PAUL C IN 23 (7)

PLACES I AM READING

I am reading The Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell this month and it is a place I really want to get to soon in RL.

THE OPENING WORDS

I am just immersing myself in Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and which has been severally tipped for recognition in the upcoming awards season. I expect it to be longlisted in the Women's Prize and it must have a change in the Pulitzer.



"First, I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they've always given me that much : the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being let's just say out of it."

Interested..............................?

BOOKS COMPLETED

January
1. The King's Fool by Mahi Binebine (2017) 125 pp Fiction / ANC / Morocco
2. The Golden Ass by Apuleius (c 170) 216 pp Fiction / ANC / Tunisia / 1001
3. Driftnet by Lin Anderson (2003) 262 pp Thriller / Rhona MacLeod 1
4. The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff (1954) 292 pp Fiction / BAC
5. Free : Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi (2021) 310 pp Non-Fiction / NF Challenge
6. The Bridges of Constantine by Ahlem Mosteghanemi (1993) 305 pp Fiction / ANC / Algeria
7. Bloodlines by Fred D'Aguiar (2000) 161 pp Poetry / BAC
8. Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan (1958) 372 pp Fiction / 1001
9. Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson (2008) 300 pp Fiction / AAC
10. U.A. Fanthorpe : Selected Poems by U.A. Fanthorpe (2013) 153 pp Poetry
11. In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar (2006) 245 pp Fiction / ANC / Libya
12. Foundation : The History of England Volume 1 by Peter Ackroyd (2011) 462 pp Non-Fiction
13. Closed Circles by Viveca Sten (2009) 451 pp Thriller / Sandhamn 2
14. The Albemarle Book of Modern Verse edited by FES Finn (1961) 181 pp Poetry
15. Brooklyn Heights by Miral al-Tahawy (2012) 220 pp Fiction / ANC / Egypt
16. The Midnight Bell by Patrick Hamilton (1929) 221 pp Fiction
17. The Siege of Pleasure by Patrick Hamilton (1932) 118 pp Fiction
18. The Plains of Cement by Patrick Hamilton (1934) 188 pp Fiction
19. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov (1995) 663 pp Fiction / Short Stories
20. The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray (2019) 267 pp Non-Fiction
21. The Death of Murat Idrissi by Tommy Wieringa (2017) 102 pp Fiction
22. Foster by Claire Keegan (2010) 88 pp Fiction

February
23. Torch by Lin Anderson (2004) 230 pp Thriller / Rhona MacLeod 2
24. Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy (2003) 163 pp Non-Fiction
25. The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa (2004) 180 pp Fiction / ANC / Angola
26. Dearly by Margaret Atwood (2020) 122 pp Poetry
27. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante (2002) 188 pp Fiction
28. The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy (2018) 187 pp Non-Fiction
29. The Lost Art of Sinking by Naomi Booth (2015) 86 pp Fiction / BAC
30. Poetry of the Thirties edited by Robin Skelton (1964) 287 pp Poetry
31. The Darkness Knows by Arnaldur Indridason (2017) 338 pp Thriller / Scandi
32. The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig (2006) 345 pp Fiction
33. The History of England Volume II : Tudors by Peter Ackroyd (2012) 471 pp Non-Fiction
34. Male Tears by Benjamin Myers (2021) 264 pp Fiction / Short Stories
35. Woman of the Ashes by Mia Couto (2015) 254 pp Fiction / ANC / Mozambique
36. Real Estate by Deborah Levy (2021) 297 pp Non-Fiction
37. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (1971) 569 pp Fiction / 1001 Books / Pulitzer

March
38. Deadly Code by Lin Anderson (2005) 261 pp Thriller / Rhona MacLeod 3
39. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2003) 307 pp Fiction / ANC / Nigeria
40. My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell (1956) 308 pp Non-Fiction / Memoirs
41. What Goes On : Selected and New Poems 1995-2009 by Stephen Dunn (2009) 195 pp Poetry / AAC

BOOK STATS

Starting Stats of the Year :

Present TBR : 5,679 books
Pages to Read : 1,943,264
Average Book Length : 342.18

Books Read 40 (5 Mar 23)
Pages : 10,559
Pages per day : 164.98
Average Book Length : 263.98 pages
Female Authors : 18
Male Authors : 20
Various : 2
Countries Read : 19 (UK, Morocco, Tunisia, Albania, Algeria, Guyana, Ireland, USA. Libya, Sweden, Egypt, Russia, Netherlands, Angola, Canada, Italy, Iceland, Mozambique, Nigeria)
Fiction : 20
Thriller : 5
Non-Fiction : 8
Poetry : 5
Short Stories : 2

1001 Books First Edition
Read 3 (330)

Nobel Winners
Read : (75)

Booker Winners
Read : (38)

Pulitzer Fiction Prize
Read 1 : (21)

Women's Prize
Read : (7)

Books Added in 2023

66 (5 March 2023)

Books Read in 2023

40 (5 March 2023)

Change in TBR +26 (5,705)

Pages Read : 10,559
Pages Added : 19,182

Change in TBR Pages : +8,623 (1,951,887)

African Reading Challenge 2023



Plans

January - NORTH AFRICA https://www.librarything.com/topic/347131 read 5
February - LUSOPHONE LIT https://www.librarything.com/topic/348039 read 2
March - ADICHIE or EMECHETA https://www.librarything.com/topic/348955#n8081025 read 1
April - THE HORN OF AFRICA
May - AFRICAN NOBEL WINNERS
June - EAST AFRICA
July - ACHEBE or Okri
August - FRANCOPHONE AFRICA
September - SOUTHERN AFRICA
October - MUKASONGA / NGUGI WA THIONG'O
November - AFRICAN THRILLERS / CRIME WRITERS
December - WEST AFRICA

Total : 8

BRITISH AUTHOR CHALLENGE



January - Rosemary Sutcliff & Fred D'Aguiar Eagle of the Ninth by Sutcliff, Bloodlines by D'Aguiar
February - Novellas & Short Stories - The Lost Art of Sinking by Booth, Male Tears by Myers
March - Vita Sackville-West & Tariq Ali

AMERICAN AUTHOR CHALLENGE



January - YA Books - Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
February - Richard Powers
March - Poetry -

AROUND THE WORLD IN BOOKS IN 2023

Countries : 19 (4 March 2023)


Create Your Own Visited Countries Map

Welcome to my seventh thread on 2023.

Happy new thread, Paul!

First up, Anita. Lovely to see you as always.

The threads are pretty quiet this weekend.

HAppy new one!

>12 figsfromthistle: It is amazing how often my two favourite Anitas post close to each other here.

Lovely to see you. xx

HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY TO MY SOULMATE

Love at Fifty

Back in those callow days
when the pulse would race
in the silken grace
of your womanly ways
I could never conceive
reaching a time and a place
when a look on your face
gives me either halt or leave.

Are they laughter lines
or marks of worry?
Should I tarry
on the harder times?
There is comfort in the calm
now of thoughts known,
a life full grown
in your ever loving arms.

Happy new one, Paul!

>16 drneutron: Thanks Doc Roc.

Happy new thread, Paul. A trip to Corfu would be a perfect post tax season antidote for my cool, rainy Oregon spring...

Hi Chris. It is definitely on my bucket list, especially when so splendidly evoked by Durrell.

Happy new thread. Happy Birthday to Hani.

Happy new thread, Paul! Happy birthday, Hani!

>14 PaulCranswick: Great picture Paul. thanks for posting! 7th thread already....happy new one.

Hi Paul, Happy New Thread mate. Love the photos of your meal yesterday for Hani's 50th birthday. Sending love and hugs to you all from both of us dear friend.

Sigh - well I had a response to your post #214 in your last thread only to find you'd moved on once again. This was it:

214 It isn't a library unless it makes you take the books back, Paul. I also have a personal library at my disposal but can't stop asking for books at the public library. Kicker is that they only let the books out for three weeks at a time.

Happy new thread

Hiya PC! Who's the smiling person who looks so much like Belle?

>1 PaulCranswick: Happy new thread!

The picture does make one wish to open the door and step out onto the hillside. The scent of warm olive tress.

Happy new thread! And I am momentarily stealing it...



Here is the Demon Copperhead thread!! Please join us.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/349040

>20 Kristelh: Thank you, Kristel.

>21 amanda4242: Thanks Amanda.

Lovely to see two of my most stalwart pals back for another round. xx

>22 mdoris: Great to see you, Mary. The photo is of course taken in Gordon Ramsay Bar and Grill in Kuala Lumpur.

>23 johnsimpson: Thanks John. I remember a few short years ago you and Karen celebrating my own 50th birthday celebration in the UK together with my twin.

Happy new thread, Paul

>24 Familyhistorian: That is very true, Meg. I really miss not having a public lending library to spend hours in here in Malaysia and it is certainly something I am looking forward to.

>25 richardderus: Hahaha RD, well spotted. She does seem quite content with life at the moment. I don't think that we have ever been as close as recently - she remains the youngest but most mature of our little troupe. She also love Beef Wellington which could also explain the ear-to-ear grinning.

>26 quondame: I looked at a lot of pictures of Corfu, Susan, but I definitely wanted one with olive trees featuring prominently.

>27 Berly: More than welcome, Kimmers. It is certainly going to feature more in this thread too!

>30 ArlieS: You almost snuck in under the radar there, Arlie, but I spotted you. xx

Wordle 625 5/6

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Didn't help me over much my first word a la Ms Kingsolver.

Happy New Thread, Paul, and Happy Birthday to Hani!

>1 PaulCranswick: My mother was huge Gerald Durrell fan and left money in her will to his foundation. I read all his books, lying around the house; My Family and Other Animals a particular favourite. My mother also tried to read Lawrence Durrell but found him quite a different kettle of fish.

Happy New Thread, and Happy Birthday to Hani!

>36 booksaplenty1949:
A friend of mine tried to read Lawrence Durrell after having read My Family and Other Animals and found him to be tough going. She only read one of his books and I am not sure which one. I think it was one of the Alexandria Quartet books. I have Larry's books in my TBR list, but her reaction made me rethink, so I just never started any of them.

Happy new thread Paul!

And happy birthday to Hani.

>35 ronincats: Thank you dear Roni. Lovely to see you here.

>36 booksaplenty1949: Your mum was right - they really were very different writers and people. I like Lawrence Durrell's books but they are not cut from the same cloth as those of his brother.

>37 SilverWolf28: Thanks Silver. I did share all the messages received with wishes for my good lady on her birthday and she was beaming. x

>38 benitastrnad: I read the first one, Justine, Benita and really enjoyed it but I tried his The Black Book which put me off reading further. I now have both his Alexandria Quartet and his Avignon Quintet on my shelves and I will brave them sooner rather than later.

>39 humouress: Thank you neighbour. I do hope you can meet each other in person some time shortly.

Happy new thread Paul.

>41 PaulCranswick: I've read Justine too and have the Alexandria Quartet and Avignon Quintet on my shelves, though not sure about when I'll be tackling them.

I spent a wonderful week or so on Corfu many years ago and would love to go back to Greece.

Happy new thread!

I'm reading the Alexandria Quartet now. I didn't love Justine, but the second entry, Balthazar got me interested in continuing with the set.

>43 WhiteRaven.17: Thank you, Kro.

>44 avatiakh: I have not been to Corfu as yet, Kerry, but I hope to do so soon.

>45 AnneDC: I do remember liking Justine, Anne, but I couldn't get hold of the other three to continue them at the time.

Happy new thread, Paul!

>14 PaulCranswick: Thank you for the beautiful picture with the beautiful people and the wonderful hopefully delicious food.
And belatedly Happy Birthday to Hani.

>15 PaulCranswick: The poem is wonderful, I showed it to my wife, she was also very touched.
But I told her that it was not mine...

>14 PaulCranswick: Lovely picture, Paul.
I see all three ladies are smiling!

>48 SirThomas: Thank you Thomas. I typed it straight onto my thread as is becoming a bit of a habit. My reading of a lot of thirties poetry recently has gotten me veering towards a ABBA rhyming structure which is not that familiar to me but seemed to be loved by Auden, Day-Lewis and Graves.

>49 FAMeulstee: I know. I am amazed that Hani managed to find one with everyone almost smiling though mine is closer to a grimace - I must have just seen the prices!

Happy New Thread, Paul. I hope you had a nice birthday weekend with Hani & family. She sounds like an amazing woman.

Happy new thread, Paul, and happy birthday to Hani! Looks like you all had a lovely dinner.

I am impressed by your reading 40 books already - aiming for 200 this year, or do you think you'll slow down some? I'm well on my way to a very average year of 120-130, but of course that's only average in the 75ers rather than the world as a whole :)

My introduction to Corfu came from the old movie "Desk Set" featuring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.

>51 msf59: She is a pretty tremendous soulmate, Mark, but then again I understand you have one of your own too - we are lucky guys.

>52 bell7: We did have a superb meal, Mary and I know it is somewhere she wanted to go again.

I am hoping to make it to 200 books this year for the first time on LT and first time since my University time.

>53 thornton37814: Lost me with the connection, Lori. I went and looked at the trailer......"Spencer Tracy as you have never seen him before.......Katherine Hepburn as you've always wanted to see her!" (the mind boggles in 1957!) but there didn't seem to be much about Corfu. I need to see if I can watch it again

Oops, happy new thread, Paul! I almost overlooked it.
>14 PaulCranswick: a very lovely photo! Best wishes to Hani on her very special birthday!
What a spectacular weekend!

Happy New Thread and Happy Birthday to Hani!!!

Happy new thread! And happy birthday, Hani!

>56 Carmenere: Glad you found me, Lynda, because I love having you stop by! Thank you to Hani for the birthday wishes.

>57 hredwards: Thank you dear fellow.

>58 foggidawn: Thanks Foggi. Always great to see you here.

>14 PaulCranswick: Lovely photo of Hani's celebration. Was there cake?

>15 PaulCranswick: The perfect gift, one I am sure will be cherished.

Happy new thread!

Lovely photo. and best wishes to Hani!

I'm currently reading Demon Copperhead so will be joining in on the discussion

>55 PaulCranswick: It's in the scene where they begin asking the computer reference questions. It confuses Corfu with "curfew" and Hepburn recites a rather long poem about "curfew." I think I know that section by heart because I used it when I taught a computer class to illustrate the history of computers. Most of the students had never seen the old computers that took up an entire room and used the reel tapes. We could talk about the differences in computers then and now, and they loved it.

>15 PaulCranswick: Very nice poem, Paul. Stopping by as I catch up on some of the threads.

Happy "new" thread, Paul! (65 posts later)

>61 Caroline_McElwee: There was cake separately.



This counts too, I suppose, Caroline!

>62 streamsong: Nice that you will be joining us with Ms. Kingsolver, Janet.

The Women's Prize longlist of 16 books is announced today (Tuesday UK time) and I will be astonished if Demon Copperhead is not on it.

>63 thornton37814: Thanks Lori. You saved me because I had already watched a number of the scenes on YouTube but couldn't find any connection and I was not able to find the complete film to watch.

>64 kaida46: Thank you! It was a bit of a throwaway really but I had had the idea for a much longer free verse ramble on our 27 years of marriage together which morphed into this more manageable verse.

>65 curioussquared: Thank you, Natalie.

Wordle 626 4/6

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A win by steady accumulation.

Nicely done!

>70 Berly: Speaking of steady accumulation, I am slowly making my way through Demon Copperhead and I have a feeling it is going to be one of those that stays with me for a long time.

>69 PaulCranswick: I should have got mine on 3 but it took me 6 to get it today.

You might want to have a look at Worldle and the new game today.

Wonderful to see Hani in your midst again. I got way behind on threads (and yours is impossible, if I may say so), and now cannot see the first reunion photo on your last thread. But she looks to have enjoyed her birthday meal very much.

Happy new thread! And it's already over 70!

>14 PaulCranswick: What a lovely picture of the family! My best wishes to Hani on her birthday!

>72 humouress: I will go over and have a gander, Nina.

>73 laytonwoman3rd: I will try to save the photos to LT properly, Linda, so that they don't simply up and disappear. She did enjoy her birthday.

>74 atozgrl: Thank you, Irene.

I somehow failed to spoil that one for the three ladies. x

Wordle 627 3/6

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Quite good day at the office.

The Women's Prize Longlist has just been announced and there are some obvious ones that I would have guessed but also some surprises as always including some books I had never heard of. Here are the sixteen books:

Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh
The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris
Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks
Homesick by Jennifer Croft
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel
Memphis by Tara M Stringfellow
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell
Pod by Laline Paull
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova

Not many I would have guessed there (three or four max). I hadn't realised that Glory was still eligible. Some pretty obscure ones including one with no touchstone still!

>78 PaulCranswick: In any event, I think it’s safe to say that most of the multitudinous contenders for the innumerable prizes on offer these days will be as forgotten as The Able McLaughlins or Scarlet Sister Mary,both Pulitzer Prize winners, are now.

>79 booksaplenty1949: Haha quite possibly so!

>78 PaulCranswick: Not many on the list that attract me. I already have The Bandit Queens on request from the library. Black Butterflies looks interesting so I've added that one to my tbr list.

>66 PaulCranswick: Those cakes look divine. Birthday wishes to Hani.

>81 avatiakh: I think it is a little bit of an odd list, but I will eventually look to read most of them. I am surprised that Eleanor Catton has missed out with her new novel.

Thank you Kerry. x

>82 PaulCranswick:. I'll be picking up my loan of Catton's new novel in the next day or so. I've got a lot of library books out at present but none from the longlist.
My current read is Chetan Bhagat's 400 Days, I think you might be one of the few LTers to have read something by him.

>83 avatiakh: He doesn't seem to travel much beyond India, Kerry, does he? I have read something by him which had a YA vibe to it but which was ok.

>84 PaulCranswick: I read his bio and he lived in Hong Kong for some years before returning to India. I didn't enjoy the start of the novel, there was so much dialogue and it felt different to what I'd been reading, but now I'm finding it ok. He's popular in India as his writing is very accessible according to wikipedia.

>78 PaulCranswick: I haven't heard of a lot of books on the Women's long list but have read one, bought one and another is on my radar. From the posting on LT I think that Demon Copperhead probably has a good chance. (That's the one on my radar and library hold list.)

>66 PaulCranswick: Cake looks yum.

>78 PaulCranswick: I have only heard of three of these writers Paul. It is lovely to find new-to-me writers, but I also like to see favourite works rewarded.

>78 PaulCranswick: The Marriage Portrait is a terrific read. I just bought Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes

>1 PaulCranswick: Happy new thread!

>85 avatiakh: The book I read was ultimately accessible but took me a little while to settle into, Kerry, as I recall.

>86 Familyhistorian: It must be the favourite for the prize and possibly for the Pulitzer Prize too, Meg. The Women's List always throws up some quirky choices. I was surprised that Nightcrawling and Rabbit Hutch both failed to make the list.

>87 Caroline_McElwee: The unfamiliarity is not too surprising, Caroline, as there are a whopping nine debut novels on the list this time and stalwarts such as Kate Atkinson, Kamila Shamsie, Eleanor Catton and Jennifer Egan were all overlooked.

>88 torontoc: I haven't gotten to it yet, Cyrel, but I did really enjoy Hamnet.

>89 ocgreg34: Great to see you, Greg.

Wordle 628 3/6

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I was in tune with that one today.

Here's the next readathon: https://www.librarything.com/topic/349213

>94 SilverWolf28: Thank you, Silver

Wordle 629 4/6

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That game makes me look well organised!

Thanks for posting the Women's Long List. I only have two of those on my radar -- Demon Copperhead (reading now) and The Marriage Portrait. Interesting...

>97 Berly: I am a completist nutcase, Kimmers, so I will slowly hunt down the whole longlist and see what I think. I also try to work out a shadow longlist from books that were suggested for the list but got overlooked.

FRIDAY DOUBLE HEADER

67. Homesick by Jennifer Croft
68. I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel

Greetings from soggy California! Hope you're enjoying your weekend!

Greetings from cloudy, crisp coastal B.C. Have a great weekend Paul!

>98 PaulCranswick: I've marked a few more that I am interested to pursue on my thread. And I'd love to see your list of overlooked books for the long list. I enjoy your nuttiness!

>100 amanda4242: Greetings from tropical Malaysia. I will come over and visit your waterlogged digs at some stage this weedkend. xx

>101 mdoris: Greetings from humid Kuala Lumpur. I will come over and visit your crisply coastal digs at some stage this weekend. xx

>102 Berly: I will try and put up my alternative list this evening, Kimmers.

>103 PaulCranswick: I'd better go knock the dust off my thread!

>105 amanda4242: Hahaha I noticed it moving a little overnight already!

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Not sure about this one!

I promised an alternative Women's Prize Longlist

1. Emergency by Daisy Hildyard
2. Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie
3. Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
4. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
5. Aue by Becky Manawatu
6. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer
7. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
8. A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo
9. The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
10. Fight Night by Miriam Toews
11. Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
12. Really Good Actually by Monica Heisey
13. Things They Lost by Okwiri Oduor
14. The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
15. The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
16. Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

I have six of those on my shelves already. Will look to get through both this alternative longlist as well as the real one. I am sure that I will prefer some of the books on this list over some of the others.

Hey Paul!

>109 PiyushC: Piyush!! What a lovely surprise!

I hope you are doing well my friend. It is such a long time ago already we got together and chewed the fat in Kuala Lumpur.

>110 PaulCranswick: Oh yes, it has been many years indeed! You were to tell me of your Mumbai / India travel plans!

>111 PiyushC: Hahaha, indeed. So many things happened in-between. I must get to Mumbai one day soon. My company does have projects for Reliance in Mumbai so you never know!

>112 PaulCranswick: While I am back here, you also have my number (it hasn't changed), so do tell me if any such plans materialise.

>113 PiyushC: I will do of course. I can guarantee, Piyush, that I shall not come to Mumbai without contacting you and making sure we can meet up there.

BOOK 41



What Goes On : Selected and New Poems 1995-2009 by Stephen Dunn
Date of Publication : 2009
Origin of Author : USA
Pages : 195 pp

Of American poets active in my lifetime my favourites are :
Mary Oliver, Louise Gluck, Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds and Natasha Trethewey amongst the ladies; Galway Kinnell, Philip Levine, Kevin Young, Billy Collins and probably my absolute favourite, Stephen Dunn.

Wonderfully accessible, a richly informal polisher of words and phrases whose poems are exercises in perfectly telling a thought, a moment, a life, an encounter, a love, a death.

This is a tremendous collection that spans six collections with some added "new" poems from the peak of the writer's powers.

Happy Weekend, Paul. Hope all is well. Glad to see you mention Adrienne Rich. She hasn't been getting much attention around here for a while. She was one of the first poets that I got into, along with Oliver.

Struggled with selecting a poem from Stephen Dunn's collection. Not my absolute favourite but this is very typical of the poet:

The Last Hours

There’s some innocence left,
and these are the last hours of an empty afternoon
at the office, and there’s the clock
on the wall, and my friend Frank
in the adjacent cubicle selling himself
on the phone.
I’m twenty-five, on the shaky
ladder up, my father’s son, corporate,
clean-shaven, and I know only what I don’t want,
which is almost everything I have.
A meeting ends.
Men in serious suits, intelligent men
who’ve been thinking hard about marketing snacks,
move back now to their window offices, worried
or proud. The big boss, Horace,
had called them in to approve this, reject that–
the big boss, a first-name, how’s-your-family
kind of assassin, who likes me.
It’s 1964.
The sixties haven’t begun yet. Cuba is a larger name
than Vietnam. The Soviets are behind
everything that could be wrong. Where I sit
it’s exactly nineteen minutes to five. My phone rings.
Horace would like me to stop in
before I leave. Stop in. Code words,
leisurely words, that mean now.
Would I be willing
to take on this? Would X’s office, who by the way
is no longer with us, be satisfactory?
About money, will this be enough?
I smile, I say yes and yes and yes,
but–I don’t know from what calm place
this comes–I’m translating
his beneficence into a lifetime, a life
of selling snacks, talking snack strategy,
thinking snack thoughts.
On the elevator down
it’s a small knot, I’d like to say, of joy.
That’s how I tell it now, here in the future,
the fear long gone.
By the time I reach the subway it’s grown,
it’s outsized, an attitude finally come round,
and I say it quietly to myself, I quit,
and keep saying it, knowing I will say it, sure
of nothing else but.

>116 msf59: You would like Stephen Dunn and Philip Levine, I'm sure, Mark.

I will always prefer the Brits when it comes to poetry because it is part of the fabric of who I am, but I much more appreciate the dextrous wordsmithery of some of the very best American poets.

Wordle 631 3/6

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Another good day begins!

I am extremely worried about the dangers to the world economy of spending continually money we do not have.

On 10 March 2023 Silicon Valley Bank failed (which is the second largest bank failure in USA history) with $175 billion of deposit liabilities. Banks were encouraged to buy US Treasury Bonds when interest rates were zero and they are of course downgraded now that those rates have been raised to try to counter inflation.

The US Treasury Secretary has been wrong, wrong, wrong at every turn on inflation and the health of the banking sector (see the unregulated FTX crypto-currency collapse also). At the same time the Biden Administration has just introduced a $7 trillion budget adding $20 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. Will Wells Fargo be next?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-bank-silvergate-capital-markets-fdic...

>108 PaulCranswick: I haven't heard of most of the books on your alternate list, Paul. The only ones I knew of were Lessons in Chemistry and Shrines of Gaiety. I read and enjoyed both of those.

TWENTY BRITISH NOVELS I "NEED" TO READ:

I really don't understand how I haven't read these books yet!

1. The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
4. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
5. Middlemarch by George Eliot (hopefully this month)
6. New Grub Street by George Gissing
7. Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe
8. Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett
9. Howard's End by EM Forster
10. South Riding by Winifred Holtby
11. The Years by Virginia Woolf
12. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
13. The Towers of Trezibond by Rose Macaulay
14. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
15. The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott
16. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
17. Atonement by Ian McEwan
18. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
19. The Children's Book by AS Byatt
20. The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

>121 Familyhistorian: I am currently reading two on the actual list and enjoying one much more than the other.
I will read a couple on my alternate list too for the sake of balance!

>122 PaulCranswick: *psst*There's no apostrophe in Howards End.

>124 amanda4242: Ah yes, now I remember! You are right, Amanda, but of course there should be!

It is difficult for those who (mistakenly) think they know all there is to be known about the apostrophe to avoid a tone of superiority. "Whatever the characteristics of Howards End, it does not have an apostrophe." That was a correction dictated by the Pooter in me. To tell you the truth I have no idea why Forster decided the apostrophe was not required.

The Guardian 30 September 2002.

>122 PaulCranswick: I feel faintly smug, then, as I have read at least half of your list and have positively decided I don't intend to read a few, but there are some that on still on my TBR list.

>126 CDVicarage: Lovely to see you, Kerry. There are some I should definitely have read, especially as I have all of them on my shelves.

TWENTY AMERICAN NOVELS I "NEED" TO READ

The Man With the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

>122 PaulCranswick: Nice list, Paul.
I have read Pride and Prejudice, Bleak House (definitely the last Dickens ever for me), Middlemarch, and Brideshead Revisited.
I own The Golden Notebook, and The Remains of the Day, will get to them some day.
Also want to read Howards End, The Years, Atonement, Cloud Atlas, and maybe The Jewel in the Crown, but that last one is hard to find in Dutch translation.

>129 FAMeulstee: Anita, Bleak House is one of only a few of Charles Dickens's books I have not yet read. I don't really understand why I haven't read P&P yet.

>128 PaulCranswick: And again a nice list, Paul :-)
Read: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Beloved, Gilead, and The Color Purple
Own, to be read: The Adventures of Augie March, and East of Eden
Want to read: Tender is the Night, The Corrections, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and The Portrait of a Lady. Sadly Infinite Jest isn't translated

What is next? German, French, Italian, Spanish, or maybe Russsian novels? :-)

>120 PaulCranswick: It continues to worry us all Paul, since a US recession wont be confined to US alone.

>122 PaulCranswick: Excellent list! Have read No. 2, 4, 5, 12, 15 and 17 out of those.

>131 FAMeulstee: You know me too well, Anita!
French will be next. xx

>132 PiyushC: That is exactly so, Piyush. A banking crisis brought on by reckless spending amid difficult world conditions (supply chain issues, war rather than peace being paid for and its ensuing energy crises) will impact all of us. That is a very sizeable bank to fail and the US Federal Reserve was powerless to intervene.

>133 PiyushC: I do hope that I can tick a few of them off in the coming months.

>134 PaulCranswick: LOL!
I am working through my library wish list this year, some have been residing there way to long.

Fun lists!

I have read 7 of the British but just 3 of the American novels on your lists (Pride and Prejudice, Bleak House, Middlemarch, Howards End, Brideshead Revisited, Remains of the Day, Atonement, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Tender is the Night and House of Mirth).
I think that I have 4 of your British novels on my shelves TBR (The Vicar of Wakefield, Vanity Fair, Golden Notebook and Jewel in the Crown) and 4 American (Adventures of Augie March, Portrait of a Lady, Beloved and No Country for Old Men)

I've read 6 of your British novels and 13 of your American ones. I'd say you could skip all but 4 of the American ones I've read.

>122 PaulCranswick:; I've read 11 of the 20 so just over 50%
>128 PaulCranswick:; a little better, 16 of 20 or 80%

>136 FAMeulstee: Some of my books have been on the shelves 25 years, Anita, without being read!

>137 DMulvee: Maybe a shared read in April? You can choose.

>138 ursula: Help me then Ursula! Which of the four must I prioritize do you think?

>139 Kristelh: That is pretty good. I wonder if you did similar lists, how many I would have read.

>140 PaulCranswick: Some of our books are on the shelves since the early 1980s in the same state.

I became a member of the library in 2009, and my wishlist there has been growing ever since. I really want to get to the oldest, before they are removed from the collection.

BOOK 42



I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel
Date of Publication : 2022
Origin of Author : UK
Pages : 203 pp

This book has been longlisted for the Women's Prize and has had a lot of hype which is largely unjustified in my humble opinion.

It is about obsession, the obsession of a woman trolling a married man who she is having a somewhat one-sided affair with and that same woman obsessing about another woman that same man is also having an affair with. I could live with the unlikeable characters and the storyline told in gobbets which jumped about all over the place, but what irked me were the occasional random asides on race which seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with the story itself.

"Whiteness is nihilistic, it is the distilled form of the death drive and because it has a cold separation to life, it believes it alone is able to categorise, ......to decide who lives or dies......Time must remain static so whiteness' power can be maintained by any means." 164 pp

"She is able to disregard that America has always been a white European genocidal project, a settler-colonial state founded upon death and violence. It has never demonstrated the soaring values the American founders myth insists upon." 195 pp

She is of course entitled to her views - hate filled as they are - but they assign a political consciousness to a character that had hitherto never any such characteristic. We have after all a British Asian female behaving entirely reprehensibly in the story somehow able at the same time to morally pontificate to a reader waiting for her next description of her boyfriend's penis or her enjoyment of fellatio. Jarred.

The title was inaptly ironic.

I AM NOT A FAN.

>142 FAMeulstee: I am a member of Wakefield libraries in UK but I am not in a position to make much use of it!

Oh my. You, such a voracious reader, have read most of the contenders for the 2023 Flash in the Pan Prize and the Fifteen Minutes of Fame Award but have yet to experience Pride and Prejudice or Vanity Fair? In one sense you are a lucky man. I recall a professor of mine saying, apropos of Henry James, “Every time I pick up one of his books I have to give a little sigh because I can’t ever read it again for the first time.” You have some of the world’s greatest books still ahead. Enjoy!

Paul, has the Gary Lineker debacle made its way to your sunny shores as yet? Because there has been virtually nothing else on the news here for the last two or three days!

>128 PaulCranswick: Definitely not smug about this list as I have only read two and have most of the others on my TBR list!

>145 booksaplenty1949: It is 210 years since Pride and Prejudice was published so there have been plenty published in between which I have actually read. I have read most of the Brontes & Dickens, all of Hardy, Lawrence, Maugham and Greene, Zola, Camus and Sartre but there are so many, many more, aren't there?!

With Jane Austen I have read Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park and my favourite so far Northanger Abbey.

Your professor was a wise chap by the sound of it.

>141 PaulCranswick: Oh I miscounted - I came up with 5

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Beloved
East of Eden
The Color Purple
Infinite Jest

>146 SandDune: It has indeed, Rhian.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of his opinion on the issue and I would be closer to his views than the Government's for sure, I would have thought that he had a perfect right to air his opinions on his private platform. It isn't as though he was using MOTD as a platform to discuss the issue.
I didn't care for his analogy with the present situation and 1930's Nazi Germany as that allows him to be criticised - he clearly meant no disrespect to the Jewish community but the distraction was enabled.

He isn't my favourite TV guy as I think he can be glib and smug but the hypocrisy of the BBC insisting on impartiality when its own Chairman was giving personal loans to BoJo is extraordinary and unsustainable.

>147 CDVicarage: Two more than me, Kerry!

>149 ursula: Thanks Ursula. I will take the first four first as Infinite Jest is a monster of a book isn't it?

>128 PaulCranswick: Larry McMurtry is one of my favorite authors - I've read most of his fiction now - and Lonesome Dove is my favorite of his - read it 3 times now & probably not for the last time. Calling it a "Western" is simply a description of setting. Quirky characters, humorous dialogue, compelling drama - it really has it all.

>152 ChrisG1: I have read Comanche Moon and Dead Man's Walk by him with the same characters. Very good so I am looking forward to it, Chris.

TWENTY FRENCH NOVELS I "NEED" TO READ

Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac
The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
HHhH by Laurent Binet
Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau
The Nun by Denis Diderot
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier
Penguin Island by Anatole France
Promise at Dawn by Romain Gary
The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo
Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
A Woman's Life by Guy de Maupassant
Man's Fate by Andre Malreaux
Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
Life : A User's Manual by Georges Perec
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
The Ogre by Michel Tournier

>154 PaulCranswick: Have read only 4 of these, The Three Musketeers, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Dangerous Liaisons and The Phantom of the Opera.

>140 PaulCranswick: Once you guys pick a book from either of the lists, I would be happy to join as well.

>155 PiyushC: Will keep you updated, Piyush. Would be great if you could join in.

>122 PaulCranswick: I have read 10 of these Paul, 3 of them several times (Middlemarch/Howards End/&Remains of the Day. Will revert re your other lists later.

>154 PaulCranswick: From this list I have read some more: HHhH, The Three Musketeers, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Man's Fate, Three Strong Women, and Swann's Way.
I hope to read The Mandarins and Dangerous Liaisons this year.
Listed to read someday: Suite Francaise, and The Ogre.

>154 PaulCranswick: Hi Paul - Many read from all lists - only Le Grand Meaulnes stands out as a minor slog -
from many years ago in college French class.

>154 PaulCranswick:. I’ve read 11 of these which surprised me.

>128 PaulCranswick: I don't think anybody needs to read Gravity's Rainbow (despite the apostrophe) - I've seen it on a lot of shelves, my friends being largely SF fans, but not one claims to have actually done more than try it. Swap in Slaughterhouse Five.

>152 ChrisG1: But Chris, I agree that Lonesome Dove is a fabulous novel, but it absolutely is a western, not only in setting, but in working with and reworking, reversing, repairing, refreshing, and re-presenting the tropes of near a century of western myth almost everything in it echoing something sublimely from the oeuvre.

>162 quondame: I get what you mean. I guess I just meant that it's more than "just" a western.

>122 PaulCranswick: Excellent list, Paul! Pride and Prejudice and Vanity Fair are two of my all-time favorite books. Several of these are also on my TBR list--hoping to get to The Remains of the Day soon, if I can locate a copy. (All the copies in the library are out.) And I'm ashamed to admit that there are a few on the list that I'm not familiar with.

Bleak House was one I had to read for a college course. As I recall, the thing that stuck out to me was the bureaucratic red tape that the protagonists had to deal with. It had never occurred to me that really bad bureaucracy had been around so long.

>154 PaulCranswick: And another good list! The Three Musketeers is another one of my all-time favorites. I highly recommend it!

>157 Caroline_McElwee: I am not surprised that you have read a good number of them already, Caroline. I am more surprised that I have not!

>158 FAMeulstee: French literature is one of my favourites, Anita. Germinal, The Plague, Les Miserables and The Black Sheep regularly figure in my list of favourites.

>159 m.belljackson: You read it in the vernacular, Marianne? I am very impressed.

>160 Kristelh: With your reading of the classic works of fiction, Kristel, I am certainly not surprised.

>161 quondame: Yes, I suppose it is the American version of Finnegans Wake, Susan. Better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all to paraphrase someone smarter than myself. I have read Slaughterhouse Five or else it would have definitely been on the list.

>162 quondame: Yes I know what you mean, Susan, but I get also that Chris meant that the Western form is considered as pulp fiction whereas the writing of McMurtry is way beyond that.

>163 ChrisG1: Ah yes, Chris, from my last post you will see that I got your meaning. There is no reason though why "just a Western" need be a pejorative though, as it stands it probably is.

>164 atozgrl: There are so many books in this world, Irene, that there is no shame in not being familiar with all of them. A list of any of our bucket lists of intended reading reveals something about us, but there will be something on everybody's lists that someone else may not be familiar with. x

>165 atozgrl: I want to do at list one of the books in my various bucket lists every month. I will prioritize The Three Musketeers.

>168 PaulCranswick: I don't know why I'm sort of bemused by what almost seems like default for a classic western to be dismissed, much like a romance, to the extent that McMurtry's work be excluded. Most genre's, and I'll include the mid-life male crisis genre, are mostly mediocre, but all have standouts and stars which are still entirely of the genre.

>167 PaulCranswick: No choice for le Grand Meaulnes- it was the first book assigned for French 101.
And, since it was The University of Chicago in the 1960s,
we were given only a bilingual dictionary to plow through a translation.

>171 quondame: I agree with that, Susan. There definitely is a snobbishness and bias against genre fiction though - be it thrillers, Sci-fi/fantasy or Westerns etc. Not saying I hold with that snobbishness but I can see that it is there.

>172 m.belljackson: I would have thought that that was tough, Marianne. I can sort of speak French (although many French people would not wholeheartedly agree!) but not proficiently enough to appreciate its literature.

Wordle 632 2/6

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I am on something of a roll.

I have read three books from each of your lists, and appreciated all of them.
British: P&P, Howards End, Remains of the Day
American: Portrait of a Lady, Wise Blood, Bel Canto
French: Three Musketeers, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Phantom of the Opera

There are many others on there that I feel like I should read, and a few that I've never heard of.

TEN CANADIAN NOVELS I NEED TO READ:

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
The Wars by Timothy Findley
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

>175 foggidawn: There is a very nice symmetry there, Foggi!

>141 PaulCranswick: I will post lists of novels that I need to read on my thread.

>176 PaulCranswick: Hello Paul, Finally there is a list that I can say I have read them all, but I have been put to shame on your other recent lists, so lots to add to my TBR list. It is great to see all these titles, thanks for listing them. ! Since joining LT I know I have been reading fewer Canadian books.

>176 PaulCranswick: Only 2 out of these 10, The Blind Assassin and The English Patient; excellent reads both!

>176 PaulCranswick: I have only read three of those: The Stone Angel, Lives of Girls and Women, and The English Patient.
Only one to read, I have a unread copy of Three Day Road.

Thanks for the Women's Prize list in >77 PaulCranswick: and your alternate list>108 PaulCranswick:. I've read two from the Prize list and three from the alternate list.

I've read 50% of the Canadian list. I posted American, British, French and Canadian lists of books I need to list. The American and British lists could be very fluid.

>170 PaulCranswick: I believe you will enjoy it! I certainly did. I still need to read the sequels.

>178 Kristelh: I am looking forward to seeing that, Kristel.

>179 mdoris: That is impressive, Mary!

>180 PiyushC: One thing to note, Piyush, is that I am only choosing unread books from my shelves too which shows how many great books I still have to go at.

>181 FAMeulstee: I was bought Three Day Road as part of the Christmas swaps a few years ago, and I adored his The Orenda.

>182 streamsong: It looks a bit presumptuous of me putting up an alternative list but my aim was to show the fantastic range and depth of books written by women these days, Janet.

>183 Kristelh: Your thread is my next destination, Kristel. xx

>184 atozgrl: I am a sucker for a great yarn, Irene, so I think that there is no danger of me not enjoying myself!

Wordle 633 4/6

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Back to reality today with a more average score but also a decent recovery after my first two lamentable guesses.

TEN IRISH NOVELS I NEED TO READ

Ireland is a difficult one for me to categorize. Firstly because of my own antecedents it is possibly the closest to my heart and secondly because of its immutable ties to the UK until at the least 1922 what to do with Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, Bram Stoker and others. I have not included them here. The writers who overlapped the period before and after 1922 I have included here.

Esther Waters by George Moore
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
At Swim, Two Birds by Flann O'Brien
Molloy by Samuel Beckett
The Book of Evidence by John Banville
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
The Ginger Man by JP Donleavy
The Rising Tide by Molly Keane
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor

>120 PaulCranswick: I'm not especially worried about debt financing, at least by governments like the US, which still has the advantage of being a reserve currency etc. etc. Only extreme cynics expect them to default on their debt, or use hyper-inflation to devalue it. And if they could fix their various economic issues, they'd pay it back easily enough, not to mention easily handling the interest.

What worries me is a generation of bankers who equate "innovation" with the creation of ever more complex ways to privatize profit and socialize risk, and a country that can't or won't invest in its own future. This is also a country that relaxed banking regulation on ideological grounds, thereby creating the 2008 crisis - with the help of "innovative" self-regulating bankers. Corporations are people, with all kinds of human rights, according to the Supreme Court. Potentially fertile women, on the other hand .... Half the country worships business executives, and the other half worships members of designated minorities, agreeing only that their own preferred caste can do no wrong.

They won't be fixing their economic issues unless and until they extract their craniums from their rectums, and probably not until their executive class realizes that businesses need customers, and the impoverished won't be buying anything but necessities any time soon. (The big multi-nationals don't care - both their production and most of their customers are outside the US. But services - which is most(?) US jobs are now - are consumed locally - or not consumed at all, when few can afford them.) Mostly the owning/governing class doesn't care - the stock market is doing OK, and that's where they get their income.

>190 PaulCranswick: I tried to read The Ginger Man but just couldn't get into it, I should try again. I have a number of Irish novels on my 'must read' list but none from your list. My grandfather was from County Down so reading Ireland is also a must for me. I discovered Claire McGowan's Paula Maguire series a few years back and enjoyed reading book set in my ancestral landscape.

>176 PaulCranswick: I've read three or four of your Canadian novels especially enjoyed The Wars. I read The English Patient back when I was strict with myself to read the book before tackling the film.

>154 PaulCranswick: Only read four on your French list and have Promise at Dawn on my 'should read soon' list. We tried a group read of Perec's novel a few years back and I think that we all folded on it fairly quickly.

>128 PaulCranswick: Only read a couple on your US list. I don't seek out that many US writers.

>122 PaulCranswick: Your British list reminds me to get back into The Children's Book, I read another chapter in January. I've read about 8 on your list. Our English class studied Vanity Fair at high school and I really loved it at the time.
I'll recommend Alan Moore's Jerusalem as a possible contender for your list, truly a masterpiece.

>191 ArlieS: I am less worried about the USA defaulting than I am over more individual bank failures which are disastrous to those holding larger sums in the banks. Smaller deposits are usually insured, but a Wells Fargo (which didn't make its salary commitments in a timely manner last week) would be a really big deal as the insurance industry simply couldn't cover the scale of individual losses. Bank closures are a tried and tested sign of an economy in trouble. The politicization of the banking sector hasn't helped with banks being directed to only invest in the "green" economy and concentrating on diversity issues over their fundamental core businesses (although in their truer non-political sense the two should not be mutually exclusive).
When equality of outcome takes precedence over equality of opportunity in areas of life where competence and excellence are essentials we are playing with fire.

>192 avatiakh: Thanks for your input, Kerry and for the recommendation of Jerusalem which I will hunt down.

I am so very lucky to have so many peers in the group with such a tremendous reading scope to suggest books I invariably find compelling

TWENTY ANZAC NOVELS I "NEED" TO READ

Here I have included the two countries together as partly it involves disputes such as is Ruth Park a Kiwi or an Aussie. Given the tendency for dual nationalities I have included Shirley Hazzard, Nevil Shute and Geraldine Brooks here but not J.M. Coetzee who I most associate with South Africa. Whims all.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville
The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard
The Well by Elizabeth Jolley
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Great World by David Malouf
Her Privates We by Frederic Manning
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott
Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
Voss by Patrick White
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
The Carpathians by Janet Frame
Potiki by Patricia Grace
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
The Harp in the South by Ruth Park

>194 PaulCranswick: I hadn't heard of Her Privates We before. Lter petermc recommended Somme Mud by E. P. F. Lynch to me back in my early LT days and I finally read it in 2017. The book has an interesting publication history.
I've read about 7 on your ANZAC list and have Catton's latest Birnam Wood out from the library at present.
The Bone People is a wonderful read, well worth the effort. I enjoyed Picnic at Hanging Rock which I read after watching the 2018 tv series.
I struggled through The man who loved children a couple of years ago and can not bring myself to read her again.
Everyone who reads it, raves about Auē by Becky Manuwatu which I must read. It won the local Book of the Year Award in 2020.

>195 avatiakh: I was looking forward to your comments on that one!

I am pleased because I included Aue on my alternate Women's Prize list and intend to read it soon.

Read The Ginger Man in high school. I remember literally finishing it and turning back to page one and starting it again. I always hesitate to re-read the books that made that kind of impact on my adolescent self, lest they conspicuously fail to “recapture/the first fine careless rapture.”

>140 PaulCranswick: That sounds a great idea! I might be tempted to try and read the Raj Quartet if you are happy to read Jewel in the Crown?

>198 DMulvee: The Raj Quartet is an excellent series, and I am usually someone who is quite skeptic of any book based in India.

>194 PaulCranswick:. I’ve only read 3 of these. And I own 2 more.

TEN GERMAN NOVELS I "NEED" TO READ

Threepenny Novel by Bertholt Brecht
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin
Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada
Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Wolfgang von Goethe
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson
The German Lesson by Siegfried Lenz
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
Vertigo by W.G. Sebald

>197 booksaplenty1949: I have had that book on my shelves for well over 20 years. I have wanted to get to it for an age and don't really understand why I haven't yet done so.

>198 DMulvee: I am definitely up for a read of the Quartet. Starting April? Ok?

>199 PiyushC: Written by non-Indians you mean, Piyush?
I will get around to must read novels from Indian authors fairly soon too - a personal favourite of mine!

>200 Kristelh: I have a surprising number of books from Australia and New Zealand on the shelves despite the fact that they can be so difficult to get here for some reason.

>201 PaulCranswick: To be frank German literature has always been the most forbidding for me.

>190 PaulCranswick: Only read one of those Irish novels, Brooklyn. And Finnegans wake (and of course Ulysses) are on my lists.

>194 PaulCranswick: Not much Anzac either, I have read The Luminaries, and intend to read Oscar and Lucinda, and The Bone People.

BTW All English, American, Irish, and Anzac books are lumped together in my catalog under 'translated from English' ;-)

>201 PaulCranswick: That is a better list to me, all read except Threepenny Novel and Vertigo.

>204 PaulCranswick: Why would that be, Paul? A great one to add to that list would be by Austrian writer Robert Musil: The Man Without Qualities.

>205 FAMeulstee: Interesting but logical cataloguing, Anita. If most of your reading is in Dutch the English language stuff could get clumped together. There are often issues of nationality that I decide on a very unscientific whim.
Is Emma Donoghue Irish or Canadian?; ditto Brian Moore
Is Saul Bellow American or Canadian?; ditto Carol Shields
Is Shirley Hazzard American or Australian?; ditto Geraldine Brooks
Is Nevil Shute British or Australian?
Is JM Coetzee Australian or South African?
Is Nabokov Russian or American?; ditto Brodsky
Is Hesse Swiss or German?

and so on and so on.

>206 FAMeulstee: That is impressive. My German reading is woeful.

>208 PaulCranswick: I don't have answers to all of those, but Nabokov is easy for me, either translated from Russian, or from English ;-)

Besides the German books in the various 1001 lists, I have added the books from 100 German must-reads by Deutsche Welle (found on Kerry's thread (avatiakh) some time ago) on my to be read pile. It is a nice list of ranging from 1901 to 2016, with some overlap with the 1001.

>209 FAMeulstee: Ooh I will go and look at that, Anita.

>202 PaulCranswick: Sounds good!

>211 DMulvee: Pencilled in. I have a lovely two volume Everyman edition of the Quartet and I cannot wait to get to it.

I have 15 Canadian authors to read.
I've posted the Irish authors (10) that I have to read and I have done 6 for Aussie/Kiwi and 6 for German.

TEN ITALIAN NOVELS I "NEED" TO READ

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati
Deviation by Luce d'Eramo
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The Leopard by Tomasi di Lampedusa
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
History : A Novel by Elsa Morante
The Moon and the Bonfires by Cesare Pavese
Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucci

>213 Kristelh: I am enjoying my picks, Kristel and it is giving me a reminder that I have a pretty big TBR on my shelves!

>212 PaulCranswick: I have the same version!

>214 PaulCranswick: I have read five: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, The Tartar Steppe, The Name of the Rose, My Brilliant Friend, and The Leopard.
Three to be read: The Betrothed, History, The Moon and the Bonfires, and Pereira Maintains.

Keep those list coming :-)

>216 DMulvee: An even more shared shared read!

>217 FAMeulstee: I do enjoy Italian fiction usually, Anita, although both Eco and Calvino can be difficult.
I think we will be heading East next!.............

TEN RUSSIAN NOVELS I "NEED" TO READ

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Quietly Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokov
August 1914 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
On the Eve by Ivan Turgenev

A very male list, I must admit. I toiled with whether to include Gogol here given his roots in Ukraine but he wrote in Russian and apparently always considered himself a Russian novelist.

>219 PaulCranswick: And here you've added another one of my all-time favorites in War and Peace. I read it one summer when I was in college, and at home, and had lots of time to read--no chores or studies. One of the things I loved about it was that it was so long it took days to finish, even with all the time I had available for reading. So I was able to immerse myself in that world for a long period of time, and it wasn't over too soon. So many other books I would read and love just ended too soon, when I wanted them to go on. That wasn't a problem with War and Peace! Of course, these days I don't have the long blocks of time for reading that I had then, more's the pity.

>219 PaulCranswick: Again read five: War and Peace, Oblomov, Life and Fate, The Master and Margarita, and Lolita
Demons, Dead Souls, and On the Eve are on the shelves to be read someday.

>194 PaulCranswick: I preferred Illywhacker to Oscar and Lucinda, but I read both many years ago.

>194 PaulCranswick: I loved Trustee from the Toolroom and have a mostly complete collection of Nevil Shute's works. (The only one I didn't like was On the Beach.) You are in for a treat, when you get to it.

Love ❤️ all the book talk over here!

I’m doing worse on these later lists! I’ve read 4 of the French (Eugenie Grandet, The Nun, The Three Musketeers, Dangerous Liaisions) and have just two on my TBR pile (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Swan’s Way), though in my defence I have read four other works by Nemirovsky just not Suite Francaise.

I have only read 1 Canadian (The English Patient) and don’t have any of the others TBR. I have only read 3 of the Irish (At Swim, Two Birds, Molloy, The Book of Evidence), and don’t have others on my TBR, though I should point out that though I have read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Dubliners I do have a copy of Ulysses that I am yet to read and if I read and enjoy that then (perhaps) Finnegan’s Wake might be added to my TBR.

For the ANZAC I have only read 2 (Oscar and Lucinda, Voss) with only 1 on my TBR (The Man who Loved Children). For the German I haven’t read any but 3 are on my TBR pile (The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Tin Drum, Buddenbrooks).

For the Italian I have read 3 (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, The Name of the Rose, The Leopard) and only have 1 on my TBR pile (The Betrothed). Finally I have read 3 of the Russians (War and Peace, The Master and Margarita, Lolita), but am outnumbered having 4 on my TBR (Demons, Dead Souls, Oblomov, Life and Fate)

>220 atozgrl: That was a lovely post, Irene. You are the first person I have ever seen criticize War and Peace for being too short!! I hope I can immerse myself in it as you were able.

>221 FAMeulstee: Life and Fate, I knew, Anita - as I am well aware that this is your absolute favourite novel.

>222 Caroline_McElwee: That is funny, Caroline, because I have read a few of Peter Carey's books (Jack Maggs) is my favourite to date but couldn't decide whether to list Illywhacker or the more obvious Oscar and Lucinda.

>223 ArlieS: I have a good number of his books too, Arlie, but so far I have only read A Town Like Alice.

>201 PaulCranswick: I'm not so up on your German list, only read two. I found the Deutsche Welle booklist that Anita mentions useful and have a few German novels considered for reading this year. I posted the list on my thread early last year and reposted a week or so ago on my current thread as a reminder. One of my current reads is an award winning German YA, Why we took the car.

>214 PaulCranswick: I've read 5 of your ten Italian novels.
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Deviation, The Name of the Rose, My Brilliant Friend, The Leopard and Pereira Maintains. All were well worth reading.

>219 PaulCranswick: I read several by Dostoevsky when I was a teenager but don't think Demons was one of them. So have read 4 on your list and will give a plug for Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, I've read most of her translated work.
Read: War and Peace, Dead Souls, The Master and Margarita, Quietly Flows the Don.

Back to the ANZACs and I'll mention Catherine Chidgey, Kirsty Gunn, Elizabeth Knox, C.K. Stead, Owen Marshall & Vincent O'Sullivan as contemporary NZ writers worth checking out. Honorable mention for the late Ronald Hugh Morrieson.
I have tried recently to read Australian writers and my current faves would be Jock Serong & crime writer Garry Disher. I'd suggest looking at the Text Classics for a good cross section of great Aussie reads (also includes a number of NZ ones).

>224 mdoris: Lovely to see you, Mary.

>225 DMulvee: I don't know about you, but I feel that Canadian literature and that from Down Under does not get near enough credit.

>128 PaulCranswick: Great list, Paul. I have read every one but the top two. Enjoy.

>154 PaulCranswick: I would be interested in doing a shared read of either The Three Musketeers or Suite Francaise. I have both on shelf. Let me know.

>194 PaulCranswick: I would also be interested in reading Picnic at Hanging Rock. I do not own it but I have wanted to read it for ages.

>228 avatiakh: Yeah Kerry, I don't know why I always seem to struggle with German literature but it is a definite blindspot for me.

Thanks for the NZ suggestions - Morrieson I have read and I have a few books on the shelves by CK Stead and Catherine Chidgey. I will look out for the rest.

Your suggestion of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya interests me - I have one of her collections with a title about 30 words long!

>230 msf59: Let me know whether April or May, buddy and which one and I'll be right there with you!

How about Three Musketeers in May? I will decide on Suite Francaise later on.

>233 msf59: Yes, Mark, I'm good with that and will open it up to anyone else to join us.

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I’m in for a musketeers reread!

>236 drneutron: Aha Jim! That means we already have Athos, Porthos and now Aramis........looking for a likely D'Artagnan!

TEN SCANDINAVIAN NOVELS I "NEED" TO READ

For Scandinavia I have covered Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland and for ease I have chosen 2 novels from each. A bit harsh on Norway and Sweden I suppose as I have a lot of books from there but my selections are not really meant to be fair!

From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjon
Independent People by Halldor Laxness
We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
The Emperor of Lies by Steve Sem-Sandberg
The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas
The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson
The Elixir of Immortality by Gabi Gleichmann
Unknown Soldiers by Vaino Linna
The Year of the Hare by Arto Paaslinna

>226 PaulCranswick: Actually, I meant to not criticize War and Peace for being too short. Most books I read that I loved were too short because I wanted the story to continue, but War and Peace was the one that was not too short. I also enjoyed the sections where Tolstoy engaged in some philosophizing, which might annoy some, but it prompted me to think. And it also had a very satisfying ending. I still think of it as my favorite book.

>239 atozgrl: I was pulling your leg, Irene. In all seriousness thought you are the only person I have ever heard that they didn't want to get to the end!!

>240 PaulCranswick: OK, gotcha! ;-) For me, truly, the length of the book was part of the appeal, because I was able to spend so much time in Tolstoy's world. It's a reading experience I won't forget.

I am so sorry to be out of touch. I hope all is well with you my friend!!!!

>241 atozgrl: I get you Irene but the only part of his world surely to avoided is the obvious absence of showers!

>242 Whisper1: I am struggling along, Linda. I shouldn't complain but invariably do! Work is tough at the moment with plenty of dispute with the Employer and many of our Subcontractors. Hani also wants me to take her here there and everywhere. Blood pressure has definitely spiked recently. xx

TEN BENELUX NOVELS I "NEED" TO READ

Will by Jeroen Olyslaegens
Sulphuric Acid by Amelie Nothomb
The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch
War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans
Rituals by Cees Nooteboom
Max Havelaar by Multatuli
The Evenings by Gerard Reve
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
The Garden Where the Brass Band Played by Simon Vestdijk
The Misfortunates by Dmitri Verhulst

>238 PaulCranswick: Six read: From the Mouth of the Whale, Independent People, Kristin Lavransdatter, The Long Ships, Unknown Soldiers, and The Year of the Hare.
And one I want to read: The Ice Palace.

>244 PaulCranswick: Seven read: The Discovery of Heaven, War and Turpentine, Rituals, Max Havelaar, The Evenings, The Discomfort of Evening, and The Garden Where the Brass Band Played (by Simon Vestijk).
And The Misfortunates is on the shelves to be read.

>245 FAMeulstee: That is the slimmest one of the Scandi books listed, Anita.

My choice for Netherlands / Belgium was a bit limited to be honest. We are not overly well served by writers from those two countries translated into English.

>246 PaulCranswick: I liked Tarjei Vesaas The birds, and so put that one on my list.

Available in translation, in the opposite way often an issue for me too.

>247 FAMeulstee: It frustrates me a little to be honest, because I usually appreciate Dutch and Belgian authors but they are not widely enough translated.

I've been enjoying your lists of books to be read!

>249 thornton37814: Thanks Lori, I have three more European spots to visit if I may before the day is through!

>244 PaulCranswick: Wow! I have avoided smugly claiming to have read some great number of your other lists, in the spirit of modesty, but in the same spirit I WILL announce that I have not heard of a single one of these works, nor even of their authors.

TEN IBERIAN NOVELS I "NEED" TO READ

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
The Land at the End of the World by Antonio Lobo Antunes
The History of the Siege of Lisbon by Jose Saramago
Don Quixote by Cervantes
The House of Ulloa by Emila Pardo Bazan
The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas
A Heart So White by Javier Marias
Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones
The Island by Ana Maria Matute
Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas

A couple of books here which I have previously started and failed to read (Bazan & Cervantes)

>251 booksaplenty1949: I don't have a great collection of authors by Dutch and Belgian authors - I did toy with including The Neverending Story by Ende but I didn't have too many more reasonable options - I wasn't trying to be obtuse and obscure. To be fair, Mulisch and Nooteboom are very famous in Holland with both at various times being put forward for the Nobel Prize (though Mulisch is no longer eligible for the reason of mortality).

>252 poropic1: Thank you but no thank you.

If you’re interested, I made a thread for the “John Huston Film Fest”!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/349424#n8094672

Karen O

>253 PaulCranswick: I have read the two you started, and Cathedral of the Sea.
Although I AM reading my second Marías The Infatuations right now, last month it was Thus Bad Begins.
Also other books by Antonio Lobo Antunes (Fado Alexandrino, a very good read), and Outlaws by Javier Cercas.
And I would recommend Out in the Open by Jesús Carrasco, from Spain.

>254 PaulCranswick: The Neverending Story is original German, not Dutch .

Your "Need to Read" lists are fun, Paul! I'm surprised I've only read one off your French list (The Three Musketeers) although we did read portions of Suite Francaise in one of my college French courses. I did better at British and American novels (6 each) but pretty badly at the rest of your lists, although I've read 3 of the Russian novels.

Good luck getting to all of them! :)

"Need to Read" is nice because it rhymes, but too much pressure for me!! LOL I hope you have fun with them. Zero for German and for Benelux, but I've read half of the Russian. : )

That's a lot of lists and a lot of books that "need" to be read, Paul. I haven't read many of them but finally got to Pride and Prejudice a couple of years ago. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I read Longbourn, Jo Baker's story from the servants POV at the same time which gave it another dimension.

Hi Paul, i have read two books by Ildefonso Falcones and really enjoyed both. From your various lists, i have either read one or two or i have them on my shelves to read. Have a good end to the week mate.

>253 PaulCranswick: A couple of books here which I have previously started and failed to read (Bazan & Cervantes)

That sounds familiar. I am in the same situation with Cervantes.

>255 klobrien2: I do like his films, Karen, so I will go and check it out. x

>256 FAMeulstee: My Spanish reading could be much improved as well, Anita. My favourite is not on the list since I have read most of his books (Zafon).
I knew that there was a reason that I didn't list Ende!

>257 curioussquared: Thanks Natalie and lovely to see you. I will need plenty of luck getting to all of them as I have listed 160 books already covering 20 countries.

>258 Berly: It is funny how we gravitate to certain places for our reading. I read far more French than other European literature combined, I guess.

>259 Familyhistorian: And because it is adding to our already read pile it will also be a personal list, Meg. Of course I am addicted to lists so I cannot help but post them all!

>260 johnsimpson: I don't think that I have seen another of Falcones' books in the stores here other than the one I listed, John.
Good for Bangladesh that they whitewashed our Cricketers in the 3-game T20 series. Love to Karen, mate.

>261 atozgrl: I don't know why, Irene, and this is not a particularly good sign, but I wasn't much able to make a dent in my 1001 reading last year including both of those.

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Yikes, one of those games which could have had so many alternatives.

>253 PaulCranswick: I actually have a copy of The House of Ulloa. I see I picked it up from a Little Free Library, presumably because it was a free Penguin in unread condition, but haven’t thought of it since. But just now read some recent LT reviews that make it sound pretty interesting. Must admit that apart from this book and Don Quixote the other Iberian novels/authors were unknown to me.

>267 booksaplenty1949: I have a cute Penguin edition of it on the shelves, but I wasn't in the right frame of mind for it at a time last year I was looking to complete numbers of books (I have to correct that thinking!).

Saramago is a rewarding author but not an easy one.

>244 PaulCranswick: I have some of these in the pile.

Books I'd recommend are Harry Mulich's The Assault, I suspect you may already have read it Paul. Louis Couperus' quartet The Book of Small Souls is my favourite of his works (I prefer it to Mann's Buddenbrooks). Hard to get in English, my copy is American, published in the 1940s. Easier to get is Eline Vere, Pushkin Press publish several of his books in English.

>269 Caroline_McElwee: You are right, Caroline, I have read The Assault and I agree with you that it is good. Another on I liked was The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker and The Dinner by Herman Koch.
I haven't read and don't own anything by Louis Couperus.

>264 PaulCranswick:, The other Falcones book i have read is The Barefoot Queen and it is in the loft and i will save it for you mate.

>271 johnsimpson:. Thanks John

>270 PaulCranswick: I enjoyed The Twin too Paul.