RidgewayGirl Attempts to Embrace Chaos in 2024

I did try to read guided only by whim and inclination last year, and it was a bust. The best that can be said is that I did try, intermittently and not very hard. So, given that, the only thing to do is to give it another shot, hoping for different results despite everything else remaining the same. I still have two local book clubs that I really enjoy. I am still hopelessly drawn to lists, awards shortlists and I'm, once again, beginning a new year deep into the books that will feature in March's Tournament of Books. But the results will be different this year, maybe.

In any case, it will be fun to try.

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Books Acquired

First Quarter Reading

January

1. Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel
2. The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino, translated from the Japanese by Giles Murray
3. Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women by Mary Rechner
4. Blackouts by Justin Torres
5. Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
6. Cold People by Tom Rob Smith
7. Go as a River by Shelley Read
8. Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
9. Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine
10. Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon
11. One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall
12. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
13. My Men by Victoria Kielland, translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls

February

1. The Lost Journals of Sacajewea by Debra Magpie Earling
2. The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo
3. Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
4. Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
5. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
6. The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
7. Absolution by Alice McDermott

The Lists

Books by Author's Nationality

Britain
Araminta Hall (One of the Good Guys)

Japan
Keigo Higashino (The Final Curtain)

Mexico
Gerardo Sámano Córdova (Monstrilio)

Norway
Victoria Kielland (My Men)

USA
Chris Bachelder (Dayswork)
Debra Magpie Earling (The Lost Journals of Sacajewea)
Jennifer Habel (Dayswork)
Jessica Knoll (Bright Young Women)
Rachel Lyon (Fruit of the Dead)
James McBride (The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store)
Alice McDermott (Absolution)
Ann Napolitano (Hello Beautiful)
Paz Pardo (The Shamshine Blind)
Shelley Read (Go as a River)
Mary Rechner (Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women)
Maurice Carlos Ruffin (The American Daughters)
George Saunders (A Swim in a Pond in the Rain)
Tom Rob Smith (Cold People)
Jesse Q. Sutanto (Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers)
Justin Torres (Blackouts)
Ghassan Zeineddine (Dearborn)

Books by Year of Publication

2010
Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women by Mary Rechner

2013
The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino

2021
My Men by Victoria Kielland
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

2023
Absolution by Alice McDermott
Blackouts by Justin Torres
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
Cold People by Tom Rob Smith
Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel
Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine
Go as a River by Shelley Read
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
The Lost Journals of Sacajewea by Debra Magpie Earling
Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo
Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

2024
The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon
One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall

Well, friends, we are all still here and that counts for a lot. Let's get reading.

Best wishes, Kay! Merry Christmas!

Welcome back for another rollicking year of Club Read, Kay! Like you, my goal this year is not to have goals or participate in challenges. We'll see how it goes. I get so tempted reading other members' lists and plans.

>9 labfs39: Great goals. Having goals can be good if you are that sort of perso n and can optimize goals so they don’t restrict. But I’m not that sort of person. Give me a goal and I will achieve it to the extent of doing nothing else.

But please bear in mind, I think a good goal for you would be to follow all my recommendations 😊😊😊

>9 labfs39: Given that I am already busy reading the books for the Tournament of Books, I remain skeptical of my own ability to abandon reading goals.

Welcome Kay! Look forward to hearing about your reading in the new year.

Happy new thread/year, Kay! That comic made me smile.

>12 markon: Thanks, Ardene. I'm caught up on reviews and once I draw some conclusions about this year's reading, I'll be ready for 2024.

>13 lisapeet: I'm hoping it foretells what 2024 will be like. We enter, full of foreboding, and NOTHING BAD HAPPENS.

Looking forward to your 2024 reading, Kay. Happy New Year!

Excellent comic. I'll be following along again!

See you next year, Alison and Ursula. Here's to a good reading year, no matter what else is going on.

Happy new years and all my wishes for a great 2024, reading-wise and otherwise!

>18 chlorine: Thank you! I deliberately didn't finish a book yesterday, so I could jump start 2024 with a book finished on the first.

Happy New Year, Kay. Trapped by ToB? You? I think it’s a good group this year. But I can’t fit it in without cutting a lot else out.

>20 dchaikin: I'm going to try not to be a completist and only read the ones I want to this year. Dayswork was lovely and I'm glad to have read it.

Happy new year, Kay. I'm placing a request for more pet pics, tyvmia.

Happy New Year, Kay. I hope 2024 is a great year for you. I look forward to following your reading. My thread: https://www.librarything.com/topic/356547#n8339936

>22 LolaWalser: That is an easy request to honor!

>23 BLBera: While I will miss you here, I have starred your thread over there.

>24 RidgewayGirl: >23 BLBera: Yes, come back here. I did both last year and ended up staying at CR because there seemed to be more interaction.

In Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel, a woman goes through her days during covid in a house with her husband and children, researching Herman Melville's life. Told in single sentences spaced apart on the page, a format that delighted me the first time I encountered it (Jenny Offill's excellent Dept. of Speculation) but began to annoy me soon after, as book after book was published in this form, seemingly as a way of turning a collection of linked thoughts into a novel. String those bad boys together, I would think, you can just use entire paragraphs! But here, they work, reflecting the scattered nature of the narrator's thoughts. She's lost her focus, if not her interest, and goes off on tangents about people who interacted with Melville, or who wrote about him.

Running through the book are the words of The Biographer, who wrote two weighty volumes about the man, who idolized him, defending him from all criticism. The counterpoint to the hagiography are the many accounts of Melville being abusive and of his disregard for his family's welfare. Just as in the narrator's account, there are issues she has with her husband and moments of closeness, of shared history and fond affection.

I was charmed by this book, despite its format.

One really doesn't need to have read Moby Dick to read this novel, although MD is both worthwhile and a lot of fun, but a basic knowledge of Melville's life might be useful.

>26 RidgewayGirl: Thank you for reminding me about Moby Dick which I really should read.

Re the one sentience structure, it seems like many writers are experimenting with fiction structure since the old-style novel was no longer necessary to get published. If they are doing it just for the structure’s sake and not to use for any literary reason, it can be annoying. Just like the jumping around in time cane be over-used.

I’m sure it must be only in the audio version, but I’m reading The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox in audio and there are no chapter breaks, not even pauses, as the MC moves between 1920s India and modern day Scotland. Sometimes I have to rely on hints, like someone using a cell phone, to know what century I am in.

>26 RidgewayGirl: that’s a much better way to handle the pandemic shutdown than my way. I’m interested in the Melville take.

>26 RidgewayGirl: Just what I "don't" need - another book for my Moby Dick theme....

>27 kjuliff: I am all for experimentation and finding the best way to tell a story, without being tied to chronology or punctuation or whatever one needs to add or jettison. I do think, however, that authors should have reasons for choosing those styles, not just "this is popular now." I say that as the person who got a perm when she very much should not have, just because everyone was doing it.

Kate, Moby Dick is a daunting work to begin, but it's also a lot of fun. My advice is to dive into it and really relish how weird it is. The long cetology chapter is a masterpiece. Imagine the brain who wrote that and then stuck it in the middle of an adventure story.

>28 dchaikin: And the authors (a husband and wife) wrote this together during covid. Here's a very short interview with them where they discuss their writing process.

https://observer.com/2023/09/dayswork-author-interview-bachelder-habel/

>29 WelshBookworm: This is an excellent book for a Moby Dick theme!

>30 RidgewayGirl: I can’t imagine you ever having a perm.

Happy New Year, Kay! It would seem that we are both expecting different results from the same reading plans as last year. Somewhere Rebecca (rebeccanyc) is chuckling softly...

Nice review of Dayswork. I would like to read Moby Dick, at some point.

Having met you several times in person I cannot imagine you having a perm. 😳

Happy New Year Kay! Looking forward to your reviews, always good for some inspiration and bad for my TBR! I havent' read that Higashino so that's a first to look out for, after reading your thoughts!

I'm so looking forward to following your reading again. Dayswork sounds interesting but I think the structure would bother me.

Those trends can become so annoying when they're not an important part of the book or the way it reads. Like when suddenly so many children's books were published in poem form (even though mostly the 'poems' just read like they'd broken up a normal paragraph).

>31 kjuliff: & >32 kidzdoc: In my senior year portrait from high school, I'm rocking a permed bob with bangs, teal eyeshadow and a popped collar.

>33 Simone2: I'm hoping to review that today, Barbara.

>34 mabith: It might not jump out at you like it did me. In an interview, the authors explained that they wrote the book sentence by sentence, and Habel is a poet, so I suspect the structure came naturally to them.

Perms are back! And for the young teen BOY crowd! My oldest is 14 and hair that is short on the sides but long in the front and hangs down into their eyes is what's in. Even better if that long, floppy hair is permed!

Yikes . . .

>36 japaul22: That extremely short on the sides and long on top works well in young teenagers, but for grown men, the style looks like they have a tiny person's hair balanced on their head. My son forgot to get a haircut before he left at the end of the summer and he returned home with a lot of hair.

I am not a fan of Moby Dick, but Dayswork sounds intriguing. It's interesting to see more COVID novels being published and to see how different writers approach it.

>36 japaul22: sounds a bit like a poodle groom.

>38 BLBera: I'm hit or miss with covid novels, Beth, but this one just had covid running in the background, in a way that felt entirely natural.

The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino is a convoluted story of people hiding from debt collectors, their families, and their pasts and of the lengths they will go to remain hidden. A son is given his mother's ashes. She left when he was a child and as he looks into a memorial service for her, he tries to find the man she had been with in the years before her death, but the man could not be found, the name he used was not the one he had been born with. Meanwhile, a body is found in remnants of a makeshift shelter that had be set on fire. Who was the homeless man and why was it so difficult to establish his identity. And did his death have anything to do with the body of a woman from out of town found in sparsely furnished cheap accommodations that were not hers?

This installment in the series of police procedurals centered on Kyo Kaga is, once again, focused on the thoroughness of the Tokyo detectives, as they painstakingly chase down the smallest of leads. The pleasure of this series lies in how carefully the detectives work, how no loose ends are left, and how solving a crime does depend on insight and intuition, but mostly on footwork and careful attention to detail. There's a through line of people having things happen to them that put them outside of ordinary society and how they make their way. This novel provides some interesting insight into how Japanese society functions, but the real draw is the quietly charismatic detective Kago.

Happy new year, Kay. I’m smiling away to myself at the thought of you valiantly trying to resist those lists and plans… However you do it in the end, I hope you enjoy your reading, which is what matters - and however you do it, I know I’ll pick up lots of recommendations along the way.

>39 dianeham: haha, yes!

>41 RidgewayGirl: Looks like another series to add to my list of police procedurals.

>30 RidgewayGirl: I think I gave up on Moby Dick at the beginning of the cetology chapter. I hadn’t been trying very hard though. I should try again but I’m a bit reluctant to read the beginning for the second or probably third time.

>45 FlorenceArt: Would it work if you skipped that chapter. I’m thinking of trying that.

>45 FlorenceArt: Moby Dick is either great fun or terrible work. (IMHO 🙂)

>42 rachbxl: Thanks. I am attempting (again) to do a thing I am very bad at. But no matter how it ends up, I am hoping for another good reading year.

>44 markon: Ardene, I really like Japanese police procedurals, which are heavy on the minutiae of investigation and light on rogue cops going their own way.

>45 FlorenceArt: Could you skip ahead to the cetology chapter and just see how that goes? If you're intrigued, keep going, if not, well you're well able to say you've read enough to count MD as one of your accomplishments. My husband read an abridged version for young people as a teenager that definitely omitted all the things that made MD so bizarre and wonderful, but it can be pared down to a simple adventure tale.

>48 RidgewayGirl: Hm, maybe I should try that.

>41 RidgewayGirl: Again, you make me want to give this series a try. Last time that happened, I ended up reading The Miracles of the Namiya General Store, which I liked.

>41 RidgewayGirl: I have that one out of the library now, and despite my plan to read one book off my shelf for each library book I read, I'm sure that it will be one of the checked out library books I will definitely read, because he is one of my favorite crime writers.

>50 FlorenceArt: I've read four books by this author, including one that isn't a crime novel, and I'm eager to read more by him.

>51 arubabookwoman: This is a hard balance to strike. The new books keep coming and the library keeps letting us know we can borrow them.

Belated happy new year Kay. I am usully lurcking on your thread and will probably continue to do so this year (meaning, following but not participating).
Love the conversation on Moby Dick. I should go and read it at last!

>53 raton-liseur: Moby Dick was on my list for years. Some years I even made it a stated goal, hoping the embarrassment of not reading it would work (it didn't). I finally managed it in 2021.
Wait until you're truly ready, otherwise I think it might be a book you put down and somehow never finish. That said, I am glad I finally read it.

>53 raton-liseur: & >54 SassyLassy: I agree. Wait until you are so eager to dive in you can't stop yourself. It's a brilliant book, but also a weird one with a lot of digressions and it kind of needs the reader to have the most open of hearts.

Why Silvia wanted to sew a dress when she could go to a store and buy one much more easily, even more cheaply, she didn't know. She felt like making something that didn't get eaten, felt like doing something that didn't get undone almost immediately: cooking, dishes, laundry, vacuuming.

The stories in Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women by Mary Rechner center on motherhood and how it changes a woman's identity. From the first story, Pattern, in which the mother of twins tries to make a dress in time for her wedding anniversary, to Visiting Philly, in which a woman meets up with her best friend from college and they find that their friendship is the same and different. Like most collections, some stories were stronger than others, but the best stories beautifully reflect the realities of parenting young children, of women trying to find their earlier selves in what their lives have become.

Sounds like a good read. And, as always, I enjoy learning about another new(?) book through your posts.

>57 dchaikin: I have a stack of short story collections, all published by small presses, that I've picked up over the years -- whenever I get a chance to visit a different independent bookstore or the stall set up at book festivals, I hunt down short story collections by local authors. The booksellers/small press owners always have an author or two they want to talk about and I've made some lovely discoveries that way. I picked up this one at a table held by Propeller Books, a very small Portland, OR publisher, along with an older collection called The Northport Stories they'd brought back into print and for which I am the only owner listed on LT.

>58 RidgewayGirl: oh! That's cool you do that, but also that's a great story for how you found this book. (I noticed you have the only LT review). Thanks for sharing. And...I like this idea for picking up books. I'll keep it in mind.

Just stopping in to say hi, and I love your thread title. I'll be interested to see what you think of the Saunders--I have loved most of his fiction that I've read but haven't decided whether to try this one.

>56 RidgewayGirl: Sounds interesting. Young kids bring so much change to your whole identity - physically, mentally...

>60 Jim53: Hi, Jim, the Saunders is brilliant. Very different, of course, from his fiction, but it's really teaching me a lot about how short stories are structured and what makes for a good story. I waiting to get a copy of this until it was out in paperback as I knew I would have to mark it up as I read and it is indeed covered in penciled notes and post-it tags.

>61 AlisonY: It's interesting watching parenthood, and especially motherhood, become a worthwhile subject for fiction. There is far too little written about what being the mother of a young child entails, and what little there was tended toward humor or tragedy. It's good to see that change slowly.

Blackouts by Justin Torres won the National Book Award and after reading it, I can say that the judges really had no choice in the matter. It manages to be intelligent, innovative and full of heart, which is a lot for one book. The scaffolding for this novel is two men in a room, a small room in an old building in New Mexico, the curtains drawn. Juan is dying and his friend, who he last saw decades ago in a mental health facility, has come to spend these last days with him in this over-heated room, as they talk about their own pasts and read a bit from an old book called Sex Variants, where each page has been altered, words blacked out, making a new text. The also discuss the person who spear-headed the book's creation, her history and how she convinced a male doctor to be the head of the project, because she couldn't get traction as a woman, and how she was ultimately disappointed in what resulted.

This is the kind of book that ranges far and wide while staying in the same place. It's clever and intelligent, with the erasures revealing more than the original text did. It shares a format with Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman, a connection that Torres points out. It's a novel that deserves to be read slowly and ideally as a physical book, the object itself playing a part in how well this book holds together, with illustrations and photos enhancing the story being told.

This was a hard book for me to review, and given that mine is the first review up on the book's page, it seems others may have run into the same difficulty figuring out how to describe it in a few paragraphs.

>63 RidgewayGirl: I’m so happy to have read your review of Blackouts. I’ve been curious.

>63 RidgewayGirl: Great review of a strange yet intriguing sounding book.

P.S. the touchstone goes to a different work

>65 labfs39: That other work is also worth checking (even if I never got around to writing a review about it). :)

>64 dchaikin: I'm so surprised that the winner of the National Book Award is so entirely unknown.

>65 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa. I've fixed the touchstone. It really is a fascinating look at how homosexuality was treated in the first half of the last century.

Hey! I finally landed on your thread. Glad to finally be here. Blackouts and Nine Simple Patterns both look great. It's always fun to read reviews of books that are not being widely written about here on LT. Cheers!

I've suddenly been hearing about Justin Torres everywhere so I recently bought as a Kindle deal an earlier book by him, We the Animals. I still haven't read it. And I've put Blackout on hold at the library, which says I have an 11 week wait.

>68 rocketjk: Good to see you here, Jerry. I continue to be surprised that Blackouts doesn't have a hundred reviews. Short story collections by very small regional presses, sure, but a National Book Award winner?

>69 arubabookwoman: I put my hold in the minute I saw the National Book Award news, so I was able to get a copy in just a few weeks. I am interested in reading more by Torres.

Vera Wong is the sole proprietor of a failing teashop in San Francisco's Chinatown called Vera Wang's World Famous Teashop. Some days, well most days, her only customer is an elderly man who is caring for his wife. Things look up, however, when she comes down one morning to find a dead body on the shop floor. Despite the police, who appreciate neither the tea she tries to serve them, nor the outline around the body that she made in Sharpie before they arrived, the change of pace energizes her and she decides to find out who murdered the dead man herself. She even has three good suspects right off the bat -- three different people who she caught looking at her shop after she posted the news of the murder on-line.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto is a cozy mystery, which isn't my usual kind of book, but it was chosen by my book group and I ended up liking it. Vera is a good protagonist, she's pushy and determined, but she's also lonely and eager to help out when she sees a need. The other characters all came full of angst and deep feelings, in one case for each other, which provided the emotional stakes of this book -- the dead body belonging to someone who, everyone pretty much agrees, deserved to be dead. All in all, a fun foray into a genre I don't read.

>71 RidgewayGirl: It does sound like fun! At least, your review made me laugh.

>72 FlorenceArt: It was light and pleasant and I can see why cozy mysteries are popular. One was fun, but I think another would bring out my inner curmudgeon who prefers her crime novels to be grim.

We saw Justin Torres at the Portland Book Festival before the National Book Award was announced! He and Debra Magpie Earling discussed "Lost Stories," and were very good.

>74 BLBera: Beth, I envy you that. I went to the Portland Book Festival in 2022 and enjoyed it immensely.

On a pleasant summer day, aliens arrive and tell humankind that they have one month to move to Antarctica or else. It's quite a beginning for a novel, and an interesting one, but that's all we get of that. Everyone either moves south or prepares to die without question or resistance. The waters around Antarctica are filled with boats of every description, people are huddled on the shores of the most hostile continent in the middle of its winter, lacking fuel, shelter or clothing, which gives the great real start to the novel, seeing how people came together to...oh, never mind. As soon as people are huddled on shore, the book jumps forward twenty years.

Cold People is by Tom Rob Smith, who wrote Child 44 and a few other novels centered around the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence during the Cold War. They were thrillers, but ones well anchored in their historical setting, had interesting and plausible plots, and well-developed and complex characters. None of those elements make an appearance in this book.

So what is this book about, since it didn't care to waste time on the alien invasion or in polar survival? Well, since humankind is crowded onto a hostile area with very few resources and no interest in what is happening elsewhere, since people are living in extremely crowded and squalid conditions with barely enough of anything to survive, with all resources strictly controlled and rationed, with any surviving supplies from the rest of the world accessible only to the well-connected, with the end of any sort of representative government, and society controlled by a group of unelected elites, you'd expect that the story would finally gel around a resistance movement. You would be wrong. In this world, scarcity and over-crowding bring docility and contentment to the masses because, the author tells us several times, libertarianism has ended criminality. Also, there are draconian punishments for not being content and happy, but mostly it's a libertarian paradise, don't look to closely at how it works, that's not what this book is interested in.

So what is this book about? Well, because survival is so precarious, and the population dropping, all the scientists left have come together to create weird and terrifying hybrid animals that want to kill the remaining people. Yes, this was the consensus of the the best and brightest -- with aliens occupying most of the world, maybe, although no one has seen any sign of them, with humans desperately in need of a sustainable way to produce the things they need for survival, all the remaining wealth and resources is dedicated to building an enormous underground laboratory to make what they first intended to be small adjustments to the genetic code to make people better adapted to this new harsh environment, but now that all ethical considerations are considered moot, the scientists get over-excited and just keep one-upping themselves with smarter creatures, stronger and more able to survive and kill everyone. Do I need to tell you how this ends? Because, honestly, I gave up 85% of the way through. None of this was interesting, except, as it was written, the scientists weren't the bad guys. Also, since there was no more representative government, all the various world leaders opened a bar together. That was kind of interesting.

>76 RidgewayGirl: So weird. I’m not sure I would have lasted to 85%. Let’s hope your next read is more satisfying.

>77 FlorenceArt: I read it for the Tournament of Books, an annual book event I very much enjoy and for which I usually read all of the 18 books involved ahead of time. While there are often books that fall far outside of what I usually enjoy reading, until now it's been a good way to stretch my reading. I can't figure out how such a badly written and lazy book made the list.

On the bright side, I've decided to not worry about reading all the books on the list. I'll read the ones I want to, and leave the rest alone.

>76 RidgewayGirl: I just abandoned that. I read to the point that Echo had graduated from the special school for people like her, and the family was going to go to McMurdo Station. It was getting pretty silly, but along the way I was annoyed by how it would set up a premise, then abandon it and move somewhere else. The characters were unreal too. Glad I wasn't the only one to have issues with it.

>79 arubabookwoman: It was so bad, Deborah! I think it finally lost me when the couple were given an entire house to themselves despite the over-crowding, because their love was just so special and true. It read like badly written fan fiction.

>76 RidgewayGirl: an a+ entertaining thrashing. Yuck. I’ll pass.

>76 RidgewayGirl: You're not making me want to! Enjoyed your review, though.

>76 RidgewayGirl: What a bizarre book! Thanks for reviewing so the rest of us know to stay away!

>76 RidgewayGirl: Thanks for the comments, Kay. I might have picked it up expecting an interesting dystopian novel. I will pass on it.

>58 RidgewayGirl: This is a great idea - I love to support indie bookshops and small presses but had not thought about actually talking to the people there about a local author they would recommend (hi, waving at you from socially anxious corner). I'll do this in future.

>76 RidgewayGirl: What an incredible waste of a premise!

>85 wandering_star: The people running small presses or working in independent bookstores are passionate about books and love to hand sell books. They also know local authors and want you to get to read their books. I once had a woman in a small town hand sell me a book (Dirtbags by Eryk Pruitt) and then notice the author walking down the street and attempt to get his attention to introduce me. it's wild. Fortunately, it was raining too hard for him to hear her calling his name.

You might already be aware of this booktuber, but thought I would mention Sarah's channel, Eyes on Indie:

https://www.youtube.com/@eyesonindie

She focuses on new releases from independent presses in her videos. She lives in Chicago and occasionally features independent bookstores, too.

>86 RidgewayGirl: Too funny!

>87 kac522: Thanks, Kathy, I'll check out her channel. I have a good friend who loves BookTube and keeps wanting me to explore that, but our reading interests are so different that the channels she loves are not for me.

>88 labfs39: It was! She was yelling, "Eryk! Eryk!" into the pouring rain and I was hoping so hard that he would not hear. How awkward would that have been?

Great review of Blackouts; that does sound interesting!

I hated Child 44, so you couldn't get me to read anything else by Tom Rob Smith.

>90 kidzdoc: Darryl, I would love to find out what you think about Blackouts. I hope you pick it up someday! I'd also love to yell about how bad Cold People is with you, but if you hated Child 44, Cold People might just cause your head to explode.

Hello, hello! It has taken me a while to get here, but my 2024 thread is up (albeit under construction). I posted reviews of the two amazing books I have completed so far, The Fraud by Zadie Smith and North Woods by Daniel Mason. As always, I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts on the books you choose this year. I always pick up some great suggestions from you (and some books to avoid).

>92 Cariola: Good to see you here!

Go as a River by Shelley Read begins in a small Colorado town called Iola in the 1940s, when a teenage girl meets a young man and is immediately smitten. But the young man is Native American and unwelcome in that small town and Victoria's brother is excited by the idea of chasing the man away. Victoria has been taking care of her brother, father and uncle since a car accident killed the other members of this farming family and this romance has opened her eyes to the possibilities outside of her small world.

Set against the backdrop of the creation of the Blue Mesa Reservoir, Victoria's life is beset with many tragedies, from the deaths of her father and her lover, to giving away her own infant and then spending the rest of her life longing for him. In all of the melodrama, the historic events that form the background of the novel; the building of the dam, the abandonment of the town of Iola and changes to the landscape caused by the dam, are all a little lost or glossed over. But the novel is solidly written and pleasant enough to read.

>94 RidgewayGirl: hmm. I’m interested in the glossed over background. Anyway, glad to read your review

>95 dchaikin: This was chosen for my book group by the historian in our group and I'm pretty sure that she chose it because the marketing copy emphasized the story of the drowned town. Incidentally, during 2018, drought caused the town to become visible again. I wonder if this article gave the author the idea.

https://www.denverpost.com/2018/12/22/blue-mesa-reservoir-drought-submerged-colo...

I created a LT list of books which feature a village or town submerged by a dam! https://www.librarything.com/list/13180/all/Rising-water

I've just enjoyed catching up on your thread. Dayswork and Blackouts both sound particularly interesting, yet more for the list. Also enjoyed reading your review of Cold People and glad to be warned away from it! Sounds like the author was just throwing out random ideas and then not following any of them through.

>97 wandering_star: I've added Go as a River to your list.

>98 valkyrdeath: Those are the two standout books I've read so far this year.

>96 RidgewayGirl: I didn’t have patience for that article. Too much irrelevant stuff up front. But interesting story.

>100 dchaikin: I just looked at the pictures.

He would have been terrifying to her from the moment she laid eyes on him. Gone were the head-to-toe tennis whites, the plummy voice, and the handicapped act, the pleas to compliant young women for help, which we'd been conditioned from birth to answer the same way he'd been conditioned from birth to expect a woman to take care of him.

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll is a novel about the victims of a famous serial killer, in which the women are centered and the promise of their lives mourned. The person who is usually centered in this story, in movies, in documentaries, in novels, and true crime podcasts, is here never named, never described except to point out how small he was, how mediocre his mind.

Pamela is the president of her sorority house at Florida State University. She's dedicated to running the house well, which has put her at odds with her freewheeling best friend, and on that night, when most of her sisters are out having fun, she is doing paperwork. Early in the morning hours, she goes downstairs and sees a man leaving the house. The next morning, two of the girls are found dead and two seriously injured.

Ruth is newly divorced and insecure about her looks when she meets Tina, falls in love and is learning how to extricate herself from a family horrified by what she is. On a hot summer's day, she bikes to a local lake to spend time with her girlfriend, when a man asks her for help moving his boat. She never meets up with Tina.

The victims of this murderer were bright and had promising futures ahead of them. Pamela and Tina are determined to do what they can to bring him to justice, even when that means that the men around them find them pushy and unfeminine. Even when the judge at his sentencing spends time mourning the life lost behind bars and none for the women whose futures were far brighter. I suspect this will end up on my best of list at the end of the year.

Great review of Bright Young Women, Kay. Is it entirely fictional, or it is based in part on an actual serial killer?

>102 RidgewayGirl: interesting and tempting review Kay.

>103 kidzdoc: It's based on the actual victims of Ted Bundy. How he is never named and only described in ways that point out how his image as a very intelligent and charismatic person were mainly the invention of the inept police and the news media, which saw a popular story. And the immense amounts of misogyny present, that held it a shame that he'd ruined his life, but didn't consider all the lost potential in the many women he killed.

>104 kjuliff: Kate, it also drew a vivid picture of what life was like for women in the seventies. Doors were opening, but very slowly.

>102 RidgewayGirl: This does not sound like a book I would normally pick, but your review makes me wish to read out of my comfort zone. I'm making a note to either read it in English or wait for the translation in French.
Have you read anything else by this author? (I like the contrast between the topic of this book and the title of her first novel, Luckiest Girl Alive... Sorry for the bad joke...).

>102 RidgewayGirl: Finally, someone who has written a novel that centers the women in a novel about murder, instead of the sick or creepy killler of women! Refreshing.

>107 markon: I would suggest These Women by Ivy Pochoda, who does exactly that. I do not read a lot of murder books, but reading that one was an interesting experience and I felt the author was doing something interesting and new (to me).

>106 raton-liseur: This was my first book by this author. I'm wary of thrillers because I love a good one but they are mostly very bad, but her first book is on my radar now. And since you liked These Women, I think you'll appreciate what Knoll is doing with Bright Young Women.

>107 markon: I second r-l's recommendation of These Women.

Blackouts sounds really interesting. It will probably take me a while to get to, but happy to have it to put on my to-read list.

Cold People definitely one of those books I'm glad to read a review of and even more glad I didn't attempt to read (like being told about a terrible TV show by an annoyed friend).

>102 RidgewayGirl:, >107 markon: noting both Bright Young Women and These Women, since like you, Kay, I love a good thriller but I’m so, so, tired of bad ones that I almost don’t want to pick any up any more. This year I’m consciously holding my own course rather than letting myself be immediately swayed by books that look good on other threads, but I’ll still be keeping track of books that catch my eye - I just want to react a bit more slowly…

>105 RidgewayGirl: Ah. That makes sense, Kay. For some reason the story seemed vaguely familiar to me, and I now understand why.

>105 RidgewayGirl: Thanks Kay. I see it’s on audio. The seventies was a difficult time for women particularly in Australia. I will read this with interest.

>102 RidgewayGirl: Great review, and a book that I'll be adding to my list. I do like the idea of focusing on the women without naming the killer.

>111 rachbxl: I echo these comments. I love a good thriller, but at this point, picking through the chaff for a few grains of wheat gets harder and harder.

>110 mabith: Blackouts is a fantastic book and one I think we'll still be reading decades from now. As for Cold People, it had a lot of intriguing ideas, but since the author wasn't interested in them, the story never went anywhere interesting. It could easily have been a good book. But I guess it's the beginning of a planned series, with the good genetically-modified creatures battling the bad genetically-modified creatures, which I guess should be great for anyone who wants more Godzilla vs. Mothra-type match-ups in fiction?

>111 rachbxl: Letting a book sit on a list for a while instead of jumping right on it seem like a very good idea and one I'm trying to follow, too. Easier said than done, but it's not like there aren't other books to read in the meantime.

>112 kidzdoc: It says something that there are several serial killers we can recognize based on just a few details, while all the victims are forgotten.

>113 kjuliff: Kate, I'd be interested in finding out the differences between Australian and American ideas of what women could do then. I grew up in the eighties, where the messages were, to put it lightly, mixed.

>114 rv1988: Hi, Rasdhar! Welcome to Club Read! Yes, good thrillers are hard to find and often even authors who have written good thrillers end up churning out mediocre ones to satisfy the demand. I've found I read fewer and fewer of them, waiting to find out what reviewers I trust think of them before giving one a chance.

Bright Young Women isn't the kind of book I would normally read, but your comments make it very tempting. I really like the premise.

>102 RidgewayGirl: I read the blurb on this one a few days ago and thought it might have been based on the Bundy murders. Sounds like an interesting approach, but probably not my cuppa.

I Tried Bright Young Women and didn’t care for it. The author was insistent about the killer not being smart or attractive. But he was. I learned a lot about psychopaths by reading the book that Ted Bundy carried with him during his trial, Mask of Sanity by Hervey M. Cleckley.

>119 dianeham: Well, he did/does have fans, but he failed out of school and several women reported him as being creepy. But it made a good story to posit him as charismatic and intelligent and it provided cover for truly gob-smacking incompetence on the part of law enforcement that let him escape twice.

Mask of Sanity sounds a bit disturbing

Ghassan Zeineddine's debut collection of short stories all take place in Dearborn, Michigan among the Arab American community there. His stories center on a wide variety of Dearbornites, some who love the city they call home, others who long to return to Lebanon. They are observant Muslims, atheists, or somewhere in between. They are young and old, wealthy and struggling to get by. It's an achievement to write so well across such a range of experiences and this collection is impressive -- there's simply not a weak story in the book. An aspiring writer finally finds success as a narrator for audiobooks, a group of middle-aged married couples find their comfortable routines upended by the presence of a man wearing a speedo, a teenager discovers the complicated truth about the uncle he adores when his uncle comes to visit from Lebanon. Each story is so well crafted and also so fresh and full of life. This is a fantastic collection and I encourage everyone to get their hands on a copy of this excellent book.

Nice review of Dearborn, Kay. I'll mention this book to my cousin Tina when she comes here on Thursday; she lives in nearby Ypsilanti, Michigan.

>123 kidzdoc: The way those cities surrounding Detroit change over time with new immigrants replacing the immigrants who came a generation or two earlier is so interesting. And vital to the continuing health of those cities.

Also, it's published by Graywolf Press, one of my favorite small presses, if they can even be considered a small press anymore -- maybe independent publisher is more accurate.

Interestingly I was just reading about Detroit and its changing community in Why Niebuhr Matters. He was a pastor there in the 1910s and 1920s before he moved to NYC to teach at the Union Theological Seminary, and Charles Lemert, the author of this book, describes how he adopted the social gospel, in order to aid his parishioners who weren't being given a fair shake by Henry Ford and other automakers and large corporations in the Motor City. This book is absolutely superb so far, and it will be a great introduction to Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics.

>122 RidgewayGirl: nice find and great review. I’m interested.

>122 RidgewayGirl: I'm really happy to hear that you liked this one. I do love short stories and my connections with Dearborn, even if not part of the Muslim community there, made me curious. On to the wish list it goes.

>124 RidgewayGirl: Exactly. My relatives who lived in Dearborn--and we're talking in the '80s and earlier--were Polish. Now Dearborn is majority Muslim. Many of my dad's relatives of course lived in Hamtramck. By the time my grandmother died in the '70s, most of her neighbors were African American. They had lived in that house for almost 50 years.

>127 Cariola: I knew you'd be interested in this one, given its proximity to Detroit. It really is a fantastic collection.

>127 Cariola: My maternal grandparents lived in Detroit, where my grandfather worked as a chef at the Detroit Leland Hotel. But by the time I was born, they had returned to rural Missouri, so all I have about that are a few stories from my mother.

>122 RidgewayGirl: This sounds great, Kay. I will look for it.

Cody had a not-great senior year of high school, and the aftermath of that is that she wasn't accepted to any colleges. She did manage to get a summer job as a junior camp counselor at the camp she's spent every summer at, which is good, but when camp wraps up, she's not looking forward to returning home. Then, the father of one of her charges makes her the offer of a job as babysitter to his two kids for the rest of the summer, until they are returned to their mother. The job is on his private island, where there's no cell phone service, and she has to decide immediately and sign an NDA, but she decides to take the job.

Emer isn't having a great time, either, discovering on a trip to China, that the new rice varietal that the non-profit she heads has failed, leaving the farmers they'd enticed with promises of higher yields, left destitute. Now she's fighting to keep the non-profit afloat, to find a solution, and also getting a few vague texts from her daughter about an internship for an unspecified businessman, but receiving no answer to her own calls and texts. She decides that despite the turmoil at her workplace, she has no choice but to go find her daughter.

Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon is loosely structured on the story of Demeter and Persephone, and it's a lot of fun to see the elements of the myth arising in different guises. There are two entertwined stories here; a single mother's search for her daughter and the story of a very young woman who isn't sure what she wants to do with the next few years, let alone her life and how she feels her way towards maturity while existing in a place designed to thwart thought and reason.

Lyon writes with nuance and understanding from both the viewpoint of a directionless young woman and her over-extended mother, creating two characters in conflict but who also deeply love each other. She also manages to make Emer's fear for her daughter as she learns where she is and who she is with compelling and urgent while also showing Cory as curious and eager to be included in with the grown-ups. Lyon is juggling two different stories here and she does so in a way that makes both fascinating and real.

Sounds like it was enjoyable. Great review. That cover looks like a 1970’s mass market paperback.

One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall starts out with Cole, as he begins to rebuild his life after his wife left him. As he tells the story of his marriage, how his wife would verbally attack him and how, by the end, he was an abused spouse, but that he'd still like to put his marriage back together, how his college girlfriend also inexplicably turned on him, how he is a caring feminist, fully aware of the difficulties and dangers women face, it looks like this novel is going to be utterly predictable. As Cole goes on about what a great partner he is, and how it's the women in his life who are the abusive ones, it looks like this novel is going to simply be another book about domestic violence. Don't get me wrong, it's still underrepresented in fiction, but for a genre that requires some level of suspense and a few twists and turns, and from an author whose previous books had delivered on that element of the thriller, it was disappointing.

And then it turns out that this is a completely different novel than expected. While Cole may be exactly as he appears, the people around him very much aren't and what looked like a straightforward story becomes something a lot more complex and morally ambiguous. I don't think every element of this plot held together, but it was a lot of fun and it kept surprising me, so it did what a thriller is supposed to do.

>127 Cariola:

Hamtramck

Ahhh, weird that I should know anything about this little town but I recognise the name from when it made the news last year when the all-Muslim--and all-male-- city council banned LGBTQ symbols from public displays (IIRC, or on city property). I wonder if there's been any change, I can't seem to find anything new on this since last summer.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/16/hamtramck-michigan-pride-flag-b...

Mind you, not that long ago it would have been just as unthinkable that Polish-Americans would be OK with us depraved gays, so I'm not saying there's no hope, only it DOES hurt to go backwards.

>122 RidgewayGirl: Nice review of Dearborn, I will certainly be trying it!

>130 RidgewayGirl: Gosh, this sounds interesting. I haven't come across the book before.

>131 dchaikin: The reviews of One of the Good Guys all suggest the twist is well-done - I'm glad you agree. One more vote for the book.

Very nice couple of reviews, it seems like you had some enjoyable reads lately! I've immediately wishlisted Dearborn as I love short stories.

Great review of One of the Good Guys, Kay.

Today would have been the 40th birthday of my dear friend Hillary Bauer, who you and Pattie met when the four of us had dinner in Truva, the Turkish restaurant in Atlanta's Virginia-Highland neighborhood. Her father posted this incredibly touching message on her Facebook timeline last night:

It has been so hard to accept that it has been almost six months since Hillary died. Although faced with unbelievably difficult health challenges for so many years, she never gave up. We remember her as an amazing person with the best laugh and unparalleled compassion and support for others, making a significant difference in so many lives. As many of you know, Hillary adored birthdays, especially her own. From the time she was little, she would start planning her birthday months in advance. If she had her way, she would have declared an entire birthday month!

Tomorrow, on January 28, Hillary would have turned 40, a milestone she was so looking forward to. We hope that those who loved her will join us in celebrating and remembering moments when she made you laugh or showed you how much she cared. We like to think that Hillary is with her beloved grandparents, smiling because she remembered and loved. And if you ever see a rainbow, think of Hillary. She found so much joy in rainbows, much like flowers- a constant source of happiness for her.

We also want to express our gratitude to the many relatives, friends, and others who have supported us - sending notes, flowers, and food, making donations in her honor, and in so many other ways. We hope we have reached out to each person to say thank you, but if we inadvertently missed anyone, please know how much we appreciate your caring.

Our heartfelt thanks, Deb, Tom, Becca, Darren, Owen, and Callie.
_____________________

I think that God sends us angels to enrich our lives temporarily, and we grieve when they are taken from us. Hillary was absolutely one of them.

Sorry, the screen on my mobile phone is getting blurry...

>134 rv1988: Fruit of the Dead will be released in the US in March.

>135 chlorine: Yes, having read one truly bad book, I'm happy to be reading things that I enjoy.

>136 kidzdoc: I'm sorry, Darryl. She was such good company and made that evening so much fun.

>137 RidgewayGirl: I'm very happy that you & Pattie were able to meet Hillary and get a sense of how much all of us who knew her loved her, Kay.

Back when the part of the pandemic where stores were closed, my favorite bookstore allowed people to book appointments for a half hour of shopping and I jumped on the chance to finally see the top part of a good friend's face as we bought more books than planned, out of an excess of joy at being out in the world for a short time. At the time A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders had just been published and I eyed the book for several minutes before deciding to wait for the paperback. I will gleefully mark up a paperback, but will not so much as dog-ear the page of a hardcover, and this felt like a book I would want to at least underline a few passages.

I was right about it, this is a book that invites the reader to interact with it, to draw conclusions, to highlight sentences, and to tab the spots where they will want to return. Saunders presents seven short stories by Russian authors and then takes the reader through what the author was doing and how he did it. Along the way, there is discussion about everything from the predictable lessons on characterization and plotting, to how translation affects a work, to how a story might transcend the author's intentions.

I was reading other books as I worked my way through this and I found myself choosing short story collections and reading those stories differently, with a greater appreciation for the skill involved in making a character, or several characters, immediately an individual, and how the beats of a story are spaced and structured. Saunders is a gifted and generous teacher and I'm glad to have expanded my skills as a reader. I can see myself rereading this book in a few years.

>139 RidgewayGirl: This is already on my wishlist thanks to Dan, but after reading your review I want to drop everything and read it now. You make me think it's one I'll want to buy, not borrow.

>139 RidgewayGirl: Isn't it interesting how books remind us of certain times of our life--when and where we bought them, who we were with, when and where we read them, what was going on in our lives then. This one seems to have unearthed some good memories for you of that awful pandemic time.
I bought this for Kindle back about that time, but haven't gotten to it yet. I keep meaning to.

>139 RidgewayGirl: i had the same experience of immediately applying his ideas to how i saw what i was reading. What struck me most was the efficiency he points out. How small seemingly random observations are so important to them. I listened to Afterlives by Gurnah next, and it felt like the perfect follow up. He used so many of Saunders points.

>141 arubabookwoman: Yes, I read Fellowship of the Ring when I was camping in Australia. Even thinking about that book takes me back.

Old music takes me back too. I remember in the early days of marriage, my husband played Crosby Stills etc albums and over. I am always reminded of him when I hear the lyrics of “ Love the One You're With”
.

>143 kjuliff: Music takes me back too. I can't listen to more than a few Beatles songs in a row without becoming too nostalgic and even teary. My husband listens primarily to 60's music and I sometimes have to ask him to put on earphones.

>139 RidgewayGirl: Such a great review, and I'm adding this to my list.

>144 arubabookwoman: I was just going to say too, that this is true of music. Certain songs can put me right back to college, or my childhood, or even a specific moment.

My Men by Norwegian author Victoria Kielland and translated by Damion Searls, is based on the life of Belle Gunness, a real woman who emigrated from Norway to the US and then murdered several people, including family members, in the early 1900s in the Midwest. Kielland changes some details, although not the protagonist's name, but she is less interested here in the details than she is in Belle's emotional state. The novel is told in the third person, but from within Belle's emotions, so that events are recounted not by what happened, but by how Belle felt. And in moments of great emotional upheaval, Belle goes silent, so that what happens is told in the aftermath.

This is a novel without sharp details, one of rounded corners, giving the impression of watching through a dirty window. And I suspect that the translation adds an addition layer of cloudy glass. This is, in other words, a hard novel to cipher. Despite the way the book follows Belle's state of mind, I don't know any more about this character after reading this book than I did beforehand.

>146 RidgewayGirl: Too bad, as she seems an interesting historical person.

>146 RidgewayGirl: I read In the Garden of Spite: A Novel of the Black Widow of La Porte - also a fictionalized version of Belle Guinness. I read it a few years ago and gave it 4 stars. Don’t remember too much about it but I didn’t hate it.

>133 LolaWalser: Oh, that's really too bad. I thought MAGAheads were the only ones making a stink about rainbows and other LGBTQ symbols. But unfortunately, Muslims can be as non-tolerant as evangelical Christians. I hate that our country is going backwards in so many ways.

>147 labfs39: Lisa, I think that part of the issue was the translation -- not that the translator was at fault -- but that Nordic languages, when translated into English, often have a slight sense of remove to them. I noticed that when I was reading Scandinavian crime novels; how they read in German was different to how they read in English. In this case, adding an extra space where there was already a great deal of space, was just too much space, if that makes any sense at all. And the stuff set in the US felt off, which tracks with the author writing and living in Norway. The Norwegian parts felt more inhabited. She also changed the location of Belle's final residence from Indiana to South Dakota and I couldn't see why, except maybe that sounds more exotic?

>148 dianeham: Diane, I'm not that interested in reading true crime. I picked up this one because it sounded interesting and was a big deal in Norway. Incidentally, back when I worked in bookstores during high school and college, I had a friend who referred to the true crime shelves as the "how-to section."

>149 Cariola: I just read an article about the same thing happening in a school district in Glendale, CA, which has a large number of Armenian immigrants. It's more worrying when it comes from Evangelical Republicans, as they have real power to make things worse, but it's still not good.

>133 LolaWalser: “We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stackpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”

Sadly I see this as inevitable. It’s a clash that I can’t see any way around. We can’t discriminate on religion or gender, yes a (I assume) democratically elected council can take undemocratic actions.

>146 RidgewayGirl: sounds like a curious reading experience

>153 dchaikin: It was interesting. Given the subject matter, maybe the cloudiness was a virtue.

I read a nonfiction account of Belle Guinness's story a couple years ago - Hell's Princess. It was only ok.

Gruesome story, though.

>155 japaul22: I remain curious as to what her motivations were. But not curious enough to read further.

If you're American, you grew up with the story of the brave Indian maid who helped out Lewis and Clark on their journey across the western half of the American continent. What usually isn't included in the children's tale is that she was taken along as the enslaved chattel of their interpreter and that she was so, so young. Debra Magpie Earling tells the more complicated story in her novel, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea.

The book begins with Sacajawea's childhood, where her parents teach her about the world around her. Earling is doing something very interesting and difficult here -- her protagonist is from a society that is pre-literate and that has its own complicated spirituality based on nature. To recount Sacajewea's experiences in her own words is to enter a place where language is used differently, and while there is a note explaining what is intended, it was an effort for me to understand what is going on in beginning of the book. As Sacajawea grows up and as events in her life lead her into contact with both other tribes and with white men, her language changes accordingly, which was easier to follow, but also heartbreaking. This is not a happy story; it's full of beauty and poetry, but also full of pain as she is first kidnapped by a hostile tribe and then traded to a French Canadian when she is still a child. I admire what Earling has accomplished here, but I am not going to reread this one.

Very interesting review. This sounds like a good and important but difficult to read book.

>157 RidgewayGirl: her language changes accordingly, which was easier to follow, but also heartbreaking. This is not a happy story; it's full of beauty and poetry, but also full of pain

This one has been on my radar for awhile, and I think a few people are contemplating a March read. I know I most likely wouldn't finish this on my own, so I may join in.

>158 chlorine: I'm also not a poetry person. I think someone who likes that kind of playing around with language will find this novel more accessible than I did.

>159 markon: A group read would work well for this book since that means you can help each other figure out what's going on, especially in the first half of the book.

>157 RidgewayGirl: sounds like a very tricky writing project. How would you go about reconstructing that lost world? Thought-provoking review

>161 dchaikin: More than just a lost world that had no written history, but a lost way of thinking and being in the world. It was a book I had to slow down and take my time with, rereading passages and just thinking about what I was reading.

As an addition to the discussion about the short story collection Dearborn, about the way communities change over time, an editorial was recently published in the Washington Post saying that the city was filled with evil jihadists and Muslim extremists. This kind of rhetoric, along with being a lie, is dangerous and irresponsible and that it was published in somewhere as mainstream as the WaPo is deeply worrying.

>157 RidgewayGirl: I really look forward to this one. It sounds like it will be a good book to discuss.

>164 BLBera: I'm really looking forward to the Tournament of Books discussion.

I keep forgetting about the ToB! I need to check to see what books are on the tournament this year.

>166 BLBera: Beth, here's the line-up.

https://www.tournamentofbooks.com/the-2024-shortlist

thanks Kay. I will check it out.

>157 RidgewayGirl: This sounds super interesting, but apparently none of my libraries have it. Sad face.

>167 RidgewayGirl: That is quite a list, Kay. I haven't heard of half of the books! I've only read one.

>169 ursula: Yeah, I got my copy through one of those $1.99 kindle deals.

>170 BLBera: It's a weird list. It's an anniversary year, so they chose books by authors who had books in previous long lists and the results are a little iffy, in my opinion. Great books left out, truly substandard books allowed in (yes, Cold People, that is you). Still there are a few books I would never have read without this list and a few that would have taken me a lot longer to get to without this list. I have decided not to worry about reading all the books this year.

>94 RidgewayGirl: After your comment on my thread I looked up yours and was pleasantly surprised that you reviewed Go as a River. It was certainly not a 'big story' but it was one of my Memorable Books of 2023.

My rating of it had nothing to do with the dam and associated issues. That was just scene setting to the tragic events for Victoria. As per usual for me the value of a book revolves around the story of a life and consequences for them.

The impact on a woman of life choices was another one of my Memorable books of 2023. It is Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult. It is a story of a trans young girl and where it ended up because of ignorance about her life.

I am very impressed with your reviews and the selection of books to read whatever your method!

>172 JoeB1934: Thank you, Joe. My selection process is basically whim, the two book clubs in my neighborhood, and whatever awards lists catch my eye. Also anything brand new and shiny. I do like a newly published book.

>163 RidgewayGirl:

Err, do you mean The Wall Street Journal? (Google shows WSJ, Feb 2: Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital) I know WaPo's supposed to have gone down the drain but not to that extent surely!

>149 Cariola:, >150 RidgewayGirl:

I think it's been generally shown that immigrants are typically more conservative than the host country (because usually it's a matter of coming from poorer and more traditional to richer and more socially liberal countries) but that over time the differences soften in subsequent generations. There are factors that may set Muslims apart from other immigrant groups, however--for one thing, that everlasting source of crisis, the Palestinian conflict, and all the wars the US and its European allies waged in the Middle East. I would expect this to be the major obstacle to successful integration.

In any case, speaking of currently urgent politics, this article is from last October but I found it illuminating not just in the case of the US but other places where we are witnessing increasing collusion between the right wing, and conservative Muslims, such as in the UK and Canada.

How some Michigan Muslims united with extremist Republicans against LGBTQ+ rights

...Now conservative Muslims and white, Christian evangelicals have found common ground in their opposition to shifting gender roles, LGBTQ rights, and secularism.

I'm quoting this bit to underline that this isn't just bonding against "the LGBTQ agenda"--it also implies the status and treatment of women, and, at the broadest level, the separation of religion and state. This is not to say the goals of Republicans and conservative Muslims are entirely the same--Republicans are using Muslims to regain power, and conservative Muslims see the Republicans as guarantors of "family values" (given that they can't rely on the Democrats to protect their interests in the Middle East).

>151 kjuliff:

Better sex education would be the solution, I think, not just for the kids but their parents too.

>174 LolaWalser: Yes, you're right. The Wall Street Journal.

The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo is a detective novel set in an alternate world where the Argentinians won the Falklands War Malvinas War and continued on to occupy the United States. The Argentinian military developed a weapon called psychopigments -- clouds of colored powder that can alter people's emotions. The first, and deadliest is called Deep Blue, which destroys a person's memories. Military use of this psychopigment has turned the large American cities into ghost towns, the new metropolises are now located in places like Boise.

The story follows Kay Curtida, an psychopigment enforcement agent tracking down illegal pigments in the sleepy backwater of Daly City, whose proximity to a still dangerous San Francisco keeps it irrelevant. She dreams of the big time, pursuing complex cases instead of chasing petty criminals. Then a case turns out to be bigger and more interesting than anything she's ever seen. Is this her chance to finally get a transfer to the bright lights of Boise?

The first twenty pages of this novel were hard going. There's a lot of world building going on, which interrupts the flow of the story, and this part of the book is overwritten; there isn't a noun that escapes without an adjective or two. Fortunately, as the scaffolding of this alternate version of 2009 is finally erected, the adjectives also calm down and the story takes off. And that story is a lot of fun as Curtida tries to figure out what exactly is going on. The story involves a photogenic religious leader, a pawnbroker who collects all sorts of junk, an old love interest, Curtida's hopeful mother and a host of other colorful characters. While it does take longer to get going than most detective novels, this is an imaginative take on the genre.

>176 RidgewayGirl: Great comments, Kay. This was one that looked interesting to me. I will probably pick it up at some point.

>177 BLBera: Beth, it is fun, but you do have to get past the first few chapters.

Your comments will help me to persevere, Kay.

>176 RidgewayGirl: Interesting review. I’m putting it on my list but will have to keep in mind your warning about the first 20 pages so that I will stick with it.

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano centers on a family of four sisters and the man one of them married, but all of them loved in their own ways. William grew up with parents who were unable to love him, but he found a sense of belonging on the basketball court. While attending Northwestern, he meets a young woman and they quickly marry. Julia is focused and has a plan and William is grateful to be included. He also meets her family, including her three sisters and learns quickly that their relationship with each other is unbreakable. Yet, when a crisis occurs, the sisters find themselves in conflict and decisions are made that will affect them for decades.

This is a book about ordinary people, living ordinary lives. It's also a book where the emotional impact is well-earned, with a cast of characters whose actions feel very natural. One character is described as saving herself for her own Gilbert Blythe, a detail that perfectly described the life of a bookish young person -- is there anyone who was a young avid reader whose first crushes were not fictional? Napolitano's writing is very workmanlike, yet it serves the no-nonsense feel of this story. There's also a wonderful sense of place, of the Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago as it changes over the decades. I can see why this novel is a bestseller and if you're a fan of books like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and A Man Called Ove, you'll probably love this book as well.

>181 RidgewayGirl: a striking cover. I’ve read many mindless positive reviews (on Litsy) and sour negative reviews (on facebook), but I think your’s is the first thoughtful review i’ve read. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

>182 dchaikin: It was a pleasant book to intersperse with more dour fare. It was unchallenging in a way that didn't feel like I was wasting my time. I liked that it was set in Chicago, too.

>181 RidgewayGirl: This sounds appealing so I've added it to the wishlist.

You got me thinking about my first fictional crush which I think was Indiana Jones. What I most remember about my relationship with characters from books is wanting to be them, e.g. Trixie Beldon.

>184 rhian_of_oz: First fictional crushes... hmm, Herr Baer from Little Women and Little Men (I would pretend to run an orphanage school like Plumfield with dolls and stuffed animals, ok I was a strange child) or Rhett Butler (ever so dashing to a 12 year old when I first read Gone with the Wind). Although I read lots of Trixie Belden books, Jim was an incipient character, in my mind, until he got a leather jacket. :-)

>184 rhian_of_oz: Ah, yes, the eternal charm of Harrison Ford. And also yes to wanting to experience the adventures in my childhood books myself. I did have a fantasy that I was secretly the child of circus performers and would be somehow able to swing from a trapeze and ride on elephants. This was only somewhat tempered by my strong resemblance to the rest of my family and my utter lack of gymnastic skills.

>185 labfs39: Not Laurie? Boo! He was so much more fun that Herr Baer.

>186 RidgewayGirl: Ha! Never! Laurie was a goodie two-shoes. Frederik was an intellectual.

>187 labfs39: At least we'll never fight over a man, even a fictional one.

>188 RidgewayGirl: Bwaahaha!

>186 RidgewayGirl: I recently saw Harrison Ford on a talk show and he hasn’t aged as gracefully as some. Although he was before my time, and certainly yours, I much preferred Cary Grant.

>190 kjuliff: Harrison Ford always presents as not very bright on talk shows. I hated the Indian Jones movies.

>191 dianeham: I didn’t see in the Indiana Jones movies, I liked him in one that starts of in a hotel room and someone is missing, but I forget the title. I also liked Paul Newman.

When her young son dies, a mother, overcome with sorrow, cuts open his body and takes a small segment of his lung. Placing it in a jar, she leaves her husband to return to Mexico City, where she feeds and nurtures the piece of lung until it eventually becomes something that isn't her son, or even human, but very much alive and with its own urges and tastes.

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova begins as a story about grief and how it can pull people together and drive them apart, and then it becomes something else. Structured into four segments, following the mother, her best friend, the husband and finally, Monstrilio itself, this is a story that goes in unanticipated directions as the human characters care for the strange creature, but struggle to find a balance between letting it live its life and forming it into something like the lost son. This is an odd and oddly compelling story despite the characters behaving in ways that no actual person ever would.

Well, that’s an interesting description. I’m intrigued

>176 RidgewayGirl: Great review. This one has been on my reading list, I'm glad to hear it picks up after the initial worldbuilding.

>187 labfs39: Baer over Laurie anyday!

>195 rv1988: Right?!

>193 RidgewayGirl: Great comments, Kay, but this one might be too weird for me.

I'm on team Baer as well.

>197 BLBera: >193 RidgewayGirl: I think it might be too weird for me as well. But I’m intrigued.

>194 dchaikin: There's a lot of interesting stuff, but you do have to be okay with a certain level of gore. It's not, in my opinion, overwhelming, but it's there.

To Rasdhar, Lisa and Beth, you are welcome to your stuffy and humorless professor. Laurie and I will be out enjoying life.

Kate, it depends on your tolerance of, and interest in, body horror.

>199 RidgewayGirl: I see. I think I’ll give it a miss. I’m not to good on the gore front. Psychological horror is more my cup of tea. 🧟‍♀️

>197 BLBera: Beth wrote: I'm on team Baer as well.

I liked the Professor, but I think I was always a little surprised that she got married at all... Why do women have to get married? Why can't they be independent? Yes, I thought that even 50 years ago. I was gratified many years later to learn that Alcott's publisher made her do it.

>201 WelshBookworm: Yes! And after she married the professor, the rest of her life was spent in service to his school.

>193 RidgewayGirl: Added this one to my library list.

Do you know about Hard Girls - a new book by J. Robert Lennon? I think I remember you like him.

>203 ursula: I'm excited to find out what you think about it.

>204 dianeham: Yes, I really liked Subdivision, although I didn't like it until almost the end, when it turned from a random mess into something very deliberate. I have Hard Girls on my wishlist, because of both the author and the description I read. Are you reading it now?

>205 RidgewayGirl: No, not yet. But I bought the ebook.

>206 dianeham: I was tempted to grab a copy right away, but I'm trying to hold onto my book money for a trip to New Orleans in April. I've reserved a bedroom on The City of New Orleans for us, so the whole trip will be an adventure. Also, I now can't get that song out of my head.

>185 labfs39: another huge fan of Baer; I appreciated Laurie, but he seemed a more complex character. Btw did you watch the new film of Little Women? I thought it was very well done, modernizing a bit but keeping in its time

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is the kind of book to lose yourself in. Written by a storyteller at the top of his game, James McBride's account of the neglected community of Chicken Hill during the 1930s, when it was where immigrants and Jewish people landed before moving into one of Pottstown's more acceptable neighborhoods, and where Black Americans always lived. The story begins and ends with a body in a well, yet this isn't a mystery novel, but an expansive book about the many people who called Chicken Hill home. If you're looking for a tightly-constructed plot, this isn't the book for you; this one ranges here and there, while remaining centered on the small grocery store at the center of the community, run by a small Jewish woman who refuses to be quiet and whose compassion is legendary. For all this, McBride's story never forgets the harshness of the world in which these characters live. It's wonderfully told and while it seems to wander off into side stories, they all work together to make this book something remarkable.

>207 RidgewayGirl: what is the Spirit of New Orleans?

ETA: The City of New Orleans song?

>210 dianeham: Yes, that one. Once it's in your head, it will stay there for days. What a stupid typo though. I've fixed that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvMS_ykiLiQ

>209 RidgewayGirl: I finished it,and agree with you. never read McBride before, looks like I need to try another. any suggestions?

>211 RidgewayGirl: not stupid. I was thinking maybe a riverboat until you said song. I’ve never been to New Orleans but I follow a number on nola related pages. Like Kermit Ruffins, the trumpet player and anything Neville family related.

>212 cindydavid4: The only other McBride I've read was Deacon King Kong, which was a rambunctious book about a housing project in New York in the 1970s. I liked it a lot. But others here have a lot of praise for his memoir, The Color of Water.

>213 dianeham: A little stupid, given that I once earned my living as a proofreader.

>214 RidgewayGirl: ooh duh, did read the color of water which is good tho I remember being uncomfortable with some of it, and i cant remember why will have to investigate

>211 RidgewayGirl: OK, gotta jump in here as a life-long Chicagoan with Steve Goodman's original version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SfPyg-mGhU

>209 RidgewayGirl: terrific positive review of The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. I have thought about trying it. But it always seems like a book readers mainly like from a distance, if that makes sense. i like your review because is gives us a sense about being in the midsts of the book.

>216 kac522: wow thats a young Goodman! loved all his stuff (thought you were going to play this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HTRxAHfwPY Chiacgo club fans last request. another who left us way too soon

>215 cindydavid4: Interesting. I will read that someday, but I now have a copy of The Good Lord Bird to read first.

>216 kac522: Thank you, that's wonderful.

>217 dchaikin: It's a crazy, multitudinous tale with so much heart in it. How could anyone keep it at arm's length?

I loved The Color of Water, the only thing I've read by McBride so far. Eventually I will get to The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store; there is a LONG line of people waiting for it at my library, so it might be next year.

>220 BLBera: Yes, the hold like at my library is so long for this book that I ended up buying a copy.

In antebellum New Orleans, a woman and her young daughter are sold to a man who wants them to care for his townhouse. He spends much of his time at his slave labor camp, called a plantation, a day's ride from the city with his family. I don't want to give any of the plot away, except that it encompasses both terrible hardship and abuse, as well as love and women in unendurable circumstances finding ways to fight back. The novel changes in tone decidedly partway through, one half being an account of a girl growing up enslaved, and the second part being a rousing adventure story.

The center of this book is the city of New Orleans, a place where slavery thrived, human beings were bought and sold, but also a place where some Black people were free and had a vibrant culture of their own. Maurice Carlos Ruffin excels in both making the horror of slavery evident, without that horror feeling exploitative, and in emphasizing the agency and humanity of those who were enslaved. And I love the title, The American Daughters, and how it claims that title for its brave Black women, both enslaved and free, working to prevent the Confederacy from winning the war.

There's a new thread over here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/358842