Charl08 reads words with pictures in 2022 #4

I'm Charlotte, I'm based in north west England and I like to read. I started in the category challenge last year.

I've not had much of a chance to get to galleries or museums due to Covid (I guess like most people in the group). I do love going to art galleries, and taking pictures and buying books when I'm there. I've enjoyed finding out more about women artists in recent years, so thought I'd focus on that for 2022.

A new book about women artists I'm looking forward to reading, linked to a brilliant Twitter account that highlights many women's work.

Last quarter's reading

Olya Pilyuhina
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/ukraine/articles/10-contemporary-ukrainian-art...

April 20 (Total 98)

1. Salt Lick (Prize nominees)
2. The Bread the Devil Knead (Prize nominee)
3. Parks and Provocation (New to me authors)
4. Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments (Prize nominee)
5. The Lady Doctor (GN)
6. In Case of Emergency (Women in translation/ Book groups & challenges)
7. The Book of Form and Emptiness (Prize nominee)
8. Ten Trends
9. Incredible Doom (GN)
10. The Master Key (Women in translation)
11. Creatures of Passage (Prize nominees)
12. Dien Cai Dau (Prize nominees)
13. These Days (Prize nominees)
14. This One Sky Day (ditto)
15. Strangers I know (Women in translation)
16. Memories from Limon (GN)
17. The Island of Missing Trees (Prize nominees)
18. Lena Finkle's Magic Barrel GN
19. The Slowworm's Song (Authors I've read before)
20. Concerning my daughter (in translation)

Library books read in April: 9

May 12 (Total 110)

1. Bless the Daughter raised by a voice in her head (Authors with links to Africa)
2. Black Drop (New to me authors)
3. Kim JiYoung, Born 1982 (in translation)
4. Book Lovers (familiar faces)
5. Winter Counts (New to me)
6. The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street (History/ memoir)
7. Phenotypes (Book group reads)
8. The Bone Readers (New to me authors)
9. The Village of Eight Graves (familiar faces)
10. What are you going through (familiar faces)
11. Homesickness (New to me)
12. Repentence (New to me)

Library books read in May: 7

June 15 (Total 125)

1. Sorrow and Bliss (Women's Prize shortlist)
2. Antarctica (Prizewinner)
3. Talk Flirty to Me (New to me)
4. Wilder Winds (Women Non-binary people in translation)
5. The Devil's Dance (read my books/ Book groups)
6. Women in the Picture (Reading my books)
7. Secret Lives of Church Ladies (New to me)
8. Love for Beginners (Familiar Faces)
9. Kalmann (Bookgroup books)
10. At Night all Blood is Black (Links to Africa)
11. Goodbye, Ramona (Women in translation)
12. Witches (Women in translation)
13. A Thousand Mornings (Familiar faces / Reread?)
14. The Berlin Exchange (Familiar faces)
15. Joan is Okay (New to me)
16. Zorrie (New to me)

Library books read in June 6

I'm on holiday so here's an underappreciated Viennese artist:
Helene Funke, from eastern Germany, spent her early career in France, where she became interested in Impressionism and Fauvism.
Some of her paintings were exhibited in France alongside works by Matisse, Braque and Vlaminck. From 1911 until her death in 1957 she lived in Vienna. She enjoyed artistic success until the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938. She lived as a recluse during the war. Funke's reputation was not properly restored until an exhibition in Linz showcased her work in 2007.


From: https://communityoflights.com/images/stories

Read this quarter

July 17 (Total 142)

1. Summer Light Then Comes the Night (New to me)
2. Horse (familiar faces)
3. The Essential June Jordan (New to me)
4. Fault Lines (New to me)
5. The Things They Carried (Prize winners)
6. Olga Dies Dreaming (New to me)
7. The Half Life of Valery K (Prize nominees)
8. His Only Wife (New to me/ African connections)
9. Persuading Annie (Familiar faces)
10. Women who kill (in translation)
11. Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead (Prize winners: Nobel)
12. The Siege of Loyalty House (History)
13. How High We Go in the Dark (New to me)
14. If they come for us (New to me)
15. The World of Yesterday (New to me)
16. Sex and the City of Ladies (history)
17. The Illustrated Woman (New to me)

Library books read in July 9

August 21 (Total 163)

1. Maps of our spectacular bodies (Prize nominees)
2. Beginner's Luck (familiar faces)
3 Ethel Rosenberg: a cold war tragedy (history)
4. Below Zero (familiar faces)
5. Booth (Prize nominees)
6. After Sappho (Prize nominees)
7. Case Study (Prize nominees)
8. Yell Sam, if you still can (Women in translation)
9. Luck of the Draw (familiar faces)
10. Intimacies (New to me)
11. Squire GN
12. The Con Artists (GN)
13. Best of Luck (Familiar faces)
14. All Walls Collapse (Bookclub books)
15. Wake (New to me)
16 . Dreamin' Sun: Vol 1 Vol 2 & Vol 3 & 4 (GN)
17. Bad Actors (Familiar faces)
18. The Colony (Prize nominees)
19. Chivalry (GN)
20. The Last Children of Tokyo (Women in translation)
21. The Whalebone Theatre (New to me)

Library books read in August: 11

September 5 (Total 167)

1. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Prize nominees)
2. The Trees (Prize nominees)
3. Maggie Moves On (Familiar faces)
4. No such thing as an easy job (Women in translation)
5. In search of equilibrium (New to me)

Library books read this month: 4

Graphic novels and memoirs
The Canadian author and artist Leanne Shapton


1. Esther's Notebooks
2. Okay Universe
3. Turtle in Paradise: the Graphic Novel
4. Stone Fruit
5. Over Easy
6. Cruel Summer
7. Year of the Rabbit
8. The Fade Out: Act One
9. The Contradictions
10. Parenthesis
11. Blame This on the Boogie
12. The Roles We Play
13. Lady Doctor
14. Squire
15. The Con Artists
16. Dreamin' Sun : Vol 1 Vol 2 & Vol 3 & 4
17. Chivalry (GN)

Women in translation (International artists)
Bu Hua


As Soon as China Has a Space Station It Can Begin to Consider Establishing a Communist Party Branch There 3; 2008.004" via
https://explore.dangrove.org/persons/312

1. Brickmakers (Argentina)
2. The Mad Women's Ball (France/US)
3. To the Warm Horizon (South Korea)
4. Punishment of a Hunter (Russia)
5. Wild Thorns (Palestine)
6. In Memory of Memory (Russia)
7. The Woman with the Knife (South Korea)
8. In Case of Emergency (Iran)
9. The Master Key (Japan)
10. Strangers I know (Italy)
11. Concerning my daughter (South Korea)
12. Wilder Winds (Catalan/Spain)
13. Goodbye, Ramona (ditto)
14. Witches (Spanish-Mexico/US)
15. Yell Sam if you still can (France)
16. The Last Children of Tokyo (Japan)

Prize nominees (women artists who have been nominated for and/or won prizes)

Judithe Hernandez, recognised by Anonymous was a Woman.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/anonymous-was-a-woman-expands-grant-program-20...

Judithe Hernandez, Juarez Quinceañera (2017). Courtesy of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, Riverside Art Museum, California.

1. Small Things Like These (Author has won the inaugural William Trevor Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Olive Cook Award and the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award 2009)
2. Matrix (Groff was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction)
3. The Sentence (Erdrich won the Pulitzer for her last book)
4. The Kids (Lowe won the 2021 Costa book prize)
5. Build Your House Around My Body (Women's prize 22)
6. Salt Lick (Women's prize longlist 22)
7. The Bread the Devil Knead (Women's Prize longlist 22)
8. The Book of Form and Emptiness (ditto)
9. Creatures of Passage (ditto)
10. Sorrow and Bliss (ditto)
11. Antarctica (Edge Hill short story prize)
12. The Things They Carried (author is National Book Prize winner)
13. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (Booker longlist)
14. Booth (Booker longlist)
15. The Half Life of Valery K (Times book of the month)
16. After Sappho (Booker longlist)
17. Case Study (Booker longlist)
18. The Colony (Booker longlist)

Books by authors with links to the African continent, loosely defined

Check out Afia Prempeh's paintings, including this series exploring women's dreams of the future (often including books). Love them.
https://www.gallery1957.com/exhibitions/58-afia-prempeh-we-could-be...-accra-gal...
1. Library of the Dead (Author is Zimbabwean)
2. Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (Author is Somali, born in Kenya, lives in London)
3. Ancestor Stones (Sierrra Leone / UK)
4. A Blood Condition (Author born in Zambia, now UK)
5. Bless the Daughter raised by a voice in her head (Somalia/Kenya/UK)
6. At Night All Blood is Black (Senegal/ France)
7. His Only Wife (Ghana/ Liberia / UK)

Familiar faces - authors I've read before
(Favourite artists: Natalia Goncharova)



1. Deep as Death
2. The O Zone
3. Real Estate
4. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital
5. The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing
6. The Serpent's Tale
7. All Grown Up
8. Walk the Blue Fields (short stories)
9. Lady Violet Investigates
10. Lady Violet attends a wedding
11. Lady Violet finds a Bridegroom
12. The Swimmers
13. Lady Violet Enjoys a Frolic
14. Enemies Abroad
15. All Systems Red
16. Artificial Condition
17. Exit Strategy
18. These Precious Days
19. Fugitive Telemetry
20. Lady Violet Holds a Baby
21. Lady Violet Goes for a Gallop
22. Book Lovers
23.The Village of Eight Graves
24. What are you going through
25. The Berlin Exchange
26. Horse: a novel
27. Beginner's Luck
28. Below Zero
29. Luck of the Draw
30. Best of Luck
31. Bad Actors

Keeping things interesting i.e. first time authors & new-to-me authors ('new' artists under 40)

View Ana Segovia's work here:
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/ana-segovia-sin-titulo
The artist "lives and works in Mexico City. She creates paintings from film stills, mostly from the Mexican cinema golden era that investigate the performative aspect of the gender as well as the construction of masculinity in massive audiovisual medias. "
https://www.marylynnbuchanan.com/blog/100-contemporary-female-artists-you-need-t...

1. We Run the Tides*
2. The Appeal
3. Index of Women*
4. Network Effect*
5. Often I Am Happy
6. Native: Dispatches from a Palestinian-Israeli Life*
7. Black Drop*
8. Winter Counts*
9. The Bone Readers*
10. Homesickness*
11. Very Cold People
12. Talk Flirty to Me
13. Secret Lives of Church Ladies*
14.Summer Light Then Comes the Night
15. The Essential June Jordan
16. Fault Lines
17. Olga Dies Dreaming *
18. How High We Go in the Dark *
19. If they come for us
20. The World of Yesterday
21. The Illustrated Woman
22. Intimacies*
23. Wake

*= Would look to read this author again

Histories & politics (early artists: Lavinia Fontana)


Portrait of a Noblewoman, ca. 1580; Oil on canvas, 45 1/4 x 35 1/4 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts

1. The Mirror and the Palette (art history)
2. Devil in the Grove (civil rights)
3. Kingdom of Characters (history / linguistics)
4. The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street (Russian history/ memoir)
5. The Siege of Loyalty House
6. Sex and the City of Ladies
7. Ethel Rosenberg: a cold war tragedy (biography)

Bookclub books & group reads
(Still life "groups of things" by women artists)


Ethel Sands
Still Life with a View over a Cemetery

Borderless Bookclub (now monthly) https://borderlessbookclub.com/

January Borderless - read Brickmakers
March Read Marzahn, Mon Amour
April Read Strangers I Know
May Read Phenotypes
June Read Kalmann
July read All Walls Collapse
September Thirsty Sea
October

Work bookgroup
Read (March) What it feels like for a girl
October People Person
Asia year long read (75ers group)
January: Turkey My Name is Red
February: Palestine Wild Thorns
March: Syria (read) The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor
April: Iran
Read: In Case of Emergency / Mohebali, Mahsa
Potentially: My Bird (Middle East Literature In Translation) / Vafi, Fariba
Things We Left Unsaid / Zoya Pirzad
May: to read a "-stan" I have The Devil's Dance on the shelf to read, have started.

Caroline's shared read (20 AoC)
March (gave up on) Night Haunts: A journey through the London night

Happy new one, Charlotte. Is it very hot where you are? I know you're more north but I have friends miserable in London. Hope it's not too oppressive where you are!

Happy new thread! Great to revisit all those lovely pictures.

Happy new thread! Great pictures!

Happy new one, Charlotte. I love the art and your categories. I'm taking note of the new authors.

Happy new thread! Love the Ethel Sands painting especially.

>12 katiekrug: It's pretty stinking, Katie, but it's nowhere near my memories of the stifling heat of London (and those temps were apparently a lot lower). It's apparently 26, but feels warmer.

>13 Jackie_K: There are such a range, I'm looking forward to finding more through the book listed in >1 charl08:

>14 MissWatson: Thank you.

>15 BLBera: I just need to get better at reading my own books, I think.

>16 rabbitprincess: It's a lovely one, isn't it. I would like to see the original. It's part of the Fitzwilliam collection, a museum that was one of my childhood haunts (it was free, a major plus for my mum) but I can't say I've seen this one.

>17 charl08: While we were in Edinburgh the weather news was about the heat wave in the south. It was pleasant in Edinburgh as long as I remembered to wear sunscreen. I have no idea what prompted me to take sunscreen to Scotland but I was glad that I did! The streets were teeming with tourists.

Happy new thread, Charlotte!
When are you going to Vienna?

Happy new thread, Charlotte.

The decisions about which books to pack are always the hardest, I reckon.

>18 Familyhistorian: Glad you had some good weather. It can be a bit erratic.

>19 FAMeulstee: I'm here, but it's not exactly a long trip. I think I'll be back though: it's lovely.

>20 Helenliz: Thanks Helen. Hope you're near a fan.

His Only Wife
Set in Ghana, this novel strikes me as a kind of bildungsroman, where by the end of the book the protagonist has learnt enough about herself to realise that an arranged marriage, including her husband continuing a relationship with his girlfriend, is not going to work. . The ending didn't seem to fit the rest of the book for me, given the emphasis earlier on the key role of 'village' opinion.

She sighed with her whole torso and then locked eyes with me. "Afi, don't forget who you are. You are not an actress and this is not a romance film. This is not one of those telenovelas you and Mawusi have been watching. This is real life. This is our life. You will get to know him and like him. That is how it is.

>21 charl08: how long are you going? That doesn't look like enough. But I suppose there will be book buying opportunities.

I'm probably in the minority and not doing too badly, it's the cold I can't stand. The husband, however, is melting... and doing it quite loudly. >;-)

>24 Helenliz: Back home on Friday, flights permitting. Although the temptation to just stay here, hugging the a/c, is strong.

Persuading Annie
Light retelling of Persuasion set in a fancy PR office in London and New York. Some amusing observations, but a bit dated (first published in the early 2000s).

>26 charl08: - I read that one ages ago, way before LT, because I had enjoyed the author's Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field. I was also disappointed in PA, IIRC.

>27 katiekrug: I thought I had read The Nanny, but looking at the description on LT I am wondering if I didn't confuse it with a book with a similar title. I also hadn't realised this one was republished posthumously.

After a successful wine tour today, racing to finish at least one more book so that I don't have to carry it home (and make space for the wine). If you're into dry white, can recommend Viennese vineyard tours. Lovely people, lovely settings. But so hot!

>27 katiekrug: I thought I had read The Nanny, but looking at the description on LT I am wondering if I didn't confuse it with a book with a similar title. I also hadn't realised this one was republished posthumously.

After a successful wine tour today, racing to finish at least one more book so that I don't have to carry it home (and make space for the wine). If you're into dry white, can recommend Viennese vineyard tours. Lovely people, lovely settings. But so hot!

>29 charl08: Oh, that is something I want to do some day!

>30 MissWatson: It was lovely, so peaceful an environment too.

When Women Kill
I was tempted to read this one at the bar on my own, as I thought the title might be quite a good guide to how chatty I was feeling, but no need. Although the concept of the book was fascinating (four historic cases from Chile where women had been convicted of murder), for me this was less successful as a total read. The author went off into academic over-analysis of minutiae when she ran out of archival evidence. And unsurprisingly given the bias in the period there wasn't a lot of archival material to draw on in the first place. I think this book suffers in comparison to (for example) The Five where Hallie Rubenhold was able to track down genuinely novel social history to contextual the victim's lives and make them more than part of the Ripper's story. Here Zerán touches on so many different issues (Chile's archival black holes, chwnging attitudes to women in Chile, the role of leading writers in trying to get (some of) the women pardoned but I felt spent more time reflecting on the esoteric rather than digging up useful insights. I'd have enjoyed this more as an essay I think.

>29 charl08: Looks and sounds all good, Charlotte, except for the hot.

I love the art you've chosen for this thread! And I took one look at the Helene Funke and thought "German Expressionism!" I was reasonably close! Did you get to any art museums during your time in Austria? Did you make it to Vienna, or did you stay in the western part?

>29 charl08: Lovely photos Charlotte.

>29 charl08: Looks great, Charlotte. I love dry whites!

>32 FAMeulstee: The tour van had amazing A/C which was much appreciated.

>33 RidgewayGirl: I saw the Helene Funke in person, just by chance in the Belvedere collection. I had thought it was a small picture, but it really wasn't. I was based in Vienna, the wine trip was the exception.

>34 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks Caroline. So many photogenic sights.

>35 BLBera: Me too. I made it home with two bottles. The vineyard recommended that they should have to sit for a week, so I'll be doing that.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
I'd had this on the shelf for a while, and wanted to read it for longer. Exploring attitudes to animal rights through the eyes of an older woman who lives in a remote community, I found this a powerful read. Even if the twist I could spot from a mile off. The main character has such a distinctive voice, occupied as it is with horoscopes and the natural world, I found it compelling. I've read a bit about the Polish reaction to this book, I'd like to read more to understand how it was received and the controversy around it.

... the border, which meandered capriciously, making it easy to step across it without noticing. I often crossed it inadvertently when out that way on my daily rounds. But I also liked to cross it in purpose, deliberately stepping to and fro. A dozen times, or several dozen times. I'd amuse myself like that for half an hour-playing the game of crossing the border. It gave me pleasure, because I could remember the time when it wasn't possible.

Some more photos.

Some of the street art I saw wandering around Vienna.


Some of the art I found interesting from the Belvedere exhibitions.

Adding the books I bought in Vienna at the English language bookshop and a feminist bookshop "Chicklit ".
Fateless
Wittgenstein's Nephew
Leopold Museum Guide
Mud and Stars: travels in Russia
The Tongue Set Free

>39 charl08: I really like Sara Wheeler, though Mud and Stars is more about Russian literature than about Wheeler travelling.

>38 charl08: Great photos, Charlotte. And nice book haul as well.

>38 charl08: Wonderful Charlotte. And nice book haul too.

My dad was a very young soldier guarding the Schonbrunn Palace just after WWII finished. Still not been to Vienna myself yet.

>37 charl08: I had a more mixed reaction than you did, Charlotte, and would be curious to know what you find out about the controversy. I wasn't aware there was any.

>40 elkiedee: I love books about authors, so I'm looking forward to this one.

>41 BLBera: I really enjoyed my trip: and plenty more I'd like to go back and see.

>42 Caroline_McElwee: That must have been fascinating to hear about, Caroline.

>43 bell7: There's a little bit in this NYT article, which should be accessible if you use this gift link. Polish "nationalists" were not impressed with her implied criticism of, well anything Polish.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/books/nobel-literature.html?unlocked_article_...

>38 charl08: Wow, Charlotte, you saw Judith, the Klimt painting!
Was The Kiss also on display?
I saw Judith some years ago in the museum in The Hague, so beautiful.

>45 FAMeulstee: It was Anita, but people were getting their photo taken, posing in front of it, instead of looking at it!
I was Not Impressed.

>44 charl08: I have this book TBR (apparently! I'm really glad I have Librarything records when I've done them and my Amazon order history the rest of the time to tell me such things). I can never resist an attention grabbing title.

That it attracted hostility from contemporary Polish nationalists makes me want to read the book more.

>44 charl08: Oh thanks for that, Charlotte. I kind of remember the criticisms of her fellow Nobel prize winner that year, but didn't realize the Polish nationalist party had some issues with her, too.

>47 elkiedee: Definitely, LT has saved me several times from re-buying books.

>48 bell7: I think what amazes me about Plow is how long ago it was originally written. It seems ahead of its time to me.

The Siege of Loyalty House
Fascinating look at the (English) Civil War via one siege held in a large (royalist) house that was turned into a fortress, and repeatedly attacked by Cromwell's forces. The author explores how many tried to avoid the impending civil war as long as possible, whether they were for or against the king, catholic or protestant. I had assumed all royalist supporters were catholic, but that clearly wasn't the case. Some scary reflections on the attempts people make to deny the possibility of conflict.

Rawdon, like the vast majority of his compatriots, did not want to pick a side. He did not want to leave his life. He did not want to be buried under an obscure slab in an unknown church in a village miles from home. If he was wondering how it had come to this, he was not alone. 'It is strange,' said Bulstrode Whitelocke in the Commons, 'to note how we have insensibly slid into this beginning of a civil war by one unexpected accident after another, as waves of the sea, which have brought us thus far, and we scarce know how.'

Booker longlist

Audrey Magee, The Colony (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Library reservation
Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho (Liveright) not out yet? Jan 23?
NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory (Viking) Library reservation
✔️Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Grove Press) All the stars.
Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling (Knopf) Library reservation
Maddie Mortimer, Maps of our Spectacular Bodies (Scribner) ?
Graeme Macrae Burnet, Case Study (Biblioasis) Library request (although was not a fan of his last one)
Alan Garner, Treacle Walker (4th Estate, HarperCollins) ?
Percival Everett, The Trees (Graywolf Press) Library reservation
Hernan Diaz, Trust (Riverhead Books) not out yet?
Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort Of Books) Library request.
✔️Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! (Random House)
Karen Joy Fowler, Booth (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) Library reservation

>50 charl08: OK, I'm sold. One of the first TV series I can remember making an impact was about the civil war, called By the sword divided. Been a bit of a fan ever since.

>52 Helenliz: I read The Children of the New Forest and took longer than I probably should have done to shake the conviction that the Roundheads were Mean and unjustified.

>51 charl08: Thanks Charlotte. I'm cheering for Small Things Like These, which is beautiful. I've also read The Trees and Oh William!, both of which I liked, but not sure they are great books.

I have The Colony and Trust on reserve at the library; somebody on LT loved those. After Sappho and Nightcrawling also sound good.

>51 charl08: I've only read two so far, but I just put a hold on the Keegan, based on your comments.

Copied Booker longlist to make my comments:

Audrey Magee, The Colony (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Charlotte: Library reservation
Luci: Amazon Kindle purchase, I loved her first novel The Undertaking, a historical novel set in Nazi Germany and on the Eastern front during WWII

Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho (Liveright) not out yet? Jan 23?

NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory (Viking)
Charlotte: Library reservation
Luci: Read We Need No Names, previously on an award list - will need to add Glory to Kindle wishlist and to list to look at library catalogues for when all my library cards aren't maxed out with, at the last count 9 books awaiting collection from 3 libraries and I expect this to increase, also libraries might have bought (more) copies since Booker longlist

✔️Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Grove Press - US?; Faber - UK)
Charlotte: All the stars.
Luci: Agree!

Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling (Knopf)
Charlotte: Library reservation
Luci: Already should be on my wishlists but will definitely do so at some point in next few nights/days

Maddie Mortimer, Maps of our Spectacular Bodies (Scribner)
?
Luci: ? To investigate

Graeme Macrae Burnet, Case Study (Biblioasis)
Charlotte: Library request (although was not a fan of his last one)
Luci: Have His Bloody Project, previous Booker listing, on Kindle TBR, to investigate

Alan Garner, Treacle Walker- (4th Estate, HarperCollins)
Charlotte: ?
Luci: Have many of his books for children/YA. Might have some of his recent work. To investigate.

Percival Everett, The Trees (Graywolf Press)
Charlotte: Library reservation
Luci: Know nothing, to investigate

Hernan Diaz, Trust (Riverhead Books)
Charlotte: not out yet?
Luci: Is that the UK publisher? Know nothing, to investigate

Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort Of Books)
Charlotte: Library request
Luci: Know nothing, interesting title, to investigate
.
✔️Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! (Random House)
Charlotte: Tick
Luci: Previous library reservations cancelled then Kindle acquisition - think Daily Deal - this is #3 in the series and I think I should reread first two first - they are quite short

Karen Joy Fowler, Booth (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Charlotte: Library reservation
Luci: Have read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Booth Netgalley TBR, possible future library reservation

>51 charl08: What an intriguing list! I've only read Small Things Like These, but have been hearing good things about Nightcrawling (on my TBR list), Booth, and Trust (came out in May in the US). I'll look forward to your thoughts as you read through the list.

>54 BLBera: I'm hoping that Foster will come round for me soon on the library's e-reserve system. After Sappho with its focus on women's history, sounds like my jam. Hoping they speed up the publication date given nomination.

>55 RidgewayGirl: Which ones did you read already? Would you recommend? I went on a bit of a Keegan binge after this one, so this may lead to a further lengthening of the wishlist (although, you may well have read her back catalogue already. She has won prizes for her short stories in the past).

>56 elkiedee: Sounds like you (like me) have some library books to read. I read that Trust is about the financial services industry, which I can't say is making me rush to pick it up.

>57 bell7: Apart from the two I've read already, Booth was the only one on my radar. The 'animal thing' of Glory had rather put me off, I've not done too well with animal allegories in the past. I was trying to be good and just wait for the library copies but the description of Maddie Mortimer's book caught me.

>58 charl08: So you've taken up juggling ebooks as well as dead tree books?

I have at least 9 books awaiting collection, from 3 different libraries, with 3 to return, and I'm unlikely to finish any of the others in time before the slightly different collection deadlines - I may or may not finish one before we go to Kent for a week next Friday. I'm not going to worry about trying to read anything before shortlisting or award announcements, I'm just going to try and restrain myself. Does your library have a wishlist facility where you can save the details of books you'd like to read? That's useful rather than having to keep flicking between Amazon, LT etc and the library catalogue.

Another list for you:

I'm resisting buying these book bundles even at a discount but I will be using it for reference to seek all the books out and read them - have read one previously in 2014 and one in this edition

https://shop.penguin.co.uk/products/black-britain-writing-back-complete-collecti...

https://www.librarything.com/list/43708/all/Black-Britain-Writing-Back

>59 elkiedee: Yeah, I'm lucky the library has the borrowbox subscription, it's saved me a fortune with audible / kindle.

>60 elkiedee: I have the first half of these, but hadn't seen the second set. How tempting! They do look very nice on the shelf.

I loved Foster, Charlotte, but Small Things Like These was better. I just reread it, and it is just as good the second time. I'm planning on gifting it to many people.

Re: the Booker longlist - nice to see that they are finally realizing that women can write too...

>62 BLBera: Taken them long enough, eh?

I want my own copy of Small Things Like These. I just ordered a copy of The Story of Art Without Men though, so I better wait a bit.

>62 BLBera: There were always women on the Booker lists I think. Nadine Gordimer, Beryl Bainbridge (who never won but was a contender lots of times), Penelope Fitzgerald. A few men from other Commonwealth countries who weren't actually white but came from relatively privileged backgrounds (money, education in home countries and abroad) were contenders. But recent years have been much more interesting and varied in terms of sex, race, class etc, and I think writers who have different backgrounds or who are famous for writing more popular genre fiction, and who are expected to look beyond the stereotype Booker winner of the last century, have joined judging panels. And the Booker has more competition - the development of the Orange/Bailey's/Women's Prize and of awards for writers who were being overlooked as pushed the Booker Prize to up its game. As have prizes like the Whitbread/Costa where non fiction and poetry have been in the running.

>64 elkiedee: The rate of women winning is far from equal (35/18). I thought this article was interesting on an analysis of the content of the shortlist.
https://qz.com/india/1333644/ibm-identifies-gender-bias-in-booker-prize-novel-sh...

>65 charl08: I've read The Trees and it honestly deserves to win. Just powerful and perfect and angry and funny and a masterpiece. And Oh, William!, which is, in my opinion, not as good as Anything is Possible, but still excellent if you like quiet, understated novels.

>66 RidgewayGirl: Oh, interesting. Waiting for that one from the library, but hoping that they might order a few more copies. (Currently just the one!)

>65 charl08: It is really interesting how they used data in the article, Charlotte.

>66 RidgewayGirl: I didn't love The Trees as much as Kay - I'll be interested in your opinion.

How High We Go in the Dark
Interlinked stories set as a pandemic takes over the world. The germ has been released from thousands of years of deep freeze due to the climate crisis. Scientists initially think infection is highly unlikely, but the bug mutates and proves particularly deadly for children. Gradually the stories expand from that initial infection point, exploring both the emotional and social consequences. Funeral businesses boom as the seas rise. States explore escape via space colonization, whilst VR becomes a 'solution' for others, struggling to deal with their losses.

"It's not just that I want a real job," Akira says, finding a mossy boulder to sit on. "It's impossible to meet people now."
"People like to forget about the sadness of the city," Yoshiko responds. "They walk and walk. No one stops. It's like we're all still infected. We choose to be blind to each other's suffering. It might make things easier to bear, but our hearts are cold."

>69 charl08: I really liked this one, Charlotte. It reminded me of Sea of Tranquility in some ways.

>68 BLBera: I'm not sure when I'll get my hands on it, as there are a few of us in the queue.

>70 BLBera: I liked it too, although I've not read SoT. Made me think of Ted Chiang though, who I only read fairly recently.

If they come for us
This is a poetry collection, one the library did an ILL for me (thank you Stockton on Tees library). The author was recently included in a "controversial" new recommendation for updating the English exam syllabus. The poetry deals with the author's loss of her parents, relationship heartbreak and the history of partition. Not for the faint hearted.

Each morning I stitch a scowl over my smile.
Let my eyes sass
every person standing between me
& the bus stop. My eyelashes
icy. Call it survival. Call it eyeliner so crisp
it could kill a bitch.

You look prettier when you smile
says the traffic guard & I cut
out his tongue: a pet snail
slimy in my palm. Each crooked smile
that comes my way-I take all their lips
& mount them to my wall.

Snaffled from Clubread

Characters from your reading who were...
1. Unforgettable: Frannie (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
2. Very nasty or dastardly: Uriah Heep
3. Terribly young: Lee (Prep)
4. Courageous: Cordelia Gray
5. Was/is Too Curious: Bernie Gunther (March Violets)
6. A favorite Male: Jackson Brodie Kate Atkinson
7. A favorite Female: Charlotte Gray
8. Sleuth / Investigator: Thursday Next
9. Honorable or noble: Erast Fandorin
10. Adventurous: Ropa Library of the Dead
11. Political or Civic-minded: Yashim the Eunuch
12. Romantic in some way: Jacob de Zoet
13. Royal: Hild
14. Not human: Murderbot
15. Adolescent: Cassandra I Capture the Castle
16. Senior or elderly: Elizabeth The Thursday Murder Club
17. A favorite of yours: Aaliya An Unnecessary Woman
18. Action hero of any kind: Ms Marvel
19. Read about in high school: David Copperfield
20. Lives in the future: Marvin (the paranoid android)
21. Comes with a whole family: Flora Poste Cold Comfort Farm
22. Lives in the past: Anna Levin The Siege / The Betrayal
23. Old-fashioned: Anne of Green Gables
24. Someone’s sidekick: Bunter Gaudy Night
25. One you love to hate: Tess of the D'urbervilles
26. One you would like to meet: Sister Zuana Sacred Hearts
27. Allegedly beautiful: Roseanna
28. A victim: Esme Lennox
29: Funny in some way: Jim Jurree (Killed at the Whim of a Hat)
30: On a trip in the story Lucy Honeychurch A Room With a View

>70 BLBera: and >71 charl08: When you get your library TBR under control (?), I thought Sea of Tranquility was a good read. it should come with a pandemic warning - not COVID 19 but it's a recent publication with enough parallels to make it a thing. It's an odd mix of realism and fantasy which I really like although I only dip my toes into SS and fantasy, compared to my favourite fictional genres (historical, crime and historical crime, followed by award longlist contenders of most kinds and chicklit). I guess it's really very crossover as it would appeal to a lot of historical fiction readers as much as to SF fantasy readers. But lots of mostly crime readers and writers have dabbled in SF and fantasy too, and vice versa.

>74 elkiedee: I read (and liked) Station Eleven but haven't read any more of her work. I started watching the TV adaptation of Starion Eleven but my online subscription ran out (and I'm not sufficiently committed to sign up again).

The World of Yesterday

The buildings on the edge of the city were reflected in the mighty waters of the Danube and looked out over the wide plain, merged with gardens and fields or climbed the last gently undulating green and wooded foothills of the Alps. You hardly noticed where nature ended and the city began, they made way for one another without resistance or contradiction. At the centre, in turn, you felt that the city had grown like a tree, forming ring after ring, and instead of the old ramparts of the fortifications, the Ringstrasse enclosed the innermost, precious core with its grand houses. In that core, the old palaces of the court and the nobility spoke the language of history in stone; here Beethoven had played for the Lichnowskys; there Haydn had stayed with the Esterházys; the premiere of his Creation was given in the old university; the Hofburg saw generations of emperors, Napoleon took up residence at Schönbrunn Palace; the united rulers of Christendom met in St Stephen’s Cathedral to give thanks for their salvation from the Turks, the university saw countless luminaries of scholarship and science in its walls. Among these buildings the new architecture rose, proud and magnificent, with shining avenues and glittering emporiums. But old Vienna had as little to do with the new city as dressed stone has to do with nature. It was wonderful to live in this city, which hospitably welcomed strangers and gave of itself freely; it was natural to enjoy life in its light atmosphere, full of elation and merriment like the air of Paris. Vienna, as everyone knew, was an epicurean city—however, what does culture mean but taking the raw material of life and enticing from it its finest, most delicate and subtle aspects by means of art and love?

I resisted reading Zweig due to him being everywhere a couple of years ago and just feeling like it was a bit of a fashion / trend thing. I picked up his memoir as he was from Vienna and I was visiting. His memories of growing up in 19c Vienna were fascinating, and it proved a lovely book to read whilst in the place. He's a great name dropper, and met amazing artists, writers and politicians in his lifetime, travelling around Europe and the US. The book takes a much darker tone first as he describes his resistance to the nationalism of WW1. Then again as he describes the rise of Hitler and his move to London. I think if I'd read it twenty years ago I would have said how far away it seems, but given Ukraine, the ongoing refugee crises and Trump, not so much.

But the ball on the roulette wheel of diplomacy went on rolling this way and that, at a slow and nerve-racking pace. This way and that, back and forth, black and red, red and black. Hope and disappointment, good news and bad news, and still there was never a final outcome. Forget it all, I told myself, escape into your mind and your work, into the place where you are only your living, breathing self, not a citizen of any state, not a stake in that infernal game, the place where only what reason you have can still work to some reasonable effect in a world gone mad.

>75 charl08: Reading The World of Yesterday in 2018 made me a fan of his works. Zweig wrote a lot, so I still have many of his books on mount TBR.

>75 charl08: I can understand that - we have a ridiculous amount of TV related subscriptions but it's taken me years to get through one and a bit series of Mad Men - initally on Netflix, then on Amazon Prime, now on nothing but there is a lot I'd like to see on catch up, on Iplayer, on Prime and on Netflix. At least one of my kids watches lots of Netflix so I feel one of us is getting value for money. My Prime sub wouldn't be justifed by what I get round to watching alone (it might be by what is on offer), nor would it be justified by free delivery or by the occasional Morrisons shopping, but all of them together make it feel like less of a waste of money.

I have several Zweig TBR. Heard some on the radio.

>73 charl08: Oh, that's an interesting challenge!

>75 charl08: This one does sound good, Charlotte.

I think Station Eleven is the best Mandel although I have liked her other work as well.

>76 FAMeulstee: I especially liked the first couple of chapters where he talked about his childhood and his enthusiasm for literature as a young man, Anita. Are his other books very different (from each other)? I was surprised (I'm not sure why) to find he'd written about Mary Queen of Scots.

>77 elkiedee: I decided I didn't want to be a Prime member anymore, and that was part of it (an optional extra bit). Whether that resolution lasts, I'm not sure. I was ordering a lot via Blackwells but they've just been taken over so not sure if their free postage scheme will continue.

>78 MissWatson: I had fun looking back through my books in the LT catalogue for some of the characters. A few I could just reel off. Others I'm wondering (now) how I didn't include them.

>79 BLBera: It was definitely a window onto a different world. And so sad because of his biography. I am not sure I will pick up more Mandel. I did try and didn't get very far.

Sex and the City of Ladies (history)
It was only when I was adding this to my 2022 'read' list on LT that I realised that the title was of course a reference to Carrie Bradshaw, as well as the medieval feminist classic. This was a very short book that I took all the way to Vienna and still didn't manage to finish (poor). Hilton's short chapters explore the way that Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great have been remembered, using the City of Ladies as a hook. In a 'waking dream' Hilton talks to the women about how they have been depicted, the historical 'reality' and makes suggestions for how history could better deal with these (apparently) anomalous (ie powerful) women.

The Illustrated Woman (New to me)
A poetry collection by a British writer that reflects on the experience and history of women with tattoos, the poet's own experience of having her image stolen and used in digitally manipulated porn, and motherhood. Lots of ideas and perspectives that were fresh to me, but the language itself didn't have that musical quality that (for me) some poetry manages to capture. But glad I read it.

>80 charl08: Who's taken over Blackwells? I don't buy much from new bookshops these days, just Kindle and charity shop books, and there are a couple of secondhand booksellers in central London whose stock is dominated by review copies at £2-£4 a pop for literary fiction, finished copies and ARCs, with bargain racks of chicklit and 1980s Women's Press and other forgotten feminist publishers' books for £1. That's Any Amount of Books at Leicester Square tube and Judd Street books on Marchmont Street, Kings Cross/Bloomsbury. If I'm nearby I occasionally wander into the SWP's bookshop in London, across the road from Oxfam Bookshop in Bloomsbury and which has quite an interesting secondhand section and the occasional bargain to be found. Housman's is just east of Kings Cross Station (walking distance frosm Euston!) and again it's a political/indie bookstore with lots of general stock like the SWP's Bookmarks. Persephone Books has sadly moved to Bath. There was another shop selling new and bargain books but much more literary than The Works on the same street as Persephone but it shut down years ago now!

>75 charl08:, >76 FAMeulstee: et al - I have several Zweig books and have heard some readings on the radio. I know he took his own life at quite a young age. I had no idea that he'd written about Mary Queen of Scots. Have you read Rizzio by Denise Mina, a novella about MQS and one of her very sleazy husbands, presumably father of James I? The marriage was all about power but she also suggests a lot of reason to think we'd see it as quite abusive, and much worse. My favourite book relating to MQS has to be Alison Uttley's time slip novel A Traveller In Time in which a young girl meets Anthony Babbington, a real historical person who was executed for his part in a plot to replace Elizabeth I with her cousin MQS.

>80 charl08: He wrote a lot of biographies: Marie Antoinette, Balzac: A Biography, Montaigne, Amerigo. Some are available at the library, and I hope to get to them some day.

>83 elkiedee: He wasn't young, he was 60 when he took his life. He escaped Europe just in time, went to Brazil, but didn't think the world would ever get better again.

>80 charl08: Uh oh, Blackwells got taken over? I really liked that they didn't charge extra for shipping, especially since I'm ordering from Canada.

>82 elkiedee: >85 rabbitprincess: Blackwell's being taken over:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/feb/28/waterstones-acquires-blackwells-th...

>83 elkiedee: I'm not that much into MQS' bios, I was just surprised that there was one by Zweig. He explains it in the memoir as filling a gap: the classic academic line. To be fair to him, presumably more true then than now given all the interest in the period.

>84 FAMeulstee: I thought there were hints of that lack of optimism in the memoir, Anita, I don't know if you thought the same. As if he was fighting it, but not winning. But I could be just reading in given I knew his outline biography. I think I'm more likely to pick up his novellas than the bios.

I've started my Booker reading as Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies arrived from Blackwells over the weekend. Interesting experiments with narrators / form but has sucked me in nonetheless (not being big on these things).

>86 charl08: Maybe you can start with Chess Story, it is a short and very good novella.

>84 FAMeulstee: Ok, 60 is not young, but it is too young to die, as was my mum at 72. Two writers who were family friends died by possible suicide within a few months of each other in their 30s/40s/50s in early 1983. Peter Sedgewick was a translator/historian from French, best known for translating Victor Serge, one of my literary heroes. I met him when I was a bit young to appreciate it, shortly before I started school at 5 and learned to read. I was 12 or 13 when he died. Serge was only about 57 when he died in exile from Stalin in Mexico, of a heart attack, and if he'd stayed in France or Belgium, he was a vocally anti-Stalinist Marxist Jew whose chances of surviving both Hitler and Stalin would have been very low, and his writings must have made more money since his death for others than he ever saw.

To return to Zweig, his last books could not have been published and sold normally in their original language during Nazi rule, only in translation.

I wish Zweig, Sedgewick and the rest felt more hopeful about staying alive for longer. Too many people who apparently escaped or survived the Holocaust then ended up as suicides and died when they could have written more good books than they did, and do did too many refugee writers and later writers who were inspired by them. Judith Kerr's father was a successful writer in Germany before the Nazis, and her mum attempted suicide - see the final bcyanick in Kerr's trilogy about Anna and her family that started with When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. Thomas Mann's brother was another while his nephew Klaus went for self destruction by drugs. To Jews of their generation even if and after they had escaped the Holocaust, the idea of keeping cyanide pills for when you needed to escape the world became really normalised, and not just for active Resistance participants.

The BBC have also dramatised some of Zweig's work, and I don't know if any of this is in your library's ecollection or available for suggestions.

>87 FAMeulstee: Thanks Anita, I'll have a look for a copy.

>88 elkiedee: There's a very moving part in the memoir where he talks about his books being unavailable. Thanks to the joy of the kindle notes feature, I was even able to find it again.

Not one of the hundreds of thousands, even millions of copies of my works, books that had secured their place in bookshops and countless private houses, can be bought in Germany today. Anyone who still has a copy of one of them keeps it carefully concealed. They are consigned to the ‘poison cupboard’ of public libraries, kept there for the few who want to study them, by special permission of the authorities, for research purposes, meaning mainly for the purpose of denunciation. It is a long time since the readers and friends who write to me have dared to put my reprehensible name on an envelope. And as if that were not enough, in France, Italy, and all the countries now reduced to servitude, where my books used to be widely read in translation, they are also banned today by Hitler’s orders. I am now a writer who, as Grillparzer said, “walks behind his corpse in his own lifetime”. Everything, or almost everything, that I built up over forty years in the international arena has been smashed by that one fist.

I have a Left Book Club book, written in German but first published in English by in this form by Victor Gollancz. It's a novel about young working class men street fighting with the Nazis in pre Hitler Germany. I remember it being a great read and lending it to my anarchist boyfriend. I'd forgotten about it a bit although it has a bookshelf space and I can find it. Think it's been reissued in a proper German language edition but in English only secondhand - not too expensive though because even LBC hardbacks were more like paperbacks, published to be more affordable.

Reading Paul Preston on atrocities during the Spanish Civil War, I thought "that name rings a bell" and found a copy of a novel called Seven Red Sundays. I'm not sure if it was first published in translation but I suspect it might have been - it's not like the rediscovered winters who had to wait a very long time for Franco's death.

>990 It's funny how things like that loop round and you pick them up again from other books. Most odd when they are in books you've read one after the other, mentioning something or someone I've never thought about before, and suddenly it's mentioned twice in a row (it feels like).

Saw this artist (Michelle Kingdom) today online via #womensart, more stuff I want on my (sadly fictional) art display space. Although since the budget to purchase it is also fictional, perhaps that's a good thing.

More here: https://bggalleryshop.com/collections/michelle-kingdom

Glory, Case study and Booth, three of the Booker longlist (that I reserved) have come in at the library, so that should keep me busy for a bit.

!75 I remember loving this book. Time for a reread soon. I've also got a biography of him in the tbr mountain.

>92 charl08: I have a Netgalley of Booth and, for now, a library ebook of Glory. However, I'm worried about getting caught out mid-novel with Glory by ebook auto-return - for readers who haven't used library ebooks (not like Charlotte), if I haven't finished it on 26 August and someone else has reserved it, I won't be able to renew it unless they cancel or delay their hold, so I'm not sure of being able to read it this month.

>73 charl08: Love love love A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - I was listening to a BBC e-audiobook Christmas anthology borrowed from a digital library which includes a reading from this by Miriam Margoyles (while I had a bath before going to my sister's house, instead of the World at One on BBC Radio 4). If only Francie's family had been able to buy her a sled for Christmas and some of those other shiny toys from the toyshop.

>93 Caroline_McElwee: I would like to read a bio. He avoided a lot of the personal stuff.

>94 elkiedee: >95 elkiedee: Thw autoreturn has caught me out a few times.
Miriam Margoyles reading anything would be great, I think.

Booker longlist - reading update!

Audrey Magee, The Colony (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Library reservation
Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho (Liveright) sorely tempted to buy online from the publisher
NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory: a novel(Viking) Library copy in hand
✔️Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Grove Press) All the stars.
Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling (Knopf) Library reservation
✔️Maddie Mortimer, Maps of our Spectacular Bodies (Scribner)
Graeme Macrae Burnet, Case Study (Biblioasis) Library copy in hand (although was not a fan of his last one)
Alan Garner, Treacle Walker (4th Estate, HarperCollins) Waiting to see if this gets shortlisted
Percival Everett, The Trees (Graywolf Press) Library reservation
Hernan Diaz, Trust (Riverhead Books) not out yet?
Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort Of Books) Library request.
✔️Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! (Random House)
Karen Joy Fowler, Booth (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) Library copy in hand

Maps of our Spectacular Bodies (Scribner

It is ridiculous that oncologists can die of cancer.
She asked the nurses how this could possibly happen when surely he had VIP access to all of the most sought-after, tried and tested, tumour-blitzing drugs, and they raised their eyebrows and said it did not really work like that.
Knowing something inside out does not make you immune to its power.

I have mixed feelings about this book, the first one I've read because it was on the longlist for the Booker. An artist, Lia, is facing cancer, again, dealing with all the treatments and the impact on her, her husband and her young daughter. In a parallel narrative, we go back to Lia's youth, growing up as a lonely child in a rural vicarage. We also get her daughter's increasingly fraught time at secondary school, and her husband trying to keep going at work. And also the "voice" of the disease, uncovering Lia's memories around her body.
On the plus side, not like anything I can remember reading before, full of interesting plays with words and typographical games. I loved the teenage character, just trying to find her way at a new school.
But the cancer-as-narrator didn't quite work for me. It might for you?

It's also funny: this bit made me laugh. I do like a sweet bench message, but I also like the thought of coming up with one that might make someone else smile.

>98 charl08: which book?

>99 ELiz_M: Maps of our Spectacular Bodies

>98 charl08: Great comments, Charlotte. I have been wondering about that one. I might give it a pass for now.

>101 BLBera: I suspect you'd have more success with it than me, Beth. You're much more flexible with innovation I think!

Beginner's Luck
I really liked this author's earlier book Love Lettering and this one has an equally strong focus on the work expertise of the protagonist (and this despite the lottery win theme). I'll be picking up the other two in the series. Thanks to Katie for mentioning this series on her thread, which made me pick it up.

>102 charl08: - Yay!

>103 katiekrug: Indeed.

Ethel Rosenberg: a cold war tragedy

Mixed feelings about this biography. On one hand it's a fascinating subject and one that I was glad to read a modern account about. On the other, I think the excellent NNF about means that studies like this one, which don't really have much narrative drive, suffer by comparison. I felt there wasn't much that was new here, and some elements that seemed like they should have made for dramatic, page turning stuff (the court case itself) were instead rather dry and academic. I never really felt that Ethel and Julius' specific predicament was effectively explained, given that others who did more to leak secrets were jailed rather than executed. The author has a clear passion for Ethel and her wrongful conviction, but I felt the context was a little thin in places (eg the state of the CPUSA in the fifties, the possible criminality of the state's legal team, even the experience of being in a woman's prison at the time). I suspect, reading these comments back, that this says more about my interests as a reader than the book.
Regardless of access to secret US government or Soviet files that suggest Julius at least, was an active spy recruiter, it remains a heartbreaking family story.

Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted in the book.

By killing the Rosenbergs you have quite simply tried to halt the progress of science by human sacrifice. Magic, witch hunts, autos-da-fé, sacrifices we are here getting to the point: your country is sick with fear ... you are afraid of the shadow of your own bomb.

Oh look another list...
https://www.goldsborobooks.com/article/goldsboro-books-glass-bell-shortlist-2022

Ooh, I know Goldsboro Books. Some years ago I belonged to the Crime in Store reading group. The shop moved from Covent Garden up to Store Street, near a number of University of London buildings in Bloomsbury and my aunt's specialist textbook business. Then it closed and one of the CiS booksellers got a new job at Goldsboro, and we met there for perhaps a year or so. They stock quite good books but are really a first edition collectable hardback seller.

I think I have all of his list in Kindle form, and have even read Daughters of Night.

>105 charl08: I've read Ariadne. I'm a sucker for a retelling, but there are better examples out there than that one. Tempted by Sistersong though...

>106 elkiedee: It looks like a lovely shop.
I'm tempted by most of the list, but have read Daughters of Night too.

>107 Helenliz: The Pompeii one is especially calling to me.

We Are All Birds of Uganda by Hafsa Zayyan
Sistersong by Lucy Holland;
Ariadne, from Jennifer Saint;
Mrs March, by Virginia Feito.
The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper, and Daughters of Night

Booth
More mixed feelings about my latest Booker 2022 longlist read. I've read and enjoyed Fowler's books before. I liked a lot about this book too, which follows the family of John Wilkes Booth, predominantly before the assassination. I knew little beyond that he was Lincoln's assassin. I think what Fowler has to say about the experience of being family to someone who commits an extremist act is fascinating. Lots of theatrical history, early US history, urban 19c detail. I'm just not sure it needed 400+ pages: for me it felt long and a bit baggy. She'd clearly done a lot of research but perhaps some of it could have been set to one side.

THERE ARE REASONS, just now, why romance is unlikely. John's precipitous return is connected to rumors that, back in Philadelphia, he's left a girl pregnant. He himself thinks he's probably not responsible, but a considerable sum of money was required to persuade the girl to share his doubts.
Edwin is suffering from the clap.
Of course, Asia knows none of that. She has the most wonderful brothers!

Booker longlist - reading update

Of those I've read:

Hope makes shortlist
✔️Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! (Random House)
✔️Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Grove Press) All the stars.

And the rest
✔️Maddie Mortimer, Maps of our Spectacular Bodies (Scribner)
✔️Karen Joy Fowler, Booth (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

Still to read:
Audrey Magee, The Colony (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Library reservation
Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho (Liveright) (still) sorely tempted to buy online from the publisher
NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory: a novel(Viking) Library copy in hand
Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling (Knopf) Library reservation
Graeme Macrae Burnet, Case Study (Biblioasis) Library copy in hand (although was not a fan of his last one)
Alan Garner, Treacle Walker (4th Estate, HarperCollins) Waiting to see if this gets shortlisted
Percival Everett, The Trees (Graywolf Press) Library reservation
Hernan Diaz, Trust (Riverhead Books) not out yet?
Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort Of Books) Library request.

>69 charl08: You've just about convinced me to give How High We Go in the Dark a try. I was intrigued when it came out, but not ready to read a book about a pandemic.

I'm enjoying your thoughts on the Booker Prize longlist books, too.

>111 bell7: I thought it was a great read, but I know your TBR is pretty demanding, Mary.

Litsy has a tag list running for Booker readers, I'm enjoying hearing what others make of the longlist too. The Booker organizers are linking up with reading groups around the country.
Our (eta RL book group) coordinator has applied (free books!) So fingers crossed...(did I mention the free books?)

Next one up is Case Study: I'm a bit nervous as I was not a fan of his (bleak) last one.

I also loved How High We Go in the Dark.

I've heard several mixed reviews about Booth. I'm thinking that's one I can pass on for now. My vote is Small Things Like These.

>113 BLBera: I think I need to revise my general position on dystopia, given I've read several I really enjoyed now.

I think for me Small Things Like These now has competition....

After Sappho

Readers according to Colette were like lovers. The best were attentive, intelligent, exigent, and promiscuous. She urged us to read widely and well, to seek out precisely the novels prohibited to us and lie down for hours in bed with them. We should read to gorge and sate ourselves, Colette enjoined us; after a good book we should lick our fingers. We should especially read the lives of women, for example...

I thought this was marvellous. A bit of a relief after reading a couple of other books from the Booker longlist that didn't really work for me.

Schwartz pulls together disparate queer women's lives to create a patchwork of protest: for equality and the freedom to be both artists and themselves. I've just been listening to a podcast where Ali Smith talked about how art influences her books, and I was reminded of her approach with this one: difficult to imagine the fiction without the original art inspiration. And though some of the usual anglophone suspects turn up here (notably, Woolf and Stein) what is refreshing is Schwarz's ability to connect these with continental activists and writers and actresses (and more) I'd never heard of.

In 1899 there were many Italian books instructing young ladies on proper comportment. Girls were to be noble, nice, industrious, modest, devout, quiet, self-sacrificing, and above all free of vice. Anna Vertua Gentile, who wrote dozens of these books, published How Ought I to Behave Myself? just as Eva Palmer arrived in Rome.
Eva did not read it.

Recommended.

>115 charl08: Sounds good, Charlotte.
Very few longlisted books are available in Dutch translation, so I only have read Small Things Like These.

>115 charl08: that does sound good.

>116 FAMeulstee: I hope this one is translated, Anita. I think it is quite a "European" novel, so I would think it would be (but what do I know?!)

>117 Helenliz: Someone posted online if you order through the publisher the book comes with beautiful postcards. Jealous? Me?

More Booker longlist reading. I finished Case Study.

I'm not a fan of McRae Burnet: I didn't enjoy his last (also award nominated) so I didn't have high hopes going into this one. I understand that his books are supposed to be doing "clever" things but this (again) passed me by.

On the face of it, this is the diary of a mostly unpleasant young woman going to see a therapist after her sister kills herself. This is interspersed with an account by "the author" of the controversial life of the therapist, supposedly a 60s counterculture rebel.

And I was having difficulty remembering to be Rebecca. It took a great deal more effort to he Rebecca than to be myself. But if it had just been down to me I wouldn't be there in the first place. This was what people did. They sat in pubs drinking beer and gin and listening to each other talk. They pretended to be interested and then took their turn at talking. It was difficult to see the point of any of I was sure the navvies were not in the least bit interested in what their companions had to say. They were here only to drown themselves in beer, and yet even they felt obliged to maintain some semblance of conversation. At the neighbouring table, the repartee was merely a joust between two young men to win the favour of the girl sitting between them like a prize in the church fete raffle. The man at the table by the door was still there with his newspaper. He had been sitting silently with the same glass of beer all this time. I envied him.

Booker longlist - reading update

Of those I've read:

Hope makes shortlist
✔️ Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho (Liveright)
✔️Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! (Random House)
✔️Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Grove Press) All the stars.

And the rest
✔️Maddie Mortimer, Maps of our Spectacular Bodies (Scribner)
✔️Karen Joy Fowler, Booth (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
✔️Graeme Macrae Burnet, Case Study (Biblioasis)

Still to read:
Audrey Magee, The Colony (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Library reservation
NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory: a novel(Viking) Library copy in hand
Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling (Knopf) Library reservation
Alan Garner, Treacle Walker (4th Estate, HarperCollins) Waiting to see if this gets shortlisted
Percival Everett, The Trees (Graywolf Press) Library reservation
Hernan Diaz, Trust (Riverhead Books) not out yet?
Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort Of Books) Library request.

After Sappho sounds like one I would love, Charlotte. Great comments. It sounds like Macrae Burnet is not for you. I'm enjoying your take on the Booker list.

>121 BLBera: I hear it's not out in the US until early next year (Randomly, I was listening to this podcast and the publisher discusses getting the news.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6K2TRYXoKphbVDqYQAaHt7?

I' ve been using up my last leave days before the leave year rolls over again. Cue lots of lovely lazy time, including to read.

8. Yell Sam, if you still can (Women in translation)
Short novel translated from the French that reimagines Samuel Beckett's final days in a care home via his plays. Made me want to go see his plays, as I'm sure I missed a lot. Reminded me of how fascinating a figure he is, especially when viewed from the perspective as an Irish exile in France. There's a lot here about how the elderly are abandoned, medicalised, forgotten.

9. Luck of the Draw and 13. Best of Luck were the second and third books in a romance trilogy recommended by Katie. I think I liked the first one the best, the lab setting was well done (I thought, although fwiw), but I enjoyed reading them all (so thanks again Katie, who wrote a proper review worth checking out if you want more.)

10. Intimacies
I forgot to write down on the LT record where I heard about this one, but I'm definitely going to be looking for more by this author, I really like her writing style. It's all restrained and "clean" somehow. If I had to compare it I'd mention Sigrid Nunez or some of Kazuo Ishiguro's books, and also Ferdinand von Shirach (at least how he reads in English).

It was the job of the interpreter not simply to state or perform but to repeat the unspeakable. Perhaps that was the real anxiety within the Court, and among the interpreters. The fact that our daily activity hinged on the repeated description-description, elaboration, and delineation of matters that were, outside, generally subject to euphemism and elision.

The narrator is a translator asked to work with a former dictator accused of war crimes at the Hague. She's new to the Netherlands, displaced from her life somehow. In a new relationship, her lover leaves town and she has to work out whether she will move on or hope for his return.

And finally two new graphic novels, which came in at the library.

11. Squire
One of those books that makes me want to mention it to my friends raising daughters. A book that takes a common fictional idea (training as a knight) and twists it enough to retain the fun but make space for those things previously missed. So the army is open to all, there's a reckoning about who and what it is to fight, and those who don't win the prize are acknowledged too. Beautifully drawn.


12. The Con Artists
Really funny account of a comic and his dysfunctional relationship with a childhood friend.

I'm glad you liked the Clayborns. I think the 3rd was my favorite. Have you read her stand-alone, Love Lettering? It was my introduction to her, and I loved it. I still have her latest, Love at First to read, but I'm hoarding it :)

>125 katiekrug: I have read it and liked it a lot, Katie. It was one of the reasons I was glad to see your post.

Another visit to RHS Bridgewater

I also loved Intimacies, Charlotte. I thought the insight into interpreting was really interesting.

Squire sounds like one I'll recommend to Scout.

>127 charl08: Nice.

I have an ebook hold on After Sappho but it says 10 weeks at the moment, though you never know because I think a lot of other library ebook people place too many holds and can't borrow all at once, definitely can't read all at once. I keep returning books for other users and placing holds on them, and sometimes they become available again in a day or two!

I actually saw it in the library yesterday but I really didn't feel I should take anything else out just now.

>123 charl08: Intimacies was in the 2022 Tournament of Books and got a lot of love on Litsy (that's how it hit my tbr, in any case).

>128 BLBera: I think it could promote some interesting discussions about so many things (war, "the other", minority rights, how stories are - were? - told with a male focus, as well as our responsibilities to be compassionate). Not bad for a short book!

>129 elkiedee: I hope you find time for it, I'm hoping it gets shortlisted. I have a copy of one more in hand to read from the longlist, but just not that sold on the idea of an animal perspective to pick it up just now.

>130 ELiz_M: I'm not surprised its got so much attention, it's a great read. I see Obama also included it in one of his lists. I think in my case it was probably Beth's fault!

More books read with lovely time off:

14. All Walls Collapse (Bookclub books)
A short collection of translated short stories, connected by their links to border walls. The ongoing impact of historical walls (Berlin) to those newly constructed (Rio's perspex wall preventing poor residents from accessing the airport road, Bangladesh's fencing in the Rohingya refugee camps). All the stories were powerful but the "in translation" focus unfortunately gives the impression that the UK is somehow above this (which anyone with a knowledge of Calais or Belfast would be aware, we are very much not).

If anyone wants my copy please get in touch.

15. Wake (New to me)
Gripping rural Australian "cold case" fiction. Twenty years after her sister disappeared, a young woman is approached by a PI who wants to look into the case. There's been a lot of media attention over the years, but her late mother doubled the reward before she died. Is there anything more to find? And why were the only tracks from the farm residents' own cars? You might like this if you liked Jane Harper: similar rich sense of place.

16 . Dreamin' Sun: Vol 1 (GN)
Cute Manga I picked up after Kerry (avatiakh) reviewed it on her 75 books thread.

>123 charl08: Yell Sam is on my list. I've long been a Beckett fan.

I really enjoyed Intimacies Charlotte, maybe you took your bullet from me, or maybe Beth who I remember also liked it.

>127 charl08: Lovely.

>133 Caroline_McElwee: Reading this made me think I would look out for a performance, Caroline. I've always been a bit intimidated before, I think.

I read this:

...reading shelves doesn’t do the work of the bibliomemoir. If you just looked at what I have read and what I am reading you won’t know which books matter most , when and why. You can’t see what are people’s “inner library”, as Pierre Bayard calls it. You need a bibliomemoir to find out what books really count....

https://patthomson.net/2022/08/22/the-bibliomemoir-a-musing/

And then headed to this list:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/89993.Bibliomemoirs

And then created this:
https://www.librarything.com/list/43806/all/Bibliomemoirs#

Additions welcome.

>135 charl08: - Uh-oh. Major timesuck on the horizon.....

>135 charl08: I guess I know what I'll be reading in the near future.

I'm always catching up with your thread, Charlotte.

>123 charl08: I really like Katie Kitamura's writing style, too. I discovered her with A Separation and have since picked up an earlier novel, The Longshot.

>135 charl08: Very interesting. I've read two on your list but have an embarrassing number on my tbr. What would be interesting to do is to assemble one's own bibliomemoir. It would be a good way to think through a lifetime of reading and how it has shaped me.

>135 charl08: hmmm. There's something in that.

>134 charl08: If you accept that you won't necessarily understand swathes of it (applies to Pinter too) and just go with the flow, you will be fine Charlotte, and likely surprised how much you get. And there is always humour.

>135 charl08: and >138 RidgewayGirl: I have added a few books I've read - including a publishing memoir and a book I expected to be a biography which turned out to be an author specific bibliomemoir, as the author rethinks her life while reading Doris Lessing. I've also included books on my TBR, marked accordingly - I also have quite a few that I really, really want to read so why are they still TBR, not Read?

I'm also trying to remember a couple of others - I have one in my Kindle TBR that's about a man reading to his daughter every night from 0-18. Has anyone read it?

ETA: Have found the dad and daughter sharing books memoir. It's actually by Alice Ozma, the daughter. And I bought it in April 2012.

>135 charl08: Ooh, interesting!

Another bibliomemoir that I loved years ago is The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe.

>136 jessibud2: True!

>137 BLBera: I found several I thought I'd read, but hadn't. Definitely on the look out for Fadiman's Rereadings.

>138 RidgewayGirl: I agree, a personal bibliomemoir would be fascinating. Thomson talks about books we've read but forgotten (citing How to talk about books you haven't read*), which I think would be my problem.

>139 Helenliz: I really like Thomson, she's a voice of reason in a field (I increasingly feel) lists towards "buy my book and your PhD/ research degree problems are solved".

>140 Caroline_McElwee: Gutted to find I missed a whole Beckett themed weekend of short plays at Liverpool uni earlier in the year. Timing it turns out, is everything.

>141 elkiedee: I have added some of your recommendations to my lists. I love the Susan Hill covers but found the contents disappointing.

>142 Jackie_K: I do love a list.

>143 jessibud2: Adding that one to the wishlist now!
*I have this on the shelf unread. Not sure what that says.

Bad Actors


About half way through this I realised I hadn't *forgotten* the plot of the previous book in the series, I'd just not read it. See comment above re memorable books. Difficult to summarize without spoilers, so in brief, there's plenty of dark humour, including at the expense of our former, yet somehow still there, leader. Spies are still spying, the Russians are stirring the pot, and the staff in Slough House are still stuck in their own personal little miseries, as well as work purgatory. The adviser character (complete with satchel) is weirdly familiar.

It figures, thinks Shirley, that Catherine has already established this fact. Catherine was probably on the phone to the San before dawn, checking on Shirley's whereabouts; adding unscheduled departure to her tally of crimes and misdemeanours, and waiting to pounce as soon as Shirley reappeared.
'What did you imagine you were doing?' Catherine goes on. "Taking on what sounds like a battalion of thugs?'
At a loss for an accurate answer, Shirley says, 'Yeah, it's what Thelma and Louise would have done.'
'Well, I've no idea who those people are. But if Thelma and Louise drove off a cliff, would you do that too?"
Shirley doesn't know where to start.

>135 charl08: Thanks for setting this up Charlotte!

>135 charl08: I'm having a lot of fun with the list and it's quite useful for reminding me of all those books I really had to buy that are still on my TBR. (More than one of them for more than 10 years, but for Kindle acquisitions since I got my first ereader in 2011, I can actually confirm the long ago date on Amazon). Does anyone fancy trying to do a bibliomemoir reading project in 2023?

>144 charl08: I find Susan Hill bizarrely fascinating but incredibly irritating. She is as far as I know the only person who has blocked me on Twitter - I don't know why or what particular thing I said, or maybe it was just my profile. We are clearly on different wavelengths politically as she's a right wing Tory, though apparently one with a contradictory personal life, according to Wikipedia not her two bibiliomemoirs - she left her husband for a much younger woman, a Scottish comedian, who I think then left Susan Hill for Radio 4 staple broadcaster and comedian Sue Perks. Anyway, I don't normally get into Twitter spats and would never have dared venture into an argument with Susan Hill.

I've been talking about books with a group of enthusiastic readers on Mumsnet a bit over the last year or so, and there are quite a lot of people who are drawn to Howards End is on Landing by the title, cover and concept of the book but my view that this woman's views and constant name dropping and boasts are weird and annoying is quite well backed up by posts from others. I did buy it for my mum's husband as a Christmas or birthday present but I borrowed it, and the follow up, and I've not found a charity shop or Kindle copy cheap enough to bother getting my own.

>146 mdoris: Please do add your own, Mary.

>147 elkiedee: I'd be up for the memoir read, but maybe only 3 months or something like that - I've got a terrible track record with the yearly ones. I've got a couple of Russian writer ones (including the Groskop) I want to read, and also want to check re prison reading books. The last one I read I thought was rubbish, and it rather put me off, but I think I'm curious about them again now.

I'm not disagreeing re Susan Hill's book - I don't usually think of books as primarily about decoration, but had a bit of a conflict when considering whether to keep my copy. (The usual criteria is 'do I like it / want to remember it'.)

>148 charl08: I know what you mean, can't even keep up with the library group. But this doesn't have to be a commitment thing - I'm always seeing challenges that I'd love to join in but I usually struggle to be reading the right book in the right month - eg Virago Modern Classic group challenges, Asian writers, Suzanne's non fiction challenges - they all sound great. But there are all those lovely shiny new books coming out and appearing in library catalogues and/or new book displays.

Hi Charlotte, I have finally caught up with your threads! And took several BBs of course.

>29 charl08: Oh, so beautiful! I visited Vienna the Wachau in 2018 and loved that trip so much. I went book shopping at ChickLit, too, such a great shop.

>46 charl08: "but people were getting their photo taken, posing in front of it, instead of looking at it!" I feel that this is what most people do nowadays, all the time, everywhere... Not my idea of traveling.

>75 charl08: What a chilling quote by Stefan Zweig.

>89 charl08: And this one as well.

>149 elkiedee: OK, no commitment sounds about my speed.

>150 MissBrangwen: I loved it, would happily go back to Vienna tomorrow. I am thinking about a Xmas visit. Although it also made me want to revisit some of the European places I've not been back to for years. Including Prague, which is where I first saw a Klimt (with next to nobody looking at it, at least in my memory).

Continuing my Booker22 Longlist reading with The Colony.

Anyway, James, it's my interpretation of the island.

That's grand, Mr Lloyd. It's just nothing to do with my work. My work is different. Yours is like everybody else's work.

That's not very kind, James.

A beautiful woman at the centre. Everything dotted around that. Painting done. Job done. You're all doing that. Have been for centuries.

You know very little about art, James.
James shrugged.

I've been reading, Mr Lloyd. Looking. I know enough.

This was such a compelling read for me, I really loved it, but I'm finding it quite hard to review without spoilers.

Set in the late 1970s, an English artist moves to an isolated Irish island to paint for the summer: but it's not quite as isolated as he hoped. Alongside his visit, a French linguist is trying to track changes in Gaelic speaking on the island. The Island is not as cut off from the politics of the time as it might appear, not least the news of death after death on the radio as the Troubles roll on.Magee intersperses her account of quotidian island life with the awful details of deaths in the Troubles that summer, from IRA volunteers to a woman waiting at a bus stop. Somehow the almost banal descriptions of these deaths (age, marital status, brief details of how they died) make them cumulatively powerful.
I liked how Magee complicates the politics with personal relationships. Despite thinking it was a compelling narrative that was well told, and that the ending was completely in line with that, part of me still wanted a happ(ier) ending for James and Mairéad.

Booker longlist - reading update

Of those I've read:

Hope makes shortlist
✔️ Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho (Liveright)
✔️Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! (Random House)
✔️Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Grove Press) All the stars!
✔️Audrey Magee, The Colony (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

And the rest
✔️Maddie Mortimer, Maps of our Spectacular Bodies (Scribner)
✔️Karen Joy Fowler, Booth (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
✔️Graeme Macrae Burnet, Case Study (Biblioasis)

Still to read:
NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory: a novel(Viking) Library copy in hand
Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling (Knopf) Library reservation
Alan Garner, Treacle Walker (4th Estate, HarperCollins) Waiting to see if this gets shortlisted
Percival Everett, The Trees (Graywolf Press) Library reservation
Hernan Diaz, Trust (Riverhead Books) now out (seen in bookshop!)
Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort Of Books) Library request.

I'm impressed with your Booker reading, Charlotte.

I'm reading The Colony right now, Charlotte and loving it! I hope it does make the shortlist. And what Katie said >154 katiekrug:.

>154 katiekrug: I'm not sure I'm going to make it through all the ones I want to read by the shortlist deadline on the 6th, Katie...

>155 BLBera: It's really good. It reminded me that I meant to watch a documentary where actors filmed in NI read the names of everyone who died, and I watched the first five minutes and found it too much. Poor of me. I watched Belfast though, which was very good.

Work has announced the shortlist for their short story prize:

Man Hating Psycho by Iphgenia Baal (Influx Press)
Intimacies by Lucy Caldwell (Faber)
Dance Move by Wendy Erskine (Stinging Fly/Picador)
Dark Neighbourhood by Vanessa Onwuemezi (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Send Nudes by Saba Sams (Bloomsbury)

https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/news/edge-hill-short-story-prize-2022-shortlist/

Intimacies and the two novels I've read by Lucy Caldwell (her first, years ago, and These Days, this year, are both excellent. I haven't heard of the others but will have to investigate later.

>156 charl08: I just finished The Colony, and it is brilliant. The Irish are owning the longlist this year, at least the ones I've read. I've only read four. The next one I'd really like to read is After Sappho.

You were right about Small Things Like These. A lovely novella.

>158 elkiedee: My library had a couple, so I've added them to the reservation list.

>159 BLBera: I agree: I'm intrigued to see which ones make the shortlist. Of those I've not read, on Litsy I've seen The Trees get a lot of praise, but also Nightcrawling and Trust. I guess it's a strong list this year.

>160 RidgewayGirl: Every time someone mentions it I am reminded I want to reread it. Glad you found a copy.

Chivalry
This was fun: a Neil Gaiman story about finding the grail in a local Oxfam. Beautifully illustrated as a GN, complete with sections in the style of medieval illuminated writing.

The Last Children of Tokyo (Women in translation)
This was super gloomy, but powerful dystopia. An elderly man, part of a cohort of the old who seem to have forgotten how to die, lives in the outskirts of an abandoned Tokyo. Japan is isolationist, and the latest generation of children have been poisoned by the environment and are not expected to live to adulthood.

A month before, someone had put up a poster on the wall outside the elementary school: NO ONE SPEAKS OF THE WEATHER ANYMORE OR REVOLUTION EITHER. In bold fancy lettering, it was a take on the famous quotation, WHILE PEOPLE SPEAK ONLY OF THE WEATHER I SPEAK OF REVOLUTION-but the very next day some one took it down.

And it wasn't just hot and cold-the difference between darkness and light was also becoming vague. Thinking what a gloomy day it was, you'd be staring up at a gray sky, which would brighten as if illuminated by a light bulb hidden somewhere deep inside until the sky was so blindingly bright you had to turn away.

Lovely day for a walk on the beach yesterday.

The Whalebone Theatre
First book by this new author follows a fractured but affluent family in a south coast country house from WW1 to WW2.
There's some lovely reflections on the power of reading as a child (even when the books aren't "meant for you").

...whenever she now tucks her military pistol into its holster or zips up her camouflage parachute suit, she feels solemn and justified, as if she is finally inhabiting her rightful story. After all, the world Henty described was one that constantly seethed with wars, where a plucky lad need only hop aboard a brig and cross the ocean to find himself military attaché to the Prussian Army, or leading a musket platoon through the dawn mist, and young Cristabel had marched alongside them, wooden sword held high.

But alongside that feeling of rightfulness, there is an unease too, a slight embarrassment. She is discomforted by a nagging sense that by stepping into her story she might somehow be seen. Because the imagined place of the child within the story does not show the child herself. Because had the Duke of Wellington or Admiral Nelson ever looked down and seen that a small girl had joined their forces, that girl would have been sent home.

I've read a lot of fiction set in this period, to the point where I'm now avoiding it if I come across a blurb that mentions it. This was a worthwhile read though, a story that looks at how different children can be from their parents, and the close relationships of siblings even when their choices mean their lives take separate paths. The descriptions of the outdoor theatre productions in particular were absorbing, the author bringing together an unlikely community of amateur actors.

She can see how Antigone's martyrdom must appeal to the young Parisians in the audience, but what freedom does Antigone have? Her sole self-directed act ends in her death, offstage. She defends her brother, then handily tidies herself away, hanging herself in her own dress. Just as in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, the defiant sister who defends her brother is tidied away into an unlikely mar riage at the end of the play. What if, wonders Cristabel, there was a version in which they stayed? Stayed alive. Stayed themselves.

I made the mistake of reading the last page by accident so I wasn't as shocked by the killing off of Digby, the golden child, as I might have been.

>164 charl08: The beach looks perfect, Charlotte.

>166 FAMeulstee: I wished I taken my book!

>162 charl08: Oh, that looks wonderful!

>164 charl08: How beautiful! This is one of those photos where you can almost smell the air and hear the sounds...

>164 charl08: Lovely, Charlotte.

THe Whalebone Theatre goes on my WL! It sounds great.

I'm reading The Whalebone Theatre now, but only about 70 pages in, and I fear I'm likely to clock up a fine on it, as I should have started it a bit sooner, and Haringey and Islington only have one dead tree copy each so far.

>168 MissBrangwen: I regularly count my blessings that I live within easy reach of this view! Although it isn't always so mild weather-wise.

>169 BLBera: I've not seen that much about it, but the blurbers are an impressive bunch, so assume it's had a bit of publicity and I've just missed it.

>170 elkiedee: I am feeling quite virtuous for returning my copy early (although mostly because someone else requested it, which gave me the nudge to get on and read).

The next two books have been announced for the Borderless Bookclub.
One's a familiar publisher (Istros) with a book from Albania Like a Prisoner: stories of endurance. The first book is published by Heloise, a new publisher to the group. It's overtly feminist, so I am looking forward to hearing more about their work at the meeting. Also looking forward to hearing more about the book, of course Thirsty Sea. (It's an Italian author). I've ordered Thirsty Sea but Like a Prisoner isn't out yet (according to Waterstones, anyway).
https://borderlessbookclub.com/

"For years, one US librarian collected the flotsam she found between the pages of borrowed titles.

Now, Sharon McKellar is opening her unique treasure trove for those visiting Oakland Public Library, California, in a special exhibition called "Found in a Library Book".

"I wanted to share something that was really interesting to me that I had a feeling would be interesting to other people," said McKellar, supervising librarian for teen services at Oakland Public Library.

“It tells a story of our community and our city in a different and sort of unexpected way and ties back to the library."

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2022/08/31/forgotten-treasures-the-strange-thin...

>173 charl08: What an interesting project. I do not use the library (although I love visiting libraries!) but I buy secondhand books frequently and have found small treasures in some of them, such as postcards or interesting receipts. It is like glancing into another life.
Thank you for sharing!

>173 charl08: When I was a child my aunt and uncle gave me a little gold signet ring which I wore all the time. One day I lost it. Month's later I saw a notice in the library about a ring having been found. It was mine - apparently I had tucked it inside the plastic cover of my library book!

>174 MissBrangwen: I used to use the National Library in Edinburgh, where a lot of their books are rarely used. They had a display board of materials, including some 20s/30s tickets, that had been used as bookmarks by previous (only?) readers.

>175 SandDune: Ah, that's really nice they reunited you with your ring. On the other hand, I try to donate bookmarks and fail because the librarians keep them back for me!

I've booked tickets for the Manchester lit fest, going to go and hear Natalie Haynes and George Saunders. I'd go for more but on a work day the trains are a bit more of a stress.
https://www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/events

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

The last Booker read for me from the longlist (probably) before the announcement.
I loved this one, kind of a crime story but told from the point of view of the dead man. Set in Sri Lanka, jumping back from Maali's death in 1990 to the conflict he's witnessed first hand during the 1980s. It's by no means a light read although there's plenty of black humour. Given "seven moons" before he has to make a decision on the afterlife, the book follows Maali as he tries to make sense of the afterlife and work out what led to his death. Problem is, he can't remember crucial details. There are many suspects: Maali has worked as a fixer for international journalists, government officials - and those claiming to be those things.

Being a ghost isn't that different to being a war photographer. Long periods of boredom interspersed with short bursts of terror. As action-packed as your post-death party has been, most of it is spent watching people staring at things. People stare a lot, break wind all the time, and touch their genitals much too much.

Most folk think they are alone and, as usual, they are mistaken. At the very least, there are a hundred insects within spitting distance of you and a few trillion bacteria on everything you touch. And yes, some of them are watching you.

There will always be something hovering or passing through, though most things that hover and pass are as interested in you as you are in earthworms. There are at least five spirits wandering the space you're in now. One may reading over your shoulder.

Booker longlist - reading update, with the shortlist announced in a couple of days, I don't think I'm going to finish Glory in time.

Of those I've read:

Hope makes shortlist
✔️Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These (Grove Press)
All the stars, my favourite I think.

✔️Audrey Magee, The Colony (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
I thought this was a powerful novel which managed to make a familiar context (colonialism) new and powerful.

✔️Shehan Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort Of Books)
See above. Not sure if this is helped by being the most recent I've read (and my love of crime fiction) but that being said, still hope it gets shortlisted, and will go looking for his previous novel.

✔️ Selby Wynn Schwartz, After Sappho (Liveright)
I loved this one, but it's not stayed with me as well as I would have expected it to - so I'm less keen than I was when I read it.

✔️Elizabeth Strout, Oh William! (Random House)
In my case, more a favourite because of the series than this book in particular, although I do find she creates a kind of effortless reading experience. Which clearly is not effortless writing!

And the rest
✔️Maddie Mortimer, Maps of our Spectacular Bodies (Scribner)
✔️Karen Joy Fowler, Booth (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
✔️Graeme Macrae Burnet, Case Study (Biblioasis)

Still unread:
NoViolet Bulawayo, Glory: a novel(Viking) Reading!
Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling (Knopf) out from the library
Alan Garner, Treacle Walker (4th Estate, HarperCollins) Waiting to see if this gets shortlisted
Percival Everett, The Trees (Graywolf Press) Library reservation
Hernan Diaz, Trust (Riverhead Books) now out (seen in bookshop!)

>177 charl08: Great comments Charlotte. I'll add that to my WL. Good job on reading the longlist. I agree about the Magee and Keegan, two I've read. Two that I want to read are Trust and Nightcrawling.

>179 BLBera: Despite what I said, I'm half way through The Trees as it just came in at the library, so I could pick it up after work. It's really good, so glad I got the chance to read it.

Booker Shortlist is:

The Trees
Small Things Like These
Oh William
Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
Treacle Walker
Glory

I'm so disappointed that The Colony didn't make it.

>182 BLBera: I'm surprised too, Beth. I wondered if the judges felt they couldn't pick two Irish books? But that may be nonsense of course.

Just going to leave the cover of my current read here:
There's no such thing as an easy job

Not much books read but shopping is another story!
The story of art without men arrived, hot off the press.
New book for translated fiction bookgroup Thirsty Sea
Banned Book Club with this title, I couldn't resist this GN.
Work's book group are reading People Person for the BHM meeting (October here)
I heard about The Never Ending Quest for the other shore via the Poetry Foundation's podcast. The link to African history grabbed me, as did the dual language printing.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/58oADTpTadjr6N9BdTeC9A (I think you can access it via other apps though)
And another Korean fiction in translation Violets.

>185 charl08: Not much books read but shopping is another story!

Yes, it really is, isn't it?!

>186 Jackie_K: Yes, my TBR shelf groans but I still want the new books.

https://theawkwardyeti.com/

There's no such thing as an easy job
Translated from Japanese.
An odd ball story of a woman in her mid 30s who has burnt out and wants to find a job that won't be stressful. Her adventures in short term employment involve almost-realistic-but-not-quite roles. Her first is to watch an author using secretly planted video cameras in his house, another is to write info blurbs (that have nothing to do with the product) on rice cake wrappers.
(I had to Google to find out rice cakes in Japan are nothing like UK ones, which explains the repeated references to how delicious they are.) All the jobs involve the petty annoyances of working, from the weird rules (you can't have things delivered to yourself at the office) to everyday tedium. Mixed with the left field occurrences in each of the roles the book is not as dull as the roles initially appear to be.
The book is at once an argument for the importance of co-workers and the need to take a step back for those in demanding caring jobs as we finally learn our narrator is going to go back to her role as a hospital social worker.

>187 charl08: Ooft, can relate.
>188 charl08: Wait, there are rice cakes that actually taste of something?!

I know lots of Irish books have been shortlisted for the Booker over the years, and I loved Audrey Magee's first novel nearly as much as I did Small Things, the only one I've read. Did someone want to put some more famous older more errrm masculine writers on the list. Are there shades of Atwood/Evaristo thing of we can't miss Atwood out? Because I like Atwood and I really liked the book but I think none of my personal favouritest Atwoods have won the Booker, and some were never listed either, and I'm not sure about the best. Cats Eye and Hag Seed.

Off to a street party with my literally literary family and 3 books that I'm taking with me in case anyone needs to read them as I have Kindle copies. My aunt has them, I am sure! and my cousin probably does too but there may be people like us who need to borrow first and buy later if we have to.

>187 charl08: :)

>188 charl08: This one sounds like one I would like.

>187 charl08: Ha, that's so true it hurts!

>187 charl08: Yup!

>189 Jackie_K: I fell down a rabbit hole of Japanese sweet options online. Fortunately, got distracted by beautiful woodcut prints, so didn't order anything!

>190 elkiedee: I did wonder if the Alan Garner nod is more of a "recognition of life work" award than anything else. The chair of judges for this year made a big point of the fact that there are no rules for the committee about how they choose. I have enjoyed all the ones I've read so far.

>191 BLBera: I forgot to write down where I heard about this one. I was fascinated by her personal history: she experienced some kind of workplace mistreatment, and part of her writing is a reaction to that.

>192 rabbitprincess: Litsy has a thing where people post an unread book a day from their shelves for a year. I'm a bit afraid I'd have enough for two...

>193 Helenliz: I'm not alone!

Time for a new thread...

>197 charl08: Thanks to my Jar of Fate I know exactly how many books I have on my TBR, and it would take me to just over 1 year of a book a day. I'm hoping to get the number below 370 by the end of the year (I'm currently at 378), although my current rate of acquiring books is somewhat conspiring against that.

>197 charl08: LT says I have 382 books "to read", so just over a year's worth of reading (although some are audiobooks, and they might take longer than a day to read if read straight through). I'm impressed by a year-long photo challenge!