Still wandering_

So, 2010 isn't over yet, so I probably can't post my best reads of the year on that thread. But perhaps I can do a first draft at least here...

THOSE WANDERING_STAR BOOKS OF 2010 IN FULL

Most likely to produce sobs of laughter:
Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson (no contest)

Most brain-carbonating non-fiction (you know how a good non-fiction book makes your mind shoot off in all directions?):
The Ordeal Of Elizabeth Marsh by Linda Colley - travels of a mid-eighteenth century woman and what they said about her world
Runners-up:
Everything Bad Is Good For You by Steven Johnson - why pop culture is not to be disdained
Proust And The Squid by Maryanne Wolf - a good counterpoint to the above - what happens to your brain when you read

Movingest memoirs:
Remind Me Who I Am, Again by Linda Grant - a daughter's relationship with an ageing mother
Runner-up:
The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal - family history told through what happens to a collection of Japanese artefacts
Specially commended:
Two Lives by Vikram Seth - tracing how the author's aunt and uncle, an Indian doctor and a German Jewish woman, met, married and lived through some of the great upheavals of the twentieth century
Dancing With Cuba by Alma Guillermoprieto - a naive young dancer goes to teach ballet in post-Revolution Cuba

Most worth-the-hype blockbuster (2000+ copies on LT):
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
Runners-up:
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

(splitting into two to deal with touchstoning issues)

Most overlooked gem (under 100 copies on LT):
Surveyor by GW Hawkes (11 copies)
Runner-up:
Three Dog Night by Peter Goldsworthy (66)
Specially commended:
Damned Good Show by Derek Robinson (25)
The Kingdom Of Ashes by Robert Edric (14)

Best fantasy:
blockbuster - Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
gem - The Limits Of Enchantment by Graham Joyce

The 'no, really' award for great books with unappealing descriptions:
Alice In Sunderland by Bryan Talbot (a graphic novel about the local history of a town in the north-east of England)
Runners-up:
The Sound Of A Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey (a natural history of snails)
Sum by David Eagleman (forty short ideas about what might happen after we die)
Specially commended:
Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan (surreal short graphic tales)
Gents by Warwick Collins (a short comedy set in a men's public toilet)

The 'great but gruelling' award for books with some very hard-to-read scenes:
A tie between:
The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall
Women In The Wall by Julia O'Faolain
Dirt Music by Tim Winton

The 'just great writing' award for books that don't fit any of the above categories:
Evening is the whole day by Preeta Samarasan
Runners-up:
The Lazarus Project by Alexsandar Hemon
Cassandra at the wedding by Dorothy Baker
The Dissident by Nell Freudenberger
Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney

The best books I probably won't have finished by the end of the year (look out for reviews on this thread):
Interesting Women by Andrea Lee
The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit

...and finally, not one of my top reads of the year, but winner of the 'unexpectedly prescient' prize is Turing's Delirium, for its choice of subject, cyber-resistance - I've been thinking about it a fair bit in the last week or so.

All these books are ones which jumped out at me from the list of books read this year as being good and memorable reads. The ones in bold are my top ten (or possibly eleven - I have lost count).

Ah, it is ten, quite fortuitously.

Fed up with struggling with touchstones. Will try again later.

This is a highly entertaining list! Definitely some books on there I want to read.

wandering_star, happy to see the Linda Grant memoir listed above. It's on my TBR-soon pile. Now I can't wait to get to it!

I'll be looking forward to your thoughts on The Flavour Thesaurus - it's on my wishlist.

1. Britten And Brülightly by Hannah Berry

It's a grim, grey day, I have to go back to work tomorrow, and the first book I started this year is not really grabbing me. As I trudged home through the drizzle from lunch with one of my more difficult friends, feeling thoroughly out of sorts, I knew that there was only one way to spend the afternoon - curled up under the duvet, Leonard Cohen on the stereo, with a book I knew I was going to enjoy.

I picked up Britten And Brülightly, a graphic novel that I got after it was recommended here on LT. On its first (A4 sized) page, there is only one sentence:



As it did every morning





with spiteful inevitability




the sun rose.


It continues: It rose in a sky that was bruised and tender to look at, if you could see it through the weather. The view from the window changed so rarely that I didn't bother to look at it any more. Ten years ago I began a private investigation agency with the glorious aim of serving humanity and righting wrongs. In all those years the only wrongs righted have been on my tax returns.

I am quite fond of modern noir, and this was a good example of it. The fact that it is a graphic novel added to the moodiness, with dark images, an almost monochrome palette and constant rain. Berry uses funny and surrealistic touches to balance out some of the bleaker aspects of the story, but ultimately this fully deserves the description noir: it's not pastiche, even though it might seem that way at the start when we are introduced to such tropes as the burnt-out detective and the mysterious, tough-on-the-outside young woman. The drawing is very good as well, and makes us of a variety of approaches with some full-page scenes and some passages without any words at all (eg when the detective finally realises the full truth of the case). And despite what you might think from this description, it did a good job of cheering me up.

Sample: There are certain times when you just can't reason with a person: all you can do is take their ego by the hand and lead it to the dancefloor.

Recommended for: fans of noir; fans of unusual graphic novels; a reader in the mood for something rather bleak. (It was quite a good match with the Leonard Cohen, actually).

wandering_star,

You should start a new thread: Books to be read with Leonard Cohen background music. I know, such a suggestion will cause outrage and rioting among certain members of our group. "What!" they will say. Read and listen to music at the same time???? Disgraceful!" And others--"Leonard Cohen deserves your undivided attention. One should never use Cohen as background. He must always be the foreground."

OK, I think that one is going on the wishlist. Anything that can be described as a good match with Leonard Cohen gets my attention, although, like Urania's hypothetical protesters, I would not indulge in both at the same time.

:-)

Teehee... I do like the idea of outraging both those who like silence and those who like Leonard Cohen. One of the other threads around here was talking about soundtracks for reading - that is, music to go with specific books rather than general background sound. Perhaps a more general thread on this would, um, create discussion? Despite what the purists might say, for me there certainly are books which seem to go well with music, although most of the ones that spring to mind are books that have a very strong sense of place, when that place is also associated with a certain kind of music. Or something like Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels because Rebus is so often listening to music while he drinks and broods.

On a separate issue: I have just found out that I have 801 books on Mt TBR. This is particularly distressing because, despite all my resolutions about not buying books, it's actually MORE than I had this time last year. I seem to have managed to acquire almost 200 books last year - coming up to 4 a week, which is hardly evidence of cutting down, although many of those can be explained through (a) brief but intense bookshop binges when I was in an English-speaking country, or (b) gifts, in particular my sister's lovely habit of sending me books from my Amazon wishlist at random intervals. I think the only book-related resolution I can set myself this time around is to have a smaller TBR pile by year end. I would like to say, 'under 700' but I feel that may only be a hostage to fortune!

Gone with the Wind comes to mind every time I hear something by The Carpenters ... I read/listened to them together in the early '70s and you can imagine how many loops of a cassette tape you go through during GWTW...

I have just found out that I have 801 books on Mt TBR
Last year you mentioned acquiring The Geometry of Pasta and while it might be in that 801 it was one of my favorites! Now I realize I should have had you as an Interesting Library all along for the heads-up on hundreds more books :)

801, wow! I thought I was bad closing in on 300. :)

I am not even talking about how many books I have on TBR. A state secret.

I would never have known the number, if it wasn't for LT. I think I should probably get a little card with '801' on it to keep in my wallet and look at every time I think about going into a second-hand bookshop...

Books two and three of the year are The Settler's Cookbook by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Hunting Mr Heartbreak by Jonathan Raban. I didn't deliberately choose to read these books together, but they ended up having quite a lot in common: both are partly about migration and partly about the experiences of the authors themselves; both are rather variable in tone; and both disappointed the very high expectations that I had for them, although there were certainly good aspects to them as well.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is an outspoken journalist and commentator, with a focus on issues around race and diversity. In the prologue to The Settler's Cookbook, she explains that, coming to the UK from Uganda shortly before Idi Amin's explusion of the Asian community, she left behind her treasured collection of vinyl, her books, even her photographs, but did bring a collection of kitchen paraphernalia for her student flat. She has never been able to throw any of this away. The reader might initially be tempted to see this as a simple fear of losing possessions when so much has already gone - but then Alibhai-Brown lists the items, and for each one tells a memory that goes with it, and you realise that it's far more than a collection of pots and pans.

In the rest of the book, YAB interweaves the story of the Ugandan Asians with her own memories, growing up in the early 1950s under the British Empire, getting into miniskirts and rebellion in the 1960s (while the community does well in the early years of independence), and then the growing intolerance and hardships of Idi Amin's era followed by transportation to an intermittently-welcoming UK. Scattered through the narrative are recipes, for each item of food that she mentions in her memories.

All this should be very interesting, and it often is. The problem is that it reads a bit like a first draft, or as if someone was sitting there telling you their life story: there are abrupt leaps in the subject matter, lurches in tone from spiky to lyrical, florid description to mile-a-minute honesty about very private details including the break-up of YAB's first marriage or her postnatal depression.

In a way, I think this is extremely real: both in the sense that in our own lives, our attention is often elsewhere during what turn out to be important moments, and in the sense that you feel this is YAB's authentic voice, proudly outspoken, with her intelligence leading her to jump to a new subject before you have quite figured out what she is saying. But reading it was sometimes disconcerting - as in this (rather extreme) example:

Carey inspired me to revisit Dickens, and I found the courage to read Wordsworth. When I finally got 'Tintern Abbey', it was like the most pleasurable orgasm. My micro suede skirts gave similar pleasure to the men who lived and probably died in the same library seats, speaking only to old leather-bound books.

Recommended for: readers interested in how one person actually experienced the process of migration, or in the story of the Ugandan Asian community.
Hunting Mr Heartbreak is billed, on the back, as following in the footsteps of an eighteenth-century immigrant to the US, Hector St John de Crèvecœur - Mr Heartbreak. At the start of the book, Jonathan Raban sets sail from Liverpool to New York, following the trail of so many European emigrants before him. During the voyage, he does vividly imagine how it must have been to be crossing the ocean in this great rebirth. He compares the crossing of the "fierce North Atlantic" to fairytale adventures where the heroes had to pass through the terrifying zone of the forest in order to have adventures and win treasures.

Many of the passengers must have been carrying precious addresses whose place-names gave away the fundamental unreality of America. Could anyone really live in a town called Fertile? Eureka? Promise City? Eden? Harmony? ... The map of the United States was dotted all over with fantasies and fictions. These ludic names belonged to the landscape of allegory, not real life.

Unfortunately, once Raban arrives in the US, we never really hear any more about the eighteenth-century migrants, and the book turns into much more conventional travel writing - although the theme of migration does recur subtly throughout.

Raban spends two months each in New York, a small Alabama town, Seattle and the Florida Keys. In each place he invents a new personality for himself (John Rayburn in Alabama, Rainbird in Seattle, after mis-hearings of his name). And in each place, his observations have a different focus. For example, the section on New York contrasts the way that it took in a motley group of migrants and turned them into Americans with the late-1980s stratification.

There are many acute observations about the America he sees - but unfortunately, these are mixed in with pot-shots at easy targets and some quite uninspired passages. It's all the more frustrating because you know that he is capable of better. For example, at one point Raban segues from a riff on how bad airline food is (yawn) to a really interesting analysis of the impact of air travel on the way that Americans perceive their own country. My favourite section, apart from the Atlantic crossing, was the description of Seattle, and in particular the way that Raban used the Korean community there to illustrate the way that the American dream plays out in the narratives of immigrant communities.

Sample: Like Tim, the high school students betrayed their anxiety that the world in which they lived was not as real as places where they'd never been. New York was real, California was real; but Guntersville lay beyond the pale of reality as it was laid down by imaginary Hollywood producers and imaginary Manhattan literary agents. ... It seemed to me that the town was very seriously in need of a fiction to give it a keener sense of its own reality.

Recommended for: fans of travel writing, who might be more prepared than me to forgive the less inspired bits.

4. Sir Gawain And The Green Knight, translated by Simon Armitage

I'm not entirely sure whether I gave this to my mum as a present or whether she gave it to me, but in any case, it was acquired after and because we both enjoyed Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.

This shorter and less well-known poem tells the story of Sir Gawain, who takes up a challenge from a mysterious and mighty green knight (green in skin, hair and horse as well as clothes) who comes to Arthur's court on New Year's Day. The challenge is that one of Arthur's knights may strike the green knight once with his axe: and then, one year to the day later, must let the green knight strike him once. Gawain volunteers and severs the knight's head - but the knight simply picks up his head, repeats the challenge, and rides off.

In the introduction to the poem, Armitage comments that to the modern reader, the original poem seems to be "lying beneath a thin coat of ice" - the meaning is almost graspable, but not quite. I think he's done a good job as translator: he keeps the alliteration and rhyme, and the story is vivid (at times, hard to put down). I think two or three times I was struck by a choice of language which seemed very twentieth-century - "I kid you not" was a particular example. But this was only occasional. The northern English slang that Armitage uses sometimes in the speech of the knight did work for me, perhaps because it seems more timeless.

Sample:

Then he heard on the hillside, from behind a hard rock
and beyond the brook, a blood-chilling noise.
What! It cannoned through the cliffs as if they might crack,
like the scream of a scythe being ground on a stone.
What! It whined and wailed, like a waterwheel.
What! It rasped and rang, raw on the ear.
'My God,' cried Gawain, 'That grinding is a greeting.
My arrival is honoured with the honing of an axe
       up there.

Recommended for: fans of poetry, epics and/or Arthurian legend.

15 - The Settler's Cookbook sounds interesting - it's a shame the writing leaves something to be desired.

>16 wandering_star: I love that sample from Armitage's translation of Sir G and the Green Knight, especially those last two lines... they made me laugh. I must read the rest.

Thanks for your review of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by Simon Armitage. I have got the original middle English version on my TBR list and I will certainly look out for the Armitage translation as well.

I know I'm a guy and so can do only one thing at a time, but I could not contemplate listening to Leonard Cohen and reading at the same time. How could you concentrate on your book when that wonderful poetry to music rolls over you?

#17 - Jane, I think if the synopsis sounds interesting to you it might still be worth reading. There was a lot in there - it depends on how much you are willing to filter out some of the digressions.

#19 - I guess it's because I know those songs really well, so I wasn't listening to them as such, just having them on as background atmosphere...

ETA: I realise that for some people, that's an even worse admission!

A Confession by Leo Tolstoy

First, my own confession. This came to me from the Early Reviewers May 2010 batch. It sat on my shelf until 16 December - and in the last month, I have read 50 pages of it, in short and increasingly sparse bursts.

The thing is, it's not that it's not good. I enjoyed, for example, the remarkable clarity of this book written in 1882, and I would recommend it to many readers.

Tolstoy recounts how his faith grew out of a situation of total despair. As a youth, he was taught the tenets of religion, but by the age of eighteen he did not believe in any of them. He spent his early adult life proudly rational, a believer in progress, delighted in his own fame and cultivation. Creeping doubts, however, led him to question the meaning of everything he had devoted his life to.

"The questions seemed so stupid and simple, like questions asked by children. But the moment I faced up and tried to resolve them I became immediately convinced, first that they were not childish or stupid questions, they were the most important and profound questions in life, and, second, that however much thought I gave to them I could not, could not, resolve them. Before I could sort out my estate in Samara, my son's education or the writing of a book, I needed to know what I would be doing it for."

Tolstoy entered a state of total despair, convinced that life was empty and meaningless. The only way he resisted suicide was to tell himself that he needed to make a real effort to try and work out the puzzle - and that if he couldn't find a meaning, there would be plenty of time for him to kill himself in the future. "So there I was, a man favoured by fortune, removing rope from the room where every night I got undressed alone, to make sure I didn't hang myself from the beam that ran between the wardrobes".

Eventually, his effort leads him to faith, and the book moves on to the way that he developed his belief system.

A Confession is vivid, and powerfully written. I think the reason that it didn't work for me is entirely personal. I am happily and uncomplicatedly an atheist, and the fact that there is nothing outside this life does not cause me to despair. Tolstoy characterises his peers as fitting into four groups: "people who didn't understand the question; people who did understand the question, but blotted it out in an orgy of living; other people who did, and who put an end to their lives; or people who also did, but lived on in desperation, out of weakness." I guess I would be in the first category. And because of this, the tremendous repetitiveness of Tolstoy's self-examination began to get to me. I think if I was reading it as philosophy, or as a way of developing my personal views on meaningfulness, this repetition would have been a positive benefit, providing plenty of space for contemplation. And so I would certainly recommend this to anyone who would read it with those things in mind.

PS I was also put off by the foreword to my Hesperus edition, a rather bizarre and irrelevant rant about "anti-religious polemic" in the modern world.

>21 wandering_star:, I am so behind on my ER books, it's shameful.

21 - That's disappointing. I love the Hesperus press books but will probably pass on that one.

5. One Helluva Mess (aka Total Chaos) by Jean-Claude Izzo

This interesting thriller starts with a man returning to Marseilles after an absence of twenty years drifting around the world. He, Ugo, is back to avenge the murder of one of his childhood friends, Manu - even though they had long ago lost touch. It's a very punchy opening, with the narrative swinging from third-person to second-person, so it feels very immediate.

It's a bit of a surprise, then, when at the end of the prologue, Ugo is gunned down by the police. The narrative then switches to follow Fabio Montale, police inspector, who grew up in the working-class areas of Marseilles - he too is a childhood friend of Ugo's - and is regarded with suspicion by his colleagues because of a tendency to try and solve problems by talking to the troubled youth of the area rather than going in and breaking heads. Montale is troubled by Ugo's return. How had he found out so quickly who was responsible for Manu's death? Why were the police in exactly the right place to shoot Ugo? And how does this fit in with another crime which affects a friend of Montale's?

This was a very good noir. Even the chapter titles give a good idea of the mood: "In which, even if you're going to lose, you've still go to know how to fight", "In which dawns are nothing but an illusory impression of how beautiful the world is", "In which the way others look at you is a deadly weapon". Montale fits all the noir tropes (washed-up, despairing at the grimness of the world) but does not feel like a cliché. If anything, it's more depressing than a normal noir - because Montale is disillusioned more than anything else by the growing racism that he sees around him, France's intolerant approach to immigrants, and that's a trend I find genuinely depressing in my own country. But it was still very enjoyable to read.

My only criticism relates to one aspect of the translation. Many of the characters speak non-standard French, and this has been rendered in a sort of mixture of northern and cockney, which is quite jarring - particularly as the same mix is used for all the characters, whatever their social or ethnic background. I know slang is hard to translate effectively - whatever you choose will alienate some readers - but this really didn't work for me.

Sample: He'd have needed hundreds of years to get through all he had to say. He could sum it up in a single word and a sentence. Sorry. I love you. But they'd got no time left. Or rather, time had streaked ahead of them. The future was behind them. Nothing lay ahead of them but memories.

Recommended for: fans of noir, mystery readers, someone looking for a bottom-up portrait of Marseilles.

Enjoying your thread!

6. The Clothes On Their Backs by Linda Grant

Vivien has grown up in a quiet backwater of London, with parents who desire nothing more out of life than to pass unnoticed. "A life that isn't peaceful is no life at all", her father says. One of the most vivid memories of her childhood is the appearance at their front door of a man who says he is her uncle - vivid not just for the way he was dressed (electric blue mohair suit, diamond watch) but because he caused her normally mouse-quiet father to scream, and shout, and swear, in a language she had never heard him speak before.

So when, in her early twenties, Vivien comes across Uncle Sándor again, she befriends him and starts to learn about her own history. The attraction for her is clear. I enjoyed listening to someone who was voluble, who didn't excrete small constipated pieces of information, under great pressure. Out it came, there was no stopping him, he was a man who loved to talk. But Sándor differs from her parents in another important way. They have chosen to survive by melting into the background. Sándor, on the other hand, has survived by being a hustler. He is defiantly proud of this - he has an appetite for life, and wants to live it to the full. But he also believes that it is, in the end, the only way to survive.

I didn't take the supplies, I took other people's supplies and I sold them and split the profits with them, so there was no coupon with my name on it, and this is why, at the end of the war, my mother still had an apartment. And now do you understand why your ideas about what is decent, and respect, and equality are for babies? A boy like that one downstairs, strong and stupid, is the kind who is most like the animal who suddenly lies down in the shafts of the cart and dies, for no reason, because his strength is exhausted. His strength is all he has. I'm not that type, and I hope you are not either.

I really like Linda Grant's writing, and have read all her novels. This one contains some of her best writing - I don't believe anyone could read the first chapter or two and then put the book back on the shelf. The subject seems a little less coherent than her other books, perhaps because Vivien is struggling for space with Sándor: the book is about her growing up as much as it is his life story, but he's such a bold personality that he sometimes takes over. And while Vivien's relationship with her mother is poignantly drawn, her father is little more than a cipher. There's also an element of unlikely contrivance in the story (Vivien and Sándor meet by chance - each recognises the other but both pretend not to). But there is still an enormous amount to like and enjoy in this novel, and I would highly recommend it.

7. Hope And Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami

Placeholder - I am discussing this book for a Belletrista 'conversation' and the process means that my thoughts about it are changing, so I'll come back when they've settled down.

8. Worldly Goods: a new history of the Renaissance by Lisa Jardine

This fascinating book is essentially a look at how important things, and money, were in shaping what we now think of as the world of the Renaissance.

It starts with an analysis of the National Gallery Crivelli annunciation...



... a "meticulous visual inventory of consumer goods" from across the known world as well as a beautiful work of art - and itself a desirable possession. Renaissance artists were craftsmen for hire, working to order for the rich and powerful - and sitting at table with the tailors, musicians and other salaried members of the household. Others who fell into this category were people who would now perhaps style themselves as lifestyle consultants. You could have a man to advise you on what paintings, antiquities or books to buy to display your wealth and taste. You could even have someone to pre-read the books for you - Sir Philip Sidney had a private reader who annotated a copy of Livy for him with marginal notes referring to modern parallels to the events in the text, and a number of cross-references to modern works on political and military theory.

Conspicuous consumption was an essential aspect of prestige and authority, often backed up by borrowing on a massive scale. Christopher Columbus' proposal to seek a shorter route to the Indies - and therefore bypass the mark-ups which the spice traders put on their goods - was attractive to Ferdinand and Isabella because they were deeply in debt after a series of costly military campaigns. (For the weddings of two of their children in 1495, Isabella had to redeem her crown of gold and diamonds which had been pledged to raise money for the war against Granada.) And fortunes were made for entire families of bankers because they had received trading concessions in return for loans to popes or kings - the Medici wealth was based on monopolistic access to alum, vital for dyeing cloth. You could also make a fortune by having access to the right piece of information - for example, if you knew that two great houses were planning a wedding, you could stock up on fine fabrics while they were relatively cheap.

I think that since this book was published in 1996, its thesis has become much more widely accepted. But even so, Jardine finds some eye-catching links between things - consumption and discovery - and broad historical changes. The rebuilding of St Peter's Church in Rome, involving some of the greatest artists of the day including Michelangelo and Raphael, was so expensive that Pope Leo X issued a particularly grandiose indulgence, granting remission not just from sins already committed, but "purchasers and their relatives were forgiven every conceivable sin they had committed, or might commit, and exempted from all suffering in Purgatory, advancing immediately to Heaven". The indulgences were sold particularly hard in Germany, because the papacy had agreed that half the proceeds would go to paying off the debts of the Archbishop of Mainz. It was after the issue of this particular indulgence that Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door at Wittenberg.

This is definitely a macro-history, ranging across the European continent from Scotland to the Ottoman Empire and in time across a couple of centuries. I am not sure that there was a coherent argument running all the way through it - it's more of a bag of delights, studded with interesting facts that you feel Jardine couldn't bring herself to leave out. I particularly liked the story of a map which deliberately placed the Molucca islands in the wrong place to back up Spain's territorial claim to them - and the related treaty stated that "during the time of this contract, {the Moluccas} shall be regarded as situated in such place" as shown on the map. Even that was only a bargaining chip - as soon as the claim was established the Spanish relinquished them in exchange for cash - "far more valuable to Charles, beset, in established Hapsburg fashion, by enormous debts to his bankers, than monopoly trading rights on the far side of the world".

Worldly Goods is on my TBR list for this year, and I think I'll move it up in the queue.

Hi Wanderer, enjoying your reviews. Your issues with Tolstoy echo some issues I recently had with The Brothers Karamazov, which I read in November/December. FD explores those same themes in his own way.

I really liked The Clothes on Their Backs too, but I haven't read any other books by Linda Grant. Are there particular ones you would recommend.

Worldly Goods sounds fascinating.

ETA About Tolstoy, I haven't read A Confession, but I've read some of his stories that deal with religion and I have to say, much as I love most of his other works, these just passed me by.

I found your review of Worldly Goods} intriguing and I have put it on my "to Buy" list

It was very hard to review Worldly Goods because there is so much in it. I had lots of notes that I wanted to work into the review - about the spread and impact of printed books during these centuries, about the trading relationship between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, and so on - but I couldn't make it come out coherently. I often find that with non-fiction, I end up stalled in the middle of the book - without the drive of wanting to know what happens next, I just somehow don't get round to picking it up - but this was a fascinating and really enjoyable read.

32, Rebecca, on Linda Grant, my very favourite book of hers is a memoir about her relationship with her mother who was descending into dementia, Remind Me Who I Am, Again, although it can be a tough read at times. I also enjoyed her novels Still Here, about a tough, unsentimental, prickly woman who refuses to fade quietly into the background as middle-aged women are supposed to do; and When I Lived In Modern Times, about a young Jewish woman from London who winds up in Palestine in the late 1940s, forming herself as Israel forms around her.

There's an interesting recent interview of Linda Grant here.

I'm another fan of The Clothes on Their Backs.
ETA: I think that When we Lived in Modern Times was an Orange Prize winner or shortlisted novel.

I've added Worldly Goods to my wishlist. I find these studies of material culture via art fascinating. Vermeer's Hat was one of my favorite reads last year.

Thanks for the Linda Grant recommendations. I don't think I could read the memoir for personal reasons, but I will certainly look for the novels. And thanks for the link to the interview.

I don't think I could read the memoir for personal reasons
my feelings exactly, rebecca. (Still, I tucked it in my wishlist.)

9. All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West (audiobook, read by Wendy Hiller)

If it wasn't for Cariola's recent enthusiastic review of this audiobook, All Passion Spent would still be vaguely on my "must get around to reading sometime" list. But I was inspired to download it with my new audible subscription - and I am so glad I did!

A summary of what happens in this story would look like almost nothing: an elderly lady, newly widowed, moves to a smaller house. She renews a friendship with an old acquaintance and thinks back over her life. And yet the book is engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking.

It starts with the death of Henry Holland, a Grand Old Man of British politics. His children, all in their 60s, gather - as is socially proper - to mourn their father and discuss what is to be done with their mother, the 88-year-old Lady Slane. Throughout this opening part of the book, the reader never sees inside Lady Slane's head, although there are little hints that she may not be quite as biddable and unworldly as her children believe. So it's almost as much of a surprise for us as it is for them when she quietly but firmly turns down their dutiful suggestion and scandalises them by suggesting that she moves to a small house in Hampstead to live on her own. (We are, however, much happier than the children about this idea, since they are unfeeling, pompous and self-centred in the mode of the baddies in Jane Austen).

Once Lady Slane starts setting up the house in Hampstead, and moves there, we see her - perhaps for the first time in her life - doing exactly what she wants. She no longer has to think about social conventions, her husband's career, appropriate behaviour for a political hostess. Instead, she lives quietly, and develops gentle friendships with sympathetic people, the owner of the Hampstead house, or a visitor who knew her in her past life. This change of location, and of lifestyle, gives her the perspective to look back over her life. She had been given everything that society valued - prestige, fame, wealth. But she had never really set store by any of it. And other people had only seen her in that social role, so few had ever perceived the real Deborah beneath the Vicereine's tiara. Perhaps even she had lost track of her real self, until now.

It's a tribute to the writing that this manages to be moving without being unbearably sad. Last year I read The Rector's Daughter by FM Mayor, in which a younger woman is pushed, by social conventions and family demands, into a narrow and unfulfilling life. I felt the author of that book was saying that because she herself had accepted that life, it was not a waste - but I couldn't agree. Here, however, it wasn't so unbearable - perhaps because we see it through Lady Slane's own wise and wondering approach, or perhaps because I felt that at least here towards the end of the life she has been able to find people who truly appreciate her.

A note on having this on audiobook - I agree with Cariola that the narration by Wendy Hiller is really excellent, and highlighted the intelligent but gentle humour of the novel. It also helped me get through the occasional longueurs - it's easier to keep listening than to keep reading (where I might have been tempted to put the book down, go and make a cup of tea, and get distracted by something else). There may have been things I missed because I was listening rather than reading - it's just that little bit harder to go back over the last couple of paragraphs or flip back to an earlier bit of the book. But the positive thing is that I am more likely to listen to this again soon than I would be to pick up the book again.

Wandering, thanks for your discussion of All Passion Spent. Am fascinated by the Sackville-Wests, Virginia Woolf and the whole Bloomsbury scene. Have never read any of Vita's work, and this sounds like a great place to start. Now I know where my new Audible credit will go. Will let you know what I think.

BTW, I thought I was the Imelda Marcos of books until I saw your 700 + TBR! Awesome! Now I feel so much better! Glad to know I'm not the only one who needs a 12-step program! ;-)

#39 Good review. Thank you.

>39 wandering_star:, lovely review of a lovely book!

Thank you! I was worried about not doing it justice, because it's harder to review an audiobook, somehow.

Poquette, I firmly believe that in your circle of friends you should always have people who cover your range of vices, but more so - so you can always say, "I might have a lot of shoes - but Nicky's much worse", or "I know I can be tactless occasionally, but at least I am nothing like Dan"! I am very happy to be your (anyone's), "you think I have a lot of books? You should see....."

29 - Great review! This one definitely went on the wishlist.

Another abandoned book: this one is Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.

Summary from the part of it that I read: This is the story of a circus family, all 'freaks' in one way or another, and all deliberately created by their parents when the bottom started to drop out of circuses (by medicating while the mother was pregnant). The story is narrated by one of the children, dwarfish, hunchbacked and albino but not freakish enough to draw the crowds on her own - she barks and helps with the rest of the family. Stories of her childhood are intermixed with stories from her adult life, when she lives in a house with her mother and her daughter, neither of whom know who she is but both of whom are living there from her charity.

This was lent to me by a friend, one of those 'you must read this, you'll love it' loans. Sometimes, those seem unappealing but turn out to be excellent (Watching The English was a good example of this for me) - but this one went the other way. I'd heard a lot of talk about it on LT, but couldn't really get into it. I'm not really sure why - the writing was pretty good, and while I found the subject matter a little disturbing*, that wouldn't normally put me off if the book is good.

*in particular, I felt the book might be trying to have it both ways, saying "look how badly these people are treated by 'norms' just because they look different - they are people too" while also describing the disabilities or conditions in such grotesque detail that you can't help feeling the reader is meant to have a thrill of disgust.

I know January is not over yet, but I am on holiday for the next week, and in the interests of keeping my book acquisition down, thought I'd check how I was doing on my overall TBR-reducing resolution. The answer is, not too well:

Books OFF the TBR pile: 11 (9 read, two abandoned)
Books ON the TBR pile: 12 (2 new - one from my audible subscription, and one because I find it much easier to stick to a regime of allowing myself one book a month, than to stop myself buying books at all; 3 given or lent to me, and 7 mooched in)

Hmm. On the other hand, I might finish a couple of books in the next two days, and if so at least the trend would be in the right direction!

Thanks again for your review and recommendation of All Passion Spent. Just finished the Wendy Hiller audio and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Well, I finished one more book in January, making it TBR-neutral overall.

That book was 10. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.

As the title suggests, this book looks at what the world would be like without humans - both what would happen to our artefacts if we were all to disappear, and what might be different if humans had never evolved at all.

The first two chapters look at our homes and cities, and how they would decay if humans no longer existed to maintain them: to repair burst pipes and cracked windows, to unclog the sewers and pump water out of the subway system (13 million gallons a day, in the case of New York) and clear weeds from the cracks in the pavements. I really enjoyed this part of the book - it was like a slow-motion disaster movie, and fascinating to see how much has to be done constantly to maintain things in their existing state. It is literally awesome to think about the power of nature, especially apparently small elements of nature like drops of water or tiny seeds, and it was particularly interesting to consider all the plant and animal life which is trying to get in, through or under everything we have built. Later in the book too there are interesting sections about what has happened to places which used to be full of humans and now aren't - the DMZ between North and South Korea, the area around Chernobyl, the woods of New England, Mayan ruins.

I had been expecting the whole book to be like this, though, and I was a little disappointed when it turned out not to be. A lot of the rest of the book is actually about the impact of what humans have done - right back to extinguishing North America's megafauna in neolithic times. Again, this is quite an interesting topic, but it didn't really work for me here. Partly it was the fact that Weisman had to keep relating it back to his theme by suggesting that these human-engendered changes had never taken place, the world would still look like it did before us - and that just seemed very simplistic. Partly it was because of his unfortunate journalistic manner - his language is a bit florid and sometimes he makes sweeping assertions with no backup, some of which didn't seem very convincing (eg I don't really believe that without humans and their garbage, city rats would die out). And finally, it was because Weisman has a sort of generalised snarkiness towards anything even slightly related to modern living, which was annoying and also kind of incoherent: he sneers at the fragility of our modern buildings, built out of woodchip and galvanised metal - but these have less impact on the environment than the timber and stone which make older houses more long-lasting?

Weisman has carried out a lot of interesting research for this book. Unfortunately, he seems to find it hard to leave out any piece of information - so you get a lot of throwaway comments which try to cram in information without putting it into any sort of argument. One paragraph reads:

Imagine future archaeologists clanging their way through all these pipes. What will they make of the thick old steel boilers and multiple stacks behind Texas Petrochemical? (Although, if humans stick around for a few more years, all that old stock, overbuilt back when there were no computers to pinpoint tolerances, will have been dismantled and sold to China, which is buying up scrap iron in America for purposes that some World War II historians question with alarm.)

There's no follow up to the parenthesis so we never get to see how the cryptic China-bashing comment is supposed to fit into the overall picture.

So this is very much a case of 'less would be more'. Some things in the book are really worth reading about - for example, a jaw-dropping description of the amount of plastic in the sea. But better editing, to make the argument more coherent and less haphazard, would have really increased its impact.

>48 wandering_star:, huh, maybe not then. Thanks for your thoughts!

I had a short run of books which I couldn't/didn't finish.

The first was Sunflower by Gyula Krudy, a very lushly written novel full of romance, swooning, tokens and affairs. I think it may have been deliberately over-the-top, and perhaps I could have enjoyed it if I had been in a mood to wallow in the heightened sensitivity and sensuality of its cast.

I don't normally set a lot of store by the blurb on the back cover, but I think this summary tells you all you need to know: "this sensually observed episode in Womanhood's ongoing, ever-variable encounter with the male principle. A richly quintessentialized cast of characters offers a fivefold bevy of females, variously engaged with a trio of males".

Sample from the text itself: There lived in the Inner City of Pest a strange young man whose white spats, carefully ironed trousers and curled hair were visible mostly in the evening hours. The outward appearance of this young man resembled one of those figures on antique amulets worn around the necks of pious elderly princesses or seduced daughters of the bourgeousie. Oh yes, one of those figures...

Next up... My TBR contains a surprising amount of travel and fantasy/sf writing, considering that I am not a great fan of either - basically because I have a tendency to get excited by enthusiastic reviews without always thinking carefully whether they sound like my sort of thing. On the other hand, there are some books in these genres which I loved - Trieste and the meaning of nowhere by Jan Morris was a fantastic read, and I enjoyed Mythago Wood last year. So this year I am going to try and read through these bits of my TBR pile, which may lead to quite a lot of aborted reads.

So, I read the first volume of The Book Of The New Sun by Gene Wolfe, in which a young man is expelled from the guild of torturers (he falls in love with a prisoner and lets her kill herself rather than suffering the guild's skills), and sets out on a journey - with many hints that he will one day be the ruler of this strange kingdom. I actually enjoyed the book - I read it on a flight and it was a good page-turner, keeping me engaged - but not really enough to read the next three volumes.

Then I turned to Looking for Lovedu: a journey through Africa in search of the legendary rainmaking queen by Ann Jones, an account of a drive the length of Africa. This book sought to dispense with cliches about Africa, but unfortunately failed (Jones criticises visitors who still use the phrase "the dark continent" but herself flips to the opposite cliche, wondering towards the end of the book, "was it merely a geological fluke that the African continent ... is shaped like the human heart").

I have another book by Jones on my wishlist, Kabul In Winter, but now I am worried that it will be a bit simplistic. On the other hand, I think Lovedu was written quite some time ago, so maybe Kabul In Winter will be as good as it is billed.

11. Adventures On The Wheels Of Steel: the rise of the superstar DJs by Dave Haslam

This book is ten years old, and I have owned this copy for at least six of those years. You might think that it would have been better for me to read it a bit earlier, when dance music was a bigger deal than it is right now, and when I cared a bit more about it...

In fact, this book is not just about dance music in the sense of the genres which developed in the last decade or so of the twentieth century. It's also about the history of dancing to recorded music instead of a live band (an idea initially scoffed at), the pioneers who tracked down the music they loved to play and the people who came to dance all night to it. These parts of the book are really interesting, as tastemaking DJs promote their favourite music to new audiences, leading to the creation of new genres, and the way that different ways of listening to music influenced social trends. Regrettably, there are also quite a lot of self-indulgent bits of the book, most of which consist of the author reporting in far too much detail on his conversations and interactions with well-known DJs. But these are easy to skim through. There's also a little too much but-it-used-to-be-all-about-the-music criticism of the commodification of DJing - although the book correctly points out that this happened because the record industry needed people to promote, which was harder to do with non-vocal bleepy records made by someone in their bedroom. Overall, worth reading for anyone interested in the development of pop music.

Sample: When instrumental dance music emerged, it was greeted in the same way as abstract art in the 1960s, with a similar grappling for points of reference, human interest, narrative. Now Mark Rothko is on your living room wall and 'Plastic Dreams' on your TV.

12. The White Tiger by Aravind Ariga

I've been liking the way Chatterbox is starting her reviews with "the bottom line" on a book. For this book, the bottom line would be, "not bad, but not worth all the hype".

The White Tiger is the story of Balram, an anti-hero who starts off as a poor boy in a remote village and ends up an entrepreneur in Bangalore - but it's not your traditional rags-to-riches story. He has got where he is by breaking the rules (some of the time), by not being content to submit to fate (mostly), by one great act of violence (and lots of little acts of corruption).

A lot of the hype around this book said that it was refreshing to read a book about India which punctured the 'India Rising' myth - a bottom-up view instead of a spice-laden, exoticism-tinted one. Perhaps none of these reviewers had read the best-selling 146723::Q&A, turned into the movie Slumdog Millionaire, which is a similarly bleak portrayal of life in India's slums, the violence, corruption and hopelessness. Or even - to go right back to the grandfather of these books - 2118::Midnight's Children, which is far from a positive portrait of the country and its politics. There's also an enormous amount of non-fiction looking at the negative sides of India - the collected journalism in sainathp::P Sainath's 747931::Everybody Loves A Good Drought, for example.

However, I guess that if you are a reviewer, you must be disproportionately grateful to be handed a book which upsets your expectations and stands out from the crowd.

This is certainly an angry book, which turns many of the positive cliches about India on their head. India's proud democracy comes in for particularly scathing criticism: there is no hospital in Laxmangarh, although there are three different foundation stones for a hospital, laid by three different politicians before three different elections.. India's religious traditions too: Balram suggests that real enlightenment is not about sitting under a tree but about taking your future into your own hands, by whatever means necessary. And Adiga is good on the insulation of middle-class Indians from the poverty: With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open - a woman's hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out an open window, flings a empty mineral water bottle onto the road - and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.

But this is a very mixed bag. It's basically a mile-a-minute firework display, without a lot of subtlety or insight. The characters are pretty broadly drawn, and a lot of the ironies are unlikely to be new to anybody - goodness, the people building these great steel-and-glass shopping malls actually live in slums, do they?

Adiga raises a couple of interesting questions - why the poor are content to stay trapped in the "rooster coop" of servitude, and the relationship between master and servant ("Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love - or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?") But these are not very deeply explored.

Great review of The World Without Us; I'll give it a pass. I also liked (and agree with) your review and bottom line analysis of The White Tiger. Have you read his second book, Between the Assassinations? I have it, but haven't gotten to it yet.

#52 interesting review of The White Tiger, w_s, and certainly more generous than my own assessment of the book. I, too, don't think it broke new ground, and to say that the book punctured a "myth" (it is a myth only in the sense that the West makes it one) is giving the author too much credit. As to other sources of information about India, a look at the daily international news is enough -- there's bound to be something that will "puncture" any spice-laden view of the country. Also, I'd like to add Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance to the titles you've mentioned.

I learn so much by reading your comments! I've decided I want an anthology with just the choice chapters from your nonfiction reads. But the whole of All Passion Spent goes on my wishlist, it seems like it might develop the independent spirit I've been craving to read about since I encountered Kate Chopin's short-short, "The Story of an Hour."

Thanks for the comments!

Darryl, I haven't read (or got) Between The Assassinations and don't plan to - unless I hear something that changes my mind, so let me know if you like it ;-)

Deebee, I know what you mean about this view of India being a myth because the West makes it one, but I think even in the West there is quite a range of views about India. For example, if someone wrote a "warts-and-all" book about somewhere like Thailand, that would be new to most people in the West. Perhaps a bit less so now after the red and yellow shirt protests, but if you asked people what their image was of Thailand I can guarantee that "peace-loving Buddhists" and "land of smiles" would be two of the top responses. For India I am equally sure that slums would feature quite quickly.

A Fine Balance - I haven't read it, but I saw a play adapted from it, and it was really bleak. (The play was done by a theatre company called "Tamasha", who specialise in South Asian themes - for example, they produced a new play, East Is East, which was later made into a film).

I'm going to stick my nose in here where maybe it doesn't belong, and recommend that if you are still interested in reading about India, you read A Fine Balance. Yes, it does sound bleak--and what happens is bleak. However, the people are not bleak, but inspiring (and not in a corny, rose-tinted glasses way). It is one of the best novels I've read about India.

I'm enjoying your thread very much!

Thanks Amanda - and arubabookwoman for the recommendation. Sorry I've been away for so long. I don't actually have very many books to catch up on, considering it's been a few weeks.

I spent a longish time with Wayne Johnston's The Colony Of Unrequited Dreams, the life story of Joe Smallwood, an unprepossessing young man who ends up as Newfoundland's first premier. The two main themes of his life are a sort of loveless romance (or perhaps romanceless love) with a journalist, Shelagh Fielding, and his experience of the life of poor Newfoundlanders, whether that's sealers or railwaymen.

There is some wonderful descriptive writing:

As I walked along, I felt the ice rise beneath my feet, felt myself being lifted and then lowered and then lifted again. I discovered that it was possible while walking on the ice to become seasick. One second you were walking uphill, the next downhill. The water below moved shorewards but the ice did not; you rose to a crest on the ice, then felt and saw that crest move on ahead of you while another swell began beneath your feet. It was like walking on the skin of a massive animal.

But. The book is 560 pages, and on p356 I realised I really didn't care about his life or his relationship with Fielding. If it was shorter, I could have finished it; likewise if the writing was more engaging. But for me, the book was not good enough to be so long.

13. The House Of The Mosque by Kader Abdolah, an ER book.

The House Of The Mosque is the story of a family, who live in the the house of the mosque in a fairly religious city in Iran. The book starts during the rule of the Shah, and shows what happens to the family in the period up to and after the Islamic Revolution. Some of the developments impinge more on the family than others - at times, the village imam is non-political and life goes on quietly; then the next imam is more in touch with the religious leaders in Qom and encourages the villagers to protest against the Shah. One of the members of the family develops communist leanings; others become revolutionaries; and others just get on with their lives.

It's quite hard for me to explain how I felt about this book. My opinions kept changing as I was reading it.

The first 20 pages felt like a textbook example of how-to-write-a-Middle-East-bestseller: from the cover (a grubby but bright-eyed small boy, regarding the reader, despite the fact that no small boys feature very much in the story) to the opening magical-realism-tinged scene, with deliberately simple story-teller like language and nods to themes of the clash between tradition and the modern and the treatment of women.

As the book went on, though, it became more interesting, and much less cliched. It's certainly a more complex view of Iran than in most Iran-variant Middle-East-bestsellers. The characters - I can't say they were fully rounded individuals, but they certainly couldn't be summed up in a phrase. There was a lovely theme about the power of the spoken word - poetry, storytelling, Koran readings, and sermons (one of the ways the village changes is in the character of the different imams).

That said, in the end the shortcomings in the writing really undermined all the good things about the book. It doesn't seem to have been constructed at all: one thing happens, then the next thing happens, then the next thing happens, and we are told it all in sequence. After the Revolution, time telescopes so that all the key events can be fitted in (one chapter starts, "Five months later, at around noon, three Iraqi warplanes flew over Tehran"). It's terribly expository, with characters explaining politics and history to each other. And (probably related to the previous point), everything is explained immediately, which is one of my pet hates about books.* Trust your readers to fill in the gaps! It's probably not a coincidence that my favourite story within the book is the only one which remains unexplained, the story of the grandmothers' disappearance during the Hajj.

In the end, then, although there were good things about this book, I can't really recommend it to other readers.

Sample: "You're a special woman. I rarely meet women like you. As I listened to you read, I ran alongside those snorting stallions whose hooves make sparks fly. I've read that surah many times, but this is the first time it's ever touched me so deeply. I owe that to you." Zinat soaked up his words like a desert soaks up a sudden rain. And his last sentence did its work. That night, as she lay in bed, she thought of his "I owe that to you".

*I carry this to the extreme that I am even irrationally annoyed when a book includes a glossary at the back. For heaven's sake, let the reader figure it out, or even let them wonder! (Most of the time, anyway, the words which are sprinkled like spices through the text are items of clothing, food, or standard greetings - they're never essential to understanding the story).

14. The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

This, on the other hand, was an unquestionably wonderful read. It's the story of tough, proud, snobbish and obstinate Hagar Shipley, told in her own words looking back at the age of ninety. Margaret Laurence does a great job of interweaving Hagar's memories of younger days with the failing memory and eccentric decisions of her ageing self, and manages to make Hagar a sympathetic character despite her manifest unlikeabilities - probably because the reader can see, as she herself can't, how much she hurt herself by her fierce independence.

Sample: Now I am rampant with memory. I don't often indulge in this, or not so often, anyway. Some people will tell you that the old live in the past - that's nonsense. Each day, so worthless really, has a rarity for me lately. I could put it in a vase and admire it, like the first dandelions, and we would forget their weediness and marvel that they were there at all. But one dissembles, usually, for the sake of such people as Marvin, who is somehow comforted by the picture of old ladies feeding like docile rabbits on the lettuce leaves of other times, other manners.

I also gave up on The Sing-Song Girls Of Shanghai by Banqing Han, a portrait of the brothels - high and low-class - and their customers in late-nineteenth-century Shanghai. I found the essay about the "sing-song house" culture more interesting than the book itself, which has a cast of thousands (the list of characters at the start of the book goes on for five pages) and consists of scene after scene where the girls and their clients sit at dinner parties, or alternatively have jealous fights, in varying configurations. It's so complex that the translator has to put in explanatory footnotes (eg "clearly she has gone to see her lover who lives on that street").

I am sure it would be a more rewarding read to someone who was prepared to put the time in to tease out all the relationships...

#13
The House of the Mosque Excellent review that gives me an excellent impression of the book. However you have not put me off. I am interested in the time period and the subject and so I will look to get hold of a copy and be prepared to wade through some dross.

The stone Angel looks good

#61 - I really need to go back and reread The Stone Angel. I read it for the first time when I was in high school, and had so much trouble identifying with Hagar that I really disliked the book. I think it was too difficult for me to see past the proud old woman - maybe now (though I am not that much older) I would see the value in her story. I enjoy Laurence's writing though, and love her A Jest of God. If you haven't read that one, I definitely recommend it!

Great review of The House of the Mosque; that's definitely going on my wish list.

#59 Thanks for that. Was considering reading it some time but now won't bother.

Good to read your reviews.

I think you're considering reading The Strange Case of the Composer and his Judge this month. I'm reading it now and I've found that Patrica Duncker is a very good writer.

Baswood, Darryl, I too have seen negative reviews which still make me want to read the book! I hope you get the most out of it.

Cait, I'll look out for that one. I am sure you would enjoy The Stone Angel more this time around...

Amanda, that's good to know. I really like her stuff, but her previous book, Miss Webster and Cherif, was what you might call 'one for the fans'! I'm looking forward to starting The Strange Case....

D'oh, I actually came here to post my February 'review'.

Books OFF the TBR pile: 10 (4 read, 6 abandoned)
Books ON the TBR pile: 10 (one new audiobook, 4 given to me, 4 mooched in, one picked off a swap shelf)

I am starting to see why my TBR pile is not going down very quickly! This is like keeping a budget and suddenly realising you spend a stupendous amount of money on magazines. Will try and do better in March.

15. Daylight by Elizabeth Knox

I loved Elizabeth Knox's first book, The Vintner's Luck, and have kept on reading her: Black Oxen, Billie's Kiss, and now Daylight. All those have been complex, ambitious and interesting, but none of them have quite worked. I think Daylight might be my favourite of them, but I am looking forward to reading the sequel to The Vintner's Luck, in the hope that that will regain the heights of the original.

Like The Vintner's Luck, Daylight is about an encounter between humans and supernatural beings. I don't want to say what kind of supernatural beings they are, even though this is given away on the book cover and of course in the LT tags. But it's something that should be gradually revealed in the pages of the book: the word itself is not mentioned until p153 of this 356-page book, and the story's purpose is clearly to let the reader gradually become aware of who (or what) exactly these characters are.

Brian 'Bad' Phelan is a New Zealand bomb disposal officer, injured in the line of duty and travelling around Europe. Shortly after breaking up with his girlfriend, he is involved in the recovery of a drowned woman from a cave. Something about her reminds him of a mysterious incident in his own past, and trying to find out more he encounters a young Jesuit priest, also interested in the case because the body was that of a friend of his - a woman he had met in the course of investigating the life of a potential saint.

The narrative is perhaps a little too complex to hang together well for the reader (yes, I know this contradicts what I said in my review of The House Of The Mosque), but the reimagining of the myth is very well done and the use of caves and places of darkness as a theme reflecting the dark corners of the human soul is very effective.

Sample: Two people from the saint's story were dead in suspicious circumstances, and it seemed to Daniel and the detective that a subsidence had appeared in the world, around the saint's story. The kind of subsidence that first brings a hidden cave system to notice, to light.

16. To Say Nothing Of The Dog by Connie Willis

I would never have heard of Connie Willis if it wasn't for LT, but now I have greatly enjoyed both Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing Of The Dog. They both take place in the same world, one where time travel has been invented and historians make use of it to study the past as it really was. In To Say Nothing Of The Dog, a wealthy benefactress to the university has got all the historians engaged in her pet project: to rebuild Coventry Cathedral as it was just before the bombing. One historian, severely time-lagged, is sent back to the Victorian period to recover... and to carry out one little errand. But nothing is as it seems, and if the past is changed then the chaotic system of history will go to extraordinary lengths to correct itself.

This book has none of the seriousness of Doomsday Book, and there was a little bit in the middle where it flagged, but overall it was a very funny read, which had me chuckling to myself all the way through.

Sample: "Where's Terence?" she said, starting toward the lawn. "I need to tell him he can't be in love with Tossie because the fate of the free world is at stake. Also," her voice dropped to a stage whisper, "she cheats at croquet."

17. The Singer by Cathi Unsworth

A couple of years ago, when Maxim Jakubowski's Murder One was still a physical bookshop and not just an online one, I dropped in there to try and buy a leaving present for a work colleague. I told the shop assistant that my colleague liked mysteries and rock music, and he recommended this book, by a former music journalist and about the punk era. I got a copy for my colleague and put the book on my wishlist.

The Singer in question is Vincent Smith, charismatic psycho and punk visionary. His band flourished and fought for six years in the late 70s and early 80s, but after an angry break-up Smith fled to Paris and shortly afterwards disappeared. Twenty years later, a young music journalist stumbles on the story and decides that a book on the now-forgotten band has the potential to make his fortune. He starts to track down former band members and hangers-on, but as he investigates the story becomes more and more convoluted, and everyone has a different take on the main characters.

The story alternates between the punk days and the investigation, with both parts equally vivid and convincing. The unfolding mystery is very well-structured and drew me in. Highly recommended for anyone who likes dark mysteries, and thanks to the man in the shop who told me about it.

Sample: A big punk rocker with arms thick as tree trunks pushes his way to the front, elbowing and swearing, pumped up with expectation and adrenalin, the forthcoming catharsis of violence in song. His head is a black crown of soaped-up spikes, four inches long, liable to have someone's eye out - or so he would hope.

18. West With The Night by Beryl Markham

Beryl Markham was a bush pilot in what is now Kenya in the 1930s - the only professional female pilot there at the time. She had grown up on a large farm, and was also a racehorse trainer - and generally fascinating character.

To tell it in her own words: From the time I arrived in British East Africa at the indifferent age of four and went through the barefoot stage of early youth hunting wild pig with the Nandi, later training race-horses for a living, and still later scouting Tanganyika and the waterless bush country between the Tana and Athi rivers, by aeroplane, for elephant, I remained so happily provincial I was unable to discuss the boredom of being alive with any intelligence until I had gone to London and lived there a year. Boredom, like hookworm, is endemic.

The story of this book is almost as interesting as her own. It was first published in 1942, but soon after that went out of print until the early 1980s when someone picked up a glowing reference to the book in one of Hemingway's letters and got it reissued. Heartwarmingly, Markham was still alive at that point - she lived three more years - and received recognition and enough royalties to bring her out of the poverty that she was living in.

The book opens with the story of one particular flight Markham made, to deliver a cylinder of oxygen to a remote mining area, to try and save a man dying of a lung disease. I was blown away by the writing in this section, which was beautiful and also philosophical: I found myself thinking of that other aviator, Saint-Exupery, and wondering whether being a pilot in those early days of flight, where you dared death each time you settled into the cockpit, made one become philosophical. (Later in the book, Markham confirmed this: Being alone in an aeroplane for even so short a time as a night and a day, irrevocably alone, with nothing to observe but your instruments and your own hands in semi-darkness, nothing to contemplate but the size of your small courage, nothing to wonder about but the beliefs, the faces, and the hopes rooted in your mind - such an experience can be as startling as the awareness of a stranger walking by your side at night. You are the stranger.)

Unfortunately (as far as I was concerned), after this great opening Markham turned to other subjects, many to do with horses or the adventures of the 'white hunters', which I was much less interested in and seemed to me almost a waste of her writing talents. I was only drawn back in when she told the story of her flight from England to North America, the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo in this (more difficult) direction.

That said, I think most fans of travel writing or adventure stories would enjoy this book.

(I should say as well that I was worried that this book, given the era and culture it was written from, would be quite offensive to a modern reader. In fact, it was much less so that I would expect from the genre, although there is a certain amount of the 'noble savage' approach).

19. Basrayatha: the story of a city by Muhammad Khudayyir

I picked up this book from a second-hand shop because I have been looking for something which would give me an idea of daily life in Iraq before the war(s). It turned out to be a sort of poetic psychogeography, with essays about different sites or different aspects of life in Basra - the cemetery, the river, the cinema, the baths. As such, many of them are quite timeless, although there was one tale of a haunted bicycle race which had to be more modern, and a collection of short essays about Basra in wartime.

Sample: ...we settle in the central hall beneath the bath's recessed, ribbed dome, as daylight flows from its lofty windows. Steam condenses inside and changes to droplets of warm water that leave us semi-conscious, as we slip ever deeper into daydreams and grow ever less involved with the world around us. This is the 'fabricating' chamber, where I met the liar. He told such huge lies that he turned into a penis that wriggled across the bath's tiles, leaping from basin to basin, until he finally dissolved in a steam cloud among feathers of daylight that fell in fragments from the dome. This man exists only in the public baths - along with the laughing man, the weeping man, and the sarcastic man.

For true accounts of life in Iraq before the war, I highly recommend Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War by Anthony Shadid.

#73 sounds very strange. Amazing what you can find and read in a second hand shop

#75, yes, the trick is knowing which ones to look in! I used to like the Oxfam shop at the bottom of Strutton Ground because it's very close to the Channel 4 building, and I think some of the C4 journalists donated their review copies, so you could often find very recent books there.

20. Ma p'tite cuisine by Julie Andrieu

This is a cookbook published by the French publication house Marabout. I bought it a few years ago from a cookshop which had a number of absolutely beautiful cookbooks from the same press. After lengthy (and hungrifying) browsing, I picked this one because the recipes looked most like ones I would actually make.

Julie Andrieu apparently presents (or presented) a daytime cookery programme and contributed to the food pages of magazines like Marie Claire. This book is focused around storecupboard staples and quick meals - although that doesn't necessarily mean simple ones. It's divided into themed sections like "we all have an Italian mamma inside us", "useful for when you've invited your boss to dinner" (fancier food, also useful for impressing the in-laws), "what's more difficult than coming up with an intimate dinner for lovers" and "under the pine tree" for Christmas food. Each section starts with a list of Julie's "fetishes" for this kind of food, amusingly written up: she comments that she is tempted to carry a tube of anchoiade around in her handbag because it's such a useful condiment, and suggests that if you can't find Kikkoman soy sauce in the supermarket, you should try and buy a bottle from your local sushi bar. It was a fun browse and I turned down the corners of half-a-dozen recipes to try later.

21. Samba by Alma Guillermoprieto

Alma Guillermoprieto is a journalist specialising in Latin America (she's originally Mexican but now US-based). This book is an account of preparations for the Rio Carnival in 1988, by one of the 'samba schools' - loose organisations which compete with each other during the Carnival, each with a parade complete with elaborate floats, costumes, and a 'story samba' song encapsulating the theme, which can be surprisingly serious (in the 1988 carnival many of the schools chose to theme their parade around the 100th anniversary of the abolition of slavery).

Guillermoprieto was an avant-garde ballet dancer before she became a journalist (last year I really enjoyed her memoir of being a ballet instructor in revolutionary Cuba, Dancing With Cuba). She becomes a member of the samba school, learning to dance in the parade, and after some time moves to the favela where the school is based.

Her book would be a wonderful read even if it stuck only to the subject of the preparations for Carnival, because of her descriptive abilities:

Gradually a ripple set in, laid over the basic rhythm by smaller drums. Then the cuica: a subversive, humorous squeak, dirty and enticing, produced by rubbing a stick inserted into the middle of a drumskin. The cuica is like an itch, and the only way to scratch it is to dance. Already, people were wiggling in place to the beat, not yet dancing, building up the rhythm inside their bodies, waiting for some releasing command of the drums.

Or later:

She must have been about fourteen years old, but there was none of the sharp-edged busyness of the mosquito brigade's dancing in her movements, and none of the blatant sexual appeal coached into sambistas from toddlerhood. Delicately, she explored every interstice in the rhythm, dancing first to the light metal instruments, then to the drums, reshaping the music into movement and making all its different parts visible: the song line's rise and fall, the changes in rhythm, the backbeat of the mandolin.

But Carnival is much more than just a community event: it's mass entertainment, part of a major money-spinning industry. It's exclusive - I had assumed that Carnival paraded through the streets for all to enjoy, but in fact it takes place in a vast purpose-built Sambadrome, with the seats filled by the wealthiest Cariocas. And it's also an excellent window onto the relationships between classes and races in Brazil. "In Rio, when state of local officials want to show appreciation for black culture, they visit a samba school": but the only paid members of the samba school are the parade designers (carnavalescos), generally white, and the prestigious roles of singers on the floats are also generally handed out to the white and wealthy. The exhausting job of dancing in the parade, continuously while the floats are moving through the sambadrome, goes to the favelados who are perceived as the ones with the real 'samba spirit'.

I found this book absolutely fascinating and would love to read a 2011 update - I wonder whether Brazil's improving economy has had any impact on the lives of the favelados in the last twenty years.

It also gave me a powerful desire to watch Black Orpheus again.

stopping by to catch up...and i always love your reviews and excerpts. Samba, The Singer, West with the Night, that crazy excerpt from Basrayathra...all on the brain.

It can get discouraging reading books like Samba, but I guess it's the least I can do and, besides, it sounds like a great read.

Samba sounds great, added it to the wishlist.

Samba does sound good.

I remember Strutton Ground. I used to work near there (in another lifetime) and it was a favourite place for lunchtime browsing.

Enjoying your reviews.

Thanks everybody for dropping by! Glad you're enjoying the reviews.

22. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

The first time I've read this - and it was a very odd feeling to be reading something which I had such a clear image of without really knowing anything about the story. (The image is basically a young Robert Redford in an open-topped car). I really enjoyed it, and the fact that it confounded my expectations, particularly the way that Gatsby ended up as almost a tragic hero, rather than the villain of the piece.

Sample: The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing upstairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colours, and hair bobbed in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names.

23. Crossfire by Miyuki Miyabe

Junko is a young woman with pyrokinetic powers, which she uses vigilante-style against villains who have evaded justice. Chikako is (unusually) a middle-aged, female frontline police officer, a detective in the arson division, who is piecing together a picture from a series of inexplicable murders in which people have been burnt horribly to death. As Junko starts to wonder whether she is controlling her powers, or they are controlling her, the stories of the two women start to intertwine.

Several years ago I read another crime novel by Miyabe, All She Was Worth, about the devastating consequences for one young woman of being caught in Japan's economic downturn. I really enjoyed that book and had been on the lookout for others by the same author. This really wasn't what I expected - partly because of the supernatural elements, but also because I was pretty uncomfortable with all the execution-style killings. There is a debate in the book about whether Junko is justified in what she does, and the eventual conclusion is no, but there are also a LOT of references to her victims being "evil... the dregs of society... they had to be exterminated".

Like the other Miyabe I have read, there is also a focus on the treatment of women in Japan in this one, although this time it wasn't so convincing. Yes, most of the baddies have been involved in abusing young women in one horrible way or another, but I don't think Miyabe is suggesting that this was why they weren't being brought to justice. And Chikako does get warned off the case by a series of male police officers, but they do that to her male colleagues from arson too.

I don't think I'll be looking out for any more books by Miyabe... although I think this one would do well with people who liked the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo books.

Sample: Junko bit down hard on her back teeth to shoot her energy directly behind her, towards the entrance of the shop. Energy as sharp as a dagger flew to the brass doorknob and lock, melting them instantly and welding them shut.

24. The Strange Case Of The Composer And His Judge by Patricia Duncker

Dominique Carpentier is a judge, known as "la chasseuse des sectes": a hunter-down of those who defraud and beguile the gullible out of their money or their lives by offering them the secret to eternal life or hope. Her hyper-rational nature makes her well-suited for the task. But there are some things which rationality can't explain: love, music, and above all faith. The Composer (with whom she comes into contact in the course of one of her investigations) may just represent all three. And so the Judge finds her rationality tested...

I loved the writing in this, and the way it teased out ideas of rationality and its opposite, about truth and lies. Of course, even at the beginning the Judge's rationality is not as pure as she thinks it is: she is not immune to love or friendships, and is passionate about her work. "Reason is neither gentle nor kind, and the Judge believed in Reason with as intemperate a commitment to her own credo as any of the secret initiates who had given their hearts to the suicide Faith."

I am a big fan of Patricia Duncker, but her last novel, Miss Webster and Cherif, didn't quite hang together for me. This, fortunately, is a great return to form. It feels more mainstream than some of her early work (eg it doesn't play around quite so much with notions of gender) - I personally miss that, but perhaps it will mean that this can be her breakthrough success.

Sample: The Judge crouched in her seat, baffled by the action and the incoherence of the music. Yet everything unrolled according to her prejudiced expectations: forbidden love, desperate conflicts of loyalty and trust, she loves this one but has to marry that one, who is this one's lord and master. So far, so predictable. But the music unsettled her nerves; a monolith of sound, oddly broken and discordant. Each theme she picked out modulated, mutated, dissolved and escaped, so that she could never keep hold of the threads. The Judge confronted a structure, which resembled the barrage in the mountains above Montpellier, a giant man-made dam behind which the waters mounted, pressed. She could hear the danger rising, rising. And so two conflicting emotions bubbled within her: anger and irritation at being forced to listen to something that she neither liked nor understood, and hypnotised fascination. Her gaze flickered across the rapt and concentrated audience: another sect, another sect.
_____

#24 The strange case of the composer and the judge is already on my to buy list and after reading your review and that fascinating extract it has just moved further up the list.

Catching up on your always interesting thread. I'm going to have to keep an eye out for Samba.

25. Girls Of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea

I should probably explain that I didn't pick this book up immediately after The Strange Case..., but it was the next one I finished. This is billed on the cover as "Imagine Sex And The City, if the city in question were Riyadh", and that's a pretty good description. It's the intertwining tales of four young women, with different personalities and interests, told in a series of emails by one of their friends... or perhaps one of the quartet herself, anonymously. Sadly, it's also like SATC and much chick-lit in its love for designer labels and conspicuous consumption. One of the young women makes a new friend because "the two had several classes together and each noticed the other's good looks and perfect American accent right away". It's also not particularly well-written.

In the end, though, it is quite interesting to see how Saudi cultural and religious values impact on the lives of even the most wealthy and Westernised women - including the pressure they feel even when they are outside the kingdom. And the many different ways the author finds them to get to know men - whether it's a bold character who comes up and suggests they pretend to be related so they can stroll round a shopping mall together, someone met through an internet chatroom, or a work colleague.

Sample: Hamdan was twenty-eight. The most handsome thing about him was his nose, as sharp and fine as an unsheathed sword. He had a trim, light beard and a truly infectious laugh. He was as stylishly turned out as Michelle always was. Usually, he wore a nice pair of jeans and a name-brand T-shirt to work, but sometimes he showed up in his white kandurah and isamah.

26. The Geometry Of Pasta by Caz Hildebrand & Jacob Kenedy

This is the most design-y cookbook I have ever seen. It is organised by shape of pasta, with each shape getting a short description, a beautiful black-and-white graphic, and a couple of recipes for a sauce which would go particularly well with the shape.

This is the cover:



And here are a couple of examples of the pastas:





I bought this last year but picked it off the shelf after a visit to an Italian restaurant where I was puzzled by one of the descriptions of "slap" pasta (paccheri). I found out not only that "The name derives from paccaria, the Neapolitan term for a 'slap or smack'", but also that it had been invented specifically to enable the smuggling of Italian garlic into Prussia (who'd banned the stuff as a way of supporting Prussian garlic-growers).

Exhibiting an early example of Italian disregard for the law, local pasta barons invented the pacchero - a tube of dried pasta just the right size to hide a ducat's worth of Italian garlic cloves (about four or five). Paccheri stuffed with garlic were sent north to sate the Prussian appetite, and the trade was thus illicitly saved. The Prussian government never uncovered the deception, and in the early 19th century their garlic industry folded.

After that, well, I had to read the whole book, and I wasn't disappointed. (I also had the paccheri on my next trip to the restaurant, and they were good too). I have at least a dozen recipe pages folded over to try....

Some more good photos of the pages here (where the last photo above came from) and the book's homepage here.

27. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

This is the narrative of a bearded stranger who approaches an American sitting at a Lahori café, to recount the story of his life. He turns out to have personal experience of America - he embraced the American dream, working in a high-paid and prestigious finance job, before rejecting it and returning to his home.

Most readers seem to have loved this book, including my mum, who gave me this copy. I didn't. I didn't hate it, but found the 'insights' nothing new, the framing device and narrator's convoluted locutions annoying, and the story, as a whole, slight. To me it felt like a padded-out short story.

Sample: We locals treasure these last days of what passes for spring here in Lahore; the sun, although hot, has such a soothing effect. Or, I should say, it has such a soothing effect on us, for you, sir, continue to appear ill at ease. I hope you will not mind my saying so, but the frequency and purposefulness with which you glance about - a steady tick-tick-tick seeming to beat in your head as you move your gaze from one point to the next - brings to mind the behaviour of an animal that has ventured too far from its lair and is now, in unfamiliar surroundings, uncertain whether it is predator or prey!

28. Interesting Women by Andrea Lee

I've been reading this collection of short stories for a long time, dipping in whenever I needed a refreshing palate-cleanser.

Most of the main characters in these stories are American (often African-American) women, somewhere between youth and middle age, generally in some stage of pairing with older, Euro-trash elite Caucasian men. You can see right there all the complexities of perception and stereotype that might affect these relationships: age, gender, ethnicity, Old World vs New. But although there is plenty in these stories about sex, attraction and eroticism, ultimately it's the relationships between women which are the focus, and which seem so much more complicated than the relatively simple relationships between women and men.

It may seem a limiting factor that the stories focus so much on the transnational well-heeled, and take place in the kinds of environments where such people might pass their time: cities in Italy or the United States, Caribbean islands, a country house in Scotland.

But even if the themes don't sound interesting, I'd recommend these stories for two reasons: the excellent writing, and their acceptance of the complexities of human interactions. These stories don't attempt to answer questions even about the relationships which they focus on, never mind any more widely.

I acquired this book because I heard one of the short stories being read on the New Yorker fiction podcast (follow the link to listen or download, or find the text of the story, "Brothers And Sisters Around The World", here).

I'd really recommend listening to/reading the story, and if you like it, you should get this collection. I'll be looking out for more of Andrea Lee's books.

Sample: Elizabeth knows she adopts an expression of intense comprehension whenever Edo reminisces; it pinches her features, as if they were strung on tightening wires. Still, she doesn't want to be one of those young women befuddled by lives lived before their own.
____

March TBR review:

Off TBR: 12
Onto TBR: 5 (one gift, two bookmooched in, one ER, and an audiobook)

Better than the first two months of the year... but I need to keep it at this rate to make any dent in the TBR pile!

The Geometry of Pasta sounds like a lot of fun. And I may have to try Andrea Lee again; I've been a little underwhelmed by the stories of hers I've read in the New Yorker.

It's exclusive - I had assumed that Carnival paraded through the streets for all to enjoy, but in fact it takes place in a vast purpose-built Sambadrome, with the seats filled by the wealthiest Cariocas.
I did also; Samba looks very interesting.

>90 wandering_star: The Geometry of Pasta landed in my Top 10 last year ... so yay for LT, you know I only discovered it by seeing through my Connections that you'd added it :) I've made several of the recipes but the one I love most is the simplest, the "light tomato sauce" at the beginning of the book -- tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, salt/pepper; puree and simmer -- incredibly fresh and flavorful. I enjoyed the book because it's as much armchair reading as cookbook.

I've added the Patricia Duncker to my wish list. I've never read anything by her but have her book The Doctor on my shelf. Have you read that one?

Enjoying your reviews!

Detailmuse, thanks for the tip... I will review any recipes I try on cookbooker.com, but will try and remember to let you know if I find any particularly good ones.

Arubabookwoman, I think that was published in the UK as James Miranda Barry. That is one of my favourites.

Haven't had much time for reading this month, for one reason or another. Two quick reviews:

29. Erasure by Percival Everett.

Thelonius 'Monk' Ellison writes novels which are critically well-received but low-selling - reworkings of ancient classics like Thucydides. He attends obscure literary conferences. In one scene, he wonders into a Borders and looks for his own books:

I went to Literature and did not see me. I went to Contemporary Fiction and did not find me, but when I fell back a couple of steps I found a section called African American Studies and there, arranged alphabetically and neatly, read undisturbed, were four of my books including my Persians of which the only thing ostensibly African American was my jacket photograph. I became quickly irate, my pulse speeding up, my brow furrowing. Someone interested in African American studies would have little interest in my books and would be confused by their presence in the section. Someone looking for an obscure reworking of a Greek tragedy would not consider looking in that section any more than the gardening section. The result in either case, no sale. That fucking store was taking food from my table.

Under growing personal (and financial) pressure as his family disintegrates, Ellison keeps hearing about the multi-million dollar contract awarded to the author of We's Lives In Da Ghetto, the sort of book which in the UK would be filed on a shelf marked "tragic true life stories" (I have actually seen this label). When his latest book ("a novel in which Aristophanes and Euripides kill a younger, more talented dramatist, then contemplate the death of metaphysics") is turned down by a series of publishers, his agent suggests he writes something more like his best-selling novel, one which dealt with race relations, which Ellison himself hated. In a fit of rage, he sits down and spits out a parody ghetto-novel, with a protagonist who is violent and uneducated but periodically comes out with pseudo-deep lines. His agent warily agrees to send it out (under a different name), and soon it threatens to become the latest publishing sensation.

I really enjoyed the parts of this book which were about Ellison himself, and his family. It was one of those books where as soon as you start it, you settle into the reading, because the first pages are so good you know you are in safe hands. However, the parody-novel (which appears in full in the book) was so cringeingly awful that I found the satire of the second half of the book very broad and a bit unbelievable. I would like to read other of his books, though.

30. Out Of Egypt by André Aciman

I enjoy the 'family memoir' genre, although of course, the twentieth century being what it was, they are often a little bit depressing. Out Of Egypt has a sombre backdrop: Aciman's Sephardic family came under growing pressure in post-war Egypt, and the book ends with their last night in Alexandria before they are forced to emigrate. But its focus on the eccentric characters in the family (rather than the larger historical forces around them) give it a light-hearted tone which reminded me of Michael Ondaatje's excellent Running In The Family.

In fact, the book starts with such a larger-than-life figure, the swaggering Uncle Vili, that the darker turn it takes was a bit of a shock to me. I suppose that's appropriate, though - it must have been as much of a shock to the family themselves.

Uncle Vili knew how to convey that intangible though unmistakable feeling that he had lineage - a provenance so ancient and so distinguished that it transcended such petty distinctions as birthplace, nationality, or religion. And with the suggestion of lineage came the suggestion of wealth - if always with the vague hint that this wealth was inconveniently tied up elsewhere, in land, for example, foreign land, something no one in the family ever had much of except when it came in clay flowerpots.

A very enjoyable read.

31. A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee

This is the story of Ritwik Ghosh, a young man from Calcutta who wins a scholarship to read English at Oxford, and stays on in the UK after he graduates. He is dislocated from other lives in many ways: most obviously in his immigrant status, which means that he does not always understand the dynamics around him, and that others have mistaken perceptions of him which he does not know how to counter; but also because he is the victim of what in the UK is seen as child abuse but which in Calcutta was perhaps an extreme version of tough love; because he is gay; and because after he graduates he stays on in the UK as an illegal immigrant. Perhaps as a way of dealing with this, he starts to write a novel about an Englishwoman in Raj-era India, based on a few sentences which appear in a Tagore story.

In many ways this is a classic first novel, with many interesting ideas which are not fully integrated into the story, which is often uneven. As well as the theme of displacement there is a lot about the rules and codes which apply to different areas of life and culture: very interesting but sometimes explained a bit too obviously.

My favourite part was the relationship which Ritwik developed with an elderly woman he worked for, whose past also turns out to be related to the various themes of the story.

Sample: The main thing is knowledge, adherence to codes that to the untrained eye might be invisible. A certain type of aimlessness thrown into one's gait, being seen on the same alley or lane more than once, a few glances sideways and backwards - Ritwik knows all of these with practised ease. It's what they say about swimming, that you never forget it, that it's muscle memory; these codes are written into his veins and arteries. He can read a customer, either his kind or the more numerous and more frequent other type, from the sound their shoes make on the pavement, from the shadows they case on the occasionally syringe- and ampoule-strewn streets.

I really enjoyed Out of Egypt too; it's been years since I read it and it was nice to think about it again.

fascinating reviews. Thanks.

Rebecca, I think it was your recommendation that originally made me interested in the book!

My abandonment of Wanderlust: a history of walking is yet again proof that I often like psychogeography more in theory than in practice. I asked for this book and looked forward eagerly to reading it - I like to walk, in cities and the countryside, and was fascinated by the idea of the cultural significance of such a simple act - and there are some very interesting ideas in the book. But my automatic response when faced with grandiose, sweeping statements is to challenge: "Many professions in many cultures, from musicians to medics, have been nomadic, possessed of a kind of diplomatic immunity to the strife between communities that keeps others local." Or perhaps they had to move around because no community on its own had the surplus resources to support them. I developed a suspicion that Solnit had picked out bits from a range of resources which suited her argument, without necessarily really understanding the context.

104 - Hmm, I added it to the wishlist nonetheless, if only to remember to look for something of a similar topic which does sound very interesting.

Nice reviews of Out of Egypt and A Life Apart. I agree with your assessment of the latter book; lots of interesting ideas, but an uneven work overall.

Jane - there is a fair bit about New York in Wanderlust, as with other 'walking cities' like London and Paris. May well be worth a look if you see a copy.

April tally:

Off TBR - 4
On TBR - (ahem) 10 books and four periodicals - one gift, one ER and the rest bought new. Trips to English-speaking countries with exciting bookshops = very bad for restraint.

32. Your Republic Is Calling You by Young-ha Kim

This novel takes place over the course of one day in Seoul. For most people, it's a day like any other. But Kim Ki-yong, a film importer, receives a message he hoped would never come: it's from his masters in North Korea, calling him back after over 20 years as an undercover spy in the South. For the rest of the day, he puts his life in order and considers what he should do. We also follow the day's events for his unsuspecting wife and daughter.

I know that others have found this book disappointing, but I enjoyed it. It's true that there are probably too many things in the book and not all the themes hang together, but I know almost nothing about either Korea, so the interest value outweighed any problems I would have had with the writing.

Sample: His car, crouched and still, observes him walking away. Ki-yong encounters more people the closer he gets to the subway station but nobody looks at him. He isn't a man who stands out. Lee Sang-hyok at Liaison Office 130 instructed, "Erase yourself until your alias becomes your second nature. Become someone who is seen, but doesn't leave an impression. You need to be boring, not charming. Always be polite and don't ever argue with anyone, especially about religion and politics."

33. The Return Of The Native by Thomas Hardy (audiobook, read by Alan Rickman).

This book was well-read, but I only really enjoyed the middle half, after the story had finally begun to pick up (the first part features a lot of local-colour yokel conversations) and before the inevitable melodramatic doom began to unfold. I'm not proud of this, but I don't think I'd have got through it without the 'listen on fast forward' setting (I am thinking in particular of things like the gambling scene, where it was blindingly obvious as soon as dice were mentioned how it was all going to go down).

34. Making Policy Happen edited by Leslie Budd et al. I wasn't sure whether or not to include this, but I have read the whole thing (most of it at least twice) and it does explain why there have been such long gaps in my reading in the last couple of months... This is the course reader for a distance learning course I am doing on public policy (or I should say, have been doing, as the exam was earlier today). The contents - a look at issues facing contemporary policy-makers - were interesting enough that I enjoyed reading them despite having to get up early to do so.

Have also abandoned another audiobook, Abba's Abba Gold, part of the 33 1/3 series looking in detail at 'classic albums', which was much too detailed and not interesting enough. (Also, quite jarring that the reader said 'Abba' with a long A - Aabba).

Off to read something fun now, with no study guilt!

#108, I might have enjoyed Your Republic Is Calling You more if I hadn't read Nothing to Envy first. It is a stunning and highly readable portrayal of life in North Korea, told through the stories of several very different people who managed to escape. I think you would find it fascinating.

Edited to fix typo.

I actually have Nothing To Envy both as a real book and an audiobook, I must get to it soon.

So, my guilt-free reading choice was a quick spin through 35. Megan Abbott's Die A Little. Abbott writes punchy, pacy noirs, set in the 1950s and focused on the female characters. In this one, a quiet schoolteacher's life is turned upside down when her brother marries a mysterious woman who seems a little too good to be true... and then the cracks start to show. Very enjoyable.

Sample: She wore a low-cut velvet dress hanging by two long strings off her shoulders, and her mouth was like one gorgeous scar across her face. He remembers thinking she looked as though she might slide out of that dress and slither across the floor, and caught by the image, he found himself inexplicably terrified.

I followed that up with 36. Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose, a fascinating - and fantastic - look at the delights of reading closely, paying attention to every word, sentence and paragraph. (It builds from chapters on words, sentences and paragraphs to elements such as character, dialogue and gesture.) The book is both well-written and a sort of introductory anthology to authors who repay close reading - I have added several new books to my wishlist as a result. It also made me realise just how bad I am at reading slowly - even with the short extracts that I thought I was slowing right down for, there were several occasions when Prose picked out a telling phrase which I had missed.

Sample: Mansfield is one of those stylists whose work you can open anywhere to discover some inspired word choice. Here, the sisters hear a barrel organ playing outside in the street and for the first time realize they don't have to pay the organ-grinder to go away so his music won't annoy Father. "A perfect fountain of bubbling notes shook from the barrel-organ, round bright notes, carelessly scattered."

Unfortunately, all the other books I have on the go at the moment seem to be either non-fiction or comics, so not the best material to test my new antennae. I think this is a good opportunity to start my book of Mavis Gallant short stories, as she's one of the authors who is recommended in this book.

I love Mavis Gallant and I loved Reading like a Writer although I confess I too still fail to to follow her #1 recommendation, reading slowly! I do mean to look back at her list of books/authors and read some of the ones she recommends.

Reading like a writer looks interesting. I would like to find a way of reading slowly more quickly. I have put it on my to buy list

#113 a way of reading slowly more quickly

That sounds like a writing/editing job I once had where my boss wanted things "short but long"!

I've always thought if I could have a superpower it would be the ability to pause time...

37. The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman (audiobook, read - very well - by author)

In this, one of Canongate's series of retold myths, Pullman reimagines the gospel story: what if Mary actually gave birth to twins, one named Jesus and one whom she nicknamed Christ after the visit of the Magi? In this version, Jesus is the one who lives the life told in the gospels as we know them - the man who gives the Sermon on the Mount, the teller of parables (we'll get to the miracles in a minute). Christ loves and admires his brother and wants his story to live on after him, so he is the chronicler - but he is also guilty of making small adjustments to the story, either to make it more impressive, or - later - to change some of the messages which don't seem to him to fit. So, for example, the tale of the wise and foolish virgins, and that of Martha and Mary, both have crucial elements changed.

The key battleground between them is not the principle of their beliefs, but the question of a church: Jesus wants to preach directly to the people and have them hear his message, but he does not want power and glory everlasting. Indeed, it is Christ who tempts him in the desert, urging him to perform miracles so that his story will reach more people.

One of the things that I liked about this book was the way it retold very familiar scenes in simple modern language. There were times I could hear the well-known text ("and it came to pass in those days that a decree went out") through the words that were actually being spoken. I also liked the twist on the miracles - most of which turn out to have quite rational explanations suppressed in Christ's retelling: when Jesus shares out the loaves and fishes, he says to his disciples, you do the same, and indeed, there turns out to be enough food to go round, because one man brought some oatcakes, another had a pocketful of raisins, and so on.

Given Pullman's well-known views about the church (see His Dark Materials) and indeed the title of the story, this is in fact a more complex story than you might anticipate. Christ turns out to be an unexpectedly sympathetic character, and he also makes a very reasonable case that without an established church, Jesus' words would be remembered no more than those of every other itinerant preacher of those days.

But Pullman can't stop himself from weighting the dice, most obviously in Jesus' lament in the garden of Gethsemane, where he foretells all the problems that will be caused by an institutionalised church, up to and including the paedophile scandals. The suggestion that this was a logical and foretellable conclusion of setting up a church was a real sticking point for me. I am an atheist, but I like a fair fight, and I think this would have been a better book if Pullman had been able to keep it more neutral and let us make up our own minds.

38. The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave-Robbery in 1830s London by Sarah Wise

This is another of the books which I bought because I found a nice little independent bookshop which I wanted to support: this one was on Brick Lane, in East London, pretty near where many of the events in this book took place.

Sarah Wise takes us through the story of what was at the time a notorious case, the "English Burke & Hare" (apparently, it was the London case which was the final impetus for the change in the law which stopped bodysnatching - the passing of the Anatomy Act - although today it's nowhere near as well-known as the Edinburgh case - a mystery which she can't explain). At the same time, she uses it as a wider lens on social conditions then prevailing in London.

The challenge for this sort of micro-history is to balance a gripping central story with credible linkages to the wider case being made. Unfortunately, Wise doesn't quite achieve either.

There are interesting things about the story: it's a nicely gruesome tale, which reveals a lot about the world the bodysnatchers moved in. Wise has found some vivid glimpses into what happened (a huge number of gawkers go to look at the dwelling where the crimes took place, and after it emerges that the victims were drowned, "an elegantly dressed woman was seen to stoop down and scoop up water from the fatal well in order to taste it"). But overall, it's much too detailed: the whole text of the indictment, information about all the medical schools in London.

And Wise's wider case is a bit confused. She appears to be arguing that the passage of the Anatomy Act in 1832 was part of a trend which abolished the more brutal bits of legislation, as Britain became more genteel and respectable (the last beheadings were in 1820 - incredibly - and child labour began to diminish with the passing of the first Factory Act in 1833). But at the same time, it's obvious that the poor and working-class have a visceral revulsion to the idea of body-snatching - cabbies, for example, would refuse to carry someone they knew to be a body-snatcher, and medical schools were often attacked if people suspected 'resurrection' - which shows up the cerebral indifference of the law-makers (bodies were no-one's property, and so their disinterment was of less concern in the eyes of the law than the 'theft' of, say, a shroud or a coffin-lid, which the body-snatchers would be careful to replace) or indeed the surgeons who turned a blind eye to how their teaching material was acquired.

In conclusion, then, I'd say this was a missed opportunity. The context is fascinating, and there is plenty of information available about what happened (which sometimes, these sort of books struggle with - ahem Floating Brothel ahem) - but they could have been brought together a lot better.

39. Queen Of Fashion: what Marie Antoinette wore to the revolution by Caroline Weber

Funnily enough, although I am far from convinced by the wider argument of this book, I think Caroline Weber has done a better job of this kind of history than Sarah Wise did. That argument is that Marie Antoinette "identified fashion as a key weapon in her struggle for personal prestige, authority, and sometimes mere survival".

It is clear that the symbology of clothing was already well-established at the French court. When the young Archduchess left Austria, she was dressed entirely in French-made clothes (as well as having had the recent attentions of a French hairdresser and even a French dentist to straighten her teeth). Despite this, when she reached French territory (or rather, an island in the river between her territory and his: the only way to avoid demonstrating a power imbalance), she was officially stripped naked and dressed again in French-supplied clothes - in a temporary pavilion erected for the purpose, which was standing up very poorly to the windy, rainy surroundings.

Much of these seems to have started with Louis XIV, who had developed a complex hierarchy among his nobles, apparently in order to encourage competition between them for his favour (and therefore reduce the likelihood they would plot against him). This meant, for example, that it was a privilege to attend MA (and other royals) while they were dressing, and so every item of clothing had to be passed along a line of ladies, in order of seniority, before it reached her (and if someone of more seniority entered the bedchamber when someone was just about to pass a garment to the princess, it had to go back to the beginning and start again).

Entering this stiffly formal world, very different from the Austrian court, and becoming an unwitting pawn in the struggle between different court factions, MA eventually asserts herself and rebels against the sartorial rules, the start of a long process of expressing herself through her clothes.

One of the fascinating things about this book is the incredible lengths that French fashion went to. Tall, ornate headdresses called poufs could feature still-lifes and scenes chosen by their wearers: to celebrate the birth of a son, one featured a newborn baby, accessorised with nursemaid, African page and parrot. And the fashionable colours were often inspired by recent events: flame-orange after the Paris Opera was burnt down, pale blonde to match MA's hair, and even one called caca dauphin ('prince's poo') when MA gave birth to a son. After the Revolution had started to unroll, the silk dyers launched a shade named 'Foulon's blood' after a nobleman murdered by the mob.

This is not the only sign that (some) people were still attentive to fashion as the world they knew was crashing around them. I was delighted to read that more than one contemporary fashion magazine initially welcomed the new, simpler styles produced by the Revolution, but later became bored and called for a return to fancier stuff. It just seemed so much like the fashion journalism we know today - you know, the tenuous link to current affairs ("in this period of austerity people want to wear simpler clothes") and the desire for constant change ("hooray for the new pretty").

You will see from this review so far that I found many things in this book fascinating (not least Louis XIV, who I would like to know more about). But Weber really exaggerates her argument, trying to persuade us that MA was responsible for every incident in which clothing was significant - even the fact that different revolutionary factions had differing uniforms.

And she is much too sympathetic to MA, seeing her as a poor little rich girl, seemingly unaware that she's actually giving us a picture of someone who clearly relishes her immense wealth and power (in 1785, MA spent more than double her annual allowance on fashion) and who just does not get that the world is changing (in 1791, she writes, "Far from asking the impossible, I simply demand the re-establishment of the regime".

Still, an enjoyable read. I followed it up with 40. The French Revolution: a very short introduction by William Doyle, a very good overview from the roots of revolution to the ongoing impact, as demonstrated by the controversies over the bicentennial celebrations.

41. Pompeii: the life of a Roman town by Mary Beard

A comprehensive look at what daily life might really have been like in Pompeii before the eruption. Mary Beard is famously sceptical about what we can and can't know about the ancient world, and one of the pleasures of this book is that she trusts us with the debates, rather than picking a single version that she likes. This means that as well as learning about the social history of the town, we also gain an insight into the process of figuring out history - whether that's from her discussion of why estimates of the number of brothels in the town vary from 1 to 35 (which would have meant one brothel for every 75 free adult males), or the difficulties in figuring out whether the Pompeii region would have been self-sufficient in food or would have needed large-scale imports. "Part of the problem is that we can only guess at some of the figures that would be vital for any accurate calculation: not only the total size of population, but also the kind of yield the Romans would have extracted from this land, and the levels of consumption we should expect (is a quarter-litre of wine per day for every man, woman and child in the right order of magnitude or not?)."

She also debunks some myths, pointing out that in most cases, we are taught certainties which may not be firmly based in evidence. I was shocked to learn that we don't, in fact, know the procedure that Romans followed in the baths - and quite horrified that the baths may not have been the hygienic place I had imagined - the water was not replaced very often so there might have been quite a lot of, um, what Beard calls "bodily detritus" sloshing around (one Roman medical writer advised not going to the baths with a fresh wound: "it normally leads to gangrene").

I seem to have lost the notes I made on the books I read on my holiday... so the next few reviews might be a bit sketchy.

42. Semaphore by GW Hawkes

I loved the last book I read by this author, Surveyor, which uses the metaphor of archaeological excavation to look at how a close relationship can shift under your feet if you find out things you didn't know about your friend. This one uses the idea of a boy who can see the future to talk about love, and vulnerability - how do we carry on when human life is so fragile?

It's an interesting idea, and the writing is beautiful, but Hawkes doesn't quite manage to sustain the metaphor, making this a patchier effort than the previous book.

Sample: His parents would sometimes inexplicably age: at the breakfast table or in front of the television his father's bald head gleams like hard pink plastic, and more and more often now his mother skids into a sunny late afternoon she hasn't lived through yet and sits in her chair by the window, her head a cloud, and dozes because she has breaths left in her she o longer wants.

43. Stitches: a memoir by David Small

This is going onto the list, with Black Hole, of graphic novels which are very well done, but which I don't think I will ever want to read again. It's a good example of what pictures can do which words cannot - for example, the image of a stormy, dark tidal wave rearing up behind David's mother to represent her silent fury. But the things which happen to the child are so shocking and terrible that I don't think I could bear to encounter them again.

44. Requiem by Graham Joyce

(My notes on this book were quite extensive because it took quite a bit of thinking to work out what I felt about it. If I find them I might come back and expand this review).

Troubled by strange happenings after his wife Katie dies, Tom goes to Jerusalem to visit an old friend, Sharon. But once there, he runs into something even more crazy and terrifying.

There are three strands in this book. The first is Tom's haunting by Katie: is it real, or a product of Tom's guilt at how he acted towards her when she was alive? The second, a more perhaps mundane story about Tom's long-standing relationship with Sharon, an old college friend. And the third, a very baggy and all-encompassing story about how religions have feared the power of women and tried to suppress it. The common theme seems to be that even though we might think we are modern, rational beings, love and desire are primal forces which can overtake us at any time, and make us behave crazily. If we haven't noticed their force, it's because we have been spending our lives trying to repress it.

Where to start on the review? Firstly, one of the things I liked about the last Graham Joyce book I read, The Limits Of Enchantment, was that it managed to keep the question open throughout of whether the supernatural elements were real or whether there was some other explanation. Requiem tries to do this - with the possibility that the haunting is coming from Tom's brain - but given what other characters also experience, it's much harder to give a 'practical' explanation of what is happening.

Secondly, while the book places itself in opposition to the religions which oppressed women, what Tom thinks and says about the desire he feels comes, for me, uncomfortably close to that very tradition of blaming women for the way men feel when they look at them. And frankly, all the female characters are rubbish - Katie is pathetic and Sharon, who at first seems to be a tough, smart character, turns out to have been using a string of bad relationships to run away from how she really feels.

But finally, and probably the biggest problem, is that the three strands just don't fit together all that well. The story careers around crazily, and while I don't always mind that, there were just too many things being squeezed in here.

45. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

This Gothic tale is available free from Project Gutenberg. I downloaded it because some years ago I saw a very good play of this at the Lyric Hammersmith.

This was apparently a real bestseller when it was published in 1862. You can see why - there are all the elements of a gripping Gothic thriller, dastardly deeds, trusting innocents, a beautiful woman with a mysterious past, a net slowly closing... But for a modern reader, the story moves pretty slowly - there were lots of times when it was blindingly obvious what was going to happen (or what had happened) but the story took chapters to get there. I wasn't surprised to find out that this was originally serialised - I expect there was more money for a story which was drawn out for as long as possible. Still, an enjoyable read if you don't mind the pace.

Sample: The rain had ceased, and the cold spring sunshine was glittering upon the windows. Lady Audley dressed herself rapidly but carefully. I do not say that even in her supremest hour of misery she still retained her pride in her beauty. It was not so; she looked upon that beauty as a weapon, and she felt that she had now double need to be well armed. She dressed herself in her most gorgeous silk, a voluminous robe of silvery, shimmering blue, that made her look as if she had been arrayed in moonbeams. She shook out her hair into feathery showers of glittering gold, and, with a cloak of white cashmere about her shoulders, went downstairs into the vestibule.

46. The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman

This book is as mad as Requiem but a hell of a lot better. I bought it last year because it was recommended with a little card which read, "In dystopian London a germophone has a forbidden lesbian romance with an opera-singing polar bear. And it only gets better from there". And you know what, that's a pretty perfect synopsis!

The book is set in a London which is both futuristic and Dickensian. A century or so before, advancements in medical science accidentally cut the human lifespan to around 35 years. This has been partially compensated for by the development of 'viruses' which teach children everything they need to know at a very young age (including, endearingly, the ability to understand all the references in Shakespeare and Dante). Those same viruses are also used to ensure conformity among the population. But there are a few people - and more humanoids - who for one reason or another have not taken the viruses. One of these is our heroine, Milena.

Um, I don't think I can, or should, say any more about this beautiful and overwhelming story. I didn't always understand what was going on. But I always enjoyed the ride.

Sample: Here it comes. Image in her mind, the feel of smooth green stem, brown thorns, slight scent, the chill, the odour of roses and birdshit in pondwater, and the geese overhead, Rolfa's fur touching her just lightly on the arm, and the rose. The memory caught the light, and was held by what it caught. The lens was gravity and gravity was thought and thought was the memory.

47. Stranger In A Strange Land: encounters in the disunited states by Gary Younge

Gary Younge is a British journalist based in the US. Although it's not stated on the cover, this is a collection of his articles dating from between 2003 and 2006.

Because of that, a large number of them are about Iraq, and Bush. In fact, the first of the book's sections is titled "War". I really like Younge's reporting and I always read his articles. But I think the timelag for these articles is just wrong - they don't have the immediacy of journalism, but they are recent enough that reading them, I think 'I remember that' rather than 'so that's how it was'. Also, because the book carries them in order of publication, they can be repetitive, although they are also passionate and angry.

The next section is "Race" - which starts with an article called Black Bloke, originally printed in the Washington Post, in which Younge explains how the fact that he is both black and British sometimes confuses people's responses to him. The remaining sections are "Politics" and "Culture". Within the book there are some very interesting articles, for example about affirmative action, the changing ways in which people in the developing world see black Americans, or the hidden story of the "red diaper babies" (children of McCarthy-era members of the US Communist Party).

But again, many of the articles are very short, making them good comment pieces in the newspaper but perhaps less good anthologised.

May TBR tally:

Off TBR pile: 17 books, 16 read and one abandoned
Onto TBR pile: 3 books, of which two were gifts

48. The Path To The Spiders' Nests by Italo Calvino

This is a very early Calvino novel, written in a realistic style. The main character, Pin, is a young boy in WWII Italy. His mother is dead, father gone, and he lives with his sister who is a prostitute. He knows too much about the adult world of war, sex and survival to fit in and play with other children - but although he's tolerated by grown-ups for his cheeky humour, he isn't old enough to really understand them, and so he sometimes becomes frustrated with them and does things which lead him into trouble.

This was well-written but for some reason I had trouble getting into it.

Sample: The dreams of the partisans are short and rare, dreams born of nights of hunger, linked to food which is always scarce and always to be divided among so many; dreams about chewing bits of bread and putting them away in drawers. Stray dogs must have dreams like that, about gnawing bones and burying them. Only when the men's stomachs are full, when the fire is lit, and there has not been too much marching the day before, can they dream of naked women and wake up in the morning with spirits free and soaring, with all the exhilaration of the start of a voyage.

Some interesting books wandering_star. What a nuisance losing your holiday notes. I might just download Lady Audley's secret.

Thanks for your reviews; I always enjoy reading them even if the books don't intrigue me (although many of them do).

I've had The Child Garden on my TBR pile for what seems like forever. I really must get to it sometime soon.

I love the sound of The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. I've read a couple of the Canongate Myths series but I didn't know Philip Pullman had done one - thanks.
The Mary Beard sounds good too - I've read a few articles by her recently (in that way of things - someone or something comes to your attention and then suddenly they're everywhere you look) and had started to think it might be worth looking out for her books. (Wasn't she involved in some TV series recently, teaching Latin to inner-city comprehensive kids or something? I didn't see it but I think the first article of hers I read was about that).

Rachel - yes, it was something done by Jamie Oliver. She talked about it on her blog, which is quite an interesting read now and then.

Bragan - please do - I'd love to hear your take on it.

Rebecca, Baswood, thanks for dropping by!

Just wanted to say hello, since I've added a huge chunk of your list to my wishlist! Thank you for all of your wonderful reviews... I look forward to the rest of your year!

49. Departure Lounge by Chad Taylor

Mark is a burglar - a pretty good one, but then he has nothing else to do. He lives on his own, surrounded by goods which he has not bought. One day, going through several flats in an apartment block, he enters the home of the parents of his old high school girlfriend - Caroline May, who disappeared one day, decades before, without a trace. Mark is unsettled by this, and even more so over the next few days as he is contacted by, or contacts, others who were involved in the case: the detective investigating the disappearance, Caroline's best friend.

At the start of this book, Mark's deadpan narration of his life of crime is mixed in with the story of Caroline's disappearance, it's easy to think that you're reading a thriller. But in fact, it's much more about grief and loss: since the disappearance, Mark has in a way been stuck in the "departure lounge" of the title: You feel safe while you're waiting to board the flight. There are empty couches and potted palms and soft music, and the people on the other side look calm. You are no longer in the country, but you haven't left. You're in limbo. What happens from then on in is neither real nor unreal, proven nor disproved.

And in a way, that was my problem with this book. The thriller parts of it were enjoyably unsettling. But Mark's character is hard to get a handle on. He's cold and emotionless - but perhaps that's a facade, covering deep feeling? - no, when describing his prison counselling he deliberately fakes hints of emotion to fit in to what the counsellor wants to hear. In the end, the story revolved around whether he had taken up this life of crime because he had never been able to deal with the grief of Caroline's disappearance, which turned out to be quite a slight thing to hang a story on.

Sample: Mrs Callaghan's TV was shimmering in the front room when I got home. I did the usual circuit of the house to check that everything was okay. And then I stopped, because it wasn't.

The lounge window was wide open. The paper ticket that had been tucked into the crack was now lying on the round outside.

I walked back up to the end of the drive. The other houses were still. The empty cars were parked along the street. The trees were dark thoughts.

I walked back to my own front door.

And knocked.

50. Reading The Ceiling by Dayo Forster

It's the morning of Ayodele's 18th birthday. She has decided that today, she will have sex for the first time. But she hasn't quite decided who with. She lies on her bed, thinking about the options, and before we know it, we are into the story of the first possibility, and at the start of three versions of how her life turns out.

I was really impressed by this book until the end of the first section. It's very well-written, and I enjoyed the story (in this version, Ayodele leaves Gambia and studies in London, before eventually returning home). But as I read the other two stories, I started to have doubts, despite the good writing. Arguably, in the first story, Ayodele lets decisions be made for her, in the second she actively chooses, and in the third she deliberately makes what she knows to be a bad choice. However, the developments in her life are barely related to that one particular choice on her birthday, and her personality doesn't seem to develop differently either - which makes the framing device a bit pointless.

Indeed, there's one big difference which affects the course of her life which would have been decided before that birthday (she's informed of it in a letter which she receives the day after), which really isn't playing by the rules!

I'll keep an eye out for what else Forster writes, as this has potential, but I wouldn't actively recommend it to others.

Sample: Remi is styling my hair in the garden when my mother's childhood friend, who we call Aunt K, short for Kiki, arrives. Her noisiness is announced at the iron gate where, instead of knocking or, more sensibly, simply swinging the unlocked door open, she shouts aloud, 'Kong kong kong', her imitation of door knocking. I don't understand how she's stayed friends with my mother. They are as different as Kingston's Chalk (boxed and imported from England) from Anchor Cheddar (tinned and shipped from New Zealand).

51. Los Gusanos by John Sayles

Los Gusanos (which literally means 'the worms' but is also used in Cuban Spanish to refer to Cuban-Americans) is ostensibly the story of Marta, a young woman of convictions which are almost religiously intense, and her desire to avenge her brother Ambrosino who died during the Bay of Pigs invasion.

In fact, it's the story of a whole community, Cuban and non-: the staff and inmates at the old people's home where Marta works, the ones who returned alive from the Bay of Pigs, the ones who continue to control the community. We get to see each one well enough to understand what's going on inside their heads - the book is told in the third person throughout, but it changes style when it follows different individuals, from Luz (Marta's best friend) going out on the town, dancing and drinking and gradually getting a little sloppy, to the military-enthusiast teenager that Marta ropes into her plan, seeing his routine job as if it's military drill.

It may seem that this is detracting from the overall story - and indeed, the character of Marta is one of the weakest points of the book, seen largely through religious/saintly metaphors and the sense of future doom which her name hints at (Marta=martyr?). But it fits perfectly with the overall message of the book, which is that no human being should be seen as a means to an end. History tells us that there are the powerful - "In Santiago they were the ones who controlled the jobs, the ones who winked and pinched your cheek and collected their dues, who grinned and said such is life, who paid for the funerals of men they had broken, who left big tips but were rarely charged for a meal" - and there are their victims. Which group is powerful and which is a victim may change, particularly in the context of a revolution (the book shows clearly the complex ups and downs of the revolution and Cuban-exile politics, but also suggests that some of the nastiest oppressors may always find a way to come out on top): but the moral imperative is to help the victims and oppose oppression.

A further note on the title: worms feature several more times, Los Gusanos is also the name of a poem which Ambrosio writes during his military training, which starts "The worms find no food in our hope", an old man complains that his insides are being eaten by the worms of his life, worms turn up in the prison food on the Isla De Las Pinas eaten by those imprisoned as counter-revolutionaries.

Sample: In the kitchen there are two men, a woman and a boy. The kitchen smells like coffee, though only the ex-priest is drinking any, his cup balanced behind him on the edge of the sink. The overhead light bounces hard on the balding spot on his forehead. His hands lie together in his lap, fingertips touching as if in prayer. He can't quite believe he's really here, doing this thing, saying these words. He watches the face of the man who sits against the wall in the shadow of the refrigerator.

I've just started reading Departure Lounge and am enjoying the Auckland/NZ flavour. Charlotte Grimshaw's books are set in Auckland and have been praised highly and shortlisted for various awards. She is the daughter of CK Stead so literature and writing is in the blood.

52. Chinese Lessons: five classmates and the story of the new China by John Pomfret

John Pomfret studied in a Chinese university in the early 1980s, one of the very first Westerners to do so post-Cultural Revolution. This book tells the story of the many changes in China in the last 50 years, through the life stories of his classmates.

I think it fills a useful gap, between the 'misery memoir' style books about the horrors life in China in the mid-20th century and the non-fiction about 'the new China' and why it is/n't going to take over from the West. People often seem to forget/ignore China's recent history when they look at China today (including of course in China itself - I remember boggling at a feature in Chinese Vogue that was all about 1960s retro flower power fashions... how can the journalist not have thought about the fact that Chinese 'fashion' in the 1960s was monochrome Mao jackets and no bourgeois ornamentation?) - but this book does give you a sense of the speed and scale of the changes and how people have lived through them.

I don't imagine that it's word-for-word truth: Pomfret's classmates conveniently illustrate every social and political trend - but it is a telling overview.

Sample: 'There is a cost of doing business and a cost for getting things done in China,' Old Xu told me, cracking a mischievous grin. It was the same grin that used to crinkle his face twenty years earlier when he would ask me to head down to the Friendship Store to buy him a bike. 'China's market economy has Chinese characteristics. I am a purveyor of lubricants for China's economy. I help keep it oiled and running smooth.'

53. Ruling Passion by Reginald Hill

This is one of the earliest Dalziel & Pascoe novels, all the way back to 1973. It's interesting to go back after reading the more recent ones, to see the relationship between them right back at the start. This book, which is about the brutal murder of some friends of Pascoe's (on a day when he should have been with them except for some urgent police work), made me want to go right back and read all the way through the series.

Sample: Dalziel had decided to skip tea, partly as a result of Grainger's suggestion that he should try to lose a pound or two and partly because the medical examination had taken the edge off his usually ferocious appetite. He had left samples of just about everything extractable or removable from his body. It had made him very conscious of himself as a scaffolding of bone with flesh, blood and gut packed into the interstices. The thought of ham sandwiches or sausage rolls had no immediate appeal.

54. Swimming In The Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai

Shyam Selvadurai's Funny Boy is probably the best book I have ever read about Sri Lanka, and an excellent coming-of-age story even for those who aren't interested in the country. However, I found Swimming In The Monsoon Sea a bit disappointing. It is about one summer in the life of a young teenager, with a troubled family background, and how his world is turned upside down by the arrival of a distant cousin from Canada. It's a YA novel, and I don't read a lot of YA so I can't say how it measures up to others in the genre. But I found the story a bit plodding - a lot of the twists were obvious from a distance - and the themes quite thinly explored.

55. Zarafa: the true story of a giraffe's journey from the plains of Africa to the heart of post-Napoleonic France by Michael Allin

Well, no need to give a synopsis - just look at the subtitle. In 1827, a giraffe arrived in Paris, having been captured in what is now Sudan and sent to France as a gift from the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt. This micro-history could have touched on any number of interesting subjects, from the way that people have seen animals as entertainment objects through history, or the relations between Europe and the Muslim world at the time. It didn't. However, there are a few snippets of interesting information about the origins of Egyptology and about giraffes themselves (they are so silent because they can see a very long way, so they don't need to be able to call to each other to warn them of predators - and because of this, the hieroglyph of a giraffe means 'foretell'; this is now my new favourite giraffe fact, although the book omits my previous favourite, which is that their saliva is antiseptic so that they can eat the thorny acacia without coming to grief).

Hi w_star, Just stopping by, reading your new reviews and now thinking of ham sandwiches in a much different way. Cheers.

>139 wandering_star: well you captivated me with snails (The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating) and now maybe giraffes :)

I also keep thinking about >118 wandering_star: Queen of Fashion. I was going to a big event around the time of reading your review and it prompted more thought about what my outfits might "communicate." I'm a Mad Men fan and enjoy reading Tom&Lorenzo’s dissections of clothing symbolism in their Mad Style posts.

56. The Great Cat Massacre by Robert Darnton

This is one of the books that's been on my wishlist the longest, since I added it after hearing Robert Darnton give one of the Oxford Amnesty lectures in 1994. The lecture series was themed around historical change and human rights, although I don't remember a lot about his specific lecture. (I guess it would have to be pretty good to have left a mark on my memory seventeen years later...)

Anyway, to the book. The subtitle is 'and other episodes in French cultural history' and the best way to describe it is a book of essays, each one focusing on a detail of eighteenth-century France and using that detail very cleverly to try and illustrate wider points about the France of that time. So the first is about French folktales, and how they differed from the contemporary tradition in other parts of Europe (they are sharper and prize cunning more than a good heart) and the later variants of the same tales (they are harsher and more gruesome).

The second essay looks at an odd incident where some apprentices tortured and killed a number of cats, and parses it as a complex way of using various symbols and beliefs of the time to rebel against their harsh masters. Three more essays examine individual texts - the notebook kept by a police inspector who was charged with keeping an eye on 'intellectuals', a description of the power structure of a town, the structure of the Encyclopédie. Darnton's aim is to "shake {us} out of a false sense of familiarity with the past, to administer doses of culture shock" and make us realise just what a different country the past is. As he says:

The human condition has changed so much since then that we can hardly imagine the way it appeared to people whose lives really were nasty, brutish and short. That is why we need to reread Mother Goose.

The essays are very well-written, and Darnton has a good eye for an interesting detail. The chapter on the intellectuals' files is particularly entertaining, as he highlights the perceptions and prejudices of the policeman keeping the notes ("writers' wives never appeared as intelligent, cultured or virtuous in the reports; they were either rich or poor... 'He married an unimportant girl from his village, who has neither birth nor wealth. Her sole merit is that she is related to the wife of the former Procureur Général..."). The only shortcoming is that the subject matter is so distant from anything I know about that it was impossible to really engage with the arguments - I had no way of supporting or backing them up from outside knowledge.

June TBR tally:

Off TBR: 8
Onto TBR: 3 (all mooched in).

Net tally for first half of the year: -20.

Moving in the right direction...

PS, #141, thanks for the link. I haven't really watched any Mad Men, but I must get round to borrowing the box set from my sister... (that's how I get into most TV series, as my sister is queen of the box set).

57. Le visiteur du Sud, V1, by Yeong-Jin Oh

I heard about this book on Rachbxl's thread. It's a graphic novel, based on Oh's actual experiences as a South Korean construction manager in North Korea.

Like any foreigner allowed into the DPRK, he is in a tightly controlled environment, but being in charge of North Korean workers he gets to experience and understand (or not) a lot more of the culture than most foreigners would ever be able to. He isn't even in Pyongyang, but a tiny village in the countryside (an early episode shows him travelling, via international jet, then tiny plane, then rattling minibus, to the site, then having his vegetable steamer confiscated because the security guards think it might be a satellite antenna).

There's not really a story as such, instead short (and funny) episodes interspersed with longer notes which explain some of the historical background. Some of them are about the cultural clashes - Oh goes to buy a stamp and looking at the different models, comments 'ah, there's one with Kim Jong Il on... how much is the stamp with Kim Jong Il on?', only to be screamed at by the previously very helpful post office staff, who remind him that he must refer to 'Dear General, the Sun of the 21st century'. Others about the oddities of life in North Korea - official drivers are always accompanied by someone whose job is not to share the driving or fix the vehicle but to make sure that the driver doesn't listen to South Korean radio.

If this book was about somewhere less closed-off than North Korea, it would still be an amusing read. But as it is, I found it a fascinating glimpse into a world I'd never have found out about any other way. Onto Volume 2!

The Great cat massacre sounds intriguing. When I read the sub title on your post I was wondering if that was a joke. No - it really is about 18th century France. It has gone straight to the top of my wish list.

Yes, along with Barry, I would love to read The Great Cat Massacre. Your recollections of Darnton as well as your review make it sound very interesting indeed.

Glad you enjoyed Le visiteur du sud! I was entranced by it. Haven't invested in part 2 yet as I'm saving it for a treat, but I think its time will come quite soon.

I also read Le visiteur du sud recently, on Rachel's recommendation, and am also holding back from buying Volume 2 for the time being (I've bought too many books recently), but look forward to hearing what you think of it!

I'm very lucky, I asked a friend visiting from Brussels to bring it for me, and she brought both volumes!

58. Country Driving by Peter Hessler

In this enjoyable and insightful read, Peter Hessler has a look at some of the parts of China which are less often covered in the media. It's divided into three sections: The Road (his adventures driving in northwestern China, along the line of the Great Wall, in 2001-2002); The Village (the development of a village north of Beijing, where Hessler rents a weekend home, from 2002-2007); The Factory (a fast-growing factory town which Hessler visits regularly from 2005-2009).

The book is often very funny. For example, Hessler intersperses 'The Road' with extracts from China's written driving test, which as he suggests give you a flavour of the spirit of the road. My favourite was "352. If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you should: (a) not tell him (b) reply patiently and accurately (c) tell him the wrong way", closely followed by "True/False: In a taxi, it's fine to carry a small amount of explosive material".

But more than that, the book gives you a good idea of the phenomenal pace of change in China, and how it is felt by ordinary people, whose voices we rarely have a chance to hear: from the peasants, hitchhikers, truckers and smalltown girls Hessler encounters in 'The Road', to the villagers and factory labourers of the other two sections. Hessler's overall theme, I think, is that the speed of change in China is such that everyone - not just foreigners - is often overwhelmed, and he makes a good case for it. At a used car market, he wonders why people are making a selling point of the fact their cars have 'three compartments' - front seats, back seats and boots - until he realises that in all probability, this is the first time that most of them are ever selling a used car.

Hessler is also very observant of the little signs that mark out how well someone is adapting to the changes, from the clothes and shoes they wear even to the cigarettes they smoke:

In the village he smoked Red Plum Blossom, the white packs, which cost less than forty cents. But in Huairou, where it was important not to look like a peasant, he made sure to carry the more expensive red or yellow packs. Sometimes a wealthy person stayed at the guesthouse and left a box of high-end smokes, which Wei Ziqi hoarded for crucial business situations.

For a Chinese male, nothing captures the texture of guanxi* better than cigarettes. They're a kind of semaphore - in a world where much is left unsaid, every gesture with a cigarette means something. You offer a smoke at certain moments, and you receive them at others; the give-and-take establishes a level of communication. And sometimes the absence of an exchange marks boundaries. A city person has little to say to a peasant and naturally he will not accept his cigarettes. Even between two businessmen, one person might refuse a smoke as a way of establishing superiority, especially if he carries a better brand. All told there are more than four hundred different types of Chinese cigarettes, each with a distinct identity and meaning. Around Beijing, peasants smoke Red Plum Blossom whites. Red Pagoda Mountain can be found in the pockets of average city folk. Middle-class entrepreneurs like Zhongnanhai Lights. Businessmen with a flair for the foreign sport State Express 555. A nouveau riche tosses out Chunghwa like it's rice. Pandas are the rarest beast of all. That was Deng Xiaoping's favourite brand, and government quotas make them hard to find; a single pack costs more than twelve dollars.

*guanxi = social connections/ties

(I like this extract particularly because it reminded me of something which happened to me in China. My friends and I had stopped at a roadside stall in Shanghai and enjoyed a great meal of chilli stir-fried crayfish. In fact, we ate and drank so liberally that the proprietor came over at the end of the meal and pressed a couple of cigarettes on each of us, refusing to take no for an answer. Unfortunately, I'd had so much beer that I got right into the spirit of it and actually smoked the things, which made me feel very ill. But now I can understand better what lay behind the exchange).

I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it.

59. Random Deaths And Custard by Catrin Dafydd

I have no idea where the recommendation for this book came from, but I'm glad I got hold of it. It's the story of Sam, an eighteen-year-old from the Valleys of South Wales, whose life isn't really turning out very well. Her dad is just out of prison and not very happy about her mum's new boyfriend; her brother is briefly back from fighting in Iraq, allowed home for a family funeral; work at the custard factory is a drag, even now they've put her on Welsh translation duties; and all the boys she knows are rubbish.

I enjoyed Sam's voice, which reminded me of the sharp, slangy narration in Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow and even the schoolgirls of The Sopranos.

Sample: When I got home Mam went mad (mad happy) and said Gareth was comin' 'ome for the funeral. I said, he could 'ave my room but she said quietly that he was goin' to stay with Dad and Anti Peg. Terry came after that and I just went to my bedroom. I didn't mind really. Anythin's better than sittin' in the lounge with a stranger holdin' your remote controls.

60. The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski

An enjoyable chiller, in which pretty, spoiled Melanie dozes off on a Victorian chaise-longue which she's recently picked up from an antique shop, and wakes up trapped in the past.

Sample: She looks like an old-fashioned maid, came into Melanie's mind,, and this woman said in an Irish voice, 'Shall it be the plum-cake today, Miss Adelaide, since it's the Vicar that may be coming?' She is a maid, Melanie told herself, not a slum then, just a madhouse, all of them mad.

61. Disco For The Departed by Colin Cotterill

I do like Dr Siri. But one of the most enjoyable things about this series is the relationship with his network of friends, like him all decent people trying to do their best in a crazy world, and because this story takes place almost entirely up-country, there aren't so many of those interactions here. This was still good, but not as enjoyable as the previous one in the series, Thirty-Three Teeth.

Sample: He knew there were more holes in his hypothesis than there were pots in the Plain of Jars. But at least now he had one, it gave him something to work from. He spent the next half-hour searching through the belongings in the room. Everything was veiled in a shimmering layer of spiders' webs that reflected the torchlight like a frost.

62. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

By far my favourite Neil Gaiman book is American Gods, which suggests that every god that was ever believed in by a human is still alive somewhere, and imagines how they continue to exist now that they no longer have devoted followers. Anansi Boys is a little bit in the same mould, although the story is lighter and less epic.

Fat Charlie has since childhood been monumentally embarrassed by his father. But after his father's funeral, he is more bewildered than anything else to discover that his father was a god - Anansi - and that he has a brother he has never met. Almost by chance, he calls up this brother, only to find that his arrival suddenly makes his life immensely complicated...

A funny and satisfying read.

Sample: Today, like every day, roughly five thousand people on the face of the planet will experience one-chance-in-a-million things, and not one of them will refuse to believe the evidence of their sense. Most of them will say the equivalent, in their own language, of 'Funny old world, isn't it?' and just keep going. So while part of Fat Charlie was trying to come up with logical, sensible, sane explanations for what was going on, most of him was simply getting used to the idea that a brother he hadn't known he had was walking up the staircase behind him.

63. Potiki by Patricia Grace

The story of a Maori community and how their land is taken from them by unscrupulous developers, told in the style of the oral tradition.

So we tried to turn our backs on the hills and not look up. The hills did not belong to us any more. At the same time we could not help but remember that land does not belong to people, but that people belong to the land. We could not forget that it was land who, in the beginning, held the secret who contained our very beginnings within herself. It was land that held the seed and who kept the root hidden for a time when it would be needed. We turned our eyes away from what was happening to the hills and looked to the soil and to the sea.

64. Divinity Road by Martin Pevsner

Divinity Road tells the interlocking stories of two couples who have been separated by circumstances... or perhaps geopolitics is a better description. An African couple, Aman (Eritrean) and Semira (Ethiopian) are separated when an accident leads to a prison sentence for him, and she flees illegally to the UK. He reaches the UK some years later but is unable to track her down. Some time later, Nuala's husband Greg disappears, victim of a suicide bombing on a plane flying over an unspecified region of the Horn of Africa.

This book touches on some interesting issues, but I think there were two things wrong with it. The first is the writing, which is much too 'tell, not show' - this is most obvious in the sections dealing with Nuala's grief and depression after the disappearance of her husband, which lead us through a set of symptoms. There is very very little dialogue in the book, which is often a sign that the author is telling us too much and not showing enough: on the other hand, what dialogue there is is quite clumsy - I can't imagine anyone in real life showing a photo of their daughter and saying "She's twelve now, that awkward stage before womanhood".

The second is that the stories of the men add very little to the central theme of the book which is about grief and recovery. Pevsner's decision that Aman's story should not be one of political persecution, and that Greg's crash should be in an unspecified war zone, mean that they only hint at wider themes, in a way which is a distraction from the rest of the story. I think a much better story would have focused on the relationship between the two women rather than trying to give equal time to all four.

She cannot wait for the promised updates, her impatience dragging her upstairs to her bedroom where she begins to pack a suitcase. She decides to call every hour until she receives the go-ahead to journey to the crash site. In the meantime, there's a phone call every twenty minutes or so, the electronic tone setting Nuala's nerves jangling, a sense of dread every time she picks up the handset, but it's always a friend or relative. Hours pass. The telephone, with its capacity for relief or ruin, becomes a toying instrument of torture.

65. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson (audiobook, abridged)

Another in the Jackson Brodie series, as always very enjoyably read by Jason Isaacs. I really liked the main characters in this one, in particular a very sparky young girl who acts as Jackson's sidekick and pushes him to get involved in the cases (as he's officially a retired private investigator at this stage).

66. Sea Room: An Island Life by Adam Nicholson

As a young man, Adam Nicholson inherited three small islands from his father. They are tiny - "even on a map of the Hebrides your little finger would block them out" - but he has spent twenty years becoming acquainted with every aspect of them. He wrote this book as a way of recording all his knowledge, exploration and research before passing them to his own son. The book covers everything from their wildlife (they are home to 2% of the puffins in the world), to their history ancient and modern (and the way that it is only in modern times that they have been seen as remote, because there is an assumption that there is a centre for them to be remote from), as well as the folklore and customs relating to them. It's beautifully written and a pleasure to read.

Sometimes, early in the spring, around the middle of April, before any true signs of summer arrive, when the grass on the islands is still dull and tawny from the rigours of winter, when the sheep are poor and thin and an air of exhaustion hangs over the place, a break can come in the weather which seems like a gift from Heaven. Stillness is wrapped around the Shiants for a day or two and the sun bathes their cold, bruised limbs.

67. The Paris Review Book Of People With Problems

I often find with anthologies you tend to like most of the stories, or almost none, depending on how well the editor's tastes coincide with your own. In this case, the answer is 'not very much': most of the stories were very well written, but I generally didn't like them very much. Perhaps the theme was part of the problem, as a lot of the main characters seemed pretty hopeless to me. There were a couple which I really enjoyed:

"Instruments Of Seduction" by Norman Rush, which watches an experienced seductress preparing for her evening. The doorbell rang. Be superb, she thought.

"The Brown Coast" by Wells Tower, a Denis Johnson-esque story (actually, a lot of the stories feature Denis J-esque drifters, but this is the only one which was written well enough to be compared to Johnson). This one appears in Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.

The house was at the northern tip of a small island. It had given Bob a little jolt of hope and excitement when Randall had described it to him. He liked beaches, how each day the tide scoured the sand and left it clean, how people generally came to the coast because they wanted to have a good time. What confounded Bob was that this island did not seem to have any beach at all. Instead of beach, the land here met the water in a marshy skirt that hummed with mosquitos and smelled terribly of fart gas.

68. Alone In The Kitchen With An Eggplant by Jenni Ferrari-Adler

This was the opposite - an anthology where I enjoyed almost every piece. The book's subtitle is "confessions for cooking for one and eating alone", and the various writers (some fiction and some food) cover every aspect of solo eating from restaurants to home, and every response to it whether you are revelling in solitude or hating it, using the opportunity to satisfy one's oddest food cravings or seeking simplicity.

This is a second-hand book and I found a receipt in it, with a menu scribbled on the back: Crostini al rosemary + white bean spread, new potatoes with lemon aioli, lamb chops cucumber + creme fraiche. It's that kind of book - gets you thinking about delicious food.

The title comes from an essay by Laurie Colwin which is also reprinted in the book:

Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam.

>58 amandameale:

I have only read Hessler's latest book partially, and the book is still on my tbr, but my experience is that Mr Hessler's books are not to be taken at face value. In just over 10 years, Peter Hessler has developed into a journalistic writer. His works shows all the signs of the typical journalistic style of extreme detail and exaggeration. The quoted example of the significance of cigarettes is a good illustration. While it may be true that there are 400 brands, no ordinary citizen would be aware of all those brands and their alleged distinct meanings.

Many things in the book are not explained or floating out of context. Fore example. offering (and accepting) a cigarette only creates a type of temporary guanxi. This same type of temporary guanxi lies at the basis of every "temporary relationship" in everyday life, such as a taxi driver who accepts to take you, or a shop assistant who helps you with a purchase. When you have reached your destination, or when you have handed over the money, the relation is (very) abruptly terminated.

Many journalists who write about China make the most fantastic claims, exaggerations, etc. in the knowledge that 99% of their readers will never be able to verify or even understand. The more hilarious and grotesque, the better the book sells.

WS - Sea Room is now on my Wishlist.

Interesting about Hessler. I own Oracle Bones and plan to read it next year along with a few other books on China.

About the ciggarettes - I can probably count the number I've smoked (and I did enjoy them), most were in China in Guizhou in 1998 when I was working on my master's thesis (geology). Not speaking Chinese, I learned quickly this was one of the few ways I was able to connect to some of the people I met. However, China 1998 was a very long time ago, one snapshot in the midst of very rapid changes.

#157, thanks for your comments. Perhaps I didn't explain very clearly - I don't think Hessler is trying to suggest that the exchange of cigarettes in itself creates some sort of permanent guanxi. But I liked that extract because for me, it was indicative of the way that he paid attention to what was happening around him and spotted the small signs within interactions, rather than coming to the situation with his own preconceptions.

69. The Last Summer Of Reason by Tahar Djaout

This book imagines the plight of a bookseller in a dystopian, Taliban-esque world. He doesn't understand what is happening to his city, his family have turned against him, and worst of all, they are taking away his books.

Until now, nothing has been able to stop the exorcist madness of these crazed redeemers. They have decided to polish the sky so that their faith might be reflected there. They want to begin by washing away the unseemly clouds made up of books.

Books have been the compost in which Boualem's life ripened, to the point where his bookish hands and his carnal hands, his paper body and his body of flesh and blood very often overlap and mingle. Boualem himself no longer sees a clear distinction. He has met so many characters in books, he has come into contact with some many unforgettable destinies that his own life would be nothing without them.

The manuscript for this book was found among Djaout's papers after his murder, apparently by fundamentalist Islamists. With that backstory, it seems churlish to criticise the book. But while I found the parts which dealt with Boualem himself very powerful, I felt that more of the book could have been given over to his story, rather than to descriptions of the world he found himself in.

July stats:

Off TBR: 13
Onto TBR: 15 (two audiobooks, one mooched in, one borrowed, and the others bought in secondhand shops)

Net: -18

70. Alone In Berlin by Hans Fallada, also titled Every Man Dies Alone (which is closer to the title in the original German).

(Some spoilers in this review, although nothing that would damage a reader's appreciation of the book.)

Like my previous read, this is a book about individuals' response to a tyrannical regime, in this case Nazi Germany. But this one I found much more immediate and impactful.

Although I didn't realise it until the Afterword, it's loosely based on a true case. In Fallada's version, Otto and Anna Quangel are moved by the death of their son at the Front to start a small-scale propaganda campaign against Hitler's regime, consisting of writing short postcards with messages such as "We have become a flock of sheep, following our Führer to the slaughterhouse. We have given up thinking for ourselves", and leaving them where they will be found.

This might seem like a futile act, doomed to failure and very dangerous for the Quangels, and we do see the reactions of some of the people who pick up the cards - it tends to be first, fear; then anger that someone would put others in danger by writing cards like these, when everyone knows the sentiments that are expressed on them; and finally terror that the cards were deliberately left there for that particular person to find, as a way of testing them for suspect beliefs. But the book argues clearly that the Quangel's actions were far from wasted:

"...and what good did our resistance do?"

"Well, it will have helped us to feel that we behaved decently till the end. And much more, it will have helped people everywhere, who will be saved for the righteous few among them, as it says in the Bible. Of course, Quangel, it would have been a hundred times better if we'd had someone who could have told us, such and such is what you have to do; our plan is this and this. But if there had been such a man in Germany, then Hitler would never have come to power in 1933. As it was, we all acted alone, we were caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn't mean that we are alone, Quangel, or that our deaths will be in vain."

As well as the Quangels, we meet many others that touch their lives, from the neighbours in their block of flats to the postwoman who delivers the letter telling them of their son's death, and the Gestapo officer who investigates their case. This makes the book quite long, and we are often taken away from the Quangels' story for quite long periods of time. But these subplots serve their purpose too, to remind us that good people treat others with humanity, and that's the most important thing that anyone can do.

Recommended.

Alone in Berlin sounds interesting. I often wonder what I would have done in a situation where an evil dictator has grabbed the reins of power like Hitler's Nazi's did in the 1930's. I sincerely hope I never have to find out.

Yes. I think one of the strengths of Alone In Berlin was that it showed very effectively how gripped by fear everyone was, and how it prevented people from taking even the tiniest action.

71. A Visit To Don Otavio by Sybille Bedford

This entertaining book is an account of a journey that Sybille Bedford made to Mexico shortly after WWII.

A few chapters deal with the major sights they saw, but more time is spent describing tortuous journeys to places which turn out to be not quite worth it. Bedford portrays herself as someone who puts up pretty stoically with the discomforts ("There was a road bed, in a fairly advanced stage of construction, much of it really passable"), and her friend E as highly unimpressed by her surroundings and by Bedford's hare-brained travelling schemes ("E stalked past it all, the way Doctor Johnson must have stalked about the Hebrides").

There are happier elements to the visit too, from the beauties of some of the countryside to the titular visit to Don Otavio, a young and otherworldly Mexican from an aristocratic family who lives in a mansion by a lake.

Although I don't think this book told me much about Mexico, I still found Bedford an engaging companion. She gets as much humour from the foibles of the expats that she meets from the vagaries of transport and accommodation difficulties, and she appreciates the good sides of what she sees.

Sample: The posadas are most jolly. The ground floor is always a large, unkempt parlour opening into the patio without much transition, full of overgrown plants, wicker-chairs, objects without visible use, birds free and caged, and a number of sleeping dogs. Here the innkeepers jot their accounts, sort the linen, drive bargains with the poultry woman and the egg child, arraign the servants, play the gramophone, drink chocolate, chat and doze; and here the guests sit, smoke cigars, have their hair cut, shout for servants, play the gramophone, drink rum and chocolate, chat and doze. Everybody has their own bottle, sent out for by the mozo. The innkeeper would think you mad to pay him bar prices; every time you draw cork he will supply you - compliments of the house - with glasses, lime, salt (without which spirits are considered to be unswallowable), pistachio nuts, fried anchovies, toasted tortillas strewn with crumbs of cheese and lettuce, stuffed cold maize dumplings and pickled chilli peppers.

The copy I read of Don Otavio was published by Eland Books, who describe themselves as reprinting travel books, fiction and biography which are "united by a quest for the spirit of place". They have a lot of interesting books in their catalogue, several of which are on my wishlist. Looking at their website, though, they mention that if they sell these through any of the big chain bookstores, or Amazon, they have to give the intermediary a 55% trade discount. I am sorry to find that out, as I always thought that buying books from small presses, wherever I bought them from, would support the publisher. From now on I'll get their books from their own website...

I agree that Every Man Dies Alone (the title of the version I read) was quite remarkable, though grim. I thought the way he showed the behavior of many characters, not just the Quangels, was excellent.

72. The Golden Child by Penelope Fitzgerald

The novel is set in a museum (unnamed but which seems to resemble the British Museum very closely), where a huge blockbuster exhibition is about to open (again, the details are not named but closely resemble the artefacts from Tutankhamen's tomb). At the start, it's a sort of campus-novel, and it is very funny in its portrayal of the eccentric characters and personality clashes within the museum's staff.

The Museum, nominally a place of dignity and order, a great sanctuary in the midst of roaring traffic for the choicest products of the human spirit, was, to those who worked in it, a free-for-all struggle of the crudest kind. Even in total silence one could sense the ferocious efforts of the highly cultured staff trying to ascend the narrow ladder of promotion. There was so little scope and those at the top seemed, like the exhibits themselves, to be preserved so long.

The competition turns out to be bitterer than we might imagine, and about two-thirds of the way through, it turns into a locked-room mystery.

This is the third book by Penelope Fitzgerald that I have read, after The Blue Flower and The Bookshop. In all three cases, I have enjoyed the book but been left feeling that I must be missing something, given the huge critical admiration which Fitzgerald receives. I think that The Golden Child is probably one of her lighter works. But I did enjoy reading it.

73. Exit Music by Ian Rankin

Less than a week before Rebus' retirement, and one final case. A Russian dissident poet is brutally beaten to death one night. Could he case have anything to do with his attitude to the regime back home? Or an impromptu poem given at a poetry reading, criticising a former friend of his whom he'd spotted in the audience? And what is the nature of the connections between the visiting Russian oligarchs looking for Scottish investments, the Scottish Parliament, and the gangster Big Ger?

An enjoyable final (?) outing for Rebus and his frequent concerns about corruption, big and small, and the links between the underworld and 'overworld'.

Sample: The air still smouldered, the charred smell almost overpowering. Siobhan Clarke held a handkerchief to her mouth and nose. Rebus stubbed out his breakfast underfoot.

A couple of abandoned books:

Low Life: lures and snares of old New York by Luc Sante is about the New York underworld between around 1840 and 1920. It's very well written, but also very dense. I think it would be an excellent book for someone who knew New York well, or was interested in the city's history. But for me it was a little too detailed.

Long Time, No See by Dermot Healy seems to be the story of a teenage boy's life, in all the mundane detail: his eccentric great-uncle, the errands he runs for the neighbours, his sort-of girlfriend. It's an Early Reviewer book and many of the other reviews say that after a slow start it picks up and starts to draw you in. I gave it 150 pages and it had not done so.

Sometime in July I also gave up on Blue Aubergine by Miral al-Tahawy, the story of an Egyptian woman (nicknamed 'blue aubergine' because that's what she looked like when she was born). The language is highly poetic and there are many changes in perspective, making the story as such very difficult to follow.

I also abandoned, for the time being, One Hundred Years Of Solitude, which I found difficult to get into because it seemed that the events which took place in the book were so arbitrary - with only a few pages given to each story, there was no build-up to the twists and turns. I will probably try and return to this in a few years' time.

Following your thread as ever. I have not read any Penelope Fitzgerald. It would seem that she appeals to some people much more than others. I have of course read plenty of the Rebus books and it seems like they are still up to standard from your review.

Nice reviews of The Golden Child, which I've added to my wish list, and Exit Music.

Just catching up on your thread . . . you've read so many interesting books this year.

74. The Worst Date Ever: or How it took a comedy writer to expose Africa's secret war by Jane Bussmann

On the face of it, this is quite a strange book. But it came highly recommended by Michela Wrong, whose books on Africa I would recommend to anyone, and there's an approving quote on the cover by the journalist Jon Snow, whom I also admire.

So here goes with the synopsis.

Jane Bussmann is working as a celebrity journalist in LA, writing made-up interviews about music and film stars - goodness me, aren't they surprisingly normal when you meet them, and even the skinniest turn out to be wolfing down pizza during the interview. The most challenging part of her life is trying to keep down the nausea as she writes yet another vapid puff piece. One day, she encounters a man who is not only handsome but also Useful - a conflict resolution expert, specialising in Africa. Attempting to spend more time with him, she ends up in Uganda (while he is in the US) and almost by chance discovers that, contrary to the orthodoxy, it would actually be possible for Ugandan forces to defeat the Lord's Resistance Army - it's just too convenient for too many people for the war to continue.

Throughout the book, she maintains the same voice, which is hilarious but also kind of gross: as she herself says, as a British comedy writer she is programmed always to say the most offensive thing possible. This voice works when she is talking about an encounter with Britney's publicist. Does it work when she's talking about, say, the victims of a brutal raid? The answer is, sometimes. Sometimes, comedy can be a brilliant way to make serious points - see Mark Thomas, for example. But Bussmann's humour is much more scattershot: anyone can be the butt of the joke, and that sometimes undermines what she is saying.

She also depends a lot on jokes about how out of her depth she was and how she was always worrying about impressing the Useful Man. I found this very jarring, but towards the end of the book there is an explanation: Bussmann returned from her trip full of fire about what she'd seen, but could not persuade anyone to let her make a programme about it. Once she turned it round though, and spun it as a 'what-happens-when-a-Bridget-Jones-type-ditzy-girl-tries-to-date-out-of-her-league' comedy, people were much more interested. So that's how we got this book.

I can't help feeling that's a bit of a pity. On the other hand, if this had been a serious book, I would probably have left it sitting on my shelf alongside N other books about what's wrong with the development aid system. And I'm interested in these issues. So Bussmann is definitely succeeding in getting the message out to more people.

Sample: When I started out in Hollywood, I'd meet the star and order a Diet Coke like them to look friendly. Now I drank margaritas as fast as it's possible to drink without belching and sometimes faster, nodding and agreeing that it is indeed cheaper to co-lease a private Gulfstream jet than fly your entourage First Class. Tequila rocks: if I closed my eyes I could imagine I was working in a Mexican whorehouse instead.

75. Perfume by Patrick Süskind

This is a re-read - it's probably 20 years since I read this before, so I didn't remember much about it.

In eighteenth-century France, a pretty stinky place, a boy is born with a preternaturally sensitive sense of smell, and no odour of his own. That lack of odour makes other people feel uneasy around him, without really understanding why. But the abilities that his sense of smell gives him - finding hidden money, for example - are ample excuse for them to distrust him and send him away. Gradually, however, Grenouille hones his sense of smell, and sets out on a sinister search for the most perfect smell of all.

The two things I enjoyed most about this fable-like story were the lush and sensuous descriptions of the various smells, and the way that it manages to make the reader sympathetic to a character who is monstrous in his lack of care for other human beings.

Sample: First he made an odour for inconspicuousness, a mousy, workaday outfit of odours with the sour, cheesy smell of humankind still present, but only as if exuded into the outside world through a layer of linen and wool garments covering a old man's dry skin. Bearing this smell, he could move easily among people.

76. Wish I Was Here by Jackie Kay

This is a collection of short stories, which circle around the topic of loneliness. Relationships that have ended, or that never started, or that will keep limping on even though there is really nothing there. Some of the stories are poignant, some bleakly funny. They are all excellently written. But because the topic was so sad, I found myself waiting longer and longer to pick the book up again between stories.

Almost all of the stories on their own would be four stars, but I've given the book 3.5 because of the similarity of theme between the stories.

Sample: I knew she was having an affair because she told me herself. She said she wanted to respect our fifteen-year relationship and not lie to me. I respected her for that. She said that I ought to be grown-up about it and that she wanted to preserve our family, keep our kids together and keep our house. She said I could pick somebody too if I liked because she wasn't bothered any more. She said our life was a whole civilization and she didn't see the point of it crumbling. She said this woman was the love of her life. I listened in that still way that you listen in the night to a strange sound in your house. I listened without being able to move at all.

> 75 I suppose having no odour is a little like having no shadow...

I also read Das Parfum.Die Geschichte eines Mörders almost exactly 20 years ago, finished on 28 December 1991. (Isn't LT great, to be able to look it up that fast.)

Worst Date Ever sounds great--but it appears to be out of print (?). How old is it?

Edwin - I wish I'd kept notes going back so far! I don't have much before joining LT five years ago...

Joyce - only last year. It's still available on amazon.co.uk, maybe it wasn't published outside the UK?

>178 wandering_star:

I have kept a record of the books I've read + date finished since 1981. It was very easy to copy that onto LT.

77. Afternoon Of An Autocrat by Norah Lofts

It was pure chance that I acquired this book, and when I picked it off my shelves I thought I knew what I would be getting - a bit of social comedy, a bit of gentle romance, that type of 1950s middlebrow reading popularised by Persephone books.

The first surprise was that it was about the life in an English village, consumed with the question of enclosures. They are happening in other villages around, and many of the richer villagers are keen to bring it to Clevely, but the old squire is set against it. Lofts quickly sketches out the people of the village, the devout Methodist cobbler who neglects his trade for his worship, the 'progressive' farmer who argues with the squire, and a wide population of other people. It is witty and lightly told, but the people feel real.

The squire dies suddenly, and his son is summoned home from India. Again I settled in comfortably: a historical novel about change, and how it affects these people I have come to know. But almost without me realising it, the book suddenly became something much stranger, more complex, and more gripping. Every time you think a course of action is predictable - it isn't. All sorts of twists and turns kept me reading to the early hours. I know that the book is out of print so it's unlikely anyone who sees this review will ever read it... but even if there's a small chance, I don't think I should give away what happens.

I will however mention the range of very interesting and complex female characters who play central roles, from the young squire's sharply intelligent but downtrodden wife, to the elderly lady who secretly takes her own steps against the possibility of enclosures, and the cobbler's daughter struggling between her self-denying beliefs and her more sensual nature.

"Sir Richard said, my lady, that you wished me to come and report to you every day."

That was, of course, exactly how Richard would put it, making it seem as though the idea were hers. And she could not - in the circumstances, contradict. Also, she thought, with just a flash of spirit, suppose she had said so; would it have been so extraordinary? While Richard was away she was in charge and had a perfect right to demand that the bailiff report twice a day if she wished. But this bout of self-assertion lasted only a second; the rightness of her position was undermined by her knowledge that Richard had arranged these interviews as a form of penance for them both. Richard's malice poisoned everything.

I would love to read more of Norah Lofts' books, although disappointingly none of them seem to be available on Project Gutenberg or anything similar, and few are in print. Her wikipedia entry notes cryptically "Norah Lofts has a devoted international following, notably on the Goodreads website".

78. Tree Of Smoke by Denis Johnson

This was one of those reads where even though I wasn't always sure what was going on, I still thought it was brilliant. It's a huge, sprawling book about the Vietnam war, told mainly through the perspective of a young agent who is desperate to get closer to the action but who is mostly kept away from it by his larger-than-life uncle who has other, more secret plans for him; other story threads deal with a Vietnamese officer and his cousin, a Viet Cong double agent; and a pair of good-for-nothing brothers who are grunt soldiers. It's also about betrayal, lies, and chaos - I thought it captured very effectively the confusion of fighting in a war when you are never really sure what exactly is going on.

Being by Denis Johnson, the writing is brilliant, very vivid both about the lush tropical landscapes around them and the human craziness inside their heads. I can't stop myself from quoting a few examples:

Now they had the sun bearing down from overhead and yet, beneath their progress, a thick red mud that seemed alive, clinging to Carignan's shoes, building up on the soles, clambering up over the sides, engulfing him up to the ankles. In their bare feet the others ambled over it easily, while Carignan struggled along among them with his tennis shoes encased in red cakes as heavy as concrete.

He lay on the bed gasping while the strength boiled out of his blood.

Nothing happened on the north side either, but it was uninhabited, rocky, plunging, cut by ravines, and often a leaf turned wrong caught the light and looked like a flash of white up above a cliff - like somebody hiding there - and terrified him. Any fallen log looked, at first glance, like a sniper in the undergrowth.

In such unprecedented silence James could tell just from the tiny sound his clip made as the sling ticked against it that the clip was empty, whereas only two minutes ago the surrounding noise had been so magnificent he couldn't hear his own screaming. In this new silence he didn't want to replace the clip for fear all the senses of the enemy would lock onto the sound and he's be shredded, shredded, shredded.

For sure, at over 700 pages, this could have lost a couple of hundred and still be just as comprehensive, overwhelming and chaotic as it needed to be to have its impact. But I did find myself enjoying it more when I read it in long chunks than short bursts - I think it helped me to read myself into the pace and cadence of it.

I have also abandoned Sugar And Slate by Charlotte Williams, a memoir of her life growing up in a small town with her Welsh mother and Guyanese father. It's an interesting story, but a bit too stream-of-consciousness, with the writer breaking off to make points about something which has just occurred to her. I enjoyed it while I was actually reading but never felt inclined to pick it up.

August tally:

Off TBR: 12 read, 4 abandoned
On TBR: 4 - 3 mooched and one audible

Net: -40 - not bad, although next month is birthday month so the trend is likely to reverse...

79. The Dream Life Of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin

Anatoly Pavlovich Sukhanov is a Soviet bureaucrat, an art critic upholding the official line, a man who has risen to the middle by ruthlessly suppressing any thoughts or memories which seem to be undesirable. But it's 1985, and some of the old Soviet certainties are starting to unfreeze. One night a chance meeting with an old acquaintance brings some of Sukhanov's troubling memories to the surface, and his carefully tended carapace begins to crack. Unsettling developments at work and at home complete the job, and Sukhanov emerges rawly into a maelstrom of memories.

This book was written in English but Grushin was born in Russia, and seems to have drawn on (what I imagine to be) the Russian absurdist tradition - there are many references to Gogol - as well as nods to surrealism (the first officially-sanctioned article Sukhanov writes is about surrealism "as a manifestation of capitalist insolvency", and the first sign that something is wrong at his work, 20 years later, is a directive from above that perhaps it was time to write an article about Dali which wasn't entirely critical).

The writing is wonderful - moods are beautifully evoked, and Sukhanov's disorienting slips from reality into dream into memory are very well handled. The story is marvellous, and incredibly moving. Despite starting off as a crusty, dull apparatchik, who pays no attention to his family and can't be bothered to remember the name of the man who has been his chauffeur for several years, Sukhanov becomes a truly sympathetic character. I cried for the last thirty pages.

Unquestionably the best book I've read so far this year.

Below, the Moscow River moved its slow, dense, brown waters, and from their depths emerged a flimsy upside-down city that existed only at night, created by a thousand shimmering intertwinings of street lights, headlights, floodlights. The walls, the churches, the bell towers of the underwater city trembled with a desire to break free, to float away with the current, to leave the oppressing, crowded, dangerous Moscow far, far behind; but the night held them firmly, and they stayed forever tethered to their places by infinite golden chains of reflections.

You've intrigued me with the Norah Lofts book so I'm going to have to read it and I have a copy of The Dream Life of Sukhanov that has just risen much higher in my tbr pile. I love reading your reviews.

I'm definitely going to look for The Dream Life of Sukhanov based on your recommendation and my general interest in Russian/Soviet literature.

I've had Grushin's The Line for ages, and have yet to read it. Maybe next month? Your review of her other book makes me want to read something of hers sooner rather than later.

In my life, I have had to explain my way out of a lot of tight corners, but this tops them all.

I am leaning against the wall of an upper-storey room in an empty dockside warehouse. I am leaning against the wall because I doubt if I can stand up without support. I am trying to work out if there are any vital organs in the lower left of my abdomen, just above the hip. I try to remember anatomy diagrams from every encyclopaedia I ever opened as a kid because, if there are vital organs down there, I am pretty much fucked.

I am leaning against a wall in an empty dockside warehouse trying to remember anatomy diagrams and there is a woman on the floor, about three yards in front of me. I don’t need to remember childhood encyclopaedias to know that there is a pretty vital organ in your skull, not that I seem to have made much use of it over the last four weeks. Anyway, the woman on the floor hasn’t got much of a skull left, and no face at all. Which is a shame, because it was a beautiful face. A truly beautiful face. Next to the woman without her face is a large canvas bag that has been dropped onto the grubby floor, spilling half of its contents, which comprise a ridiculously large quantity of used, large-denomination banknotes.

I am leaning against a wall in an empty dockside warehouse with a hole in my side trying to remember anatomy diagrams, while a dead woman without her beautiful face and a large bag of cash lie on the floor. That should be enough of a pickle to be in, but there is also a large bear of a man looking down at the girl, the bag and now, at me. And he is holding a shotgun: the same one that took her face off.

I have been in better situations.

So begins 80. Lennox by Craig Russell. I was listening to it on audiobook (brilliantly read by Seán Barrett) and at this point, I had a shiver of excitement anticipating how good the rest of the book was going to be. I wasn't disappointed.

Lennox is a private eye - but one who does most of his work for one of the 'Three Kings', the three gangsters who between them run 1950s Glasgow. It's not the easiest line of work to be in - he's none too popular with the police - but on the other hand, other underworld types know who his bosses are and that usually gives him some protection. One day, a small-time gangster is murdered, and his brother asks Lennox to find out who did it. Lennox refuses, but that night he is pulled in by the police on suspicion of murdering the second brother, who has turned up dead in circumstances which seem to point to Lennox. Nettled, Lennox starts along the trail - and gradually realises that the brothers may not have been as small-time as all that. His investigation leads to ever deeper and wider connections within Glasgow's underworld - and more widely - and starts to make Lennox all sorts of new enemies.

I really enjoyed this book. The mystery is gripping and Barrett infuses fantastic menace into the reading. (I've just seen on audible that he seems to have quite a line in thrillers, reading for example all of Jo Nesbø's books). The tone is sardonically noir: The next morning a spring sun was trying to break through, but an ill-tempered early morning Glasgow was telling it to fuck off and shrouding it in factory smoke. With its world-weary protagonist, twisting plot, and examination of the city's corruption, I think this would appeal to anyone who likes Ian Rankin.

There are, by the way, a few scenes of quite graphic and sadistic violence, which normally I hate. Here I didn't mind it so much, perhaps because it seemed to serve a purpose, reminding us from time to time of the viciousness of the people with whom Lennox is dealing.

Two great reads were followed by a couple of duds, Deer Cry Pavilion and Breaking The Tongue.

Deer Cry Pavilion (by Pat Barr) is subtitled "A Story of Westerners in Japan 1868-1905", and should be filed under 'missed opportunity'. It's essentially a sort of annotated anthology of travel writings, by foreigners who were in Japan at a time of incredible change, and should have been well-placed to observe it. Sadly, for every individual who writes about that, there are dozens who prefer to focus on daily life in the expat enclaves, occasionally pausing to patronise what they see as the eccentricities of the Japanese; and Barr repeats their views very uncritically. This is such a pity, as the ones which are interesting are very much so. One such, William Griffis from New Jersey, a teacher in a provincial city, witnesses the abolition of feudalism through his contacts with one samurai family. This section was fascinating and made me realise how little I really knew about the start of the Meiji period. But I couldn't manage to trawl through pages and pages of musical evenings and temperance lecturers attended exclusively by foreigners, to find more of these gems.

I only managed a few pages of Breaking The Tongue because of the very clumsy way it was written. I think partly this was due to timing, as many of the things which the author was trying to do had been done far more skilfully by Olga Grushin, so it lost by the contrast.

81. My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

My name is Asher Lev, the Asher Lev, about whom you have read in newspapers and magazines, about whom you talk so much at your dinner affairs and cocktail parties, the notorious and legendary Lev of the Brooklyn Crucifixion.

I am an observant Jew. Yes, of course, observant Jews do not paint crucifixions. As a matter of fact, observant Jews do not paint at all - in the way that I am painting. So strong words are being written and spoken about me, myths are being generated: I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people; also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipulator of modes and forms revered by Gentiles for two thousand years.

Well, I am none of those things. And yet, in all honesty, I confess that my accusers are not altogether wrong: I am indeed, in some way, all of those things.

The opening paragraphs of My Name Is Asher Lev effectively set up the fundamental tension of what follows, in the story of a young boy in the grip of an incredible gift which contradicts everything in the tradition he has been brought up in. But not quite everything - both his parents, in their own way, are gripped by duties which govern their lives, in the way that his art governs his. And for all three, the thing that drives them is something which makes them struggle against the odds - but which has also, at times, caused them to bring their family pain. This was a beautiful and absolutely compelling story: and I genuinely believed in Lev's contradictions, his concern for his family but also the fact that he was totally unable not to paint.

I drew a point with the pencil on the first page of the sketchbook. I drew another point a few inches away. Then I connected the two points with a straight line. I drew another straight line, in tension with the first line. I drew a third, balancing line. Then I was drawing a face. Then I was drawing faces. Then there were trees and lines of walking people.

Wow, the opening of Lennox hooked me instantly! Onto the wishlist it goes, I think. I want to know how the narrator gets out of that one. :)

Not to mention how he gets into it! I felt exactly the same way.

82. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Apparently, the genesis of this collaboration was that Neil Gaiman had started a short story, but he wasn't sure how it should end, so he sent it to Terry Pratchett. He didn't know how it should end either, but he did have an idea for what happened next, and so it began.

The premise is... well, Armageddon. The end of the world is nigh. Unfortunately, some years ago when the antichrist was delivered to earth, he was swapped with the wrong baby, and so he's grown up a human boy and missed out on the essential demonic training. Also ranged against the four horsemen of the apocalypse (three horsemen and one horsewomen, or to be even more precise, three motorcyclemen and - you get the picture) are a couple of angels (one fallen) who have rather got used to their lifestyle on earth, the descendant of a surprisingly accurate prophetess, and a collection of other eccentrics. You may, at this point, be able to guess who will win - but the point of a book like this is not the ending but the getting there.

My favourite part was definitely the relationship between the angel and the demon, both of whom have lived on earth for six thousand years and have grown quite friendly - and aren't above helping the other out occasionally to save on time and expenses. Both were of angel stock, after all. If one was going to Hull for a quick temptation, it made sense to nip across the city and carry out a standard brief moment of divine ecstasy. They felt to me much more like creations of Neil Gaiman's imagination, just as the slightly saucy and very cryptic prophetess felt like a Terry Pratchett character. But generally the book fits together fairly well, and I can believe that there are sections which neither author can definitively claim as his. This was a good, quick read which cheered me up when I was feeling under the weather.

"I think," said Aziraphale, sipping his wine (which had just ceased to be a slightly vinegary Beaujolais, and had become a quite acceptable, but rather surprised, Chateau Lafitte 1875), "I think I'll see you there".

83. Light Boxes by Shane Jones

This is an odd little fable about a town which is stuck in February, gripped by wintry sadness. The townspeople resist in what ways they can: when flight is abolished, they draw balloons on the bottoms of teacups and the inside of cupboard doors, and when they decide to combat February they do it by wearing summer clothes and pretending they are warm, or building a system of troughs to melt the snow with hot water. But February keeps fighting back:

People in town laughed today. Someone even skipped. The first sprouts of green crops can be seen on the hillside. The town feels alive and productive again. We have won an early battle against February but know that anything can happen. For instance, there have been reports from the messengers that dark clouds are cascading from the mountain peaks. Grizzly bears were seen buttoning deer-skinned coats in case of freezing temperatures. The carpenters have boarded up their windows and refuse to leave their homes. They mumble sadness. Sadness sounds like bubbles blowing slowly in stream water.

This is a very poetic book, and sometimes moving, but overall I found it a bit baffling. It's definitely a fable ... but of what, I couldn't tell you.

84. Honey Tongues by Helene Uri

This book is supposedly about the tensions underlying the friendship between a group of four women, billed on the back as a work of 'acute psychological observation'. Unfortunately, the writer seems to have forgotten the need to establish that the women are indeed friends, and from the beginning the women's meetings are characterised by envy, jealousy, one-upwomanship and snobbishness. This meant that (a) I didn't like any of them, or indeed recognise the relationship as any female friendship I have experienced, and (b) the big blow-up at the end came as no surprise. Implausible, and over-the-top.

And the food is good, Sara knows that. The food that Sara prepares is always, without exception, very good. The second course is already on the table, steaming in front of Sara's closest friends, an almost yolk-yellow soup with big mussels, garnished with fresh basil and a dollop of home-made garlic mayonnaise, as soft and as supple as Dior's best face cream, in each bowl.

Very nice reviews here. I'll pick up My Name Is Asher Lev in the near future, and Light Boxes sounds like a book that I might enjoy.

Wonderful reviews! I must recommend Grushin's The Line, and now I'm going to have to soon pick up The Dream Life of Sukhanov which is sitting next to The Line on a bookshelf. I too am intrigued by your Norah Lofts review -- I seem to remember reading her waaay back in HS, but have no specific memories.

In a senior moment, I ordered The Dream Life of Sukhanov twice, once from Amazon and once from the Book Depository. Jane, if you haven't bought it yet, or if anyone else would like my extra copy, send me a PM with your address and I'll mail it to you.

I quite often find I have bought the same book twice, although slightly less so now that I've got my books catalogued here! I hope you all enjoy Sukhanov.

I haven't posted for quite a long time, I see - possibly because I've been having a bit of a book slump. I am hopeful that I'm coming out of it with my current read. But I think the next few reviews will be pretty brief.

85. The Magic Flute by Alan Spence, which follows four Glasgow boys as they grow up through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, from childhood through girlfriends, adult responsibilities and disillusionment. A major theme is the music that they listen to at different times of their lives - there are also many elements from Mozart's opera scattered through the book. But while I was engaged in the boys' lives at the beginning, as they grow up the book visits them at ever less frequent intervals, and it becomes more difficult to care about them.

Sample: Twice he made them jump with false starts, put the stylus down in the wrong place letting loud guitar-noise shriek out at them. Then at last he judged it right, placed the needle just so in the space between the tracks with its soft expectant click and hiss. 'Now,' he said, and the music began. And after a few bars Tam felt the tension in his gut begin to ease. He let the music carry him, flow round him like water.

86. Rolling Thunder by Doug Boyd, a book about a Native American shaman, by someone who knew him well and spent a lot of time with him. Unfortunately, the book is completely uncritical about the events he claims to witness - at one point, after something supernatural appears to have happened, the author comments smugly that someone who knew Rolling Thunder less well than he did might have asked the shaman to explain what had just happened. It's true that someone who took a more challenging approach might not have got so close to Rolling Thunder, but for this reader at least, it was frustrating.

Sample: Rolling Thunder had not offered me any tangible proof that a summer flower could be taken from the snow. Perhaps there could have been a demonstration, but how meaningless it would have been! He could have done it several times to be sure that I was convinced. I could have taken pictures and shown them to others as through the whole point was whether, in fact, Rolling Thunder had actually plucked a flower from the snow. Caught up in that hopeless challenge, I would have failed to find out anything.

87. Sovereign by CJ Sansom, the third in the Shardlake series of detective novels set in Henry VIII's time. I really enjoyed the first two, but when I started this, I felt that it was retreading ground that I'd seen done better by Ariana Franklin (in her series of detective stories set in medieval Britain, but again demonstrating the capriciousness of kings and the danger of being favoured by them), not to mention in Wolf Hall (set at the same time). However, the background to this story was very interesting - King Henry's progress to the north of England after a rebellion (the Pilgrimage of Grace) had been put down - and once the thriller bit of the story got going, about half way through, it was gripping.

Sample: As we walked down the church another sound became audible, an angry crowing from the chapterhouse. There must be hundreds of fighting cocks, I realized, and wondered what they made of the holy statues, whether they took them for real men as Barak had. I looked around. For all the great vaulting arches this was the corpse of a church, a corpse set out to be mocked and desecrated as they said Richard III's was after the Battle of Bosworth.

88. Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett. I heard the author of this book on a podcast and it sounded fascinating - what his years spent living with a tribe in the Amazon rainforest had taught him, challenging both his faith (he went as a missionary and came back no longer a Christian) and established tenets of linguistics. Unfortunately, the most interesting parts of the podcast barely featured in the book, which was amazingly dull reading considering the subject matter. There was too much detail of unimportant bits of the story, and not enough analysis/reflection (which was what I'd heard in the podcast).

89. The Colour by Rose Tremain. This story is about the gold rush in New Zealand, and the way it affects lives, particularly the lives of an emigrant couple from the UK. In the UK, the husband dreamt of growing wealthy as a farmer - but when he finds a lump of gold his dreams immediately become wilder and he rushes off, leaving his wife and family, to seek wealth and glory.

I think I've gone off Rose Tremain. This book was fine, but I wasn't especially engaged by it, I think because there were too many characters to follow.

And several books which I gave up part-way through:

Speaking of Love by Angela Young, Walking Into The Night by Olaf Olafsson; both these books were about people who couldn't communicate their feelings to others, and how it caused them problems. The first is about an English extended family, the second (which was more interesting) focused on an Icelandic butler who worked for Howard Hughes. I found them both a bit annoying.

Streetwise by Mohamed Choukri, the story of a kid growing up on the streets of Morocco, trying to better himself. I just found this very 'meh', although I did find this wonderful snippet of a poem in it:

Travel, because you will always find a replacement
for what you have left behind.
And do something. The good thing about life is to
be doing things.
I have seen that stillness spoils water. Running water
tastes good, while standing water does not.

The Barbarians Are Coming by David Wong Louie, the first person narrative of a Chinese-American who has become a chef but insists on cooking only European food, and his relationship with his parents. My problem with this book was that the narrator was (a) neurotic, and (b) very self-aware, so it didn't feel as if there was anything below the surface for the reader to be looking for.

Phew. I hope the reading gets better!

Thanks for these reviews. I'm particularly glad to know I can skip Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes as I've been toying with buying this book ever since I saw it in a bookstore several years ago.

Yes, I was very disappointed as I was excited to see it on the shelves of the friend I was staying with!

September tally:

Off TBR: 16 (11 read, 5 abandoned)
Onto TBR: 8 (5 birthday gifts, one mooched in and two bought)

Net total: -48

I've been reading through the Paris Review archive of interviews. Here's a quote I liked, from the interview with Jeanette Winterson:

INTERVIEWER

Once you had the structure, did the book come quickly, or was it still an uphill climb?

WINTERSON

When it’s written, of course, it could never have been written any other way. You just think, What was all the fuss about? Yes, it was difficult. It’s like stoking a fire. To start with you must tend it very carefully; it won’t burn anything you throw on it. By the time it’s a big blaze you can chuck old tires and sofas on it and it will burn. But to start with, that will just put it out. I kept putting out my fire by throwing on too much unwieldy, unsuitable material before it was blazing; then I would have to start the whole thing painfully again with little twigs and bits of paper, and nurse it and make it go until I got to that point where I thought, Right, I’ll just chuck the lot on there and it will be incandescent.

I'm pleased to report that in October, my reading is looking up.

It started with 90. Masque Of The Gonzagas by Clare Colvin, which lets us observe the peak, and later the decline, of the Gonzaga family, dukes of Mantua during the Renaissance. Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga is a lover of the arts, but it's just as important to him that everyone knows his court has the best artists in Italy. This book is about power - art and power, wealth and power, love, lust, sex appeal, dynastic marriages and power. I don't think it will be one of my most memorable books of this year, but it was a very competent and enjoyable piece of historical fiction.

Sample: The composer in black looks up from his score and smiles as she soars to the final note of the cantata. The audience applaud, and Isabella catches Ottavio's eye in the mirror as he knew she would. Look at the Duke: he is besotted. It is January in this year of 1611 and the winds blow from the Mantuan marshes even to the cloistered corners of the palace. Appearance is all. Who could attach such glory? Splendour is power. No one would confront a prince of such substance, not the King of Spain himself.

91. GraceLand by Chris Abani tells the story of Elvis, a sixteen-year old boy growing up in Lagos. He loves to dance, but that's not bringing in enough money, so he starts to get other kinds of work, which gradually draw him into more and more sinister aspects of Lagos' underworld. I enjoyed reading this, although Elvis starts off so innocent that it's barely credible - he is teased many times for not knowing how things work in Nigeria. But this at least means that the abrupt shift into a very dark story indeed is as much of a shock to him as it is to the reader.

Sample: Bridge City was a dangerous place, and when darkness fell, it was easy to be very much alone in the crowds that milled everywhere. Hundreds of oil lamps flickered unsteadily on tables, trays, mats spread on the ground and any other surface the hawkers who flocked to Bridge City at night could find to display their wares. Yet even all that light could not penetrate the deeper shadows that hung like presences everywhere.

So many years ago that I remember almost nothing about it except that I enjoyed it, I read a book about the Gonzagas called A Renaissance Tapestry: The Gonzaga of Mantua by Kate Simon.

92. The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb

I didn't really know anything about this book before picking it up, but from the author's name and the small-press publisher, I was expecting European Literature with a capital EL - something intellectual, perhaps a bit melancholy. I couldn't have been more wrong! Instead, this is a very witty and amusing book which spoofs a whole range of things from Gothic romances to worldly European intellectuals and the way they see their, ahem, somewhat less intellectual English acquaintances. Most enjoyable - and amazingly modern for a book written in 1934.

Sample: The moment I reached the bend in the corridor I saw a light outside the door of my room. I stepped two places closer, and then, forgetting all sense of geography in my fright, began shouting in three languages at once. In front of the door, with a flaming torch in his hand, stood a gigantic medieval figure.

93. A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle - this was one of my childhood favourites, which I picked up for a re-read. I am glad to say it was just as enjoyable this time around.

Rebecca - the blurb on the back of Masque of the Gonzagas says that the author has thrown light on "one of history's most fascinating riddles" - perhaps why the Gonzaga rule collapsed so quickly? - although I had never heard of them before reading the book. But there is some good, Renaissance-Italy style family conspiracies in this one so I imagine that it would make a good history too.

I'm also enjoying my reading of The Pendragon Legend.

Catching up - really enjoying reading about your reading, as ever (the next best thing to reading myself, which I haven't had much time for recently).

Thank you! It sounds as if you have been very busy. I hope things are looking up...

94. Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg.

Eugenia Ginzburg was an academic who was caught up in Stalin's purges. This book is her memoir of the time of her accusation, trial and first few years in prison, at first near to Moscow (and in solitary confinement) and then by prison train to a labour camp in the Russian Far East. What happens to her is horrific - even more so because as I was reading this book, I somehow simultaneously felt incomprehension and recognition. Incomprehension that people could treat other people in this way - it wasn't just a brutal system, it was made up of a long chain of personal encounters, with an accuser, an interrogator, a prison guard. And recognition because the stories were so familiar: this is the first book I have read about Stalin's purges but I have read a lot about the Cultural Revolution, and many elements of the story are the same; and other elements are recognisable from films, or books about other periods of history. The description of her accusation and trial really made me think that Kafka was prescient - or perhaps not, perhaps even in Henry VIII's time the same exchanges were taking place between purging apparatchiks and their randomly chosen victims.

It is remarkable that Eugenia Ginzburg stayed sane through her experiences, never mind finding enough detachment to write this book, which is never self-pitying and manages to find the irony in the most desperate situations. For example, one thread is the difficult relationships in prison between the committed Communists such as Ginzburg and her contemporaries, and the earlier rounds of political prisoners, the Mensheviks and so on. At one point, one of the women in the cell - a Social Revolutionary - runs out of cigarettes and Ginzburg offers her one. She taps out a message to the regional committee secretary, incarcerated in the next cell:

"There's a woman Communist here who has offered me cigarettes. Should I accept?" Mukhina inquired whether the Communist belonged to the opposition. Derkovskaya asked me, passed on my reply - and Mukhina tapped categorically: "No". The cigarettes lay on the table between us. During the night I heard Derkovskaya sighing deeply. Though thin as a rake, she would much sooner have done without bread.

As you can see from this story, Ginzburg is good at highlighting the details which throw light on the bigger picture. In the prison train, for instance, the women are given one small cup of dirty water per day, and friendships could be broken if someone jogged another's cup, spilling a few drops. When one woman's cup got broken because the train stopped abruptly, the guard refused to give her a new one. Another example is that the Communist women turn to the earlier generations of political prisoners to explain the system and what is coming next - but sometimes their experiences are out-of-date. The same Derkovskaya from the cigarette story tells Ginzburg that she will be allowed to see her children before she is deported - but that does not happen. Derkovskaya had spoken out of her experience of Tsarist prisons. There was no room nowadays for 'rotten liberalism' or 'pseudo-humanitarianism'.

95. One Man's Justice by Akira Yoshimura

1946. In US-occupied Japan, a war crimes tribunal has been set up. Takuya, until recently an officer in the Imperial Army, is contacted by a former colleague, who warns him that the American investigators have uncovered the story of the execution of a group of US PoWs as the war ended, and are starting to track down the perpetrators - Takuya among them. After a quick farewell to his family, Takuya goes on the run.

At the start of this book, I thought that it would be an investigation into individual motivations. Partly, this was because of the title's ambiguity - are we talking about the 'justice' that Takuya meted out, or that which is being visited on him? And partly it's because a great deal of Takuya's memories of the war are taken up with his team's mapping of the incoming US bombers, analysing the numbers which define their flightpath, payload and remaining fuel - and I thought that this must be to highlight the un-mappability of the human heart.

In fact, however, this turned into a book about the way that Japan responded to the US occupation - how fear, resentment, and hostility gradually turned into acceptance of the reality and developing understanding of how to work within it. This was an entirely new period of history for me and because of that I found the book very interesting - and it's pushed my copy of Embracing Defeat, a history of the same period, to the top of my TBR. At the same time, I did think it could have been better written. In particular, while Takuya's views do develop, they are not examined very deeply - I would have liked to see more into his mind.

I bought this book because I loved the same author's Shipwrecks, about the arrival of the plague in a small fishing village in Japan. It seems from the summaries of his other books that he particularly likes the question of how people respond to overwhelming changes in their circumstances, whether that's the destruction of all they knew or the unexpected release from a long prison sentence. I would recommend Shipwrecks to anyone, but One Man's Justice perhaps only to those interested in Japan and its history.

Between your review of One Man's Justice and my impression of Storm Rider I get the sense the Yoshimura likes to write about history and historical events in a very literal way, but within a fictional narrative. Very insightful last paragraph in your review. I may just add One Man's Justice after I read Shipwrecks to see if my problems are with the translator and not the author which I'm guessing is the main difficulty I had with Storm Rider.

Yes, if you like Shipwrecks, perhaps give One Man's Justice a try...

96. Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie

Foreign Affairs follows two American academics as they head to London for a summer of research - and escape from their unsatisfactory lives.

Virginia (Vinnie) Miner is fifty-four, a specialist in children's rhymes and games, and at first glance rather mousy and easy to ignore. Fred Turner is a handsome, up-and-coming English literature academic - although it turns out that he is rather less self-assured than the acerbic, smart and fiercely independent Vinnie.

And indeed, throughout the book people are not what they seem. During the summer, both Vinnie and Fred have relationships with rather unlikely partners - but both fail to understand their partners properly until it's too late.

I hope setting the story out like that doesn't make it sound too formulaic. I loved reading this - it was both extremely funny, and managed to make me really care about the two flawed protagonists.

Sample: Besides, Vinnie is reluctant to relate her troubles at any time. She believes that talking about what's gone wrong in one's life is dangerous; that it sets up a magnetic force field which repels good luck and attracts bad. If she persists in her complaints, all the slings and arrows and screws and nails and needles of outrageous fortune that are lurking about will home in on her. Most of her friends will be driven away, repelled by her negative charge. But Vinnie won't be alone. Like most people, she has some acquaintances who are naturally magnetized by the unhappiness of others. These will be attracted by her misfortunes, and will cluster round, covering her with a prickly black fuzz of condescending pity like iron filings.

Don't you love the 'prickly black fuzz of condescending pity'? My first Alison Lurie, definitely not my last. Incidentally, I felt that the book captured London very well - at one point I put the book down with a feeling that I knew what I was going to do that day, before being slightly startled to realise that I wasn't, in fact, in London.

97. Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear

I picked this up for the TIOLI challenge to read a book from the International Space Station's Legacy Library. And for big chunks of it, the book was gripping enough that I thought, yes, if I was up in space, this book would take my mind off my surroundings for a couple of hours. But ultimately, I think it was trying to be too many different things, which meant it didn't work so well.

The premise is (roughly) that some bits of human genetic material have mutated and are causing strange results in their carriers - most obviously, some very abnormal pregnancies. This is happening all over the world, and may have been happening for some time - there are reports of mass graves from remote villages in some countries where women have been massacred for carrying 'the devil's seed'. In response to huge public pressure, a group of scientists in the US is hastily assembled to try and find a cure. But some of the scientists are convinced that this is not a disease - instead, it's the next stage of evolution, triggered by some sort of crisis of modern humanity (this is a bit vague in the book - the suggestion is that it includes over-population and environmental degradation, but I don't know how that fits with the 'remote villages' I mentioned earlier).

The bits of the book I liked best were the bits about politics and the public (mis)understanding of science - I don't know if these are common themes in outbreak thrillers (I have only read one of these and that was about 15 years ago), but they were very well-handled - the panic, rumours and misunderstandings, the failure by politicians to understand the issue and their desire to respond to public pressure. I also found the first two-thirds quite an effectively written thriller. But the last third of the book has a sudden change of pace, slowing things right down and taking the story to a more intimate scale. Unfortunately, neither the characters nor the ideas in the book are strong enough to carry this section. I was fine with them when we were racing against time to find the truth, but I didn't care enough about them when the pace wasn't there.

Sample: "They will not get away with this pretense forever, but for the next few years, the conservatives, the hardliners, will rule. They will mete out information at will, to those they trust not to rock the boat, to agree with them, like zealous scholars defending the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are hoping to see their careers through without having to deal with a revolution that would topple both them and their views." "Incredible," Daney said. "No, human, and we all study the human, no?"

98. The Pyramid by Ismail Kadare

The Pyramid is ostensibly the story of how the great pyramid of Cheops came to be built - but at the same time, it is an allegory of terror and tyranny everywhere.

The grand project of building the pyramid, perhaps, can be seen as the grand project of building socialism, or year zero, or any of those projects which took over a generation, which demanded total belief and support, and for which blood had to be spilt.

There are conspiracies and purges, and abrupt changes of policy which bring bloody consequences for those who can't keep up: at one point, a popular line of argument is that it doesn't matter if the pyramid is progressing very slowly, because it is certain that the Pharaoh will live a very long time - but one 'unfortunate member of the government' who suggests, as a logical consequence, that work should be suspended completely to show that the Pharaoh is immortal, is executed by mutilation.

Those lower down try and keep up with the latest winds. People did not know what to do: to expedite their work at a time when intemperate zeal could be seen as supporting the rumour {that the Pharaoh is ill}, or to slacken off, even though their bodies were striped with welts from whippings and other punishments meted out for just such slackness.

All this is very interesting and intellectually this book was a rewarding read. But for me, the impersonality of it undermined its impact. I recognise that as an allegory, it is meant to be a timeless tale of something which repeated itself again and again through history - but even so, I find something like the gulag memoir Into The Whirlwind much better at expressing the universal horror, by taking you into one person's individual experience.

My favourite part of this book was the two chapters which were supposed to be the bureaucratic records of the construction, stone by stone by stone. I think that's because through these details, I could get a better glimpse of the bigger picture, and imagine the impact on individual people's lives.

Forty-seventh stone. From Aswan quarry. Double check carried out as per latest instructions. Swearing heard during haulage: "You should burst like my heart!" "You should be smashed to smithereens!" "You should fall into the abyss!" Blessings heard: "Thank fate to have placed you on this peak!" "I wish you a long life of stone!" SALS in order. Magician's authorization ditto. No problem in hoisting. No graffiti. Forty-sixth stone. From Karnak quarry. A reliable seam. Cursing and praising in roughly equal measure. One of the latter kind of expressions - I sacrificed my son to the pyramid with joy - alludes to an accident that occurred during unloading of the stone. No graffiti. They have disappeared as a result of improved surveillance, a very successful measure.

Excellent reviews, particularly the Alison Lurie book. An author I will have to read I think.

Interesting review of One Man's Justice. Reading it sort of brought back images of Sea and Poison which takes place during about the same period. I'd be interested in reading the Yoshimura to compare the trains of thought on that period from two different authors. You've read the Endo I believe. What are your thoughts when comparing the two books?

I haven't read it, I'm afraid. I've just had a look at the reviews, though, and I think that the focus is a bit different (although the time and even place are similar). One Man's Justice does look at the way that social norms of what's acceptable (in behaviour, beliefs and values) can change over time, but the focus is much more on the changes after the war, rather than the changes which meant that enemy soldiers could be executed in cold blood. It seems from the reviews that Sea and Poison does the reverse.

Curiously (and unintentionally), my next book could also be described as an allegory of totalitarianism, although it's far, far lighter than The Pyramid.

99. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn imagines a small, independent island statelet whose founder was the man that came up with 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog', that famous sentence which contains all the letters of the alphabet. Apparently that's called a pangram; another one, given to us in the epigraph and as a descriptor of the book itself, is 'a quirky novel with pages of zany, jumbled lexicon'.

Gradually the rulers of the statelet start to ban letters, one after another, causing increasing difficulties for communication. Books are burnt, people denounce their neighbours, underground resistance groups are formed. All this is told in letters between the islanders, which as you might imagine, progressively use fewer and fewer letters. We go from 'Cousin Ella, I must relate something that has happened which Mother has made me vow not to divulge' to 'I am Ella - the one who smile at y'all yesters. Whose home is near' to 'Please tont worry apowt me. I haph mate this one phirtiph mitnight phoray to leaph this note'.

It's a clever idea, but for me, it was only just enough to sustain a book. I liked the fact that the book gloried in the possibilities of language - the islanders try and express themselves creatively without any offending letters ('it's a weeping shame', for example, after the outlawing of C), and come up with new and vivid coinages ('the thug-uglies'). But I found the islanders' sesquipedalian communication style slightly wearing, and it felt like the book was basically built around working up to one particular piece of wordplay. However, lots of the LT reviews are super-positive so I am clearly just being an old grump.

I suspect you can judge whether you'll like the book from your reaction to the fact that Ella Minnow Pea is actually the name of one of the main characters. If it's closer to a groan than a laugh, come and join me in Curmudgeon's Corner, where we will be reading The Wonderful O.

Sample: There are loonies - paranoi's at the helm! Intoxi-tipsy on raw, intemperate power.

100. The Return Of The Soldier by Rebecca West

A soldier, shell-shocked, loses the last fifteen years of his life - he does not know that he is married, he does not remember his wife, but he does remember very vividly his love - a woman he has not seen for fifteen years. It's a powerful set-up - so you might be surprised that Rebecca West chooses to tell the story through the eyes of someone outside the triangle - the soldier's cousin Jenny.

It turns out, however, that this is not really the story of the lovers but a sort of fable, with the soldier's wife (glamorous but cold) symbolising surface and falsity, and the former love (a shabbier, dowdier, lower class woman) symbolising substance and truth - and poor Jenny, herself secretly in love with Chris (the soldier), torn between them, through the ironic tension that the true, honest love is the one that depends on denying the factual record.

And so, Jenny really is the pivot of the book. Perhaps because we are privy to her thoughts, she is the only character that comes across as a real, rounded person - but that means that through her, we can feel all the pathos of the story.

Reading back, this review sounds a little ambivalent. It isn't meant to be - I enjoyed this book which is beautifully written and very moving. But I was, for a period of time in the middle, disappointed that the man's wife was such a one-dimensional character - after all, it's not hard to imagine what a living nightmare it would be if the same thing happened to you. And I think the story would be more poignant, not less, if the reader could sympathise with both (all three) women.

Sample: But now I was too busy reassuring him by showing a steady, undistorted profile crowned by a neat proud sweep of hair instead of the tear-darkened mask he always feared, even to have enough vitality left over to enjoy his presence. I spoke in a calm voice full from the chest quite unfluted with agony; I read Country Life with ponderous interest; I kept my hands, which I desired to wring, in doeskin gloves for most of the day; I played with the dogs a great deal and wore my thickest tweeds; I pretended that the slight heaviness of my features is a correct indication of my temperament.

Interesting thoughts on Return of the Soldier. That book was a big hit with my 20th century literature class. I know what you mean about the wife, but it didn't bother me. --I think I was too distracted by what Jenny was up to.

I've started a new thread for the rest of the year, here.