wandering_ through my book stacks

Hello there.

I'm looking forward to another good year of reading, discussion, and adding books to my wishlist - all enhanced by the fabulous Library Thing community.

My top discoveries of 2009 were James Salter (I read The Hunters) and Helen Garner (I read The Spare Room) - I've acquired some more of their books since then, and I'm looking forward to reading them. I also really enjoyed Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam and Gang Leader For A Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. My 2009 reading is on this thread.

One of the other things that happened in 2009 is that I moved house, which involved finding boxes of unread books everywhere - in the attic, in the shed, at the back of cupboards... a bit like the way alcoholics stash booze. I've managed to catalogue them on LT, which has told me that, at my current rate, I have coming up to eight years' worth of unread books on my shelves. Oops.

So one of the things I'd like to do this year is get better at ditching books if I'm not really enjoying them. It's not that I feel I have to finish a book once I've started it ... but I only seem to stop reading a book if I'm actively hating it. Oh, and I am going to try my hardest not to buy any new books, although the odd mooch might creep in.

I'm not very keen on setting myself specific reading targets - quite often it just means that the book suddenly becomes terribly unappealing. But I have one little objective for the year, which is to read all the books that I have been given as presents over the years - I've spotted a few which have been on the 'unread' pile for a very long time.

Other than that, it'll be as the winds take me. Hope you enjoy the adventure as much as I will!

Best of luck on the adventure!

It's only New Year's Day and already I've got a recommendation from you! - London Bridges, from your post on the introductions thread. Looks great; I hadn't heard of it. I look forward to seeing how else you tempt me...

Great stuff. I am tempted to give a Bond-villain cackle and say, "My work here is done"! I managed to hold off from adding anything to my wishlist until today, although that was mainly by staying off the internet for a couple of days. I hope you manage to get hold of a copy. Actually, I like all of Jane Stevenson's stuff - I don't know why she seems so unknown (her most popular book on LT only has 62 copies).

I hope I'll be able to tempt a few more people with my first read of 2010, Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot.

Why/how I acquired this: it was a Christmas present from my other half, who despite not having access to my wishlist, managed to give me two books which were on it and one which would have been if I knew it existed. It was on my wishlist because it is mentioned fairly often in recommendations of graphic novels.

That said, I didn't really have any idea what to expect. I guessed from the title and the brief reviews I'd read that it would be something surreal and funny. Imagine my surprise when I started reading and discovered that it was ... a work of local history!

Before you turn away, I should say that this has to be a strong contender for the most entertaining work of local history ever written. Not only is it bursting with ideas and energy, but by the end of it I was almost convinced that Sunderland had a good case to be the unsung centre of the universe. As the book traverses the history of the Northeast through the ages, taking in everything from local myths and traditions to Sunderland's current regeneration to, um, a history of the comic strip form, all sorts of people turn out to be (a) connected to the Northeast, and (b) incredibly influential - the Venerable Bede, the only English person mentioned in The Divine Comedy, George Formby, admired by the Beatles, and of course, Lewis Carroll, who put an end to the preachy, edifying children's literature of the Victorian period and apparently inspired a vast swathe of twentieth-century culture, taking in Woolf, Kafka, the Surrealists, Dennis Potter and Monty Python among many others.

The visual style of the book is just as wide-ranging, a collage of everything from medieval illuminated manuscripts (born at St Peter's monastery in... well, you can guess where) to Boy's Own cartoons to Victorian photographs. Visual references to Tenniel, Hogarth, the Bayeux Tapestry and even Tintin make an appearance.

Fascinating and fun. I only wish that someone would do the same for Iain Sinclair's work, so you could take in the interesting psychogeographical explorations without the turgid prose.

Recommended for: I would recommended this to anyone who I thought was open-minded enough to give it a go. It could be a tough sell otherwise: “Yes, it's a comic. Um... about local history. No, I've never been to Sunderland either, but it's still good...” In particular I would recommend it to any fans of psychogeography.

2. Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell.

Why/how I acquired this: I've heard a lot about Mankell, as one of the most popular of the Scandinavian crime writers. This is the first book in the Inspector Wallander series.

The starting point of Faceless Killers is the brutal murder of an elderly farming couple in their remote cottage. It looks far too vicious to be a simple robbery-gone-wrong - and yet the criminals, whoever they were, found time to feed the couple's horse on their way out.

The style is pretty bleak and (stereotypically) Scandinavian: at the end of the book, Wallander is visiting a terminally ill former colleague, who tells him, "At the moment I don't have any pain. But it'll be back tomorrow. Or the next day". I think that could have stood as a motto for the book.

I found this pretty disappointing. Firstly, while I have no objection to the concept of the lonely, hard-drinking detective (I'm a big fan of Rebus, for example), it seems to me that in the best books you get a decent amount of crime and crime-solving in first. Here, on the other hand, it was p5 - meet Wallander, p6, Wallander thinks about his terrible relationship with his daughter, p9, Wallander thinks about his terrible relationship with his ex-wife, and so on. That just made it seem all the more cliched - and the arch reference to the fact that detectives in books all seemed to have miserable home lives too didn't make it any better. Secondly, the crime-solving bit was not particularly page-turning, and the ending was a bit of a let-down.

I wanted to give Mankell another chance, though - at the start of Faceless Killers, I kept seeing the scenery and character of the BBC version, which I saw just over a year ago, and I'd found that distracting and annoying, so I thought maybe that had affected my impressions of the book. (Embarrassingly, I had also assumed that the first in the book series had been the first in the TV series so I thought I knew how it was going to turn out... and was a bit surprised when it didn't). So I picked up The White Lioness, the third in the Wallander series (I had found both books in the same day of trawling round Cambridge's secondhand bookshops, which is why I already had this one).

This was quite different - instead of the traditional whodunnit format of the first one, this was a story where you knew who committed the crime from early on, but the question was how quickly he would be caught and what else he might do until then. For me, though, it had the same flaws - even more so when I realised that, although the net was tightening, I didn't really care. So, following the resolution I already mentioned, I ditched the book.

Spoiler alert, sort of: Incidentally, I was a little disturbed by the fact that both books featured (a) the cops bemoaning the fact that Sweden's borders are very open and that immigration has been increasing, and (b) crimes committed by immigrants.

Recommended for: fans of bleak detective fiction.

I caught the BBC series, which I loved, but it sounds as though I'll be giving the books a pass. Rebus fan here, too, by the way.

>4 wandering_star:, I also got Alice in Sunderland as a Christmas present from my other half! I can't wait to get started on it. And I agree that the history of the North East is badly neglected.

What a coincidence! I hope you like it.

3. The Serious Game by Hjalmar Söderberg.

Why/how I acquired this: I enjoyed Doctor Glas by the same author, which I picked up after reading a recommendation from Margaret Atwood.

It's summer in the Swedish archipelago at the very end of the nineteenth century, and a student and a young girl are in love. However, he is unable to commit himself to her, and they lose contact. Many years later, when both are in loveless marriages, they meet again by chance. But have they changed too much to rekindle their early romance? Well, actually, he hasn't changed all that much - he still dislikes the idea of promising himself to anybody, and he still needs her to be the innocent thing of his youthful dreams. But of course, if she were still so innocent, they would not be able to embark on a love affair. And so this time around, it's much more dark and bitter.

There's clearly a theme of morality running through the book. The student grows up to be a journalist, and with his friends and colleagues they talk about theories of morality and truth. There are many references to famous lies, frauds and scandals of the period, from La Grande Therese to the Dreyfus affair. And the story itself is seems to me to be deliberately 'immoral' - characters have adulterous affairs, illegitimate children, divorces, and this is all presented as absolutely normal, which I am sure was scandalous at the time the book was written.

It wasn't clear to me, though, how this theme fitted with the main story. At one point, Arvid (the student) muses on how he always saw himself as an upstanding, moral person, but now his life is full of lies and hypocrisy. I suppose this might be more effective if there had been any other evidence that his life was upstanding and moral rather than a constant search for the easiest way out of things. Actually I found him a rather tiresomely juvenile figure, and if I was Lydia (the girl) I would have got pretty fed up with being constantly questioned about my spiritual purity...

Recommended for: probably only those particularly interested in late-nineteenth century Sweden. There's quite a lot about Stockholm and the politics of the time, which went over my head.

Happy New Year wandering star- I met up with you in the book nudgers group last year when you suggested I read Le Clezio's Wandering Star for obvious reasons. (I did read it in the end).

I read Alice in Sunderland last year after petermc on the 75 book challenge recommended it, and loved it. It was an amazing reading experience, I especially enjoyed the wide range of illustration styles. I had recently read Lewis Carroll in Numberland so lapped up all the Alice/Carroll references.

I'm also a big Rebus fan and haven't totally been sold on Rankin's new DI in The Complaints but I hope to warm to him eventually or I'll have to give up my annual dose of the dark side of Edinburgh. Another crime writer I really like is Robert Wilson, though the crimes in his Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon books which are set in Sevilla are a bit gruesome. I like all the historical background he puts in the novels while others dislike this feature.
I haven't tried the Wallander books and your descriptions don't really entice me.

I haven't tried the new Rankin detective yet. But since my memory is so terrible, I could probably get away with never buying another detective novel, but just spend the rest of my life happily cycling my way through Rebus, Dalziel & Pascoe and Aurelio Zen!

I've heard that Faceless Killers, despite being the first Wallander book, is actually a terrible introduction to the series. Still, I've got it and will presumably read it at some point, on the strength of other people's love for the books.

Hi Fanny, nice to see you on here!

Oh my ears and whiskers, I'm already behind on posting about so many books! I think the problem is that every time I go anywhere near LT I am sucked into reading interesting discussions on so many threads! It really seems as if people are starting the new year with a lot of postings. Maybe it's because people are snowbound... or staying in to read... I don't want to deprive myself of the joy of other people's threads, but I am kind of hoping that the posting rate will slow down as we get into the year!

Anyhoo. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, so here's one:

The Road Home by Rose Tremain.

How/Why I acquired this: I really enjoyed Rose Tremain's Music and Silence; The Road Home had really good LT-buzz; and the subject matter also attracted me - I'm interested in migration issues, and am very troubled by the fact that prejudice against asylum seekers, along with Islamophobia, appears to be the acceptable face of racism in the UK today.

So, I really wanted to like this book. But before I get ahead of myself with my reactions:

At the start of The Road Home, Lev has boarded a bus from his Eastern European village where the main employer has closed down. With the expansion of the EU, he is travelling to the UK ("I am legal" is one of the English phrases he has committed to memory) in order to earn money for his mother and his daughter (his wife has recently died of leukaemia). In London, he encounters much that is unfamiliar, but also begins to build friendships, particularly with Lydia, a compatriot he met on the bus, and his Irish landlord Christy, whose ex-wife is preventing him having access to their child.

The touching relationship between these two lonely men, both missing their daughters but wishing to do the best by them, is one of the highlights of the book (at least, of the part I managed to read). There's also a nice thread about language and jargon - Lev has had English lessons before coming to the UK but is baffled by the language of job advertisements and room-for-rent notices, of self-improving business-speak, of the posh restaurant where he gets a job in the kitchen.

But.

This book was highly praised for giving humanity to the anonymous figure of the immigrant. Christy, too, could be another negative stereotype, the deadbeat dad (before his wife left him he was having trouble finding work, and drinking heavily). They are portrayed very sensitively. But for me, this was totally undermined by the fact that the book didn't bother giving humanity to the vast mass of the English working-class (who are all fat, drunken, incomprehensible and greasy-faced). There are several asides which sound to me much more like a middle-class Englishwoman's reaction to modern Britain than that of a working-class Eastern European man. Most of the speech of the British characters is really tin-eared - which grates even more in comparison to, say, the well-written conversations between Christy and Lev. And it seemed to me there was a lot of lazy stereotyping going on. You can see that from the fact that Christy's ex-wife is now shacked up with an estate agent - easily one of the top five most hated professions in Britain. Oh well, then, we just know we can hate him. Wouldn't it have been more subtle if we could have had sympathy for Christy's wife as well? If she had left him because she couldn't stand the fact that he kept coming home incoherent and throwing up on the hall carpet, but ended up with someone who loved her and was able to care for her and her child? I don't think that would necessarily have made Christy's character any less sympathetic.

I know a lot of people have rated this book very highly, and I really, really, really did try. I kept picking it up for another go, but inevitably, after a great, moving piece, I would come to something which made me roll my eyes and grind my teeth, and, y'know, that's not really what I look for in my reading. So, onto the 'abandoned' pile it goes.

Recommended for: aargh, I don't know. Like I say, lots of people have thought very highly of it. I guess I would recommend it for someone who would enjoy the good bits and manage not to let the clunky bits get to them. Not me, in other words.

Found you right back! Loving reading your thoughts on these books, so consider yourself STARRED for 2010. Oh, and good luck with your reading resolutions - they're not that different from mine, so here's to us both, reading excellent books and behaving ourselves when in the vicinity of bookish temptation... :-)

4. Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson.

How/Why I acquired this: good LT buzz. Picked off my shelves for the Reading Globally Sweden month, and then turned out to fit with SqueakyChu's Take It Or Leave It challenge as well.

This is the story of two women, one in her 80s and one in her 30s. Both have chosen solitude as a way to retreat from painful memories. However, after they meet, the ice gradually begins to melt, and as their friendship develops they begin to come to terms with their pasts.

At the start, this book reminded me a little of Tove Jansson's delicate, low-key story-telling. The Swedish countryside landscape (from March to late summer) is a significant part of the story, and Olsson focuses on the subtle shifts which tell you that a season, or an emotion, has changed. Her language is poetic, although sometimes it reads like a translation.

However, the backstory of the two women is really too melodramatic. You name a traumatic event, and one of them will have suffered it. For me, the book would have been a lot stronger if it had had the courage to be more subtle.

So, this was very nearly an excellent book. But I probably wouldn't have finished it, except for the fact that I was away from home and the only alternative was my partner's copy of A short course in cloud physics (which really is a physics textbook).

Recommended for: people who like female-focused stories whose protagonists overcome difficulties.

That reminds me of a charming and bookish coincidence which happened while we were away.

When we arrived at our hotel, we were told that our room was ready except for one thing - we had to choose a name for it. We then had to pick out a card at random from a pile.

On the card was written: "A Scrapbook Of Dreams", with a quote: Each one of us has two houses. One is concrete, fixed in a time and place. The other is not concrete. It is incomplete, it has no address, and it has never had the opportunity to be preserved in an architect's design.

We live in both houses at the same time.

When we got to the room, the book "A Scrapbook Of Dreams" by Olga Tokarczuk was lying, open, face-down on the divan by the window, just as if someone had been reading it and put it down for a second.

When I got back to my computer, I found out that the book has been translated into English as House of Day, House of Night, and that it's already on my wishlist (I think because of janeajones' review).

I have also listened to three great short stories through the New Yorker Fiction podcast:

"When We Were Nearly Young" by Mavis Gallant, chosen and read by Antonya Nelson (here) - about the relationship between a young American woman living in Spain, and her three Spanish friends. This deceptively simple story is the first work of Mavis Gallant I have read/heard, but I have her book Varieties of Exile and this has moved it right up my TBR list.

"Graven Image" by John O’Hara, chosen and read by E. L. Doctorow (here) - a man asks an old acquaintance for a favour. It took me two listens (and the podcast discussion) to figure this very short story out, but it was worth it, not least for the very subtle way the story captures the shifting power balance within the conversation.

"Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff, chosen and read by T. Coraghessan Boyle (here) - this starts off as an apparent satire about a critic who just can't switch off his supercilious critical brain, but unexpectedly develops into something deeper and more touching.

All these stories were excellent.

5. Beowulf, in the Seamus Heaney translation.

How/Why I acquired this: it was a present from my mum last summer, after we visited Bellaghy Bawn, a centre in Northern Ireland devoted to the work of Seamus Heaney, who was born in the village.

Heaney's translation is excellent - muscular and vivid. (In the introduction, Heaney describes the poem as 'forthright' and 'foursquare'). He makes the act of translation look easy - I felt that there couldn't be any other way of expressing that meaning.

I also found the poem fascinating. This was the first time I've read any of it, and I didn't know much about it beyond the basic story - Grendel and Grendel's mother. So I was expecting a lot of monster-ravening and heroic battles. In fact, there is a lot more in the poem. One theme is about how to be a good ruler - protecting your people by being generous, wise, and strong. Another (perhaps contradictory) theme is about the consequences of the culture of the blood-feud. At one point, Beowulf comments on the likely future of a wedding between a Danish princess and Ingeld, ruler of the defeated Heathobards, which is means to be a marriage to make peace ('Shielding' is another name for the Danes):

"Think how the Heathobards will be bound to feel,
their lord, Ingeld, and his loyal thanes,
when he walks in with that woman to the feast:
Danes are at the table, being entertained,
honoured guests in glittering regalia,
burnished ring-mail that was their hosts' birthright,
looted when the Heathobards could no longer wield
their weapons in the shield-clash, when they went down
with their beloved comrades and forfeited their lives.
Then an old spearman will speak while they are drinking,
having glimpsed some heirloom that brings alive
memories of the massacre; his mood will darken
and heart-stricken, in the stress of his emotion,
he will begin to test a young man's temper
and stir up trouble, starting like this:
'Now, my friend, don't you recognize
your father's sword, his favourite weapon,
the one he wore when he went out in his war-mask
to face the Danes on that final day?
After Wethergeld died and his men were doomed
the Shieldings quickly claimed the field,
and now here's a son of one or other
of those same killers coming through our hall
overbearing us, mouthing boasts,
and rigged in armour that by right is yours.'
And so he keeps on, recalling and accusing,
working things up with bitter words
until one of the lady's retainers lies
spattered in blood, split open
on his father's account. The killer knows
the lie of the land and escapes with his life.
Then on both sides the oath-bound lords
will break the peace, a passionate hate
will build up in Ingeld and love for his bride
will falter in him as the feud rankles."

You could make a novel or a film out of those few dozen lines, and you could set it today in any number of places in the world.

Recommended for: anyone except total poetry-phobes.

#17, Varieties of Exile was the first collection I read by Mavis Gallant and made me a big fan of hers, and I still think it contains some of her best work. Enjoy.

And I'll have to check out the New Yorker podcasts; they sound great.

I will - I've been flicking through it and I love the tone of her writing. Hope you enjoy the New Yorker podcasts - they have introduced me to lots of excellent writers.

6. In The Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming

How/Why I acquired this: recommended on LT.

I was feeling fluey last week, and remembering vaguely that the detective in this book was a female vicar, I thought it might provide the light/cosy reading that I was in the mood for. (I don't know if that says more about my prejudices or the Church of England.) Anyway, while a good pacy read, this is far from cosy - priest Clare is a former US Army helicopter pilot, and the book is as down-to-earth and brusque as she is. The book wasn't perfect - it dragged a bit in the middle, and Clare did something so completely stupid I got rather annoyed with her, but it was an enjoyable read.

Recommended for: mystery fans, looking for something a bit different.

7. India In Mind, edited by Pankaj Mishra

How/Why I acquired this: a straightforward case of 'saw in shop; wanted'. I have read The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra and quite liked it, but I am pretty sure I bought this first.

This is an anthology of writings about India by foreigners. The extracts are all short - maximum 20 pages. It's almost all travel writing, memoir or journalism - of the 25 extracts, only 4 are from works of fiction (Kim, The Jewel In The Crown, Gore Vidal's Creation, and a short story by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala).

I'm not a huge fan of travel writing, so a lot of the selections didn't work for me. Many of them seemed to say more about the writer than about India itself (eg Pier Paolo Pasolini's astoundingly patronising reaction to middle-class Indians). But the range of authors selected were interesting: Claude Levi-Strauss and Andre Malraux among the more usual suspects. Allan Ginsberg contributed a hallucinatory diary:

Dec 22, 8 PM -

Walking (in dhoti & lumberjack shirt) thru Benares alleyways, turning corners past toy stands, thru red gates up Vishwanath alley past the temple - thru a grate seeing crowd round the lingam chanting slow-beat of drum vary-voiced tuneless mass - beautiful harmonies, ending as I passed out the back courtyard past the huge stone cow, with acceleration of drums - past the square where in daytime sell red and blue & yellow bright colored powders displayed in cones of dust -

After reading this I am adding JR Ackerley's Hindoo Holiday and Alan Ross's Blindfold Games to my wishlist, as well as Mark Twain's travel books.

I should also mention the great intros which Mishra has written for each contributor - far from the usual bland summaries of life & work. JR Ackerley's includes this: After serving eight months as prisoner of war in a German camp, he studied at Cambridge University where he met, among other furtive gay men, EM Forster, who had visited India in 1922 and had spent some time at the court of a campy Maharajah. As it turned out, the Maharajah was then looking for a secretary and had even written to H Rider Haggard for help in locating someone who resembled Olaf, a character in Haggard's The Wanderer's Necklace. The Maharajah wasn't impressed by Ackerley's good looks but fell for his poems.

Recommended for: fans of travel writing, or people interested in the way that outsiders have perceived India.

8. Barefoot Gen Vol 1

How/Why I acquired this: I think I knew about this book before, but it was fannyprice's review last year that spurred me to get hold of a copy.

As the book's subtitle says, this is a cartoon story of Hiroshima - a lightly fictionalised, autobiographical story of a Japanese family in the months leading up to the bombing.

I don't really have a lot to say about it here. Somehow, it feels wrong to have a critical response to this excellent, but harrowing work.

It's the first in a ten-part series. I am sure the rest are excellent, but I don't think I have the stomach for more.

It's so fun wandering around Club Read and see how much variety there is in what everyone is reading. I'm not familiar with the titles you've posted on this thread, save for Beowulf. I read that in Medieval Lit. this past semester, and would like to try the Heaney translation at some point—I also relish the prospect of just reading it at my leisure, instead of speed-reading for class. That's a fun story; I actually dramatized a couple scenes from it for my class project, and performed it at the Medieval Faire. Quite fun, that was.

I bet! Which scenes did you pick?

Beowulf's reception at the hall of Hrothgar, followed by his fight with Grendel. So much fun—I was Beowulf, and got to rip off Grendel's arm and hang it from the ceiling at the end. Crazy stuff!

Oh, I didn't mean to delete that, I wanted to edit it. Never mind - just wanted to say that sounded great!

9. Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese student soldiers by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney

How/Why I acquired this: there was an intriguing review in the Economist when this came out. I forgot the title but remembered the idea, and one day spotted the book in a second-hand bookshop.

One of the many awful things that happen to the family in Barefoot Gen is that one of their sons, sick of being taunted and despised because his father opposes the war, enlists in the Navy and is sent off to a pilot training camp where he (and the others) are brutally mistreated. (There's a very moving scene where the father salutes his son as he leaves, despite his total opposition to what the son is doing). Anyway, that reminded me that I had this book on my shelves.

One of the main aims of this book is to dispel the myth that kamikaze pilots were fanatical nationalists, eager to die in the name of the Emperor. As it turns out, there were 4000 kamikaze pilots trained. 3000 were children - schoolboys - and 1000 were students who had been granted early graduation to enable them to be drafted. Huge amounts of peer pressure were put on them to 'volunteer'. Sickeningly, the whole process was done at arms-length from the regular army and navy because they took their orders from the Emperor, and it could not be seen that the Emperor was ordering men to die.

The schoolboy pilots have left few traces, but many of the the students kept lengthy diaries, which are the subject of this book. Many of them came from prestigious universities and they have a remarkable breadth of education - at high school they all learnt Latin and two of English, French and German, as well as reading huge amounts of political and social philosophy, with Marxism and German Rationalism being particularly influential.

Their diaries track their responses to their reading, as well as their views about their own situation - both the war itself, and their inevitable oncoming death which they are expected to receive with joy.

Some of them are supporters of making peace from the start. Others begin with strong patriotic sentiments which are eroded by the brutal, oppressive treatment they receive on the military bases. But the overall picture is a complex mixture of pride in the national culture, a sense of impending doom (whether or not they are in the army), an idealised view of masculinity and sacrifice, and an often naively adolescent view of the ills of the world.

Ohnuki-Tierney argues that all of these responses were attempts to rationalise the fact that they were going to die young, and they didn't want to. I don't think that the texts themselves demonstrate this clearly - some of the patriotic emotions were surely genuine. I can understand her intentions, but I think that this complexity is already enough to demonstrate that the stereotype of kamikaze pilots is inaccurate.

Overall, there was some fascinating information in this book. However, for my tastes it spent too much time analysing the philosophical thinking of the students. The diary entries about their fears and their families were extremely moving, and it was interesting to hear about their influences - much less so to read their detailed thoughts about their reading of Novalis or their response to the painting of Degas. Also, the sections dealing with each individual are very repetitive.

It has left me with a strong desire to find out more about Japan in the period up to the war, in particular the social history of the way expansionist propaganda was absorbed.

Recommended for: I would recommend the introduction to anyone with an interest in the subject. The full text more for someone who wants to know about their responses to the political philosophies of the time.

NB: I should mention that despite the title not all the diaries are of kamikaze pilots, although they were all young ex-students serving in the Japanese military.

Wow, that sounds like a fascinating book.

You could look at An Artist of the Floating World, a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. The main character is an artist who created propaganda pieces during the war. The story focuses more on the aftermath of the conflict - how does a country react when its culture has focused on military might but the country is defeated in war. That might not be quite the angle you're looking for, but it was a thought-provoking read.

>27 wandering_star: - Intriguing. Reading Barefoot Gen also made me interested in pre-war and wartime Japan social history. If you find anything great on that topic, be sure to share!

Thanks for the suggestion, Char! I didn't know that's what it was about. If I find anything else I will let you all know.

10. Two Lives by Vikram Seth

How/why I acquired this: I loved A Suitable Boy, so I've kept on reading Vikram Seth (even though I didn't much like An Equal Music)

I have one thing to say after reading this book: we should all write more letters. You owe it to your grandchildren - how can you deny them the pleasure of finding a bundle of letters in the attic and discovering aspects of their personal history?

There's a Hindi word, Dhaayi, which means two-and-a-half, and Vikram Seth has said that if there was an equivalent word in English, this would have been called Two-and-a-Half Lives. The two lives of the title are those of Seth's great-uncle and aunt, Shanti and Henny. The half would have been Seth himself, who lived with the couple when he first went to England and who continued to stay in close touch with them throughout their lives.

Between them, Shanti and Henny have personal experience of almost everything the twentieth century could throw at them. They became friends in Germany in the 1930s. Shanti was born into colonial India, injured while serving as an officer in the British Army during World War Two. Henny, a German Jew, escaped to England a month before war broke out. Her mother and sister died in the Holocaust.

This story would have been interesting in any hands. But Seth's love for the couple shines through, and makes it especially moving. Seth traces their story through letters, as well as conversations with Shanti and with other relatives and friends of the family. He has an unerring eye for the telling details, which means that his narration makes the well-known sequence of events horrific all over again. For example, he reproduces an exchange of 25-word telegrams between Henny and her mother and sister in the early 1940s, which were sent through the Red Cross. Almost comically short, all they say in effect is 'I am well, thinking of you, write soon'. But four months passed between each one.

I was also lucky enough to hear an interview Vikram Seth did about this book on the KQED Forum podcast, which meant that throughout the book I could hear his warm, wise tones. It would be quite something to have a recording of him reading it.

Highly recommended for everyone.

PS. I think I have a bit of a crush on Vikram Seth. I've always admired his polymathicness (is that a word? polymathy sounds even worse) - being an economist who speaks Chinese, writes poetry, plays classical music, as well as writing books like A Suitable Boy. On top of all that, in this book, and the couple of interviews I've read since reading it, he comes across as incredibly humble, as well as displaying a deeply humanist view of the world. Sigh.

I am 100% with you on Vikram Seth, Two Lives, and A Suitable Boy, and even on not liking An Equal Music (although, like you, I admire him for trying something so different from his other books). And I enjoyed his novel in verse, The Golden Gate, much more than I expected to. Eagerly awaiting "A Suitable Girl" . . . and will reread ASB in advance of its publication.

Ooh, is that a sequel? How exciting. I hadn't realised how un-prolific a writer he was until reading the bits of Two Lives where he talks about his difficulties with writing and deadlines... maybe because his work is so diverse.

I wasn't quite sure what the point was of The Golden Gate except to show that you could do it, but hey, it's not an easy thing to do so why not flaunt it? Also, I read it a long, long time ago. Maybe I should give it another try. I like his translations of Chinese poetry (Three Chinese Poets).

11. Cold Earth by Sarah Moss

How/why I acquired this: a combination of Jane Smiley's Grauniad review and FlossieT's review here on LT.

A group of young researchers are conducting an archaeological dig in Greenland, in one of the settlements of the Norse colony which died out at the start of the fifteenth century. As they dig, they debate why the settlement ended - did a colder climate make the land uncultivable, was it plague, or could it have been raiders from the sea? At the same time, they are uneasily aware that pandemic disease is taking hold in the world they have left behind - and then their single internet connection to the outside world goes down. With one of them seeing (increasingly active) ghosts of the bodies they are disinterring, and no idea whether there is anyone left waiting for them at home, the strains in their relationships come to a head.

So: the idea behind this book is genius - smart and chilling. And the way in which the events unfold is also pretty effective. But there was one killer flaw for me: Nina, the woman who is seeing the ghosts, and who is also the narrator for more than half of the book, is an astoundingly annoying woman: neurotic, snobby and smug. And it turns out that it's quite hard to be scared when you're busy being irritated.

Recommended for: people who are less misanthropic than me, who will be able to take the story on its merits. (FlossieT for example noted that the characters were extremely unsympathetic but enjoyed the book anyway).

#33, Yes, it is a sequel that Seth announced last year. It is scheduled for 2013.

#34. Before I read it, I thought the point would be that he could do it, and I did read it while visiting San Francisco, which may have had an influence on me, but after taking a while to get into it I really enjoyed it. Will have to look for his translations. Have you read his book about traveling through China?

No - I will have to look out for it.

I have Two Lives on my shelf and will be reading it this year, so I'm glad that you liked it. I loved A Suitable Boy.

#35 What did you think of the ending of Cold Earth? I read this last year and really enjoyed the book apart from the ending which I found very unsatisfactory. It seemed to me as if the author just ran out of ideas as to how to bring everything to a satisfactory conclusion.

That's a good point. I certainly think it would have been better without the last chapter, but even that would leave a lot unresolved.

12. The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy

How/why I acquired this: recommended on LT.

This is a story about growing up in Vancouver's Chinatown in the 1930s and 40s, seen through the eyes of three children from the same family. There are no linkages between the three parts, and the third and longest story is the best - an examination of the tensions between the Chinese community (and wider society) and Japanese-Canadians as the war in Asia develops. The other two are shorter and feel like early chapters of a story rather than stand-alone pieces - they are more interesting for what they say about Chinatown, the relations between different generations and different families, and the tensions between "Old China" and their current home, Canada.

Recommended for: someone interested in Asian immigrant experiences. This would also be a good book for teenagers, because of the simple language and the childs-eye view.

13. Pastors and Masters by Ivy Compton-Burnett

How/why I acquired this: well, it was an Early Reviewers book, but I requested it because Compton-Burnett featured in The Uncommon Reader, which I read last year. A book by C-B (can't remember which one) is the first book borrowed by the Queen. She reads it to be polite, and finds it very dry. However, some time later, when she is more well-read, she picks up the same book by accident, and this time finds it very witty and amusing.

Not a lot really happens in Pastors and Masters. There is one key event, but if I summarised it, it would not sound like enough to hang a whole book on. The focus is really on the characters - all of whom are intensely dislikeable, running the gamut from martyred and passive-aggressive to self-involved and downright bitchy. And that is where the humour lies - the book is told almost entirely in dialogue, so people condemn themselves out of their own mouths while they think they are putting others down.

Now, because there are so many layers, and because many of the characters are self-consciously terribly clever, sometimes the utterances take a lot of puzzling out. So I would agree with Alan Bennett's categorisation. And apparently Compton-Burnett herself described her books as 'easy to put down'!

That might sound as if I didn't enjoy this book. That's not actually true: and I will certainly keep it and read it again. But this is definitely a book you have to be in the right mood for. When I was, I found the book very sharp and witty. When I wasn't, I didn't have the patience to wonder over every line to figure out what was really being said, and it draaaagged.

Recommended for: someone who is feeling cerebral, and wants something astringent.

>42 wandering_star: Interesting! I too have become curious about Ivy Compton-Burnett since reading The Uncommon Reader (I can't remember which book the Queen reads either), and now I'm even more curious. But I'll bear in mind what you say about being in the right mood!

>42 wandering_star:, I also got Pastors and Masters on as an Early Reviewers books. I read the first chapter this morning. I'm reserving judgement until I get further into it!

#44, I saw your review. I agree with you about the absence of stage directions - it was very disconcerting! Especially in that scene with the coffee.

14 Light, by Torgny Lindgren.

How/why I acquired this: one of my favourite theatre companies, Complicite, did a production based on this book. I didn't see it, but they usually do interesting stuff - eg they also did a production of The Elephant Vanishes, which I love.

This book is about a medieval village in the far North of Sweden. In fact, it is the last village: beyond is nothing but wasteland. A flea from a pregnant rabbit brings the plague, and when its ravages are over, only six people are left alive. One of those people, in a crazed moment, committed a terrible act because he thought it would save him from the plague. Perhaps as a result of that, perhaps as a result of the decimation, the previous unquestioned natural order is upset, and nothing makes sense any more - no-one knows what is right and what is wrong, no-one can track the passage of time, and no-one can make everything return to normal.

The focus of the story is on two of the surviving characters: Konik, who is troubled by the incomprehensibility of the new world, and Onde, who takes advantage of it. I think this was the key tension in the book - between believing that things are as they are, or that they should be as they should be.

I say 'I think', because for a lot of the time I was reading this book I felt fairly confused. It was obvious that there was a lot of symbolism going on - there are repeated motifs (rabbits, for example, which I think symbolise vitality and also chaos) and the characters' behaviour is not very naturalistic. But I feel as if I picked up about a tenth of it. That made the book quite a slog for me. I managed to keep going in the hope that it would all become clear in the end, but it didn't, really.

Recommended for: a reader who enjoys decoding symbolism (or perhaps more bluntly, someone who likes a challenge!)

15. Cassandra At The Wedding by Dorothy Baker

How/why I acquired this: don't remember where the recommendation came from.

I am part of the way through Half Of A Yellow Sun, but it's not quite doing it for me at the moment. I can see that there is some beautiful writing in it, but thought that perhaps I was just in one of those reading slumps. So I decided that I needed to read something frivolous - and selected Cassandra At The Wedding from my shelf on the basis of its cover, which has two coiffed girls in bikinis sipping cocktails by a swimming pool.

In some ways it was a poor choice - frivolous this book is not, although the main character, Cassandra, does use a very chatty tone to try and mask her despair. But I loved it, and certainly feel out of the reading rut now.

Cassandra is a graduate student at Berkeley, unhappy and increasingly disconnected from her life. She does try and create relationships with the people around her, but her very high standards and horror of being misunderstood mean that the only person she has ever really felt at ease with is her twin sister, Judith. However, Judith moves to New York, and nine months later tells her sister that she is getting married. The book opens a few days before the wedding, as Cassandra, convinced Judith is making a terrible mistake, prepares herself to drive home for the ceremony.

This is a wonderfully written story. Cassandra narrates most of the book, and her voice is remarkable. She mostly avoids looking head-on at her problems, and yet her desperation and sometimes delusion are clear. When Judith took a turn narrating, I was a bit scared - I felt like I already understood the situation, from both sides of the story, and I didn't really want a simplified version from Judith. I needn't have worried, though: in fact, Judith's narration managed to add an extra level of complexity.

Recommended for: anyone who likes literary fiction.

16. Letters from Iwo Jima by Kumiko Kakehashi.

How/why I acquired this: recommended on Radio 4's A Good Read by someone called Trevor Dann.

I was hoping, from the title, that this would be a more accessible version of Kamikaze Diaries. In fact, it's a book about the battle of Iwo Jima, and especially about the Japanese commander there, General Kuribayashi (although there is a chapter of letters from ordinary soldiers, as well as extracts from battlefield memoirs and interviews with survivors and relatives).

Kuribayashi was sent to command 20,000 men in a near-suicide mission (95% of the Japanese soldiers died on the island) in an almost literally Hellish landscape - Iwo Jima is a volcanic island, so little grew there even before the battle, and there were no sources of fresh water. (Japanese soldiers heard rumours that the American troops were supplied with water in cans, and wondered whether such a thing was possible).

Kuribayashi comes across as a remarkable man. He had spent some time in the US and understood that the war was unwinnable for Japan, and he made a point of sharing the same rations and conditions as his men - one canteen of brackish water a day. At the same time, he inspired his men to fight to the bitter end, refusing them the traditional glorious and pointless banzai charge in favour of the bitter, painful slog of guerilla warfare.

This account makes it very clear why Iwo Jima has such a significant role in US memories of the campaign. It seems stranger that (at least according to Kakehashi) there is less knowledge about the battle in Japan.

The only small downside is that Kakehashi is not a historian - she's a journalist, specialising in human interest stories. This meant that occasionally I missed the additional depth or context. However, overall this was a moving, vivid and highly readable introduction to this piece of history.

Recommended for: anyone who would like to know more about this battle and/or the final stages of the conflict in Japan.

47 - Great movie too.

And you've already read 16 books. I'm on my 2nd of the year. So slow, so slow.

Lilisin, there's nothing wrong with taking time over a book. In fact I would really like to slow down and make sure I am properly thinking about what I am reading, instead of galloping through the pages, but quite often I get carried away...

I also tend to read a lot when I am procrastinating, so I must have done plenty of that this month!!

Well for me it's more a question of getting carried off by the personal life: going out, dancing, poker, restaurants, etc... But every once in a while I look at my shelf of unread books and can't help but feel guilty that I don't give them more attention. But on another note, since I already have so many unread books, I never buy new ones so my book buying budget is incredibly low! ;)

Well, that all sounds pretty good too... there are only so many hours in the day, after all!

I usually start getting impatient if I'm reading a book for too long, even though I feel guilty for it. I keep checking how far my bookmark is through the width of the book, and start impatiently planning what I could read next... Oddly, reading the classics seems to have 'cured me' for the time being! For both Persuasion (a couple of weeks ago) and North and South (now) I've slowed right down to enjoy them and absorb everything they have to offer, and even though they take so much longer to read by necessity, I haven't gotten impatient ONCE.

Maybe I'll have learned my lesson enough to carry it back to the rest of my reading! Quality over quantity, and all that jazz...

That's one of the interesting things about recording the start date and end date of reading a book on LT - sometimes I feel like I've been reading a book for ages and when I log the end date, it turns out to have been less than a week!

17. Half Of A Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

How/why I acquired this: from a friend who'd finished with it.

This book focuses on the story of two sisters, their lovers and extended families, in the period leading up to and of the Biafran war. It is a book which comes a huge amount of buzz, on LT and elsewhere - the sort of buzz which often makes me instinctively rebel against the idea of reading that particular book, but as Yellow Sun had very positive reviews from LTers whose views I respect, I guess I always knew that someday I would read it.

When I started the book, it immediately drew me in. Ugwe, a village boy, is being taken to his new employer's home by his aunt. He is sure that she is exaggerating when she tells him that as a servant in this house, he will eat meat every day.

However, as the book went on, it became less and less satisfying. The characters are - not one-dimensional exactly, but it seems as if each of them could be summed up in one line. This is frustrating, as their relationships develop over the story with the complexity of real life, but their personalities never quite catch up. For example, the relationship between the two sisters, one beautiful but rebelling against the moneyed world of her parents; the other sardonic and savvy, 'the ugly one' who takes over her father's business. This should have been a fascinating dynamic. But all the story gives you, even at the end, is one sister wanting to be liked, the other an aloof mystery.

The other drawback for me was that everything in the story was made explicit - no piece of background or character's motivation was left for the reader to work out for themselves.

Unfortunately, these meant that I never came to care very much about the characters. In fact, if I'd accidentally left this book on the train, I wouldn't have bothered to get another copy so that I could finish it.

I can see why many other readers have enjoyed this book - it takes the reader to a place and time that most of us know very little about; its world is imagined in vivid detail; and some of the writing is beautiful. But for me, it felt like a missed opportunity.

Recommended for: people who like to read about places, times and lives different from their own.

As one of the early promoters of Half of A Yellow Sun here on LT and because we often like some of the same books, I was interested in your review. It is a couple of years since I read it, but I think what I liked about it was that it was not just a story of these characters but of the intersection of their lives with all the complexities of history, class, colonialism, and race. I did feel that the character of the white lover was one-dimensional, but other than that I wasn't troubled by the characterization. And I also found that although I had been aware of the Biafra war when it happened, this book gave me a lot of new insight into what was really going on without being didactic in any way.

But, it was very interesting for me to read your perspective, and it almost makes me want to go back and read the book again -- except that I have way too many other books to read.

> 54, i approached this book with high expectations and went away feeling exactly like you did. we even gave it the same rating.

Rebecca,

I agree, it's a nicely non-didactic book. As I say, there were lots of obvious good things about it, so it took me a long time to figure out exactly why the book wasn't gripping me. I'm still not sure I've got it completely right. For example, the point about everything being made explicit definitely came from the contrast with Cassandra at the Wedding, which is full of sidelong hints which the reader has to work out, and it just felt like such a relief to start reading that after feeling a bit bogged down in Yellow Sun.

18. East Wind Melts The Ice, by Liza Dalby.

How/why I acquired this: random find in a charity shop, which I picked up because I enjoyed Dalby's book Geisha.

This is a book of very short essays, inspired by the divisions of the seasons in an old Chinese almanac, which is still referred to in Japan. The almanac divides the year into 4/5 day periods, each with a name which reflects some aspect of the changing natural world. Today, for example, falls into the period Jan 30-Feb 4: "streams and marshes are frozen solid". I've been reading it in little nibbles - the essays are just the right length for those little spaces in the day, like when you're cleaning your teeth or waiting for the coffee to brew.

Liza Dalby, who spent many years living in and studying Japan, wrote each essay during the days of one almanac period, over the course of several years. She wrote them originally in Japanese, and translated and interpreted her original thoughts into English for this book. The subject matter ranges widely, covering her years in Japan, her current family life, and other thoughts which occur to her.

This does make the book a bit of a mish-mash, and it's clear that the publishers had no idea what to do with it. They have decided to market it as a sort of Eastern mysticism/self-help book - it's subtitled "A Guide To Serenity Through The Seasons", and one of the critic's blurbs claims that the book "calms, quietens, transports". I think this might put off most of the people who would actually enjoy the book.

I found some of the essays fascinating, especially those about Japan and Japanese culture. But there are some periods of the almanac which clearly failed to inspire her, and we end up with a handful of banal, unconnected episodes, for example about times she has seen quails near her home in Northern California.

Mind you, I suppose banality is a matter of taste. I am not very interested in gardening, but someone who was might have enjoyed those essays. And I will be keeping this book, because of the enjoyable little insights into Japanese culture.

Recommended for: anyone with a strong interest in at least two of the following: Japan, translation (between languages and cultures), gardening, and the flora and fauna of Northern California. Oh, and who likes snippety information (which I do).

I've listened to two short-shorts from Sum by David Eagleman, which were on the Radiolab podcast about the afterlife. At the end of my 2009 thread I mentioned the story "Sum", from the same collection. These two were "Metamorphosis", which starts, "There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The Third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time" - and then wonders what this means both for those whose names don't live on, and for those whose do; and "Ineffable", which asks what happens when a grouping of people comes to an end - a platoon, a theatre group - and comes up with the most appealing definition of the afterlife that I have ever heard. Both were excellent.

ETA: I have just been googling this book and have realised that for "Metamorphosis" at least, the podcast was only an extract from the story.

19. The Yellow Room Conspiracy, by Peter Dickinson.

How/why I acquired this: I'm fairly sure it was recommended on LT.

This book is told through the alternating viewpoints of Paul and Lucy, an elderly couple who 40 years before were involved in a scandal of Profumo-esque proportions, with a mysterious death at its heart. One morning, Paul is weeding the garden, Lucy pottering in the kitchen, both with the radio on, when a satirical news programme starts to make joking references to the affaire. This leads the two of them to start talking about things which have been buried for decades. Lucy asks Paul to tell her, finally, how he managed to commit the murder. He replies, "I had always imagined it was you".

Cracking start, and incidentally the radio gameshow is a great device to introduce us to the dramatis personae. However, the story doesn't quite develop into the countryhouse mystery that you might expect - by the time the reader finds out what the crime is, it's pretty obvious who must have committed it. The pleasure is in hearing their distinctive voices as they tell the story, the portrayal of that post-war social milieu (half people who'd known each other at Eton, half up-and-coming types of dubious reputation), and the relationship between the five Mitford-esque Vereker sisters and their various lovers, husbands, and friends.

Highly satisfying.

Recommended for: anyone who likes their mysteries at the cosier end of the spectrum, but with a twist.

20. The Royal Physician's Visit by Per Olov Enqvist.

How/why I acquired this: again, I think this was an LT recommendation.

The royal physician of the title is a man called Struensee, and the visit refers to the time he spent as effective regent of Denmark in 1771 and 1772, pushing through a vast swathe of Enlightenment-inspired reforms.

I knew nothing about this period of history before reading this. But even so I could tell that this was an inspired reimagining. Enqvist takes the dry historical record, and adds the passion back in - fear, betrayal, guilt. (The book is full of madness of different kinds, from broken-willed feeble-mindedness to a lust for power and control.) The narrative is laced with references to contemporary records which each give us glimpses of the extreme and chaotic events, but it's the passion and madness and theatre which start to make sense of them.

This might make the book sound like a historical romp, which it isn't. It's dense with images and metaphor, yet Enqvist maintains a dry and oracular tone throughout, as if he is trying to make rational sense of what happened - even though the book as a whole suggests that nothing in history makes sense if you ignore the human emotions involved.

Recommended for: readers who like their historical fiction on the cerebral side.

21. Evening Is The Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan.

How/why I acquired this: I think I first heard about this book on Eric Forbes' book blog. I read it for my TIOLI challenge of books whose title is a standalone sentence.

Evening Is The Whole Day starts with the ignominious departure of a disgraced maidservant from the Big House, a blue-painted mansion on a quiet street in Ipoh, Malaysia. Her mistress is sitting at the kitchen table, spitting out angry and embittered words towards the two youngest children of the house, who are sitting as quietly as they can in the hope that no-one will notice them. The eldest daughter left the previous week, to study in the US. The father of the house is at his office.

The story then works its way backwards, unpeeling the onion-like layers of secrets, misunderstandings, suspicions, betrayals and petty inhumanities which have created this broken, unhappy family.

Although the events are increasingly harrowing, the lushness and beauty of the language stop this from being a depressing book.

Salman Rushdie's influence is clear, in the book's punning, multi-linguistic exuberance, the pungent smells and spiciness in the air, and the fact that many family milestones take place at the same time as significant events in the development of the country. But this is more a family saga than a Malaysian Midnight's Children, although along with the hints of family difficulties there are rumbling undercurrents of the country's racial tensions. (I am not sure if the resentments and suspicions, passed down the generations, are meant to be a metaphor for communal relations in Malaysia. It's possible, but this is not overplayed.)

This was a phenomenal read - fantastic writing, a vivid sense of place, and a powerful story. It's a crying shame there are only around 100 copies of this book on LT.

#62 TIOLI?

Sounds like a great book!

It is!!

For TIOLI, see here.

Thanks for those enticing reviews! I will probably read The Royal Physician's Visit in the next month or two, for the Reading Globally January read, and I'll definitely read Evening Is the Whole Day later this year.

I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of them!

22. Dark Fire by C J Sansom.

How/why I acquired this: another LT recommendation!

This is the second book in the Matthew Shardlake series. It's the hottest summer of the sixteenth century. Henry VIII is tiring of Anne of Cleves, and has his eye on pretty young Catherine Howard. This threatens the position of Shardlake's former master, Thomas Cromwell, who calls him to help on a case which will be vital to keeping the king's favour. At the same time, Shardlake is trying to help out a friend of his, whose niece has been accused of murdering a young boy.

Like the previous book, Dissolution, this is a good twisty-turny mystery, with extra interest from the historical context - the internecine power struggles for Henry's favour (and the religious future of the country). It also has some great flavour-of-the-time language - Shardlake has to go and visit "Bathsheba Green at the Bishop's Hat brothel at Bank End", and describes an unscrupulous rival lawyer as a "bottled spider".

Recommended for: all fans of historical mysteries.

Odd coincidence corner: in both The Yellow Room Conspiracy and The Royal Physician's Visit, which I read one after the other, there is the character of a prostitute who dresses in men's clothing in order to be able to make the acquaintance of an important man - the foreign minister in the first, the king in the second.

I read Evening is the Whole Day last year. Your review captures its essence perfectly.

I came here to catch up with your thread and picked up two great recommendations (The Royal Physician's Visit and Evening is the Whole Day) - thanks very much!

Thank you both!

Um, so I have just fallen off the book-buying wagon with a resounding CRAAASSSHHH, since I found out that you can shop Oxfam bookshops online. I've just bought 24 books... but they were very cheap... and it's for charity...

I guess 6 weeks is a reasonably long time to hold out ;-)

>71 wandering_star:....(Char places hands over eyes)...la la la la...I'm trying to pretend I didn't read that about Oxfam books online!

Lovely review of Evening Is the Whole Day -- and I second (or third) your recommendation. It's a brilliant book.

#72 - I felt able to share the link with LT once I had checked for all my wishlist-books!

I am a bit behind, need to post reviews of Cry, The Beloved Country and Black Hole. Coming soon...

But I just dropped in to mention that I spent this afternoon watching the BBC adaptation of Small Island that was on TV in December. Nicely done, I thought - with some great acting, especially from Ruth Wilson as Queenie.

23. Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton.

Why/how I acquired this: I am pretty sure I've owned this book since the early 1990s, which must make it one of the earliest pebbles on Mt TBR. It was on a reading list I was given at school, which thinking back must have been something like 'adult books for curious teenagers'. I must have read some of the books on the list, although the only other ones I can remember are A House For Mr Biswas, which I got a handful of chapters into and then stopped, and Papillon, which so many of my friends read that it practically counts as if I read it, right?

Anyway, having finally started this book, I am not sure why it took me so long to pick it up. While not what you would call a fun read, it was not in the least difficult to get through.

Cry, The Beloved Country is set in 1940s (pre-apartheid, but only just) South Africa. It follows an elderly black priest as he goes to Johannesburg to try and track down his sister and his son, both of whom disappeared to the city some years before. He does manage to find them, but both of them have fallen victim to the temptations the city has to offer. He also locates his own brother, who is now an up-and-coming political player within the community. What the priest finds sometimes makes him despair, but sometimes he manages to find hope in God.

A lot of the story is told in dialogue, and the priest's search is interspersed with conversations and discussion between unnamed people which throws light on the political context at the time.

At the same time, though, the prose style is rolling and oracular, like a fable or the words of a prophet. Phrases are repeated, through the text: "doubt not that it was fear..." or "which is not a thing that is lightly done" (this phrase usually appears after some physical contact or show of friendship between a white character and a black one), or within a paragraph: "Look at the wonder-share of Tweede Vlei. For it was twenty shillings, and then forty shillings, and then sixty shillings, and then - believe it or not - eighty shillings. And many a man wept because he sold at twelve o'clock instead of two o'clock, or because he bought at two o'clock instead of twelve o'clock".

The effect is to give the work a timeless quality, as if the story is an exemplar of what was happening over and over again. The overriding image is of a broken society, the fundamental question how such a country can be rebuilt without hate.

As well as timeless, though, the book does feel a bit dated. I think this is because it is too scrupulous in its arguments - it appeals more to the intellect than the emotions, and almost all of the characters are more noble than you would expect anyone to be in similar circumstances. It's probably meant to be a parable about what can be achieved if people can act with understanding and compassion. But even the (white) prison warder treats the priest and his family gently and sympathetically. Maybe this is because the message seems to be directed largely at a white audience, and Paton thought a tougher line would alienate them. It doesn't detract from the message of the book, but it does mean that the same book couldn't be written now.

Recommended for: readers who like poetic writing, and/or are interested in the history of South Africa (especially the views of liberal white South Africans at this period).

24. Black Hole by Charles Burns

How/why I acquired this book: it regularly appears on lists of best graphic novels.

Before I started Black Hole, I knew that it was about a mysterious plague that affects teenagers. I suppose I was expecting strange occurrences and a sense of growing horror as people begin to realise what is happening. But in fact, when the book starts, the plague is already there: an established fact of life. The teenagers are just being teenagers - copping off with each other, getting stoned, trying to figure out what to do with their lives - with the plague as just another of the shadows that hangs over them.

I found this quite difficult to read. Both the grotesqueness of the plague symptoms, and the awfulness of being a teenager, were made much more immediate and disturbing by the fact that they were depicted in images rather than words. (The style of the drawings, monochrome and usually with heavy black backgrounds, and the often grotesque dream sequences, add to the overall grimness - it's not one of those books that you start looking at and instantly want to read).

That said, since finishing it, I have kept going back to look through it, and noticed new things. It is certainly a book with a lot of impact. This all sounds like faint praise. It's not meant to be: I think this is a good book. It's just that you need to know what you are getting into.

Recommended for: well, I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who loved being a teenager. For the rest of us, I think it is worth looking at.

25. Howard's End Is On The Landing by Susan Hill.

How/why I acquired this: it was half of my Secret Santa present from the Virago Modern Classics group: thanks again, bunnyb!

The premise of this book is that one day, Susan Hill was looking for a book, and she noticed the sheer number of books which she owned which she had never read, or in some cases even remembered seeing before: ("Here is a book called How To Train Your Aggressive Dog. But we have never had an aggressive dog.") This prompted her to spend the following year reading only books from her own shelves.

I was expecting one of two things: a book either about that year of reading (the experience of picking up never-read books and rediscovering old ones), or about the reader's interaction with books. In fact, though, this is essentially a collection of essays about authors, reading, books and literary life.

It's still an interesting read - Hill writes sharply about her likes and dislikes and she is not afraid to put forward an unusual point of view, whether that's defending Blyton and Bond (James) or disliking... wait, I'll get to that later. Some of her comments made me laugh and others made me bristle - I expect that experience would be the same for any reader, although our reaction to specific opinions might vary.

I have a couple of caveats with this book. Firstly, in several of the chapters Hill is basically asserting her liking for an author or a book, without really explaining why. To get much from this, you need to trust the opinion of the person you are reading, I think, and I couldn't quite do that for someone who doesn't find Jane Austen enjoyable, or who can't get into writing from Canada or Australia (she does, though, admit this as a weakness). Secondly, Hill attempts a few frothy essays about being a book-lover (like those Anne Fadiman excels at), but you really need a bit of whimsy to make those work, and Hill does not come across like a woman of whimsy, but rather of firmly held opinion.

Despite all that, this certainly sent me back to the books themselves, which is a Good Thing. Many of the books she rates I know are on my father's shelves, so I'll be borrowing an armful next time I go home. And her chapter on Penelope Fitzgerald has finally convinced me that I need to have another go at The Blue Flower: I don't think I gave it the attention that it was due when I read it before.

The book has also made me think about the books that I am reading - which ones will I really come back to and value in the long run?

To sum up, then, I was expecting this book to be delicious, and it's not, but it is interesting and enjoyable, and I will be keeping it and referring back to Hill's views about specific books.

Recommended for: fans of Susan Hill and/or of literary classics.

Sounds like an interesting book, though I would struggle with anyone who doesn't understand Austen's worth. FWIW, I would give Fitzgerald another try. The Bookshop is a quick read and might be a good place to start.

Alas, I have read The Bookshop, and came away with the same feeling as The Blue Flower - perfectly fine book, but uncertain what the fuss was about. I will try again, though.

Bold As Love by Gwyneth Jones

How/why I acquired this: good newspaper review.

Quite soon after starting this book, I remembered how I felt when I read the first two books of Jones' Aleutian series - that while I was enjoying the books, I was missing some of the most important stuff, because I couldn't get my head around the books' worldview.

Jones makes no concessions to the reader - normally, in the science fiction that I have read anyway, there are enough clues and bits of exposition for you to figure out the characteristics of the world - but here, you have to interpret the whole thing from the way that the characters behave.

I had that same feeling after the first few pages of Bold As Love. I realised that I either needed to commit to putting the time in, to puzzle and re-read and figure things out, and perhaps find that the effort was worth it, or to cut my losses and put the book aside. I decided on the latter, even though I was enjoying the bits of the story which I could understand!

26. Savage Sanctuary by RL Spittel

How/why I acquired this: it was a gift from a friend, when we were both living in Sri Lanka.

Savage Sanctuary is about the aboriginal Veddas of Sri Lanka. It was written in 1940 by a Burgher doctor who spent a lot of his spare time travelling in the jungles hoping to meet Veddas and find out about their lives. As it says on the flyleaf, "Whatever he says of the life of the Ceylon jungle has personal experience behind it".

Savage Sanctuary draws together the true story of a Vedda "outlaw" called Tissahamy, with Spittel's experiences of the life of the Veddas, in village and jungle. It is interesting, but to a modern reader I think it lacks the analysis that we might expect from a work of popular anthropology, and the imagined detail that we would get in a modern-day fictionalised historical account. It also had a bit too much of the 'noble savage' about it, and the usual flipside of that, which is a disdain for those who the author sees as of an inferior (read, city-dwelling) race - in this case the "Moors" (Sri Lankan Muslims) who sell the Veddas products they don't need and encourage them to grow ganja. (There's a great note, by the way, which explains solemnly that "Persons intoxicated with ganja are liable to commit acts of homicidal violence."

Recommended for: fans of historical travel narratives.

Jones makes no concessions to the reader. I'd agree with that statement! I just bought her latest collection of essays but have yet to dip very deeply into it.

Avaland, I see you have a lot of her books in your library. Would you say there was any easy place to start? Are the essays more accessible? I think she probably has a lot of interesting things to say, if only I can get to them.

This post finally brings me up to date on my reading/reviews:

27. Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

How/why I acquired this: according to my tags, it was recommended in Francis Spufford's The Child That Books Built. I've just been to look through that, though, and I can't find the reference.

In my memory, it was one of the books described in The Village That Died For England. Even if my memory is wrong, it's not inaccurate - I think Mythago Wood could have fitted in very well to that book, which deals, in part, with the role of the English countryside in the national subconscious.

Mythago Wood is about a swathe of ancient forest, with primeval energies which can work with human (adult, male) consciousness to bring forth incarnations of ancient myths - all created from the fear and hope which occurred when one community is invaded by another. So we have Celtic myth-figures imagined into existence to fight the Romans, Saxons against Normans, Roundheads against Cavaliers (interesting definition of invasion there). One of the myths is a seductive Celtic princess, who comes to obsess the members of a nearby household - first the father, and then the two brothers. One after another they seek to find the secret of the woods. But the woods have ways of keeping them away from the sources of their power.

Um, I realise that this makes it sound like the most cliched kind of sword-and-sorcery (especially the seductive Celtic princess)! It really isn't. I don't think it would convert anyone who hates the genre, but for me it was an interesting idea, cleverly developed, well-written and satisfyingly scary.

Recommended for: anyone who wants a gripping, interesting fantasy/sci-fi novel.

28. Iron Earth, Copper Sky by Yashar Kemal.

How/why I acquired this: I can't remember! Possibly I was intrigued because Kemal has several books published by NYRB...

I hadn't realised that this was the second book of a trilogy. However, I think it stands well enough alone. It's set in a poor Turkish village, at the start of a bitter winter. This is a world where an old woman can make a vow never to speak to another living soul, and stick solemnly to it, or where a beggar can speak incoherent words which are taken for prophecy.

The villagers have been unable to harvest enough cotton in the summer to pay off their debts to the town shopkeeper, and are terrified by his unforgiving reputation (the story goes that the last time a village couldn't pay their debts, he arrived with his men and took everything of value, down to the drawers the women were wearing). They make all sort of preparations for his visit... but he does not come. This puts the village into such a pitch of terrified hysteria that all sorts of coincidences start to look like portents, and all of a sudden, one of the villagers - a man called Tashbash - is being hailed as a man with holy powers who will deliver them from their troubles. Tashbash himself doesn't want to have anything to do with this. But he happens to be a bitter enemy of the town's headman, who takes the whole thing as a plot against him - will Tashbash be able to extricate himself?

This was an interesting story, with wonderful descriptions of village life and the surrounding mountains. It's a deceptively light read, which I enjoyed, although the deliberate folkloric simplicity of the style is not really my thing.

Recommended for: anyone who wants to read about a world outside their experience.

29. Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan

How/why I acquired this book: there have been some fantastic reviews on LT of both this book and Tan's The Arrival, which made me pick this up when I saw it in a shop. As soon as I'd opened the covers I knew that I had to get it.

This is a collection of tiny, surreal stories, beautifully illustrated. Both the words and the pictures are delightful, although the stories have a deep emotional undertow. Each story is illustrated in a different style - for example, a piece about what happens to poems which are written but never shown to anyone is told on tiny scraps of paper, piled on top of each other.

They are a little bit like modern fairytales, but I'm surprised that it's often tagged as a children's book - admittedly, I know no-one between the ages of 5 and 20, but I wouldn't have thought that a child would really be able to understand what the stories are saying about human nature - the emotional undertow I mentioned - and without that, wouldn't the surreality just be puzzling?

Recommended for: everyone who has any sense of joy in their heart.

Grr, for some reason Iron Earth, Copper Sky is not touchstoning even though it shows up when I am writing/editing the message.

I got halfway through Mythago Wood and skimmed the rest many years ago. I agree. It is not a traditional fantasy novel. I did find it interesting (and a worthwhile read), but I was more engaged in reading for my dissertation than I was in Mythago Wood. Archetypal fiction is not quite my kind of book, but I would recommend. The style reminds me a bit of Graham Joyce's style. I heartily recommend his work. Quite interesting.

I've never heard of Graham Joyce - any suggestions for where I should start? Thanks!

My personal favorite is The Limits of Enchantment.

That was the one which appealed to me most as well! It's on the wishlist.

One of the ways I'm trying to thin my TBR pile is to weed out the non-fiction books I own on subjects I'm not that interested in. I have a surprising number of these - I think because I have a tendency to get excited by other people's glowing recommendations without considering what the book is actually about.

I managed to get rid of several just before Christmas, but was left with a small pile of "borderline" books - ones where I don't think I'm interested in the subject but I can't quite bring myself to toss out. I decided that I'd need to skim through them before making a decision one way or the other.

I picked up the first of them today - The Perfect House by Witold Rybczynski, an introduction to the architecture of Andrea Palladio, told through visits to several of the villas he built in the north of Italy. 20 mins of skimming convinced me of two things.

Firstly, that this book is worthy of the praise - it's very easy to read, full of beautiful descriptions of the Italian countryside and of the villas themselves, and has good illustrations of the facades and rooms being discussed in the text.

Secondly, that it's not a book that I personally will get a lot out of - I don't know anything about architecture so I don't have any context for Rybczynski's descriptions, and while I don't think this would be a problem for someone who wanted to learn about the subject, for me it falls into the category of 'would be nice to know'.

So, it's going onto Bookmooch, but I would still recommend it to anyone who is interested in classical architecture, and it would also be a great book to read if you were on holiday in Italy.

Palladio is a hard one to start with. Part of what made him brilliant is the way he arranged the pieces, so I can see how a background would help to follow that. Sounds interesting though...I put The Perfect House on the wishlist.

Jane, I'm so glad to hear that. I hope you will be able to get hold of a copy, and that you'll enjoy it. It's certainly a good book, just not for me...

...especially as the 24 books I ordered from Oxfam arrived in my flat today. It turns out 24 books is quite a lot.

At the same time I also got three books which were presents, and two in from bookmooch - so it's a good day for my shelves but a bad day for my resolutions!

LOL--just sent a mooch request for The Perfect House!

Lisa

30. Remind Me Who I Am, Again by Linda Grant

How/why I acquired this book: I like every book of Linda Grant's that I have ever read.

Her novels specialise in bolshy women, smart women who won't veil their intelligence, women past middle age who refuse to grow old gracefully and fade discreetly into the background.

This book is a memoir, focusing on her mother's decline into dementia, but also covering her own complicated relationship with her mother, and the generations represented by her mother - within the Grant family, of women coming of age in the 1940s, and of second-generation Jewish immigrants to the UK.

These are tied together by a common thread: the importance of memory in identity. One of the roots of the guilt within Grant's relationship with her ageing mother is the fact that when she was young, she scoffed at the old family stories - who cared about that when you could be skipping school to go and watch the Beatles playing at the Cavern? Now, when she wants to know more, there is no-one left to fill in the gaps in the story. (Grant of course is also a representative of her generation, "the first one to think they would be young for ever".)

This probably makes it sound a very miserable book. It is certainly extremely sad in places: Grant is unflinchingly honest, both about what the dementia does to her mother, and about her own sense of guilt as a daughter. It was particularly affecting for me because I could recognise elements of my own relationship with my mother. But the quality of the writing, the clarity of thought behind it, and the widening out of the story beyond her mother's decline, all lift it above the merely depressing and make it a very worthwhile read.

Recommended for: anyone who is interested in ordinary lives and how they have been lived in the twentieth century.

31. Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow by Faïza Guène

How/why I acquired this book: because of good reviews in the newspaper.

Doria lives with her mother in the Paris banlieue. She's an angry teenager: angry at her father for leaving them to go back to Morocco and find himself a peasant wife to bear him a son; angry at the lazy racism she and her mother encounter daily; angry at the social workers for pretending they understand and care. Fortunately for the reader, Doria's anger comes out as cynical wisecracks, which had me laughing out loud. But there are signs that some of this is just teenage bravado, and beneath that is a young woman who cares not just about her mother but also about her own future.

This was a sassy, energetic read which I really enjoyed. It's not perfect - sometimes the intention of the author shows through a bit too much (this bit's uplifting, this bit shows that Doria is smarter than she pretends to be), but hey, this is a first novel and Faïza Guène was only 19 when it was published, so I think those flaws are fairly minor.

Recommended for: anyone looking for something smart and funny which also gives you a bit of insight into a different world.

A note on the translation: this is a US publication, which uses an edited version of the translation made for a UK audience. This comes through in some of the slang - Doria refers to where she lives as 'the projects'. It's also got a different title - in the UK it was published as Just Like Tomorrow, a different way of dealing with the punning title. (Kif-kif is Arabic for 'same old, same old'; kiffer is French slang meaning to be crazy about something.)

32. Thirty-three Teeth by Colin Cotterill

How/why I acquired this book: For much of the time I was reading The Coroner's Lunch, the first in the series of mystery novels featuring Dr Siri Paboun, elderly and reluctant national coroner of newly Communist 1970s Laos, I thought it was essentially a sort of Southeast Asian No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - perfectly pleasant to read, but a bit too cutesy. But as I got to the end of the book, I realised that I was really enjoying it - especially the relationship Siri developed with his motley gang of allies. And after a little while had gone by I realised that I was craving the next book in the series.

Anyway, this one didn't disappoint. Once again, I really enjoyed the relationship between Siri and his friends, some on the winning and some on the losing side of the recent Communist takeover, but all of them worldly-wise, wearily cynical about daily life in the glorious new republic, and yet determined to do what's right instead of what's simply expedient. The world being what it is, this doesn't always bring them benefits from the humans that they deal with, but good spirits can sometimes be counted on to reward their honesty. (There is a bit more of the supernatural in this book, as Siri gradually comes to realise the extent of his newly-awakened shamanic powers.)

I picked this up to get me out of a bit of a reading slump, and it definitely did the trick.

Recommended for: anyone who likes light, unusual mysteries.

I have also decided not to finish a few books:

Femmes de Siècle, an anthology edited by Joan Smith which alternates short stories by women of the 1890s with short stories by women of the 1990s. Some of the stories from the 1890s had been published in "The Yellow Book", the literary quarterly which published Aubrey Beardsley's pictures.

Interesting idea, but eight stories in (about a third) I hadn't found one that I liked, and I was definitely avoiding picking the book up.

Recommended for: someone interested in Victorian women's writing.

Darwin's Voyage Of The Beagle - I have been dipping in and out of this, but I'd hesitate to list it as a book I have read as I skipped quite large chunks - detailed topographical or botanical descriptions, for example. However, Darwin is a much more engaging travelling companion than I was expecting (having in my head that black and white photo of a heavily bearded Victorian). He is immensely pleased to be on this adventure (it was after all his first trip outside Europe): "Delight ... is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who, for the first time, has been wandering by himself in a Brazilian forest". When reading his detailed descriptions of animals, or of the landscape, you can imagine him sitting there just looking, and trying to capture exactly what he sees - this is about half of his description of a cuttlefish:

These animals also escape detection by a very extraordinary, chameleon-like, power of changing their colour. They appear to vary the tints, according to the nature of the ground over which they pass: when in deep water, their general shade was brownish purple, but when placed on the land, or in shallow water, this dark tint changed into one of a yellowish green. The colour, examined more carefully, was a French gray, with numerous minute spots of bright yellow: the former of these varied in intensity; the latter entirely disappeared and appeared again by turns.

By the time I put the book down, the bearded Victorian had morphed into the young, enthusiastic naturalist in the Master & Commander film!

Incidentally it was also quite an interesting window onto a time when amateur science was a hobby of gentlemen - Darwin quotes other writers' journals to back up his arguments, or to disprove them with his own observations.

Recommended for: anyone who enjoys Victorian/Edwardian era travel books.

Saddled With Darwin by Toby Green, a travel book in which the narrator and his girlfriend ride around South America, following in Darwin's footsteps. There are funny moments (neither the narrator nor his girlfriend are expert riders, and everyone they meet thinks they are crazy), but blessedly, this is not a comic-capers-and-amusing-natives sort of travel book - it's much more thoughtful, and very detailed in its portrayal of the countries they pass through.

I didn't finish it because I'm not a huge fan of travel writing, so it has to be something standout to hold my attention, but I would certainly recommend this to anyone who likes the genre and is interested in South America. In fact while noodling around LT I found that the author has also written a history of the inquisition, which is definitely something I'd like to know more about, and so that has gone on my wishlist.

33. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

How/why I acquired this book: lots of recommendations on LT.

Oxford University, 2054. Kivrin, a young historian, is preparing herself for a trip back to the middle ages - she has carefully chosen a time before the plague arrived in Britain so she will be safer. But while it has become common practice for historians of, say, the twentieth century to travel back in time to study the past at first hand, earlier centuries are considered too dangerous: her supervisor, who has no experience in time travel, has cut corners, and deliberately waited until the head of department was away to run the 'drop'. After Kivrin has gone, the technician in charge begins to panic, but before he can get a word out he collapses, and has to be hospitalised. Meanwhile, Kivrin has arrived in medieval Oxfordshire, to discover that things are not quite as she expected them to be.

I really enjoyed this book. It's a great page-turner (don't start it if you have anything urgent to do).

I found it somehow comforting that Oxford in 2054 is very similar to Oxford today, with academic turf wars, bacon and eggs for breakfast, and students reading Petrarch. It's also very nice to see that the NHS is still functioning, but less so to see that people are still protesting against Europe and against immigration. Then again, as the book goes on, you start to think that perhaps human nature hasn't changed all that much since the middle ages - when faced with disaster, people still flee, stay and help, blame outsiders or perceive the just wrath of God.

One small thing - it's funny how dated the past's view of the future can seem. I wouldn't blink if I read a book set in 1992 where people watch videos and don't have mobiles, but it still seems strange that 1992's view of the future is like that. Mind you, that was something I only noticed at the very start - soon I was drawn into the story and past quibbling with little details.

Sample sentence: "You have no business wearing white to the Middle Ages," he'd said. "It will only get dirty."

Recommended for: anyone who wants a good story and isn't put off by the label of 'science fiction'.

This looks like fun. It's going on my summer wishlist.

34. Grandville by Bryan Talbot

How/why I acquired this: like Alice In Sunderland, this comes up quite often on lists of best comics.

Unlike Alice In Sunderland, though, the subject matter is a bit more traditionally "comics" - although the execution is remarkable.

The story takes place in Belle Epoque France, but a France which won the Napoleonic Wars and now has an empire which straddles the globe (um, a bit more than the French empire straddled the globe anyway). This means, incidentally, that most of the time people are speaking French, so you get some lovely backtranslations like "Name of a dog!" and a reference to a dancer at the "Shepherdess Follies".

Anyway, Britain was a difficult-to-rule colony for almost 200 years, and has grudgingly been given its independence, but a recent dramatic act of terror - an anarchist bombing of an important symbol of France (sound familiar?) - has led to calls for the country to be subdued again. A British detective starts to investigate the mysterious suicide of a secret agent recently returned from France, but what he finds leads him - through a trail of corpses - to the very highest levels of the French regime.

Oh, I should also mention that it's a steampunk Belle Epoque, and that all the characters are animal-headed (except for a few "doughfaces", a menial underclass).

So, it's a lot of fun, and the pictures are fantastic - from the broad views of automaton-ed Paris to the close-ups of an opium-addicted terrier or a terrified chimp. (Or indeed, the copy of the famous picture of Marianne leading the revolutionaries, where Marianne has the head of a chicken.) I didn't like it as much as Alice In Sunderland though because the content is much thinner - you certainly wouldn't read it again for the words. Two other things also reduced my enjoyment of the book: firstly, there's quite a lot of blood and guts (Talbot himself says that Tarantino was an inspiration, along with Conan Doyle, Rupert the Bear, and early science fiction illustrators), and secondly I found the political references a bit inconsistent - France is sort of the US but Lapin, the President, is sort of Tony Blair - but then I don't suppose it's meant to be a detailed satire, more something to raise a scoff of recognition.

Sample sentence: I'm frightened, LeBrock. Last night... last night Sabrina overdosed on laudanum - just like Coco. It was on the lumierescope news.

Recommended for: the pictures, the wordplay and the inventiveness - but probably only for people who already like comics.

35. The Kingdom Of Ashes by Robert Edric

How/why I acquired this: I was blown away by Peacetime when I read it a couple of years ago.

Like Peacetime, this novel examines the complex moralities and human relations of a hurting post-war world. Here, the world is 1946 Germany, within the British zone of occupation, where everyone has lost something and everyone is trying to make use of others for their own ends.

Our main character is Alex Foster, a British army interrogator working at "the Institute", processing arrested Germans to see whether they need to be sent to trial. Unlike some of his colleagues, he does not get his answers by brutalising the prisoners; he also tries to treat his German colleagues with humanity, which gets him into trouble with his boss, Dyer, a man who firmly believes that they are there to do what they have to do and nothing else - the people in the local displaced persons camp, for example, are nothing to do with them. That said, 'what they have to do' includes staying on the right side of the US, and so Alex ends up re-interrogating a prisoner, Walther, on the basis of a very slender file. Walther is suspected of being involved in an incident where a large group of US POWs were summarily executed. He claims that he was in hospital at the time, but points out, "if I'd been present ... then perhaps I might have participated in what happened. Yes, I don't deny that. Sometimes, and as I'm sure countless others have already made clear to you, Captain Foster, choice in these matters is an unattainable luxury."

This is a masterly, although uncomfortable, tale of complicity and compromise. It's easy to detect analogies with more recent wars, but that's never heavy-handed, and it really is more about the aftermath of war in general - not just the lives lost or shattered, but the utter mistrust between the survivors.

Sample sentence: Alex ... seized his own small advantage and said, "It looks as though I might get tied up in all of this - the girl." He gestured towards the hospital. "Both of us will, Whittaker and me. Especially if there's any sort of investigation into what's just happened, what rules we broke." Dyer understood him perfectly and grinned again. "Finally, you're actually listening to what I'm telling you. You get on with your work and there'll be no investigation."

Recommended for: anyone who likes well-written, complex, shadowed fiction.

36. Fabrizio's Return by Mark Frutkin

How/why I acquired this: recommended on LT.

In 1682, a priest climbs a church tower in Cremona to watch for Halley's comet. 76 years later, a devil's advocate arrives in Cremona to investigate whether the priest is really worthy of canonisation. But just as the comet returns, echoes and ripples from Father Fabrizio's life start to eddy into that of the new arrival, and before long, despite his initial credo that "Mother Church cannot abide ambiguity", the devil's advocate is experiencing confusing thoughts and emotions...

The thing I liked best about this book was the descriptions of rain, from a light drizzle to a fog which is almost a physical presence. Other than that, I found the book fairly insubstantial. I didn't especially believe in the Jesuit's change in character - he steps out of his carriage a cynic and before long is troubled by even the flimsiest stories of miracles. I have nothing against magic in books, but this one didn't really work for me.

Sample sentence: My story pertains to deeply hidden truths that can burst forth, without warning, on a grey spring morning when the fields are heavy with fog.

Recommended for: someone looking for a light, sweet read.

37. Vale Of Tears by Paulette Poujol Oriol

How/why I acquired this: I thought that depressaholic had this as his Haiti read, but I can't find it in the threads. In any case, it was another LT recommendation.

Vale Of Tears is a riches-to-rags story centred on Coralie, a weak woman who makes some bad decisions and who is taken advantage of by others. The book interleaves the story of one day - new year's eve, late 1950s, in which she is trawling the city looking for someone who can lend her rent money - with her descent from a life of privilege as the beautiful, fair-skinned daughter of a wealthy family.

Other reviewers have liked this book, but again, this is one that just didn't work for me. I found the style very distancing - the camera stays in medium shot, so the focus is very much on the overall trajectory. This meant that there was very little psychology, either for Coralie or those who do her down - it's much more 'tell' than 'show'. There's not much dialogue, and what there is is expository rather than insightful. I found myself comparing this book to Jean Rhys's Voyage In The Dark, which is a similar story in that it's about the inevitable sad decline of a young, naive woman with nothing but her beauty to live on - but despite the predictability of the story, you feel what Anna is feeling and in a way can understand the decisions she makes.

There is a certain amount of interest from what the book says about the situation of the poor in Haiti, but I don't think it really added anything to what anyone might have imagined.

Sample sentence: Annoyed, yet relying on his wife who outsmarted him, Felicien, who wanted peace in his home, began to come around to Aline's point of view that someday soon Coralie would have to be put into a boarding school.

Recommended for: someone interested in Haitian life in the mid-years of the twentieth century.

I've also started, but fairly quickly abandoned, The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton - another LT recommendation, if I remember rightly.

This novel is inspired by the real Kenyan Camel Mobile Library, set up to improve literacy rates and access to books in rural areas.

A young, idealistic American librarian goes to Kenya to work on the "camel bookmobile" - but others, in the village and outside, are opposed to it, because they don't think the books are relevant to the villagers' lives, or because they think the books will bring unacceptable 'modernity' and disrupt the traditions of the village.

I pretty much stopped reading here (I was finding the style very clunky), but I imagine that what happens is that Lives Change; people are Redeemed By Literature or Learn Important Life Lessons from contacts with others - you know the drill. I'm not saying this is a bad book, but it's not my bag.

Sample sentence: At age fifty-six, she knew what it cost to spend years chafing against restraints others didn't even seem to notice. The journey was always easier, after all, for the beast that wore blinders. That had been her own mother's argument, though Neema had never been able to live by it.

38. Women In The Wall by Julia O'Faolain

How/why I acquired this: it was recommended very highly somewhere, possibly on LT. I found a copy on bookmooch and ordered it excitedly... but when it arrived, I took one look at the back-cover blurb, thought 'sixth-century nunnery?!' and moved it right down to the bottom of the TBR pile. I only picked it up again because it was chosen for me in the Go Review That Book! group, but I am very glad that it was.

This book takes the little that is known about some real 6th century saints and religious figures and tries to imagine what their lives were actually like, with all the passions and powerplays, not to mention some of the grotesque violence (against others and the self) of the chaotic and brutal era they were living in.

The main figures are Radegunda, a queen who rejects the world to found a nunnery (and was later made a saint), Agnes, a young girl whom she persuaded to leave the world along with her and who becomes the abbess of the convent, and a poet and priest, Fortunatus.

Radegunda is a German princess, whose family are slaughtered by Franks when she is eleven, and who is later married to the Frankish king who led the warriors that day. She is an extremely pious woman, but she is also very proud and stubborn - and a woman who understands power well enough to make pretty sure she gets what she wants ("after all, I had spent fourteen years as a king's wife"). She is often assailed by doubts about her real motivations for joining the convent: it had "sprung from love - but of what? God? Self? Peace? Privacy?" Of course the answer, as is usually the case, is 'a bit of all of these', but as a religious, Radegunda is not comfortable with shades of grey. This makes her very tough on herself - but the dramatic penances she chooses could be (and are) criticised by others as pride rather than humility. Meanwhile, Agnes has little sense of vocation, and she struggles between the two ideas that religion is about finding joy, or that God is more pleased with greater sacrifice (so someone who goes unhappily to the cloister is more welcome than someone who is happy to be there).

This is a vivid and energetic book, which drew me in very quickly. It's a fascinating imagining of the world at that time, and of two complex women trying to make their way in that world. It's about politics as much as religion - within the conflict-torn kingdom, but also in the ostensibly calm and quiet convent. The women are stronger - and more manipulative - than the men, who are fairly weak souls. There is also a surprising amount of sexiness for a book about 6th-century nuns: real sex (which is often compared to apples, sweet and juicy, but I guess with an overtone of wholesome and natural) but also the strangely sexualised imagery of the nuns' passion for their Lord. Part of Radegunda's complex motivations for entering the convent is a disgust with herself for enjoying sex with her fairly brutish husband.

There are lots and lots of other things in this book, eg an interesting theme about the continued influence of the Roman era - some of the kings live in Roman palaces, where they can still get hot water, although they wouldn't be able to build the systems themselves - and Fortunatus is allowed to get away with a lot because his ability to poetize in Latin is seen as a hangover from those civilised times. I am sure there was lots about the religious debates and the reflections of real lives that went right over my head but would be picked up by another reader. I should also warn that there is a disturbing and sometimes gruesome sub-plot involving an anchoress, a nun who has chosen to be walled up in a tiny space and live there for the rest of her life, as a way of bringing grace and power to the convent. This is something that did happen at this time, and the reason for this subplot becomes clear by the end of the novel, but it's a horrible thing to imagine in detail.

Sample sentence: This was something for which Agnes always had to be prepared. Radegunda, who thought she left control and responsibility to Agnes, was not even aware of what she was doing. Authority was part of her. She had to make a conscious effort to get rid of it as she had rid her diet of meat, fish, fruit, eggs and wine. When she forgot, her directions were immediately obeyed and often ran counter to some arrangement made by Agnes.

Recommended for: I would recommend this to anyone interested in literary fiction, especially fiction focused around women and/or human relationships.

PS, I've just looked again at the back of my copy. It starts: Away from the chaos, violence and flames of sixth-century Gaul, the nuns lead their quiet lives as Brides of Christ. For Radegunda retreat means sainthood and mystic mortification. Sweet Abbess Agnes tends the gardens. No wonder I didn't want to read the book! What a complete misrepresentation.

It's a 1978 edition, so maybe a more accurate blurb was seen as too shocking?

104 - Sounds interesting, although I agree...terrible blurb.

39. It Falls Into Place, a collection of 14 short stories by Phyllis Shand Allfrey.

How/why I acquired this: Allfrey's The Orchid House is on my wishlist, so when I saw this was available I picked it up.

Allfrey, a white Dominican born into a family of planters/colonial officials in 1908, sounds like she led a fascinating life, growing up in Dominica and then, as a young woman, living in the US and UK for a number of years before returning to Dominica in the 1950s to co-found the Dominica Labour Party, and serving for four years as a government minister.

This collection contains 14 stories published together here for the first time. Most of them are short, vivid episodes, many of which appear to have autobiographical elements, including a couple of childhood episodes which hint at the admiration felt by a quiet girl for the confident, attractive women who break rules. There's also a running theme about exile - sometimes, that is missing the island from a cold, bombed-out Europe, but in other stories you realise the characters are remembering a world which doesn't really exist any more - or which they can't get to, such as one story in which a Dominican woman in New York, who is able to pass as white, makes a one-time-only journey to a West Indian nightclub in Harlem.

Sample sentence: My great-uncle, the colony's medical officer, had issued a statement to the press that the prevalent epidemic was kaffir-pox, a disease that was unlikely to affect people of pure European blood. Unfortunately, the first white victim of this unpleasant ailment was the Anglican archdeacon and the second was myself, a child of ten.

Recommended for: fans of atmospheric and slightly poignant short stories.

40. A State Of Independence by Caryl Phillips

How/why I acquired this: I think I've had this book for quite a long time, and I think I bought several of Caryl Phillips' books after reading one of his, but I can't for the life of me remember which one.

A State Of Independence covers a few days in the life of Bertram Francis, who returns to St Kitts just before independence after twenty years in the UK. In a sort of reverse Small Island, he arrives with high expectations, but the people closest to him, far from welcoming him back, seem to want to teach him a lesson - his mother, his former girl, and an old schoolfriend who is now a government minister, and like all politicians, obsessed with the future but not above settling scores from the past.

As well as the personal story, the book wonders whether the Caribbean island was really gaining independence, or exchanging a formal relationship with the UK for cultural and economic dependence on the US.

I found this a fairly slight read, although in the final quarter of the book, Bertram started to take shape as a character, and began to find his direction.

Sample sentence: After twenty years he had already discovered that he still felt an attachment to the house, and to the village, and to his mother, but as much as it shocked him to have to admit it, the attachment he felt towards his mother was in no way greater than that he felt towards these other facets of his life that he thought England had stripped from his consciousness.

Recommended for: someone interested in Caribbean or post-colonial literature.

I managed 50 pages of the turgid Victorian pastiche of Angelica by Arthur Phillips, before I had to put it down.

Sample sentence: Only with the front door's guarantee that he had departed for his work did Constance descend to the kitchen and, betraying none of her pain at the instruction, asked Nora to prepare the nursery for Angelica, to call in a man to dismantle the child's outgrown bed and haul the blue silk Edwards chair up from the parlor to her new bedside.

41. The School Of War by Alexandre Najjar

How/why I acquired this: spotted in the Saqi/Telegram books catalogue (which specialises in the Middle East)

This is a sort of memoir in short scenes, of the author's early years during the civil war in Lebanon (which started when he was 8 and ended when he was 23). He has now returned after many years away, and all sorts of everyday things bring back memories, from filling his car with petrol to watching a football match, or seeing an old man gardening. A chance find of his school photograph reminds him of a time he was captured by militia at a roadblock, but one of the masked men whispered that they'd been at school together and allowed him to escape. (This is not his only brush with death - he has a bullet lodged in his body from a time when his school bus was fired on.) But the stories are not all terror and destruction - family, friends, love and adventure are also there in this child's-eye-view of war.

Sample sentence: Eleven o'clock at night. The radio has just announced that bombing has resumed. I leave the house and travel the two hundred yards to the shelter. Along the way, I come across dozens of men in pyjamas and women in nightgowns filing past in the darkness like ghosts.

Recommended for: readers who like memoirs, or who are interested in what it feels like to be caught up in a war.

42. Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler

How/why I acquired this: I saw someone else reading this, and it looked fun - the first book in a series dealing with London's "Peculiar Crime Unit", on whose desks all the odd little cases end up, and who in turn are not above solving crimes with the help of supernatural elements.

I was hoping for a black-humour filled romp, and was disappointed when it didn't materialise. That said, the story has some satisfying twists and turns and a nicely creepy undertone. Not enough for me to seek out the other books in the series, though.

Also, towards the end I realised that I had probably read it before - or if not this, then another book with a rather similar criminal.

Sample sentence: 'You mean to tell me that amateurs are being invited to solve murders?' asked Arthur Bryant with some surprise. 'Have a pear drop.'

Recommended for: fans of quirky and complicated mysteries.

43. Tell Me A Riddle by Tillie Olsen

How/why I acquired this: LT recommendation, I think.

This is a collection of four short stories, dealing with have-nots and people who find difficulty expressing themselves in words - a mother talking about her eldest child, the female half of an elderly couple, an alcoholic sailor. The stories are moving and very effectively written - emotions are rarely stated explicitly, but are there in every line.

Sample sentence: "You lie," he said sturdily, "there was joy too." Bitterly: "Ah how cheap you speak of us at the last."

Recommended for: people who admire the craft of short story writing.

44. Beside The Sea by Veronique Olmi

How/why I acquired this: LT early reviewer.

The narrator of this story is a single mother, who suffers from both anxiety and depression. She loves her two young sons, but she can't always make herself get out of bed in time to pick them up from school, and the social workers just don't understand. In the first couple of pages of the book, it is obvious that she is taking them to the seaside - but not intending to bring them back.

This is an incredible attempt to get inside the head of someone on the edge of desperation. We are given very little detail about the life which went before, which brought her to this stage. But there is heartbreaking detail about the trip itself: she'd imagined herself giving the boys a treat, but the hotel is filthy, it pours with rain, and the sea is a dismal brownish-grey: and worst of all, the coppers she has so carefully saved up are barely enough to buy a few snacks, and are sneered at in the shops and cafes.

This is such a good imagining of a monologue from someone on the edge of desperation that it seems churlish to point out that there is very little light and shade. From the reader's point of view, it might have made a more interesting book if the narrator was trying to keep it together a bit more. But this is a novella, and as such it's focused on the evocation of a mood, and does it very well. I hope that more of Olmi's work will be translated into English soon.

Sample sentence: They all looked like they had somewhere to go, they seemed to know the way by heart. I set off at random, in my I-know-what-I'm-doing mode, the kids trusted me and that brought me luck because guess what we came to? You'd have thought it was expecting us! The sea, yes, the sea! Bang in the middle of town, now that's something. You're looking for a cafe and you find the ocean, that doesn't happen every day, it was quite a surprise.

Recommended for: someone who admires good writing and doesn't mind tough subject matter.

What I mean by 'light and shade' is that I think it is possible, even with very bleak subject matter, to have some development in the tone. I was thinking while I read this about two other books, Janet Frame's chilling Faces In The Water (semi-autobiographical, about her period in a lunatic asylum) and Helen Garner's The Spare Room, probably the saddest book I've ever read but also one of the best. In both of these, you had to look through the writing to see the character, and that is something that I always admire (and enjoy) in fiction. In Beside The Sea, the pain was right there on the surface. I'm sure this is accurate for someone in that position. But it did mean that the book lacked some of the complexity of these other two works.

Another abandoned book, I'm afraid - this one after only 20 pages. It's Rituals by Cees Nooteboom, and it seems to be filled with slightly ponderous statements that appear at first sight to be profound, and then fairly quickly turn out to be meaningless.

I'll give you two examples:

Inni Wintrop was one of those people who drag the time they have spent on earth behind them like an amorphous mass.

Oh yes, one of those people.

She had the total equanimity of someone who had been made solely to be different from the others without ever being conscious of it, a different order of being that consisted of only one member - her.

I must say from the first 20 pages, it doesn't surprise me that this pedestaling/objectifying remark is made about one of the female characters.

Well, other people I know have found this book good, but it's not for me.

>41 wandering_star:, So did you like the Najjar? It's been on my TBR list for several years now, but I kinda burned out on Lebanese civil war memoirs for a while.

ETA: By the way, I love the idea of the "sample sentence". If I wasn't so lazy, I would steal the concept!

Thank you! Usually the sentence jumps out at me... or several do. It's fun choosing one.

I did like the Najjar, although it might not be so interesting if you have read a lot of Lebanese civil war memoirs, or even a lot of books about what it's like to live through a war. I thought it was an interesting perspective - as well as telling us about his experiences, it showed how those memories continue to haunt his life because so many ordinary things can bring them up suddenly.

45. Gents by Warwick Collins

How/why I acquired this: can't remember.

Three Jamaicans work in a public toilet in London. They are pretty much resigned to the almost constant cottaging that goes on, until one day the council tells them that it needs to be stopped or the premises will be closed.

That might not sound like a great premise for a book - and indeed, the story is both short and a quick read. But the style and the subject matter both pack a lot more punch than you might think on a first look.

The style is very spare - it feels as if you are being told everything that happens, but of course there is actually a lot going on between the lines. The story, too, manages to bring in some big questions - particularly how different people choose to respond to other lifestyles (not just sexuality) - without ever labouring the point - it's beautifully light-touch.

Sample sentence: It was possible to tell from the sound alone which cubicle had opened or closed. The doors of the seventeen cubicles were like a musical scale. Each hollow space they enclosed had a different frequency. The flushing of the cistern in cubicle three had a different sound from cubicle eleven.

Recommended for: anyone who appreciates good writing and is prepared for an unusual setting!

>118 wandering_star: I love workplace fiction and this one seems unique! So glad to see your post (and lovely passage) -- I remember Gents from Early Reviewers; it wasn't available to the US and looks like it's still limited here. But now I'm on a mission :)

eta: found it through the library!

#119 I hope you like it! What other 'workplace fiction' would you recommend?

46. Tokyo Cancelled by Rana Dasgupta

How/why I acquired this: I think I read a newspaper review of Dasgupta's other book, Solo, and that intrigued me to check out his other stuff.

This is one of those books which comes covered with effusive critical praise, so I was a bit taken aback when I just didn't think it was that good. It was nice to check the LT reviews when I'd finished and find that most ordinary readers were as nonplussed as I was. That said, I can see why reviewers might have liked it ... I'm sure if you have to read so many books and don't get to choose which they are, originality starts to become very important!

So, as the book starts, a snowstorm has blanketed Tokyo, leaving a planeload of passengers stranded in a small airport. Gradually, hotel rooms are found for all but 13 of them. In order to while away the night, they decide that each of them will tell a story.

I thought this was a great premise - although it was disappointing then that the stories were all so similar in tone and theme. These are fables for a globalised world - and that's not a lazy cliche in this case, for the subject matter of the stories is, in many ways, globalisation itself - the increased ease and speed with which people, information and commodities can travel across borders, and the vast gaps of income and opportunity which result. Into this environment are dropped the traditional characters of myth - the third son, the mysterious prophecy, the encounter between a wealthy man and a shopkeeper.

The stories are tremendously imaginative, and there are some images which will stay with the reader - I liked the cyber-map which visualised all the routes which are travelled by people, commodities and information. But I wish the author had applied the same level of imagination to the way that people might actually behave in some of these circumstances. Also, blending a naturalistic modern environment with fabulous events turns out to be quite tricky - I am quite a fan of fantasy and magical realism, but they still have to make sense on their own terms, and for me that wasn't happening here. So, I can accept that one character is a mute woman who can make people hear her thoughts. I can't really accept that a wealthy man would send his new wife to work cleaning in a hotel, especially not a hotel which is connected to the sinister source of his wealth. The final problem for me was that many of the stories didn't really seem to go anywhere. It was as if the author had the idea but felt it was enough just to put it down on paper.

I think the stories are similar enough that you would know, after a couple, whether or not this is a book that you would enjoy.

Sample sentence: The moon was so bright that the streets seemed to be bathed in an eerie kind of underexposed daylight that was even more pellucid for the absolute quiet. Insomniac houses and Range Rovers blinked at each other with red security eyes.

Recommended for: I would recommend this for fans of thought-provoking sci-fi - it's got the interesting ideas, but also some of the downsides that sci-fi sometimes has (clunky writing and plausibility gaps).

I enjoyed Solo, but Tokyo Cancelled seems like a very different book, and one that I wouldn't enjoy as much. Thanks for that useful review!

I didn't enjoy Tokyo Cancelled for the reasons you've outlined. It's made me a bit wary of trying Solo I must admit.

Yes, I've crossed it off my wishlist too...

>120 wandering_star: happy to recommend! Here’s my ”workplace” tag, sorted from highly rated to low to tbr. About half are fiction, the rest memoir and nonfiction. More than I can keep up with, yet I’m excited every time I find a new one (some more suggestions here).

47. The Bridge On The Drina by Ivo Andrić

How/why I acquired this: LT recommendation.

The Bridge On The Drina is about ordinary life in a small town, over several centuries. However, while the people of Višegrad are like those in any small town, Višegrad itself is not ordinary. It is on the border of the Bosnian and Serb territories, and its bridge - built in the sixteenth century - is an important communications link for the Ottoman Empire.

Great historical forces lead to political upheavals, imperfectly understood in the town but with inevitable consequences.

Much of the book is focused on the bridge itself, including the terraced area midway across where the townspeople pass the time, and the caravansarai to one side. Serbian villagers try to disrupt the construction of the bridge and are made examples of. Refugees cross the bridge, driven out of their homes. After the shift from the Ottoman to the Austro-Hungarian empire, women start to take the air on the terrace, much to the disgust of the men who used to smoke their waterpipes there. Guards appear and question the people who are crossing.

As this shows, the book is interested in the way that the great political changes are experienced in daily life, and especially in the way that the town changed with each wave of new influence - whether that was in a new way of reckoning weights and measures at the market, or a different shape of horseshoe. And the influence goes both ways:

"Many of these officials, the fiery Magyar or the haughty Pole, crossed the bridge with reluctance and entered the town with disgust and, at first, were a world apart, like drops of oil in water. Yet a year or so later they could be found sitting for hours on the kapia {terrace}, smoking through thick amber cigarette-holders and, as if they had been born in the town, watching the smoke expand and vanish under the clear sky in the motionless air of dusk; or they would sit and wait for supper with the local notables on some green hillock, with plum brandy and snacks and a little bouquet of basil before them, conversing leisurely about trivialities or drinking slowly and occasionally munching a snack as the townsmen knew how to do so well."

This extract also shows the poetry of description which is another feature of the book.

I don't think I've ever read anything which looked at the sweep of history in such a human way. Highly recommended.

Sample sentence: Watching all this, day after day, year after year, the townspeople began to lose count of time and of the real intentions of the builders. It seemed to them that the construction had not moved an inch forward... Men who do not work themselves and who undertake nothing in their lives easily lose patience and fall into error when judging the work of others. The Visegrad Turks again began to shrug their shoulders and wave their hands when they talked of the bridge. The Christians remained silent, but watched the building work with secret and hostile thoughts, wishing for its failure as for that of every Turkish undertaking.

Recommended for: anyone interested in the Balkans, but also for anyone who wants to think about the way that ordinary peoples' lives are thrown about by events set in train far away.

Great review!

>125 wandering_star: Sounds superb. I've added it to my wishlist.

125 - Sounds great!

Thanks! I think it's a remarkable book, and because it is quite subtly done, it sort of creeps up on you how good it is.

So, I have been quite quiet recently because I was revising for an exam, but it took place on Thursday and I am exhaling and looking forward to guilt-free evenings and weekends.

A few reviews to catch up on...

48. The Raven by Peter Landesman

How/why I acquired this: I have an ancient notebook where I used to write down books which were recommended to me, way back before t'internet. This came from that.

The Raven reimagines the real-life sinking of a pleasure boat off the coast of New England in 1941. The twist here is that as well as the run-up to the disaster, we see the survivors again in 1952 and finally 1985.

A promising premise, and the book starts very effectively. We are introduced to the key characters, each one in an episode that emphasises the fearsome force of nature, and especially water - floods, gales, storms at sea. The language is heavily poetic - sometimes too poetic, to the point that it occasionally obscured meaning - but it can be very effective:

Clayt tugged at the throttle and the water in back boiled and the boat moved off below them. Land pulled away.

However, once we got to 1952, the focus on nature's power shifted firmly onto people's inhumanity, and the language didn't seem to cope so well with this. Some of the fizz went out of the book, and it became a bit of a slog. I probably wouldn't have finished it, except that in the midst of panicked revision, it seemed like a good idea to be reading something which was easy to put down...

Sample sentence: Though for Leslie there was something else. The wrecks piling up on shore, the wrecks being made of ships in open water. Leslie knew dying was going on out there this minute. He'd made a boyhood of knowing it.

Recommended for: people who enjoy poetically written books.

49. Pompeii by Robert Harris

How/why I acquired this: I've read (and enjoyed) most of Harris' novels.

Although I've never felt quite the same way about him since hearing about him karaokeing 'YMCA' with Jeremy Paxman, Jon Snow, Ian Hislop and Peter Mandleson... it's kind of stuck in my mind. (To any non-Brits who may read this, I know this sentence will make no sense at all, but there's too much cultural baggage there to explain simply - sorry).

Anyway, when you pick up one of his novels you know you'll get a pacy story in an interesting setting, and indeed that's what Pompeii delivered (as well as some interesting information about volcanoes, which seemed pretty topical). At the start I felt as if it was a bit too dense with research, but soon I was absorbed in the story.

A very serviceable read, although not up to the heights of Fatherland or Enigma.

Sample sentence: The new owner of the Villa Hortensia, the millionaire Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, had first heard the story as a boy - of how the Augustan aristocrat Vedius Pollio would hurl clumsy servants into his eel pond as a punishment for breaking dishes - and he would often refer to it admiringly as the perfect illustration of what it was to have power. Power, and imagination, and wit, and a certain style.

Recommended for: well, a pacy read in an interesting setting.

50. King Rat by China Miéville

How/why I acquired this: I'd seen his various books in bookshops and on friends' shelves, and they looked intriguing.

Early one morning, Saul is woken by the heavy boots of policemen in his house, there to take him in for questioning regarding the mysterious death of his father (who has jumped, or been hurled, through the front window). In the police cell, he feels that his life has already descended into his worst nightmare, but then a mysterious stranger appears in his cell. King Rat is boastful and menacing ('I know when your ships are sinking'), but he springs Saul and introduces him to a parallel world alongside the London that he has always known. Saul is exhilarated at first, but soon it becomes clear that King Rat's grand plan is to use him in a complicated and dangerous act of revenge, and he realises that nowhere is safe for him any more.

There are several good things about this book. I love the Dickensian/cockney mashup of the way King Rat speaks: 'By a river we found us a town, not too gentry a gaff, mind, but with silos that fair creaked at the seams'. I like how so much of the book is set in the unprepossessing suburbs on London - places that only people will live in the city will know. The atmosphere is just menacing and horrible enough. And the story is inventive.

I wasn't too keen, though, on the scenes set in the human London - this was where the book felt more like a first novel. Saul's mates are all really into jungle music (it is the early '90s, after all) and talk much too much about how important it is in their lives, and of course how rubbish all the other sub-genres of music are. This was kind of boring, and also made the book feel very dated.

Sample sentence: Stop looking at me and wondering, boy. You're not going to get it. I've crept through these bricks when they were barns, then mills, then factories and banks. You're not looking at people, boy.

Recommended for: readers who like complex, dystopian fantasy (although they'd be better off with Jeff Noon, in my opinion).

51. Bluebeard's Egg by Margaret Atwood

How/why I acquired this: big fan of Margaret Atwood...

...although this was a little disappointing.

Apart from three or four stories about a woman's memories of her childhood (which appear autobiographical), the stories in this book are all about the relations between men and women.

They are a little samey - the same tone of dry wit (which borders on archness when you've seen too much of it), main characters who feel out of place in their own lives, as if everyone else has had instructions on how to behave which they missed. I think this probably makes them better on their own than as a collection. I certainly enjoyed most the stories which strayed off the template.

Sample sentence: Robbie was twenty years older than Emma, a stocky red-bearded Scot whose grumpiness was legendary. Emma mistook it for shyness. She thought he was more spiritually mature than she was, and therefore difficult to understand.

Recommended for: fans only, I think.

52. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

How/why I acquired this: again, big fan of her work.

I read this through in two sittings, glorying in the fact that I didn't have to do any more revision! There are so many reviews of this on LT that I don't think I need to say any more than that it's excellent. On the one hand, a very atmospheric chiller set in a crumbling stately home; on the other, a touching portrait of friendships between people who feel rather out of their time and place.

Sample sentence: I stood frozen for a moment, not knowing what to do. A few minutes before, the little garden had appeared almost snug to me. Now the small walled patch, with its single narrow exit leading only to another choked and isolated space, seemed filled with menace.

Recommended for: I think almost anyone would enjoy this.

A little late to this thread, and catching up on all your reading, but I want to enthusiastically second your recommendation of The Bridge on the Drina. I also thought it was a remarkable and wonderful book, and I then went on to read his Bosnian Chronicle which is different, but equally fascinating (tile also sometimes translated as The Days of the Consuls).

Bosnian Chronicle is on the wishlist!

53. Off Colour by Jackie Kay

How/why I acquired this: I really enjoyed Jackie Kay's long poem The Adoption Papers, about the adoption by a white Scottish family of a black baby (like Kay's own family circumstances), and also her novel Trumpet.

I picked it off the shelves because of the 'Read a living poet challenge' (and it was the thinnest book that fit!)

The poems in this collection are, roughly, themed around sickness, including sicknesses of society such as racism. My favourites were the ones which seemed the most personal - especially the ones about the speaker's relationship with her dying mother. There are also poems in broad Scottish accents about being ill: the first poem in the book starts:

Let me tell you what like it is.
It's a great muckle hand inside my guts, clawing.
Or a camshachle crow; beak at my kidneys.

I can't find any online from this collection, but here is a recording of Kay reading "Pride", the last poem in the book, which provides a sort of redemption:

http://thepoetrychannel.org.uk/poems/pride/.

At the start of Delirium by Laura Restrepo, a man returns from a short business trip to find his wife Agustina has gone mad.

The story is then told in four different voices - the husband, who narrates his efforts to look after his wife and find out what happened; an ex-lover of Agustina's, Midas McAllister, who tells the tale of his fall from grace (and wealth), Agustina's fractured voice remembering episodes from her troubled childhood (which echo the themes of her madness), and a fourth voice telling the story of her equally insane grandfather.

Normally when you have interleaving stories like this, they peak at different times to keep you reading. But halfway through the book, none of the stories were more than intermittently engaging for me. So I have given it up - not because I hated it, but just because I wasn't getting much out of it.

Sample sentence: We danced at the cheap dance halls or we went to see Mexican movies, always downtown or in the south of the city, in those working-class neighborhoods where there was no way anyone we knew would go, you know it's farther from the north to the south of Bogota than it is from here to Miami, if you could've seen Carlos Vicente, always such the society gentleman that he looked as if he'd swallowed an umbrella, well, in the anonymity of the south he loosened up, he was nicer to people, he danced like a dream in the dive bars, we loved to go to the Swan, the Loose Screw, the Salome, the Pagan Delight....

Recommended for: readers interested in Colombia - one of the main themes of the book is the gulf between the social classes.

54. Icefields by Thomas Wharton

How/why I acquired this: not sure where the recommendation came from. It might be that another of his books, The Logogryph, was on my wishlist and so when I found this book available secondhand I thought it was worth picking up.

At the end of the nineteenth century, a British doctor falls down a crevasse in a glacier in the Canadian north. Before he is rescued, he thinks that he sees an angel trapped in the ice. After he returns to the UK, he finds it hard to get the image out of his head, and returns to Jasper, the town below the glacier. At this point the story widens out to the lives of the other people who live in Jasper - and what they seek in the desolate landscape.

There are some things I loved about this book. For example, the first few sections of the book mirror Dr Byrne's mental state - short, choppy pieces in section one as if he is drifting in and out of consciousness, and the surreal beauties when he is first drawn back - a hotel keeper making it snow inside her glasshouse, or the statue of a saint lodged upright on a sandbar after a flood. Like many books set in icy environments, the deceptive, treacherous landscape is a metaphor for the psychology of the characters, but this book also truly brings out the beauty of the ice, the imperceptibly changing landscape - frost needles and ice flowers, or the lake that forms briefly of meltwater on top of the glacier.

However, I found the structure a bit disconcerting, with the focus on Byrne opening out to an ensemble piece. It was an enjoyable, easy read, but I didn't feel that I got enough inside the heads of any of the characters.

Sample sentence: When the sun breaks through cloud, the cathedral fills with light. The warmer air hollows it into a more baroque, flamboyant shape. Spires, archways, gargoyles begin to flow. Waterfalls set festive ice bells ringing. Then, slowly, the delicate balance that kept it aloft is undermined. Even as light glorifies it, the cathedral is diminished, beings almost imperceptibly to collapse. Sepulchral booms and crashes attest to hidden vaults and hollows, the shifting instability of the foundation.

Recommended for: anyone looking for a pleasant, unusual read, especially if you like books set in icy landscapes or stories of people who want to escape from the world.

55. Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

How/why I acquired this: I read a lot of Julian Barnes when I was at university in the early 1990s, but haven't much since then. I got this when it came out on the basis of excellent and interesting-sounding reviews.

Arthur & George is based on a true story of a miscarriage of justice (involving a man called George) which was taken up by Arthur Conan Doyle.* But that involvement doesn't start until halfway through the book. Before that, we get a detailed narration of each man's life from early childhood. Barnes manages to make this both interesting and hang together - partly through highlighting common themes, around the unspoken rules by which a society lives, the difference between what you know to be true about yourself and what everyone else thinks about you, and about difference.

This is a great read - page-turning, thought-provoking, and with writing that is almost invisible (by which I mean that while you laugh and are moved, your eye never snags on a flashy bit of writing - you are just caught up in the story).

Arthur is a terrific character - he is pompous, boring and deluded (for the reader, very amusingly so), and yet his story is also sympathetic and moving - I ended up respecting him despite his flaws. George, inevitably, is a less colourful character, but he still comes across as very real.

Spoiler alert: *although the case is not well-known, it led to the establishment of the Court of Appeal, and could be described as the British Dreyfus case.

Sample sentence: George is impressed, but also slightly shocked: he is suspicious of joy. He has come across little of it in his life. In his childhood there was something called pleasure, usually accompanied by the adjectives guilty, furtive or illicit. The only pleaseures allowed were those modified by the word simple.

Recommended for: all readers who enjoy literary fiction.

56. The White Cities by Joseph Roth

How/why I acquired this: don't remember where the recommendation came from - either LT or the Atlantic, i think.

I was going through a reading slump some time ago and idly picked this off my shelves. I opened it at random, to the essay on Nice, and read:

The town of Nice looks as if it had been dreamed up by society novelists and populated by their heroes. Most of the characters you see on the promenade and the beach come straight out of the lending library and the dreams of little country girls. God can't have created such people. They aren't made of common clay, but of high-end pulp ... An author dictated a world into a typewriter - and lo! - it appeared, here it is, it walks and talks, it plays roulette, dances the Java, and goes sea-bathing.

I can't think of many better ways to blow away a reading slump.

Actually that whole essay is great. I won't type the whole thing out, but I can't resist another quote: Even when they die, they won't leave a gap but an inheritance.

At their best, the essays in this book are not travel writing but philosophy, each one with a line which brings you up short with its sympathetic insights into the lives of the disadvantaged - the poor, or refugees.

Some of the longer ones, though, flagged for me - especially those about cities in France which I have not been to (it's harder to relate to the assertions about the city's atmosphere), and some of the more political journalism which was written as a response to something which I don't know about.

Sample sentence: (about Bastille day): Chauffeurs left their motors running, got out for a drink and a dance, and drove on. The street, you see, did not belong to them in their capacity as chauffeurs but only became theirs when they danced.

Recommended for: anyone who would like to be (or is) on holiday in France.

57. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.

How/why I acquired this: I've enjoyed her other books...

...although I can never really explain why. Simple, whimsically told tales about slightly passive women - by all rights, that should have me grinding my teeth. But somehow they always get under my skin, and this is no exception.

There are actually two stories in this volume, Kitchen, a novella focusing on the connection between two depressed and lonely young people, and Moonlight Shadow, a short story about a young woman whose boyfriend has died. I think the dreamlike simplicity of the stories is misleading - actually, there is very profound emotion here.

Sample sentence: I lean up against the silver door of a towering, giant refrigerator stocked with enough food to get through a winter. When I raise my eyes from the oil-spattered gas burner and the rusty kitchen knife, outside the window stars are glittering, lonely.

Recommended for: people who are prepared to look beneath the surface.

58. Sum by David Eagleman.

How/why I acquired this: after hearing some of the stories read on the wonderful Radiolab podcasts.

This is a book of 40 very short episodes (most are two or three pages), each one of which posits a different afterlife.

There are some common themes which crop up in multiple stories - creators, in one form or another, baffled by their human creations; the tiny scale of human existence (a bit like the machine in Hitchhiker which drove people mad by showing them their true place in the universe); or paradoxical situations where what seems like paradise is actually hell - such as the world where God gives the sinners eternal life, because he is so bored by it that he feels that nothing could be a greater reward than oblivion.

This could have meant that the stories were too repetitive, but I think the book is saved from that by some of the other overarching themes: the dramatic contrast between the theoretical capacity of the human body, mind and emotions and what we actually do with them, which leaves you with a smile on your face - and the interconnectedness of humanity and the incomprehensible importance of love, which makes that smile a warm one.

Sample sentence: After some questioning, you discover that God's favourite book is Shelley's Frankenstein. He sits up at night with a worn copy of the book clutched in His mighty hands, alternately reading the book and staring reflectively into the night sky.

Recommended for: anyone except those who are absolutely certain they know what the afterlife will be like.

That book surfaced in the pile on my bed recently. I think I will get to it soon.

Thank you for reminding me.

Robert

And I read a third of it before dozing off for my nap. I hope to finish it tonight.

Thanks again,

Robert

I'm on holiday, so tearing through the books and not stopping much to review... lots to catch up on, so these will be fairly short.

59. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

How/why: rave reviews on LT.

What can I say that other, more eloquent members of LT haven't already said about this book? I loved the intermingling of the different levels – the international politics, court jostling for power, and personal motivations – and the way that one almost incidental event could prompt someone to do something which then pulled all the threads in a different direction.... Read it!

Sample: He doesn't say it, of course. At such moments, Henry expects you to fall to your knees - duke, earl, commoner, light and heavy, old and young. He does it; scar tissue pulls; few of us, by our forties, are not carrying injuries.

Recommended for: Anyone, but especially readers interested in historical fiction and/or political power and influence.

The Love Wife by Gish Jen. I love Jen's Typical American, but couldn't get far into this story of a mixed-race American family (Chinese father, white mother, and assorted adopted and natural children) and the impact on their lives when a nanny arrives from mainland China.

60. Spiderweb by Penelope Lively

How/why: recommended by charbutton.

I enjoyed this book about an anthropologist, recently retired, who finds that moving to the rural southwest of England is more challenging than any of the (undeveloped) places she has lived in her professional life. At first you think that it's the rural English themselves that will drive her away, despite her anthropologically-trained ability to spot what she needs to do to fit in (buy a dog, attend church) – but by the end, you realise that it's the very act of settling down and forming ties that she will find impossible.

Sample: 'The trouble with us,' says Judith over a lunch of bread and cheese, 'is that our trades have put us out of touch with the real world. The one we have to live in. I think in terms of funeral practices, weaponry and ubiquitous bloodshed, and you see people as components of kinship networks and lineage patterns.' 'That sounds precisely like the world as I know it. I only have to switch on the telly or read a newspaper.'

Recommended for: unconventional women.

61. Post Secret

How/why: belongs to a friend – read while I was staying with her.

I often read the Post Secret website, which collects postcards which people have sent telling their deepest secrets. Some are funny, some are moving, some are horrifying. This book is one of several anthologies of the site.

Sample: He's running away to follow his dreams... part of me is wishing he fails so we can live out mine...

Recommended for: dipping into.

62. Digging To Australia by Lesley Glaister.

How/why: Not sure where the recommendation for this came from.

I remember reading Glaister's Sheer Blue Bliss some time ago, and finding it a bit too macabre for my liking. This is the story of a misfit teenage girl, who suddenly learns that everything she thought she knew about her family was wrong. I quite enjoyed this, although it was spoilt a bit for me towards the end – there had been a nice, gently building sense of menace and guilt which was suddenly broken into by a passage which screamed MENACE AND GUILT, MENACE AND GUILT. After that it felt a bit pointless continuing to the end as it was so obvious what would happen.

Sample: The popular girls, the lucky ones, even Bronwyn, had smooth-knit shop jerseys in the regulation shade. Some of us had home-made affairs in not-quite-the-right-shade of green, cardigans with peculiar buttons, or cable patterns, or saggy fronts. Mama had knitted mine in a fancy basket stitch. "Just that little bit different," she'd said proudly, stupidly, because she didn't understand.

Recommended for: fans of the unsettling read.

63. Family Money by Nina Bawden

How/why: I first heard about Bawden's books for adults by reading about the 'Lost Booker', for which one of her books was nominated. This interested me in her work, and when I saw one of her books in a charity shop I knew I wanted to read it.

This is quite a hard book to summarise. On the surface, it's the story of a woman – a widow – who suffers a concussion and starts to behave just a little erratically, and how her grown-up family react. But every time I thought I had a handle on it, it surprised me by moving into a wider focus. At first I thought it would be another satire on the eighties – yuppies and house prices – and groaned with boredom. Then it looked like turning into one of those stories about how families misunderstand each other, partly because of love and concern, partly out of carelessness, and partly because of selfish motives. But by the end I realised it was just a book about people: and especially how Fanny comes to terms with the impact of her concussion and the fact that she is – suddenly – feeling old. I enjoyed Bawden's acuity on social and family relations and sharp sense of humour, and the sympathetic portrayal of Fanny. I'll definitely be reading more of her.

Sample: She and Daniel had always had what people called a 'host' of friends, and in her bad dreams that was how she saw them: a vast, white-robed army, pressing close upon her, menacingly singing.

Recommended for: fans of this sort of apparently gentle but actually very sharp-eyed commentary.

64. The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin

How/why: This is the first in a series of detective stories which I have often seen in shops, but just lately I've read a lot of positive things about them.

This is a very satisfying, over-the-top romp of a detective story. I enjoyed it a lot and will certainly be looking out for the rest of the series.

Sample: Disconcerted, Zurov twirled a black moustache.

Recommended for: lovers of eccentric mysteries.

65. The Scandal Of The Season by Sophie Gee

How/why: can't remember where this recommendation came from.

This is a fictionalised account of the events which led up to Alexander Pope's composition of The Rape Of The Lock – Pope's arrival in London and introduction to the literary scene, his decision to abandon the epic style and start writing satire, and the scandalous liaison which led to the incident described in the poem. It was interesting reading this in follow-up to Wolf Hall, as there was a sub-plot about the discrimination that Catholics were still suffering in the early eighteenth century – not permitted to live within ten miles of London and unable to inherit. The story could also have been an interesting one, and the book was certainly trying to be a bit of a romp. But unfortunately I found the writing a bit ponderous – unsuccessfully mimicking the esprit and gallantry of contemporary satire, and telling rather more than showing.

Sample: Theresa turned to her with a knowing air. 'If I were betrothed to Clotworthy Skeffington, the second son of a footman would seem a glittering prize in comparison,' she pronounced.

Recommended for: fans of period sauciness.

66. Author, Author by David Lodge

How/why: lent by my mother, who enjoyed it.

This book is about Henry James, and like Colm Tóibín's The Master, a key incident is the opening of James' play Guy Domville, where the venerable author was booed by the audience as he took a curtain call. But the wider focus here is James' desire for sales – partly for the cash and partly for the recognition – and his friendship with George Du Maurier, writer of the (contemporary) runaway bestseller Trilby.

Lodge has done plenty of research and makes use of quotes from actual letters and diaries. I think he was imitating James in the broad social sweep of his work – it's a portrait of a group rather than an individual – and also to a certain extent in his style, although this is largely through long sentences.

But – with the exception of the chapter about the ill-fated play, which explains very well how the debacle actually happened – for most of the book I was wondering what the point was.

James comes across as a man prone to embarrassment and awkwardness who finds it difficult to make the emotional commitment, especially to women, that underlies a real connection. But he doesn't make a very human character and I found it hard to care about him. (From what I remember of The Master, which I read 18 months ago, that Henry James is more sympathetic because he is more keenly aware of his failings).

Sample: Henry's attitude to the theatre sometimes reminded her of an elderly uncle who had decided to play some children's game with his little nephews and nieces, which he did with an elaborate show of seriousness and solemnity, squatting down to put himself on their level, diligently learning the rules of the game and doing his best to beat them at it, and then became seriously, disproportionately competitive, so that he ended up spending hours in this pursuit that would have been better dedicated to something more appropriate to his talents.

Recommended for: people interested in the life of Henry James, and perhaps the perspective of an author on sales and public recognition!

I started to read Period Piece by Gwen Raverat, Darwin's granddaughter. This artless, child's-eye view of her early life was extremely charming and delightful - in very small doses. Unfortunately as I was borrowing the book from my hostess I had to try and read it through in one go, and it didn't take very well to that... It also suffered in comparison to its polar opposite -

67. Queenpin by Megan Abbott, recommended by RidgewayGirl, a great, dark, pacy noir.

Sample: What could I say? Didn't he get it? There were no insider tips. Not for guys like him. You couldn't win and if you did, it wouldn't be for long. That's why they call it a racket.

Recommended for: anyone who's ever enjoyed a hardboiled/noir thriller.

68. Four Walls by Vangelis Hatziyannidis

How/why acquired: it was longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007.

Four Walls is about an unusual family, producers of an almost miraculously delicious honey, on a Greek island. The four walls of the title recur several times through the book, which plays with ideas of imprisonment and confinement - one character, fleeing from justice, is afraid to go out of the house in case she is recognised - another is locked up for her own good, and comes to depend on the security she gets from this. However, as this theme becomes more obvious, the events of the story become less and less plausible. I enjoyed the delicately witty first section - which shows how the family comes together and how they develop the fantastic honey. But the rest of the book was disappointing.

Sample: The excavation of the hill, an inseparable part of life at the monastery, was coming to an end, leaving the monks with the sense that a part of them had been amputated. Several of them had expressed the wish to embark on a new, equally ambitious project - the construction of a network of underground tunnels or building a church entirely out of tiny pebbles.

Recommended for: the first section only, which is a sort of magical realism-lite and very readable.

I started reading Piano Lessons which I bought my mum after recommendations on LT. I enjoyed it, but not enough to take it with me when I left my mum's house.

69. The Needle by Francis King

How/why acquired: borrowed from my host.

Lorna Martin has always had an extremely - almost unhealthily - close relationship with her brother, Bob. But now Bob has returned home from living in Malaya, mysteriously closed-off and listless, and he is no longer telling Lorna his secrets. He keeps odd hours, he refuses to tell her where he's been, and gradually Lorna begins to suspect he has a terrible secret.

It wasn't just the main subject matter of the book that was disturbing. Lorna and Bob are mirrored by other dependent relationships, and the book is full of foul smells, filthy houses, disgusting food and sickly patients (Lorna is a doctor). I found this, in the end, overkill - it's one thing to have an atmosphere of menace or of decay, but there was just too much that was disgusting.

Sample: Later, her battered bag heavy on her arm, Lorna heaved herself up the slippery iron steps, the February evening lying chill and moist on her forehead, cheeks and lips like some invisible cobweb, so that she put up her free hand as though to brush it away.

Recommended for: readers with a strong stomach.

70. The Limits Of Enchantment by Graham Joyce

How/why acquired: recommended by Urania in post #87, above!

This is a very interesting book, which is hard to characterise. It's the mid-1960s, and Britain is changing. This book focuses on one of the changes which has been chewed over less than most others - increasing bureaucratisation/standardisation of life. Oh dear, that sounds incredibly dull, but it is anything but!

Fern is the daughter of a hedgerow healer and traditional midwife, Mammy Cullen. With the arrival of the NHS - and especially, free and formally-trained midwives for every pregnant woman - some of her work has dried up, although there are folk who still trust the old ways. Mammy may also be a witch ("we few"). When Mammy takes to her sickbed after a treatment apparently goes wrong, Fern knows that she has to make a decision - to follow the old, traditional ways, or to fit in with the new. But there are obstacles on both sides as well as benefits - the old feudalistic snobbery and the new uncaring bureaucracy.

A good read - I'll be looking out for more of Joyce's work (Dark Sister looks the most interesting one next!)

Sample: At that time there were in the locality well over a hundred women who preserved, wrapped in paper and stored in a tin away from mice and weevils, a single slice of cake from their own wedding day to be halved and sewn into the grave clothes of the first in the partnership to go over. Because in those days one married not just for life, but for death, too.

Recommended for: anyone, except for people who dislike any hint of the supernatural.

71. Wish Her Safe At Home by Stephen Benatar.

How/why acquired: picked up in a second-hand bookshop because it was an NYRB, bought because it looked interesting.

Wish Her Safe At Home is narrated by Rachel Waring, a post-menopausal spinster who unexpectedly inherits a large, if tumbledown, house in Bristol from an eccentric great-aunt. On the spur of the moment, she decides to leave her boring administrative job and grumpy flatmate, and make a new life for herself. At the start of the book, Rachel is hilariously eccentric - but then you realise with a jolt the extent of her delusions, and the book becomes both funny and appallingly sad. This is redeemed slightly with a suggestion towards the end that Rachel actually knows what's going on, and has made a conscious decision to believe that she is living in a much better world - but I still longed for someone who could give her the love that she craved.

Sample sentence: As a reader, indeed, I still never embarked on any serious novel without half hoping to find in it the solution to all of life's most pressing queries: all of its problems, mysteries and ills: a story so self-contained and comprehensive it would finally render superfluous the reading of every other. Yes. My first word, apart from "Chapter One" - as yet I had no title - was "On".

Recommended for: a remarkable mix of the funny and the poignant.

72. The Various Haunts Of Men by Susan Hill

How/why acquired: several positive comments on LT.

This is the first of a series of detective novels by Susan Hill. A quiet care-home worker goes missing, and a newly-arrived policewoman sees something worth pursuing in the case. An unhappy, overweight young woman turns to an alternative healer to help her overcome her depression and acne. Just as things start looking up for her, she too disappears.

There were some interesting things about this book - I liked the family of the chief inspector, his bossy but good-hearted mother and his caring doctor sister. The theme of alternative medicine was unusual and interesting. And I found the mystery perfectly adequate, if rather wordy.

However, I couldn't really get over how stilted the dialogue was - especially the alternative therapists, who all explain how they work in a very formal and precise way: "Now, first of all, we will both continue to sit here like this. I shan't draw the curtains or light any candles or anything of that sort. I don't work with a spirit guide either, as some mediums and clairvoyants do. I wouldn't find that helpful."

Not a waste of time, but I won't be hurrying to acquire the rest of the series.

Sample: "I don't know Simon well, it's Meriel I know, but I've met a lot of people who've been bruised by him. He's a charming man, handsome, cultivated, warm, good company. He's fast-tracked up the career ladder, which is also an attractive trait. But he has broken more hearts than I've had hot dinners, Freya."

Recommended for: fans of British mysteries.

73. The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

How/why acquired: I first heard about Aleksandar Hemon when he was on the New Yorker podcasts reading a short story by Sergei Dovlatov.

This stunning novel interleaves the story of Lazarus Averbuch, a young Jewish immigrant, killed in Chicago in 1908 and framed as part of the "anarchist menace", with that of Vladimir Brik, an early-21st century writer, a Bosnian immigrant to the US (like Hemon himself) who becomes interested in the case and travels through the Balkans and Eastern Europe researching Lazarus' family history, hoping to get a novel out of it.

The 1908 section - the anti-anarchist panic, the callous framing of an innocent young man and the media response to Lazarus' supposed evil crime - is properly angry-making, although it does lose its way a little as the novel goes on. The sections set in the modern-day, desperate and gangster-ridden Eastern Europe are more depressing than angering. But the prose is incredible, and the book stirs up all sorts of ideas, about home, freedom, the old world and the new, and what it means to know someone else. The echoes between the events of both sections lead the reader to think about twenty-first century genocides and xenophobias, as well as the nineteenth- and twentieth-century ones which are directly explored. I had to keep forcing myself to slow down so that I could really get the most out of the writing itself and also the ideas behind it.

Sample: One morning in Chicago I had tiptoed to the kitchen with the intention of making some coffee. While customarily spilling coffee grounds all over the counter, I spotted a can in the corner whose red label read SADNESS. Was there so much of it they could can it and sell it? A bolt of pain went through my intestines before I realized that it was not SADNESS but SARDINES. It was too late for recovery, for sadness was now the dark matter in the universe of still objects around me: the salt and pepper shakers; the honey jar; the bag of sun-dried tomatoes; the blunt knife; a desiccated loaf of bread; the two coffee cups, waiting. My country's main exports are stolen cars and sadness.

Recommended for: anyone who loves to read high-quality writing, and/or those interested in thinking about migration, xenophobia or the chequered history of the late twentieth century.

Nice review of The Lazarus Project; I'll add it to my wish list.

I'll have to look for that one, as I've been sort of avoiding Hemon because I igrouped him, perhaps unwisely, with the kind of contemporary authors who irritate me because they seem so pleased with their own cleverness.

Glad you enjoyed Spiderweb!

I am really enjoying your reviews. I've added The Lazarus Project to my wishlist. I think you put your finger on why I'm ambivalent about Susan Hill. Her dialogue is awkward. But I do love British mysteries and hers are well plotted.

Thanks for all of your comments!

Char, I'm just back from a week in Somerset, staying near to Porlock (apparently in the same cottage where Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan). I hadn't realised that the 'mineral line' which features in Spiderweb was a real footpath - along the route of the old 'West Somerset Mineral Railway' which took iron ore from the mines to the harbour. If only the weather hadn't been so terrible I would have walked it and looked out for some of the characters!

Rebecca, I know what you mean about Hemon being 'clever' - there is certainly some tricksiness in the book - you can even see that from the lines I quoted with the sardines/sadness thing - I think I have a fairly high tolerance for that sort of thing. But I did think there were good things in the book aside from that.

I'm afraid I have a low tolerance for the "clever" stuff, but I may try this book anyway because your recommendation made it sound interesting.

It definitely was.

Right, masses of books to catch up on...

74. The Septembers Of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer

How/why acquired: passed to me by my mother.

The Septembers Of Shiraz deals with a wealthy Iranian family, soon after the Islamic Revolution, and how they respond when the father is arrested. It follows each of the four family members - the father, waiting in prison to find out what will happen to him; the mother, desperately destroying anything incriminating around the house; the son, safely in the US but struggling to find his way there; and the young daughter, coming to terms with the sudden change of hierarchy at school - now, the daughter of the prison warden is the person with the most power.

I found this a little bit too 'Iran 101', but it would be a good introduction for someone who does not know much about the subject (except for the fact that it slightly underplayed the brutalities of life under the Shah, suggesting that the secret police only targeted people who had done something - well, yes, if complaining about the regime while waiting for a bus counts as doing something). It was an easy read and took a nice, subtle approach.

Sample: She wants to tell her mother about the files, about his file, but decides not to. Increasing her mother's grief, she knows, would also increase her chance of dying. Grief terrifies her, because it's invisible.

Recommended for: someone who would like to learn about Iran immediately after the Revolution.

After that I abandoned several books in quick succession: Bombay Mix by Richard Baum because it demonstrated that it's not as easy as you might think to write a good comic novel; An Error Of Judgement by Pamela Hansford Johnson because halfway through I couldn't see the point of the story or the characters; and Nine Nights by Bernardo Carvalho because it was baffling.

Then I read most of Will by Christopher Rush, acquired because I loved his memoir, Hellfire And Herring. This imagines Shakespeare on his deathbed, remembering the story of his life. It's dense with puns, poetry and allusions to the plays - for example, in the story of his childhood you are shown all the influences which created his imagination, his beliefs and his personality. It's also crammed full of sex, violence (political violence against humans and butchery against animals), and bodily functions. I did enjoy reading it, but it would have been far better at about half of the 600 pages, and didn't manage to finish it (again I was leaving the house where it belonged, and didn't like it enough to borrow it for the sake of the last 150 pages).

Sample: Ah, the Theatre! A place for viewing; a locus of life; a venue for all the multiplying miracles and villanies of nature that swarm upon this great stage of fools - with a seat reserved for the nobs, and farting room only for the groundlings.

Recommended for: Shakespeare lovers.

75. Mistress Of The Art Of Death by Ariana Franklin

How/why acquired: lots of LT recommendations.

In twelfth-century Cambridge, a child has been gruesomely murdered, and people are blaming the Jews. Henry II, concerned about the loss of revenue if the Jews are driven out, calls in an investigator from overseas - who brings with him a woman, a skilled forensic analyst, or in the language of the time, a mistress of the art of death.

I enjoyed this a lot. It combines a gripping story arc with an enjoyable and detailed historical picture, making it a good read despite the occasional predictable genre element. Rather like the Coroner's Lunch series, I liked the odd collection of allies which Adelia acquires, especially the Cambridgeshire locals with their thick accents and initial suspicion of the outsiders turning into loyalty. I hope Gyltha is in the next book!

I don't much like gruesome descriptions of violent crime so I don't think I would read this one again, but I am certainly looking out for the second in the series.

Sample: "We have a piece of the True Cross," Brother Gilbert shouted. "Who ain't?" said the nun on his other side.

Recommended for: fans of historical fiction, fans of interesting mysteries.

76. The Yiddish Policeman's Union* by Michael Chabon (the title is of course, policemen's, but for some reason the touchstone only comes up if I misspell the title...)

How/why acquired: I really liked Kavalier and Clay.

Another absolute cracker. I loved this book from the first lines:
Nine months Landsman's been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 208, a yid who was calling himself Emanuel Lasker.

As you can tell from that, this is a noir pastiche - very well-done, and featuring all the necessary tropes: corruption, conspiracy, alcohol and a deadbeat but tenacious and honest detective - with the twist that it's set in an Alaska where Jews were allowed to settle in 1948 - after being expelled from Palestine once and for all. Only problem is, it's a 60 year lease which is about to run out...

Chabon has imagined this world in vivid detail, including layers of Yiddish-inspired slang, and it's crammed with great lines and eye-catching images.

Sample: According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Landsman has only two moods: working and dead.

Recommended for: non-purist fans of noir detective fiction, readers who like clever, witty fiction.

77. The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah

How/why acquired: LT recommendation, from rebeccanyc.

This book consists of an elderly Mauritian man remembering an episode in his childhood which has troubled him all his life, an encounter with a young Jewish boy who has ended up in a prison on Mauritius, one of a boatload of refugees turned away from Haifa. It's a moving and well-written story.

Sample: Sometimes I thought I saw a fruit that had been spared, I would stoop, pick it up, examine it, but ended by throwing it away, for mangoes, lychees, pawpaws, longans, all these summer fruits had been mown down at the height of their ripeness and were nothing but rotting husks, sticky balls, dripping wet and stinking. I showed David how to test the quality of a fruit, to sniff a mango at its base, roll a lychee in his hand, squeeze a longan between thumb and finger to check the softness of the skin.

Recommended for: readers who enjoy simply told, moving stories, or who are interested in fiction from a child's viewpoint.

78. Madam Fate by Marcia Douglas

How/why acquired: random find in library sale.

This novel intertwines the histories of several generations of Jamaican women, their pain and joys, along with folklore, magic and (brutal) history. Ida hears the voices of the dead and understands the stories that are told by the animals and plants. Claudia is searching for the mother she never knew. Gracie's mother leaves to work in the US and doesn't send for her. Mrs Cummings loves her garden but her children want to send her to the lunatic asylum to be rid of her.

An interesting read, although the stories don't develop much - it's more glimpses into lives.

Sample: In the moonshine I could see a little lizard on the windowsill, her pointy head raise up and tilt to one side, and she listen along with the rest of we. They say moonshine is poor woman jewels, you know. And is true.

Recommended for: readers interested in women's lives.

79. The Beetle by Richard Marsh

How/why acquired: Last year Penguin brought out a series of 'Red Reads', gothic horrors, and this was one of them. I had a look at it in the shops then when it was on display, but when I saw this in a beaten-up old hardback, with an inscription in the front dated 1913, I thought it was too good to pass up.

I'm glad I didn't - this was a rollicking read, complete with creepy chills and a good story - in fact, the story moved along so quickly that I wouldn't have been surprised if I'd been told it was a modern pastiche of the Victorian sensational novel. Also very much of its time with the evil Oriental villain and the terrible fear that a young white woman is going to be robbed of her virtue... Truly brilliant (and a very good thing to be reading on a boring plane journey).

Sample: The creature to which the eyes belonged was coming closer. So intense was my desire to fly that I would much rather have died than stood there still, yet I could not control a limb; my limbs were as if they were not mine.

Recommended for: anyone in the mood for some original Gothic chills.

80. Me Cheeta by James Lever.

How/why acquired: gift.

This purports to be the tell-all memoirs of the chimp from the Tarzan movies, from an inauspicious start in the jungle to orgiastic, name-dropping partying in Golden Age Hollywood, to the days when the pictures got too small...

At first I assumed that this book was a send-up of the celebrity memoir, and while I was enjoying it, I expected it to be a bit of a one-hit wonder. But it developed in all sorts of unexpected directions, ending up as an unusual reading of the Tarzan oeuvre, a moving story of unrequited love, and a hard look at the way humans treat animals - and each other.

Cheeta is an engaging narrator, spotting the animal instincts underlying human interaction, but also apparently able to impart the most positive motives to human behaviour despite his experience of back-stabbing, disloyal and bitchy Hollywood. Funny, but not just funny.

Sample: I was aware there was some kind of groundswell of acclamation going on for my 'work', but to be absolutely honest, the garnering of critical acclaim has never meant much to me - quite unlike the role it played in Chaplin's life, which was pretty similar to the role morphine played in Bela Lugosi's, or the erect male sexual organ in dear, sweet Mary Astor's, which is to say, he was hopelessly dependent upon it.

Recommended for: a wide audience.

81. My House Is On Fire by Ariel Dorfman

How/why acquired: I like the author's work.

Ariel Dorfman is probably most famous for Death and the Maiden, later made into a film starring Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley, in which a woman believes that a stranded traveller is the man who tortured her (she was blindfolded during the interrogations and recognises him by his voice).

My House Is On Fire is a collection of short stories, which consider life under an authoritarian regime - that of Pinochet's Chile - and in particular, how the constraints of such an existence interact with family and other loyalties. The first story, 'Family Circle', is about a conscript whose father despises the uniform he is wearing. Some of the stories are genuinely chilling - in the title story a child almost gives her family away because she doesn't understand the seriousness of what she hears, and in 'Putamadre' a group of navy sailors encounter anti-Chilean protests in San Francisco. Others have a funny/sardonic edge - in 'Lonely Hearts Column' a woman doesn't know whether she has lost her husband's affection to another woman, or to resistance to the regime, in 'Trademark Territory' Dorfman imagines a doorbell which will keep the poor away from the doors of the wealthy.

I enjoyed this collection, with its range of content and style.

Sample: He accepted for publication a collection of poetry, replacing the word 'lion' with 'sheep' four times. 'Approved with changes,' he wrote on the appropriate page. The book would have to go back to the printer, the pager and the linotypist. That should serve as a warning to the publisher. As for the reader, he would end up confused, unable to read any hidden political meaning into a text that seemed so incoherent. The beauty of the verses was not greatly altered.

Recommended for: fans of short stories or Latin American fiction.

82. After Dark by Haruki Murakami

How/why acquired: again, I am a big fan of Murakami.

The action in After Dark takes place between dusk and dawn - or, to be precise, between 11.56 and 6.52 (each chapter title is a clock showing the time at which it takes place). Slightly sinister, slightly odd things happen to a quartet of people. At first it's hard to discern any common thread - but gradually, themes emerge of sleep and insomnia, the 'other world' of dreams, and also the 'underworld' which is awake when most people are sleeping. The simple language, too, becomes more compelling as the book goes on. By the end of the book, I was really enjoying it - although if you haven't read Murakami before, I wouldn't start here - it's one of his slighter works.

Sample: Mari is no longer here. Neither is anyone else. Music continues to play from the ceiling speaker. A Hall and Oates song now: "I Can't Go For That". A closer look reveals that Mari's image is still reflected in the mirror over the sink.

Recommended for: Murakami fans.

83. Village Of Stone by Xiaolu Guo

How/why acquired: gift from a friend.

Coral Jiang works in a video shop in Beijing, and lives with her slacker boyfriend. One day, she receives a mysterious parcel - an enormous dried eel. As soon as she unwraps it the smell pulls her back to the village where she grew up, the barren and weatherbeaten Village Of Stone on China's southeast coast. Her Beijing life is interleaved with her memories of growing up there, looked after by her grandparents who have barely spoken to each other since they got married and her grandmother, a newcomer to village customs, accidentally offended against several traditional superstitions.

Contrary to my expectations when I started the book, this wasn't just another book about gumption-less slackers in urban China. There is some very good writing in it, especially in the descriptions of the village. But another problem I very often have with modern Chinese fiction is a sort of lack of engagement and emotion. There are events, and emotion, in plenty in Village Of Stone, but they still don't seem to be very connected up. I don't know if this is just a common theme in contemporary Chinese writing or whether it's something to do with the translation.

Sample: I would stand and watch the typhoon winds churning the ocean into waves, not unlike a fisherman's wife who waits year after year for her husband to return from the sea. The rough winds buffeted me until my skin, my hair, my eyes, even my fingernails took on the colour of the sea. I was a small, soil-coloured person.

Recommended for: those who enjoy modern Chinese fiction.

84. Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann

How/why acquired: long-time on my wishlist, borrowed from a friend.

This is a charming story about a flock of sheep who try to solve the murder of their shepherd. They have the advantage of being able to listen in on private conversations (George, the shepherd, used to read to them every day, so they understand some quite complicated words) - but as you might imagine, they can't always understand the motivations of the humans who are speaking them. But bringing together their various skills, they manage to figure most of it out... if only they can get the message across.

I enjoyed this, although the fact that it's quite light-hearted doesn't mean you don't have to concentrate - the storyline is complicated (especially when filtered through the interpretation of a flock of sheep) that you need to make sure you know what's going on!

Sample: Miss Maple was the cleverest sheep in all Glennkill. Some even claimed that she was the cleverest sheep in the world, but no one could prove it. There was in fact an annual Smartest Sheep in Glennkill contest, but Maple's extraordinary intelligence showed in the very fact that she did not take part in such competitions.

Recommended for: fans of complicated and unusual mysteries.

Still having a bit of trouble with getting through books at the moment. I have given up on two:

Waiting For The Wild Beasts To Vote by Ahmadou Kourouma - the story of an African leader, told by his storyteller and fool. The style is mythic/poetic, with a fair amount of repetition and stuffed full of proverbs. I often have difficulty with this sort of writing, because one of the things I get the most enjoyment from when reading is psychological insight, and this mythic style distances you from that. And in this particular book, I wasn't getting very much else out of it either. The thing that finally stopped me from struggling on was kidzdoc's comment that the second half was less good than the first!

Spike Island by Philip Hoare - this is the history of the Royal Victoria Military Hospital in Southampton, an establishment that was groundbreaking in its day (it was the first military hospital, treating soldiers returned from the Crimean and later the First and Second World Wars). The first chapter was fantastic - very reminiscent of Sebald as the author remembered growing up next to the (now disused) building and considered what it, and the manor house next to it, had meant to different eras. But after that it became more of a linear history, and while there were some very interesting snippets (eg the morality of having unmarried women nursing the wounded soldiers), as a whole it didn't quite hang together enough for me. I did enjoy the writer's approach, though, and I might try and get hold of his book England's Lost Eden, about utopian thinking in Victorian times.

Three Bags Full sounds fun; I'll look out for this one.

I'm glad that I encouraged you to give up on Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote. I picked it up after eairo recommended it, but, like you, I didn't get much out of it.

>160 wandering_star:, That sounds like a great book. We watched the film version of Death and the Maiden in a Holocaust narratives course I took in college - I wasn't aware it was based on a book, but I really liked it. The stories sound fascinating.

>161 wandering_star:, I really liked After Dark, which was actually my first Murakami. I loved how slight and sinister it was, with just a vague sense of menace but never going over that edge.

Darryl - I think the thing is, when I am reading a book that was well-reviewed (as Waiting For The Wild Beasts was when it came out), I always wonder whether I will get it if I persevere. So your review almost made me feel that it was ok to give up... as well as thinking that if it got less good, I definitely didn't want to keep ploughing through.

Fanny - how nice to be proved wrong so quickly! I am really glad you enjoyed it, and hope you try lots more Murakami soon.

Another abandonment now, I'm afraid: Official And Doubtful by Ajay Close.

Nan Megratta works in the Glasgow post office, Returned Letters Section (Official and Doubtful). Her job is to go through those letters with unreadable or non-existent addresses, figure out where they were meant for and see that they get there. One day, the letter she opens seems to be a threatening or even blackmail note. She narrows down the possible addresses to three - and shows each of them the note. Rather than being put off or offended, all three start to draw her into their lives, and even ask her to do some sleuthing for them.

Subsequently, a man - who happens to be connected to all three of her targets - is murdered. But I wouldn't call this a mystery story - it doesn't move fast enough. Instead, it's more about the social changes that Glasgow has seen: the three targets are all, in their own ways, emblematic of the gentrifying, post-ideological 1990s (a celebrity restauranteur with a dark past, a New Labour MP who rose from the shipyards, a famous 1960s feminist now writing an advice column for one of the nastier newspapers).

There are some good bits of writing in this, and I think that if I'd read it in 1996 when it was first published, I might have liked it more. But Nan analyses every aspect of the people who talk to her - every item of clothing, every gesture, every phrase - from the perspective of an aggrieved underdog and misfit, and I found the generalised contempt a bit wearing. Not to mention the fact that all three targets make an effort to become intimate with her, in one way or another, despite this - a bit of a plausibility gap.

85. Wild Surmise by Dorothy Porter

How/why acquired: don't remember where the recommendation came from.

Alex is an astronomer, obsessed with the idea of finding life under the frozen crust of Europa, Jupiter's moon. Her husband, Daniel, is a literature and creative writing lecturer, who hates his job and loves his wife and reading poetry. There is already a certain distance between them when an old flame of Alex's, Phoebe, comes back into their lives.

I think with novels in verse (which this is), my first question is: why? Does the poetry add something which couldn't be done in prose? Here, the answer is definitely yes. Each poem (which rarely last more than two pages) is about a moment of emotion - love, despair, wonder, even grumpiness, which gives it an amazing impact on the reader. The imagery too works overtime to convey so much more than prose explanations can - for example, Alex fears that she is lost in her desire for Phoebe like being sucked into Europa's frozen black waters.

Another thing I liked, incidentally, is that in this book, Science rather than Art is the root of transcendent wonder (which makes much more sense, if you think about it...)

I am now keen to read Porter's The Monkey's Mask, a noir thriller in verse.

Sample:

Europa's shadow

Jupiter shimmers
from Alex's computer screen.

Alex's ageing, bright eyes
lap over
her giant planet
aglow
with the whirling glitter
of ammonia clouds.

But Alex's loving
and probing gaze
snags
on the melanoma spot
of Europa.

Just its tiny shadow,
the moon itself
a little white pill
on the right of the screen.

An hallucinogen,
if recklessly swallowed,
lodging itself
like a stalking octopus
under the rocks
of the swallower's dreams.

Suddenly Alex calls out
to her husband, Daniel,
morosely muttering
over his marking.

She is his Europa,
and he shoves his students'
stilted stories
and pretentious poems
onto the floor.

What is it this time?

What dazzling snatch
of incomprehensible wonder
will she deign, briefly,
to share with him?

Recommended for: a reader who wants to try something a little different.

86. Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood

How/why acquired: I like the author.

I read this a couple of weeks ago and my memories are not very strong, but in a nutshell, it is a book of short stories, most and possibly all dealing with the same woman at different times in her life. (I say 'possibly all' because some of the childhood tales are very similar to a childhood which has appeared in other Atwood stories, with a bold colourful mother and a cottage in the woods). The adult women feel impractical and slightly out of place in the world. If there's a common theme, it's about the complexities of family relations.

I enjoyed these while I was reading them, but I think on balance I get much more from Atwood's novels.

Sample: I hadn't yet discovered that I lived in a sort of transparent balloon, drifting over the world without making much contact with it, and that the people I knew appeared to me at a different angle from the one at which they appeared to themselves; and that the reverse was also true. I was smaller to others, up there in my balloon, I was also blurrier.

Recommended for: fans of Atwood.

87. Three Dog Night by Peter Goldsworthy

How/why acquired: I wish I could remember where this recommendation came from! It doesn't seem to have been from LT, and since the book is not even published in the UK, it can't have been from any newspaper reviews. But it was an astounding discovery, from the first page.

Martin has just returned to Australia - with his beloved English wife - after ten years spent in London. One of the first things they do is look up the old friend from medical school whom he has always loved and looked up to. But they find Felix dramatically changed - cynical, confrontational, unwelcoming. Despite this, Martin and Lucy try and reach out to him, and there are signs that they are getting through. But what will they need to sacrifice in the process?

I found this book almost breathtaking. Although the storyline is fairly unlikely, the quality of the writing more than makes up for it, carrying the reader along and making the wildest events seems plausible. One example of this is that although Felix is almost unforgivably rude at their first meeting, the reader can completely understand what it is about him which makes Martin and Lucy persevere. And the events of the story unfold with a sort of tragic inevitability.

Goldsworthy also handles extremely well the variations of tone within the story - the drama of the main story, with, for example, the humour and cringing embarrassment of the social occasions involving the pompous senior doctor.

Sample: Our eyes lock. My heart hammers against the bars of its cage. Standard boy-meets-girl disruptions to physiology, but I have never felt them so powerfully. I feel unstable inside, as if all my organs have shaken loose from their bony shelves and leapt out into the unknown.

Recommended for: anyone who is prepared to give this unlikely story a go.

88. Journey Into The Mind's Eye by Lesley Blanch

How/why acquired: this is one of those books which had caught my eye in bookshops multiple times, before I finally bought a copy. It's one of those beautiful Eland Publications books (they specialise in reprinting out-of-print, readable travel books).

This was another unusual and enjoyable read, though in every other way the polar opposite of Three Dog Night. It is a sort of memoir - the subtitle is "Fragments of an autobiography" - but one filtered entirely through the author's obsession with Russia. Her first marriage, for example, is dismissed in a sentence, noting only that her husband had no connections with Russia.

The first part of the book deals with her childhood, and in particular a friend of her parents - a Russian who she calls only The Traveller, larger-than-life, mysterious, highly charismatic and full of glamorously romantic stories about his homeland. She is devoted to and dazzled by him and resolves to learn everything she can about Russia - and especially Siberia. This section of the book is extremely funny, as she tries to mesh her obsessions with daily life in an upper-class English household in the 1920s. She goes through a phase of putting butter in her tea, and at one point refuses a slice of watermelon, telling her parents how in some Russian villages it was considered unlucky because it looked like the severed head of John the Baptist.

Of course, even in the 1920s the image of Russia that she was cherishing was already a lost world. And when Lesley grows up, and the Traveller leaves her life, the twin obstacles of Soviet bureaucracy and her lack of finances prevent her from trying to travel to her heart's homeland - even when she makes it to Russia, Siberia is a step too far. This section of the book is, inevitably, less interesting, and is not quite redeemed even when she makes the long-awaited Trans-Siberian voyage.

Sample: 'Every woman should marry three times' had been one of his dictums, which he often impressed on me. 'Marry first for love - get it out of your system - next for money - get that into your pocket and then marry for pleasure, which has nothing whatever to do with love or money'. At the time I thought this a puzzling statement, but in perspective, I see it contains much truth.

Recommended for: the first part of the book would be enjoyed by anyone who likes eccentric period childhoods, such as that of the Mitfords (who were apparently acquaintances of hers), or who likes tall traveller's tales. The second part, probably only by those with a keen interest in either Russia or monomania.

89. Charles Dickens On Travel

How/why acquired: Early Reviewer.

This is a short anthology of Dickens' travel writing, published by Hesperus, in a series of 'theme' anthologies which includes Houdini On Deception and Bernard Shaw On War.

Unfortunately, the collection was bookended by two very arch, heavily comedic pieces - the first about the behaviour of London cabbies and the last about a man who 'travels' all over the world by visiting exhibitions. The 'true' travel articles in between were more enjoyable - a vivid account of Dickens' first, rough, Atlantic crossing, an account of the sublime Italian countryside, and two pieces about the train ride from London to Paris, one hyperbolically enthusiastic and the next (written some 20 years later) hyperbolically wearied, and both very funny.

There were also some interesting period details, such as the fact that in Italy, a favourite caricature for clowns was the English tourist - "Lord John, with a very loose stomach, dressed in a blue-tailed coat down to his heels, bright yellow breeches, and a white hat ... with an English lady (Lady Betsy) in a straw bonnet and green veil".

Sample: Two Englishmen, and now our carriage is full. First Englishman, in the monied interest - flushed - highly respectable - Stock Exchange, perhaps - City, certainly. Faculties of second Englishman entirely absorbed in hurry. Plunges into the carriage, blind. Calls out of window concerning his luggage, deaf. Suffocates himself under pillows of greatcoats, for no reason, and in a demented manner.

Recommended for: the middle extracts, for anyone who likes travel writing.

90. Hindoo Holiday by JR Ackerley

How/why acquired: after reading an extract in an anthology of writing about India by foreigners, India In Mind.

This is the wry, urbane memoir of five months spent as personal companion to the Maharajah of one of India's Princely States in the early 1920s. I enjoyed it - Ackerley writes with curiosity and an eye for the ridiculous, and his affection for the Maharajah and his time in India is clear. A side theme is Ackerley's interactions with the Anglo-Indians and Brits, who harangue him for becoming too close to the Indians and advise him against all his efforts to learn about and experience Indian culture. I also liked the character of the Maharajah, an absolute ruler but one with authority only over the most insignificant things (the British Political Agent is handing out instructions on behalf of the Raj).

Sample: I had already learnt a few Hindi phrases by heart: 'Good day', 'How are you?', 'It is a nice day', 'Don't talk so fast'; but I found I did not now believe in their pronunciation as much as when I had addressed them to myself; and since he only nodded to the first three, or uttered a throaty monosyllabic sound, I had no opportunity to air my 'Don't talk so fast' composition, which therefore remains in my memory as the only phrase I got right.

Recommended for: people that enjoy travel books and memoirs.

Ooh, lots of good reads here. I'm definitely adding Three Dog Night and Hindoo Holiday to my wish list.

168> I loved Porter's The Monkey Mask when I read it a couple of years ago -- your review has definitely whetted my appetite for Wild Surmise, though a quick look at the price on Amazon says I'm going to have to go bargain book hunting online for this one. Thanks for the review.

I've got Hindoo Holiday on my wish list, so I'm glad you liked it. Hope I come across it soon.

Thanks for all your comments! I am definitely having a very good streak of books.

91. Dancing With Cuba by Alma Guillermoprieto

How/why acquired: I ordered this book a couple of years ago on the basis of a review in the Economist, but it was one of those situations where when the book itself arrives, it just doesn't look that appealing, so it's been waiting on the TBR pile.

Alma Guillermoprieto is now a very respected journalist and writer on Latin American affairs. but in the early 1970s she was a dancer in New York City, trying to scrape a living in avant-garde classical dance. Fed up with being third choice for every part, when Merce Cunningham suggests she apply for a post teaching dance in Cuba, she takes this as a (devastating) sign - he had noticed her, but not asked her to dance in his company - and heads to Cuba more out of a sense of wounded self-esteem than any commitment to the cause. In fact, while reflexively left-wing in the mode of her environment, Alma was pretty politically naive. On top of that, she could not have known just how underfunded and under-regarded the dance school would be. The clash of cultures is made obvious in her first class where she starts to explain avant-garde dance and is told, vanguardia just means anything to do with the Party. There are no mirrors in the classrooms because they are seen by the management as a sign of bourgeois vanity, rather than an essential tool for a dancer to see what their body movements look like.

From this tiny corner of the Revolution, Guillermoprieto manages to craft a very revealing portrait of its contradictions and complexities - the gaps between the rhetoric and reality, but also the passion for the revolution's principles felt even by some of those who are disillusioned with the reality. Writing with hindsight, she even manages to make her rather self-involved and hapless younger self sympathetic, mainly by being very honest about her faults but also clear about the desperation she was feeling. For example, she is constantly tormented by conflicting desires - as a dancer and artist, she wants to be unique, yet she is also desperate to fit in and therefore needs to be more 'revolutionary'.

Sample: Conversation, a way of sharing time that in New York was ruled by the imperative of maximum speed and concision, was, here in Cuba, a baroque art. Standing in line, Galo and Pablo ramblingly narrated to Carlos and Boris, in minute detail, the ride we'd just taken, adorning each stage of the journey with its little dose of exaggeration, sting, and humor, and there was still plenty of time left over for me to give a detailed account of my first week in Cubanacán.

Recommended for: anyone with even a tiny interest in memoir or Cuba.

92. Still Life by Louise Penny

How/why acquired: everyone on LT who has read this raves about it.

With so many reviews, the only thing I can say is: believe the hype! This was an excellent read - a good, twisty mystery and a very enjoyable cast of characters. In fact, I am already having cravings for the next in the series.

Sample: "The archery club is open but the church is locked?" "The minister's from Montreal," explained Peter.

Recommended for: everybody who likes mysteries from the quirky/cosy end of the spectrum.

93. Chicken With Plums by Marjane Satrapi

How/why acquired: I'd buy anything that had Satrapi's name on it!

This is the story (based on her great-uncle) of the last week in the life of a man in despair - he lies in bed, wishing to die, and images from his past, his family, and his dreams visit him. It's very hard, in fact, to put the story into words, but it is very moving.

Recommended for: I think anyone that likes Satrapi's style would love this.

I'm glad to hear that you liked Dancing with Cuba. I bought this years ago, and was thinking of giving it away, but I'll certainly read it now.

I'll have to look for Chicken with Plums, too.

You have made Dancing with Cuba sound very appealing. Alas, there are so many books already for me to read... but I put it on my wishlist anyway.

Robert

Yes, I liked it so much I promptly ordered Guillermoprieto's Samba... look out for a review of that before too long!

94. The Dissident by Nell Freudenberger

How/why acquired: I bought this on the strength of a photo of the cover and a short blurb, in a publisher's advert.

If I'd looked at the LT reviews first, I would have been put off - fortunately, I didn't, and wasn't, as I thought the book was brilliant.

The dissident in question is a controversial Chinese artist, who comes to California on an exchange programme, living with a local family and giving art classes at a girls' school during his stay. But the story is at least as much about the family he stays with, well-off but dysfunctional, and their extended circle. Despite the differences in their backgrounds, many of the same themes run through both halves of the story - art, creation and fakery, the closeness and simultaneous tension of family relationships, intergenerational misunderstandings, reality and image, and the role of chance in defining your life.

At the same time, the story is not at all heavy - it's very readable, and funny. The use of language to differentiate the characters is another delight - the prissy, short-story writing older sister makes a point of avoiding cliche, the dissident speaks precise but slightly formal and long-winded sentences. This lifts the story and stops it being dominated by its symbology - for example, the father of the family could be a real stereotype, the psychology professor who has no idea how to interact with his wife or children, but he is drawn with accuracy, economy and wit.

The only fault, for me, was the final chapter, which tried to tie up at least a couple of loose ends, but felt like a cop-out - a tacked-on happy ending which didn't follow on from what came before. But as that was only the last three pages, I only docked it half a point.

Sample: It was not a compliment. It was a way for her brother to be the underdog, a tactic he'd used all through their childhood and adolescence. While she and Gordon had struggled and strived, Phil managed to make everything he did look like the product of luck and grace.

Recommended for: anyone who enjoys literary fiction, and particularly anyone who gets irritated with the way that some Western authors normally portray China or the Chinese - this was not at all 'orientalist'.

So, that run of good luck I've been having with books - the wheels have definitely come off. In fairly quick succession, I have abandoned the following:

Cosmo Cosmolino by Helen Garner - like The Spare Room, which I loved last year, this is beautifully written and bleak. Unlike The Spare Room, it's in large part incomprehensible - not just what is happening, but why it is meaningful to the reader. I'll try another Garner but this one was not for me.

Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas, a memoir by a Cuban writer. The problem for me here was that it seemed to gallop at speed but without much detail or thoughtfulness through the events of his life - this happened, then that happened. I find this approach frustrating because it doesn't give your brain very much to grasp on - nothing is given any more significance than anything else.

Finally, The Ice Museum by Joanna Kavenna, a classic 'saw in shop: wanted' acquisition for me. Like many other people, I love the niche of polar exploration-themed books, so when I saw this, subtitled "In search of the lost land of Thule", I knew I had to have it. Well, it's not the first frozen-north-themed book I have disliked - that was Cold Earth - this is certainly the first one I have found boring. I think the biggest problem here was that Kavenna has decided to adopt the ironic/funny approach to travel writing. I am never particularly fond of this - I find it distancing and belittling, and I would much rather my travel writers engage with the place that they are and explain things to me that I wouldn't figure out otherwise, rather than pointing at things and saying 'Look - isn't it funny'. What makes it worse is that Kavenna is not particularly good at the funny, either.

This book was a string of missed opportunities - best exemplified by the Iceland chapter. Kavenna starts off by mentioning that Iceland was a frequent stop for (British) Victorian tourists - I'd never heard that, and was fascinated to know more, but Kavenna swept past it with a quick summary. Shortly afterwards she spends exactly the same amount of wordage giving us a verbatim report of a tiresome bit of patter by a man trying to drum up tourist interest in his attraction. Aaargh! Yes, in this modern world, you can go anywhere you want and ironically highlight the disparity between the tourist dream and the tourist nightmare. But what does it add?

To be fair, Kavenna returns to the Victorian tourist experience during the chapter, but still with the arch summary. After the Geysir, she says, "Tweedie and Burton and Morris trotted off, in search of something still stranger, the women teetering side-saddle on their horses, in line with social decorum, the men shouting orders at their guides. Not bad, they all agreed, exploding water, rather interesting, rather strange." WHY NOT QUOTE THEM? It's almost as if she's afraid to take her subject seriously.

Anyway, I think that people who like the ironic approach to travel writing would enjoy this book, because there are some interesting adventures in it. But it was a bad fit with this particular reader.

How frustrating to have so many unhappy reading experiences in a row! Here's hoping the next book is one you love.

Nice review of The Dissident, but I'm sorry that your subsequent reads have been so disappointing.

Thanks for your kind wishes, and I'm pleased to say that things are looking up again.

I didn't deliberately choose to follow up The Ice Museum with a book where the funny worked, but with Cooking With Fernet Branca I was sitting in a public place shaking with laughter.

This is essentially a comedy of mismatched neighbours on a Tuscan mountainside - an overweeningly arrogant and self-centred Brit called Gerald, in Italy to get away from the plebs, and a slightly distracted, frizzy-haired Central European called Marta, whose friendly overtures towards her neighbour are hindered by her poor English (although she is fluent in Italian and very articulate in her own language when she narrates her sections of the book). To start off with, Gerald's sections are funnier - it's his coruscating snobbishness which produces some of the best lines - but soon you realise that Marta's view of events provides an equal amount of humour, nicely puncturing Gerald's self-importance - and in any case, soon the story is bounding off in such bizarre directions that all you can do is hold on.

Food and drink, in the neighbourly relationship, are both gestures of friendliness and weapons of war, with the bitter digestif Fernet Branca appearing in both categories - the latter, for example, when Gerald makes "garlic and Fernet Branca ice-cream" in hopes that it will get Marta to leave him alone.

(It may have added something to my enjoyment of the book that I too have had an unfortunate experience with Fernet Branca. I tried it once, after reading an article in The Atlantic Monthly about it. This was during an internationally-themed pub crawl, and while everything was fine while sticking to beer from various different countries, the combination in rapid succession of The French House (pernod) and Bar Italia (the aforementioned FB) sent the evening on a downward spiral from which it never really recovered.)

Anyway, back to the garlic and FB ice-cream. One of the running jokes of the book is Gerald's penchant for absolutely disgusting-sounding recipes, which are yet almost plausible as the final extreme of the snobbish English foodie's traditional fondness for vanishingly obscure ingredients and combinations. Another is his habit, while he works, of singing made-up Italian operetta arias fitted around phrases that he has seen on packaging (such as 'the expiry date is on the bottom of the container'). Marta's Soviet-mafia family, a celebrated but sex-obsessed Italian film director, and a British boy-band star who wants to be taken seriously, round out the storylines.

All this probably sounds ridiculously over-the-top, but I think one of the most skillful things about the book is the way it leads up to its most bizarre heights gradually. I'm not saying that at the start it is absolutely true to life, but every new excess of implausibility is introduced so gently that it all seems to fit together. At every twist, too, several false leads are laid for the reader. But I only realised all this towards the end - for most of the book, I was laughing too much to do any analysis.

Sample: Well, all right - I can see I'm going to have to come clean about my source of income. It's pretty humiliating but at least I can console myself with the thought that the Queen makes a living out of cutting ribbons while the Archbishop of Canterbury is paid to address the Supreme Ruler of the Universe publicly in a loud voice as if they were old friends.

Recommended for: well, the humour is quite cruel, so I would not recommend this for anyone too sensitive or indeed who was entirely nice. Anyone else - give it a go!

I'll have to give Cooking with Fernet Branca another try. I bought it because I thought it would be fun to read a satire of the "Americans/British discover cooking and the meaning of life in Italy" genre, but I couldn't get into it -- I hope it's not because I'm "too sensitive" or "entirely nice"!

Great review of Cooking with Fernet Branca; I hadn't planned to read this, but I think I'll give it a try, thanks to you.

I loved Cooking with Fernet Branca too, though the sequel wasn't quite as good. I tried Fernet Branca earlier this year, I've been wanting to try it ever since reading the novel - tastes awful, like listerine!

I adored Cooking with Fernet Branca. Unfortunately, I have to agree with >190 avatiakh:: the sequel was not as good. In fact, I found it rather disappointing.

Rebecca - 'entirely nice' is not in any way a criticism - I was just thinking about which one of my friends I wouldn't recommend Cooking With Fernet Branca to, and why... and some of them are lovely people but just don't have the cruel streak required to enjoy the humour! However, I don't think CWFB is actually a satire on expats in Italy, or if it is, it's only incidentally - the location provides the incongruous meeting of the two but other than that I think it could have taken place anywhere.

Avatiakh, Urania, disappointing to hear about the sequel as I already own it - on the other hand, it's hard to see how you could match the heights of CWFB! Also I think part of the enjoyment is the surprise factor and I expect in a sequel you already have expectations.

Wonderful review of Cooking with Fernet Branca! I've been interested in it ever since TadAD recommended it as one of the better Europa Editions in his review of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I really didn't like. Now I'll have to keep an extra eye out for it.

A couple of mixed bags next:

96. The Last Llanelli Train by Robert Lewis

How/why acquired: I think it was a combination of being intrigued by the titles in the shop, then picking up some positive reviews here on LT.

Robin Llewellyn is a private eye on the skids. He has alienated pretty much everyone he knows, crossed some powerful people, and every time he manages to get some money in his pocket, immediately drinks it all away.

I had been expecting black humour - I think because of the setting in Bristol, which is hard to imagine as the site of a genuine noir. Or perhaps I should say, it was hard to imagine as the site of a genuine noir before reading this book. But the humour, while there, points up the misery rather than undercutting it.

It's well written, but in the end the overwhelming bleakness was too much for me, so I wouldn't say that I enjoyed reading this.

Sample: Something has been shut off to us, I think, looking at the people around me, each one a little bit hungrier when they leave than when they went in. Lost, utterly. No one with a single landmark to go by.

Recommended for: readers prepared for unremitting misery.

97. Not Before Sundown by Johanna Sinisalo, also published as Troll: a love story (a much more pick-up-able title)

How/why acquired: heard about on LT, was intrigued by the title.

Angel, a photographer, finds a gang of yobs beating someone up near his home. He chases them away, and then finds that what they were beating up was, in fact, a young troll. He takes the beast home to nurse it back to health, but becomes mesmerised by its wild grace.

The story is told in short bursts from several different points of view, interleaved with folkloric and zoologic texts on trolls which Angel researches. The reader is dropped into the story quickly, and it's absorbing. The interleaved texts hint at parallels - themes for example of fear and prejudice (Angel is gay), and human beastliness.

At this point, the book was reminding me of Elizabeth Knox's excellent The Vintner's Luck, in which a young man falls in love with a (male) angel. However, although Angel becomes increasingly obsessed by the troll, every time he feels aroused he rushes off to find someone human to have sex with. Tension builds between Angel and three friends - the person he's having sex with, who knows that Angel is thinking of someone else; a old flame, who dumped Angel but is miffed that Angel has stopped moping around him; and a vet who grows increasingly suspicious by Angel's questions about 'large predators'.

All this is great reading, but unfortunately, having set the situation up, I felt that Sinisalo wasted it. You can't say that the story fizzled out, because dramatic things happen - but it still felt like an anticlimax to me.

There was also a subplot about a mail-order bride in the flat below which I couldn't see the point of at all.

Sample: His golden head bends closer to me, so i catch the scent of his aftershave. It's a new one on me, woodlandish and metallic, strangely arousing.

Recommended for: I think despite the flaws I would recommend this as an interesting read.

>195 wandering_star:: Ooh, I read that one last year, and thought it was a very interesting book, although I do remember going back and forth on the question of how satisfying the ending was, and somehow talking myself into deciding that it did sort of work.

As for the mail-order bride subplot, I saw it as an interesting, and rather dark, parallel to the captive-troll story going on above.

And I'm told that Not Before Sundown is much closer to the original Finnish, but Troll: A Love Story is certainly much more pick-up-able, as it led to me picking it up in the bookstore, having never even heard of it before, and taking it home with me. Which is something I almost never do these days.

That's very interesting. Much better than my thoughts which were about violence/inhumanity of people. Of course - she also cannot communicate to anyone how she is feeling, and doesn't really understand the motivations of the man who is keeping her there...

Thank you!

I seem to have got rather behind myself again, so some of these reviews might be a bit short.

98. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers - a moving story of a small town in the southern US, and four people who long desperately for someone who speaks their language - whether that's the language of music, of socialism, or of education. They all find it - or think they do - in the character of a deaf-mute, largely because he treats them with respect. But he, in fact, is just as alone.

Sample: They stood in the dark before the front door. Doctor Copeland tried to speak, but his voice seemed lost somewhere deep inside him.

Recommended for: anyone who's ever felt out of place.

99. Surveyor by G. W. Hawkes

How/why acquired: recommended either on LT or in a newspaper, in a thread/article about under-recognised writers.

I am sad and sorry that this remarkable book has only 8 members listing it on LT.

Paul Merline and John Suope have been mapping a small part of the New Mexico desert since the 1950s, working for a Foundation that has never told them what it wants the information for. They believe that they know everything there is to know about their patch of desert - and subconsciously, Merline at least believes he knows all there is to know about himself and his partner.

But recently, new characters have disturbed their routine - archaeologists pulling prehistoric remains out of the earth, and a film student knocking together a jerry-built townscape as part of her graduation project. The different perspectives that the newcomers bring make the landscape shift under the surveyors' feet - and their different reactions to the changes lead Merline to realise that his understanding of his partner, and himself, are equally shallowly rooted.

The book is rich with layers of metaphor, but at the same time, the story draws you in, and stands on its own.

Sample: The delicate ratio of human to empty square mile has crossed an invisible threshold and like cargo shifting in a poorly loaded freighter promises only disaster.

Recommended for: everyone, now!

PS: the book's epigram is from Robert Frost:

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Omnivores by Lydia Millet: I have nothing against grotesqueries per se - this book reminded me a little of The Wasp Factory or Five Miles From Outer Hope, both of which I enjoyed - but it turns out that when the gruesome behaviour is being carried out by adults, and narrated in plain English, it's much more disturbing. I couldn't get beyond the first section of this.

100. Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman

How/why acquired: I've read a couple of Salzman's other books, and enjoyed them.

This is an episodic account of two years Salzman spent in China teaching English and learning various Chinese arts, martial and classical.

Salzman is nicely self-deprecating, but is clearly a remarkable character: he plays the cello, draws and practices martial arts, all to a high level, but more importantly for the reader he is culturally attuned enough to have experiences which would be closed to a clumsier foreigner. This is China in the 1980s, not at all the China of today - but Salzman manages to make real connections with people who give him generously of their time. Touching, amusing and a very enjoyable read.

Sample: He showed no interest at all in my books, but sat me down next to the recorder and pointed at the pile of paper. On each sheet he had written out in Chinese dozens of phrases, such as "We'll need a spotlight over there," "These mats aren't springy enough," and "Don't worry - it's just a shoulder dislocation."

Recommended for: anyone with an interest in China or indeed contact between anyone of different cultures.

101. Hallam Foe by Peter Jinks

How/why acquired: I saw the film that this was made into - it wasn't great, but it was interesting enough to make me think the book would be worth investigating.

Hallam is a strange and reserved boy, particularly since his mother's suicide and his father's indecently rapid remarriage. Expelled from home by his stepmother, his difficulty connecting with other people drives him up onto the roofs of Edinburgh, where he can observe messy human interactions, emotions and sex from a safe distance.

He doesn't think of himself as a stalker - he means no harm to his subjects, although he finds that it's surprisingly easy to get them to trust him by revealing a couple of shared interests - he's read the book by their bedside, listened to their new favourite album. But one day, his detachment tested by his pretty boss, he starts breaking his own rules...

Well, this was certainly better than the film, although it still didn't really work for me. Perhaps because - ironically - I felt too distanced from the characters; or perhaps it's because it's never easy to make a credible book rest on the premise that people are complicated and behave in unpredictable ways (even though it's true)! Interesting, though.

Sample: Hallam thought of the rules as a professional code of conduct. They allowed him to pursue his calling without harming or disturbing others, and it provided a coherent framework that helped curb the perils of obsession.

Recommended for: someone looking for an offbeat read.

102. The Awakening by Kate Chopin

This early feminist novella deals with a young married woman, very proper and upright, who one day realises that she has fallen in love. It was an interesting read, not least because of its contemporary reception - the subject matter was so outrageous and scandalous that Chopin's career never quite recovered. But the stages of the young woman's doom are - to this modern reader - telegraphed too much in advance, and she herself is rather too hapless, so I wouldn't say it was a read I really enjoyed.

Sample: Sailing across the bay to the Cheniere Caminada, Edna felt as if she were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast, whose chains had been loosening - had snapped the night before when the mystic spirit was abroad, leaving her free to drift whithersoever she chose to set her sails.

Recommended for: its historical interest.

Off to order Surveyor!

Very glad to hear it - I am sure you won't be disappointed!

103. City Of The Sharp-Nosed Fish by Peter Parsons

How/why acquired: LT-inspired.

This book is about daily life in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchos, as revealed by a cache of half a million scraps of papyrus that have survived in the dry, desert air - literature makes up about 10%, with the rest including letters, legal documents, account books and lesson texts. (It's a story which reminded me a little of Amitav Ghosh's memoir In An Antique Land, for my money the best of his books, which touches on the stories revealed in a cache of paper found in a synagogue).

It's a painstaking task, and far from all the scraps have been deciphered (they are being published in a series of academic volumes, of which 40 more are expected). But there is enough information for a fairly detailed account of life in the town over three centuries.

And the details are fascinating. Leases stipulate that the houses be returned with shutters and doors intact, and that rooms be 'cleansed of excrement'. A letter begging a friend to send papyrus is scrawled on a bit of broken pottery (the cheaper alternative). People petition the gods to ask whether they should go through with a contract, whether to 'approach the Prefect with a higher tender', whether they will ever marry. After Egyptians are given Roman citizenship, a woman applies for the right to manage her business on her own, by the ancient rule that a woman with three children could assert legal independence.

A writer more skilled in popularising his subject might have drawn out some of the detail a bit more, and emphasised the stories - for example, one of the chapters which was most vivid for me was the one on teaching materials, partly because I can imagine more easily being a hapless schoolboy struggling with Homer than I can being a brickmaker seeking chaff at low prices. But Parsons has been a leading academic expert in his subject for decades, so it seems pretty demanding to ask for more.

Sample: Sometimes we have all the ink, but faded and abraded; sometimes just bits of letters, ambiguous in themselves; sometimes nothing but specks and the possible track of the pen. Any such traces may be difficult to distinguish from background dirt and stains.

Recommended for: anyone interested in daily life from different times and places.

104. The Death Maze (aka The Serpent's Tale) by Ariana Franklin

How/why acquired: I read the first in the series because of enthusiastic LT recommendations, which I then joined in with!

In this book, Henry II's mistress, Fair Rosamund, has been poisoned, and Adelia and her allies must find the killer before the event leads to civil war which will tear England apart.

I actually enjoyed this more than Mistress Of The Art Of Death, because it didn't have the grotesque violence of the first book, while retaining an enjoyable mystery, vivid setting (this time in ice-locked wintry Oxfordshire) and some wonderful personalities. It also fed my growing interest in Eleanor of Aquitaine, who shows up as a character, indeed a suspect, in the mystery.

Sample: Eleanor took no notice of her. She walked to one side of the table, bringing with her a scent that subsumed Rosamund's roses with something heavier and more eastern. Two white, long-fingered hands were placed on the wood as she bent forward to look into the face of the dead woman.

Recommended for: anyone who likes a good read.

105. Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh

How/why acquired: saw in shop; wanted.

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer, who has spent much of his career challenging the reclamation of West Bank land for settlements. He is also a walker, who sees beauty in the hills where many others have only seen barren hostility - indeed, one of his aims is to make the land seem real and vivid, rather than a biblical wilderness or site of political struggle.

This beautifully written book is somewhere between a memoir and a collection of essays, framed as six walks in the hills around Ramallah. Lyrical descriptions of the landscape are combined with distress at its destruction (by settlements, growing Palestinian towns, vandalism and carelessness) and anger and despondency at the situation of the Palestinians. One of the many sad things in the book is the way that simply walking in the hills is treated with great suspicion - Shehadeh is shot at by both sides in the course of these walks.

Sample: The further down I went the deeper the silence became. As always the distance and quiet made me attentive to those troublesome thoughts that had been buried deep in my mind. As I walked, many of them were surfacing. I sifted through them. The mind only admits what it can handle and here on these hills the threshold was higher.

Recommended for: a personal view of the impact of the political situation on people's lives.

City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish sounds fascinating! Onto the wishlist it goes!

Oh dear. The arrival of a box from Amazon inspired me to check how many books I have acquired this year. Despite my resolution to cut back, the total stands at 132 - that's a book every 1.67 days. Not much will-power evident there...

But you've read so many! Glad to be reminded of Carson McCullers here, and to learn about Surveyor and The City of the Sharp Nosed Fish.

eta: couldn't resist peeking at your profile to see what might have come in from amazon -- The Geometry of Pasta looks interesting!

Thank you! Haven't got to The Geometry Of Pasta yet but am loving The Flavour Thesaurus - I just opened it for a flick-through and was hooked. It's just a list of recommended flavour pairings, but the way they are described is brilliant:

Apple & Blackberry: Like Simon and Garfunkel: perfectly respectable solo careers, can sell out Central Park together. Simon is the apple, by the way, the dominant partner. Blackberry does the high notes.

210 - Added both of those to my wishlist. I went to a new bookstore yesterday, and right when you walk in are two U shaped shelves (facing each other, making a kind of circle). The one on the right is architecture, the one on the left food. I was in heaven. The Geometry of Pasta in particular reminded me of that.

106. Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen by Kate Taylor

How/why acquired: passed on by a friend who was clearing her bookshelves.

This book tells the story of three women: we read the diaries of Marcel Proust's mother in the late nineteenth century, and hear the thoughts of two French-Canadian women in the mid- and late twentieth.

I really enjoyed this book to start with - the diaries are crisp and the prose is very well-written, with themes of memory - and smell, of course, along the lines of Proust's famous madeleines. However, after about halfway, I realised that the stories of the two modern women were not really going anywhere.

It became apparent that they were linked by one man, Max - son to one and close friend to the other - with many echoes of Proust's relations with his mother and a close female friend. And as the many things which their stories could have been about narrowed down to this, I wondered whether it was really enough to hang a story around - Max is visible to the reader only in small glimpses and he doesn't seem a strong enough character to be worth all the emotional commitment that the women put in.

Sample sentence: The manuscript room in the old Bibliotheque Nationale smells of leather and dust. The buttery scent of literature wafts out from shelves of thick, calfskin-bound volumes arranged all the way down one long wall. A sharp whiff of history blows up from behind the decorative grilles that hide creaking iron radiators from both the eye and the broom. The one lush, the other acrid, the two odours meet and mingle, filling the narrow space with a single elusive perfume.

Recommended for: I think this would be quite a nice holiday read, if you're in the mood for something interesting but not too challenging, and with some nice descriptions of Paris.

107. Montmorency by Eleanor Updale

How/why acquired: I mooched this after reading an enthusiastic LT review, without really registering that it was a children's book. (Fortunately the TIOLI challenge to read a genre you normally don't spurred me to pick this off the shelf.)

A romping adventure set in Victorian London - Montmorency has been a petty thief, but during a stint in prison, he learns both about Bazalgette's new sewer system, and about the way that the rich act, how their speech and movements mark them out. With this information, he realises that he can lead a dual life, using the sewers to get away after daring raids, then dressing up nicely to sell the "family jewels" (and live on the proceeds). But as he gets accustomed to the high life, he feels more guilty about what he needs to do to afford it. Perhaps there is a way that he can make use of his unusual skills in the service of the good?

A fun read, although it won't make me hurry to pick up more children's books. I particularly liked the way it highlighted the way that movement and gesture can define people - and the gruesome descriptions of tracking through the sewers.

Sample sentence: Balancing the top hat proved a little difficult at first, and though he knew he should touch it with his hand when he passed a lady, he feared that he might send it rolling into the road.

Recommended for: it's a good book for children - I would certainly give copies to nephews and nieces.

Catching up! I'm green with envy - what a fabulous selection, as ever. I've hardly been able to read anything over the last few months (apart from One Day, which I really hope you enjoy as much as I did - although I wonder if part of my fascination came just from managing to finish a book? You might want to take that into account; it's the only one I've finished in several months - I don't know what's wrong with me at the moment but I wish it would stop!) I'm off to order a copy of Cooking with Fernet Branca right away - maybe a funny book is just what I need? (And I have no worries about being too nice for it!)

I'm so sorry to hear that - it's horrible when nothing you read works. I have had some bad slumps too and it's very frustrating - although I don't think I've ever had one as long as several months. I hope you find something which gets you out of it soon.

108. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson - audiobook, abridged, read by Jason Isaacs

How/why acquired: I really like Jason Isaacs' contributions to Mark Kermode's film reviews podcast - I couldn't tell you what he looks like, but he comes across as a really nice and intelligent bloke (and I also like his voice). Anyway, he mentioned that he had narrated the Jackson Brodie series for audiobooks, and one of my best friends has been trying to get me to read these for years - so the combination was enough to send me to amazon.co.uk. (I liked Kate Atkinson's first book, Behind the scenes at the museum, but was less keen on her second, Emotionally Weird, so hadn't read any of hers for some years).

Case Histories is the first in the Jackson Brodie series. It starts with short descriptions of three cases from years before - the disappearance of a small girl, and two brutal murders. For various reasons, Jackson (an ex-copper turned PI) is approached by people related to the victims, who all want to look again at aspects of the cases.

I really enjoyed this, although I think that's at least as much due to Isaacs' narration as to the book itself. The book is a tricky balance, with a tone of light, ironic humour despite the profound and sometimes upsetting details of the stories. The narration manages to point up the humour while also being serious enough to be moving, when that's necessary.

This is the first audiobook I have listened to and it was a good combination of reader and material. I have wishlisted the next set of CDs...

Recommended for: fans of British (light) humour.

i'm going to have to look out for some of the cooking related books you've mentioned; not so much for our reading, but for a close friend. I have a v. small N of 2 - my mom and Richard, but the most avid cooks i know were trained as lab scientists (Richard neurobiology; mom - chemistry).

I've been surprised by how much i enjoy well done audio books. In general books w/ a single reader work best for me (Neil Gaiman's books are improved by his wonderful readings; Phillip Pullman is a superb narrator - i'm sorry they used some voice actors for character dialog. A long way down was ruined by the inappropriate sounding voice of one of the characters).

Ooh, Neil Gaiman reads some of his own books! - I can just imagine that would be excellent (I saw him do a short reading during an Amanda Palmer concert).

Gah. Just been over to Amazon and it's hard to see who the readers are for some of the audiobooks. Do you think I am safe to assume that if there isn't a reader listed, it's read by the author? One of the options is The Graveyard Book which if it is read by Gaiman would be the perfect present for a friend of mine.

Minor whinge: I find it really irritating that Amazon conflates the reviews for audiobooks and the physical books, since the quality of the reading is so important!

On the cooking books, my partner (who is an excellent cook) is a chemist, and I once gave him Harold McGee's On Food And Cooking, which explains the science of cooking. The book has been around for ages and is often recommended so your friends may already have it, but it is very interesting.

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