What Happened in October, 2014

Reviews

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Ever since Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer, there has been an awful lot of Goldfinch bashing going on.  The prime complaints seem to fall into one of two categories, the first being that Tartt needed a more cutting editor, and the second being that Tartt's characters spent too much time talking about drugs.  I, on the other hand, am in the camp of The Goldfinch defenders, which I sort of didn't expect. 

The Goldfinch is a long book, at 771 pages, but that alone does not mean that Tartt needed a better editor.  I can't say that not a single word could be cut, but neither I could cite many examples of areas where I was bored.  For the most part, the parts where one could think that an editor was needed were times were Tartt was deliberately prolonging the story to show how time was dragging on for the main character, such as at the engagement cocktail party, or while he was alone in Amsterdam.  I loved every page, and wish for another hundred or two.  As for the drugs, if this was too much for you, please don't read Edward St. Aubyn. 

Lest you think that I entered into this book with rose colored glasses, I have never been Donna Tartt's biggest fan.  Time and time again, I tell people that if they liked Tartt's Secret History, they will love Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl, which is similar, but in my opinion, better.  I rarely even talk about Tartt's The Little Friend, as it was really not that great of a book, but for some reason, it is one of those books that sticks in my mind with images reappearing constantly.  In The Goldfinch, Tartt hits the mark, and earns her reputation.

The Goldfinch starts with Theo and his mother visiting a NYC museum exhibit of Dutch artists, where a girl with red hair catches Theo's eye.  Theo is drawn to the girl, who is at the museum with a man who appears to be her grandfather.  He follows them, when suddenly a bomb explodes, and Theo's life is forever changed.  Theo becomes an unwitting art thief, and spends the next 20 years  hiding his treasure.  Theo's mom is killed in the explosion, and as a result, he moves in with his wealthy friend, Andy, and his family.  As might be expected, Theo's deadbeat father reappears, and whisks him off to Las Vegas.  In Vegas, Theo meets a new friend, Boris, whose life is at least as dysfunctional as his own.

Theo is charmed in that he has amazing people in his life.  Boris, flawed as he may be, is just what Theo needs, right when he needs him, time and time again.  Hobie, who Theo meets while trying to figure out what certain things that happened at the museum meant, shapes Theo's life, and gives him all of the stability that he was missing. Andy and his family, the Barbours, give Theo the illusion of normalcy, while also giving him a place to belong, if he wants it.

I listened to The Goldfinch on audiobook.  It was read by David Pittu, who won two Audies for his performance.  He should have won even more - as many as were available.  There had to have been at least 30 characters, all of whom had distinctive voices and accents.  The voices for Hobie and Boris were my favorite.  Pittu made Hobie seem old, dignified, and somehow more affluent than the customers who shopped in his store.  He made Boris sound impulsive, risky, shady, and yet still trustworthy and loyal, all with a Russian/Austrailian/Ukranian accent. 

I loved The Goldfinch, and will happily read it again, hopefully in the near future.  I am adding it to my list of Favorites.  The Goldfinch was a NYT Notable book for 2013.

Challenges:  Audiobook Challenge

Tags:  Big Fat Books, Favorites, Pulitzer Winner, NYT Notables, Awesome Audio,

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey is the story of an ex-pat experience, as told by a husband who felt that it was a complete success, and a wife who felt miserably out of place.  George and Sabine Harwood moved to Trinidad in 1956, just as the colonial rulers are losing power.  The new Prime Minister, Eric Williams, promised to change the country and free its true citizens from the control of outsiders.  George loves Trinidad, and loves the ex pat lifestyle, so much that he never wants to leave.  Sabine sees Trinidad with more weary eyes, and is hopeful that the people will find the leader who they are hoping for in Williams, even if he scares her with his anti-establishment promises.

There are a couple of stories that are going on in White Woman.  The first is that of a revolution, as seen through the eyes of an outsider.  Sabine, the only white person at the rallies supporting Williams, is hopeful for him and his followers, and would be more than happy to leave Trinidad to them.  When he gains power, and fails to make the changes that were promised, she sees him falling into the ways of the former rulers, and is disappointed that he is letting his people down, even if she was never an intended beneficiary.  While reading this, I couldn't help thinking about Kwame Kilpatrick.  As a person who lives near but not in Detroit, I was excited for Kilpatrick to be elected.  He was young and Detroit and whole metro area was ready for someone fresh to make a change.  Instead, the Detroiters who elected him were rewarded with scandal, corruption, and outright theft.  Like Sabine, I was on the outside, looking in, but hoping that the new leader would make a difference, even if the changes wouldn't directly help me.  Also like Sabine, I was disappointed and disillusioned with the results, even if a part of me knew that I was foolish to hope for more.

Another story that unfolds through out White Woman is that of people who catch each other's eye in a crowd, and never quite let go.  One day, while she is riding her bike, Sabine and Eric Williams lock eyes.  While they don't know each other, they feel a connection.  Over the next several years, they run into each other from time to time, and fall into conversations as if they have been speaking daily, saying things to each other that no one else would say.  While it could never happen in America, Roffey makes it seem completely reasonable that the Prime Minister of Trinidad would speak freely with a woman who he has only briefly met, but who looked really cute while riding her bike.

Challenges:  Rewind

Tags:  British Stories

Yankee Broadcast Network by John F. Buckley and Martin Ott

Although I haven't done any Industry Requested Reviews in a couple of months, I still get requests every day.  One request that caught my attention was that of John Buckley and Martin Ott, who wanted me to review their book of poetry about television.  While they were really straight forward about what their book was, I guess that I was a little surprised that literally every poem related to television.  My fault - not theirs.  What disappointed me though was that while they think about television enough to want to write a book of poetry inspired by it, they seem to really hate it.

For most of us, television is a guilty pleasure, but for Buckley and Ott, the pleasure is all gone, leaving nothing but guilt, and a dash of disgust.  One of the things that caught my attention when deciding to accept the review request was their poem called "The Real Housewives of Wayne County."  Wayne County, in case you don't know, is the county where Detroit is located.  However, it's also the county where Grosse Pointe (remember "Grosse Pointe Blank" starring John Cusack?) is, which makes Wayne County an area where extreme wealth abuts complete poverty.  The poem that Buckley and Ott wrote relied only on the Detroit brand names and stereotypes, and missed the opportunity for a study in contrasts.  In fact, they could have renamed it with the name of any county, and inserted the names of products made in that county, instead of "Better Made" and paczki.

My favorite poem was "Burn'ded" which was obviously a satire of Ashton Kucher's show, "Punk'd".  In the Buckley and Ott version, there are many people playing ever escalating "pranks" ending with a home grown terrorist who eventually sees the episode in which he stars with his fellow inmates.

Yes, Yankee Broadcast Network was exactly what it promised it would be.  I just didn't like it as much as I hoped I would.

Tags:  Industry Requested Reviews

Book Group Reports

The Neighborhood Book Group met to discuss The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.  There were 8 of us who met, and only 4 had finished the book.  2 more were not quite finished, and the other two of us (I was in this group) never picked the book up.  At the beginning of the meeting, I would have said that of the people who read it, half liked it, and half didn't.  Unfortunately, after discussing various unlikely twists and coincidences, the people who had started off saying that they liked it changed sides.  I think I won't bother trying to pick this one up. 

We chose to discuss Sweetness because we are trying to read something from various genres, and this one was chosen as a mystery.  In December we will meet again to discuss The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which we have classified as science fiction.

The Typical Book Group met this month to discuss . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  We picked this book as our summer Big Fat Book (BFB) in June, and delayed meeting until October to discuss it.  Even with this delay, of the 9 people at book group, only 2 had finished the book.  There were 3 more of us who had started it and were in various stages of progress, but the rest didn't even give it a try.

I talked about . . .And Ladies in my August and September wrap ups.  Basically it is an 1100+ page book about a book group that formed in the late 1800s, and the course of the lives of the original members.  As I've mentioned, I frequently fall asleep after reading only a few pages.  The two groupers who finished the book said that somewhere around page 500, the story picked up so that they could easily read 50 pages at a time, and that they thought about the book all of the time when they weren't reading it.  I'm somewhere around page 700 now, and I am not experiencing that at all, but then again, I've been putting it down for 2 or 3 weeks at a time and coming back to it, instead of immersing myself in the story.  Maybe this month I'll stick with it until I'm done.

All told, the people who finished the book liked it, and thought that it was worth reading.  I did notice though that one of them only gave the book 3 GoodReads stars.  So, while I'm now expecting something worth finishing, maybe I won't expect it to be life changing.

Next month we'll read Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson.

In Other News

The Man Booker Prize was announced on October 14.  This year's winner was The Narrow Road to the Deep North  by Richard Flannigan.  Based on the Amazon reviews, this sounds like a really good book.  The main character is an Australian surgeon in a Japanese POW camp during World War II.  I'll be keeping my eyes open for more on this one.

November Preview

People, I am burnt out on blogging, and almost even dreading it.  So, I'm not making any promises about even doing a monthly summary for November.  But in case you are interested in what I am planning to read and listen to, here you go:

In Paper Form:
. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  Yes, I promise to finish this book in November.
Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett, if I can get it, or Bread and Butter by Michelle Wildgen, if I can't.
Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King

On Audio Book:
1Q84 by Haruki Murikami
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

What Happened in September, 2014

Reviews

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks

Two Christmases ago, my daughter gave me Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks.  The movie was coming out, and the plan may have been to trick me into taking her to see it by giving me the book first.  The plan didn't work, and Safe Haven sat in my nightstand  unread for a year and a half.  In August, my family rented a house in North Carolina, and I decided that it was the perfect time to give Safe Haven a try.  I expected it to be a good beach book, with the added benefit that my daughter would see me reading it and appreciating her gift.

I have to say that Safe Haven was pretty much exactly what one might expect from a Nicholas Sparks book.  The main character, Katie, has left her abusive husband and fled to a small North Carolina town.  There she meets the recently widowed Alex, and falls in love with him and his two children.  All is going well until, yep, you guessed it. 

While the story was predictable, it was a page turner, and I found myself oddly unable to put it down.  Sparks played some hokey name games, and threw in an unexpected but equally unbelievable twist at the end.  Still, if you are renting beach house and looking for something to bring along, you might as well bring this one!

Challenges:  Rewind

Tags:  Light and Fluffy

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

I'm a pretty persistent reader.  Most of the time, if I can make it through the first hundred pages, I'll finish the book.  Last month, I put down . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer after over 400 pages.  This month, I'm quitting The Finkler Question, despite being 2/3 through.

The Finkler Question is the story of three men living in London, Julian Treslove, Sam Finkler and Libor Sevcik.  Julian and Sam are about the same age as each other - mid 40s, and Libor is in his 80s.  Libor and Sam are recently widowed.  They are also Jewish.  So what, you ask?  Jewishness is all that they talk about.

Julian is mugged, and believes that he was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack.  Although he is not Jewish, he then experiences a huge case of Jewish envy, and tries to become Jewish by changing his manner of speaking and actions, without actually converting.  Libor is seemingly happily Jewish, although he spends a great deal of time thinking about whether attacks on Jewish people and places are understandable, if not justified.  Sam Finkler, on the other hand, joins a group who identify themselves as ASHamed Jews and are opposed to the Israeli state.

Much of the dialogue in The Finkler Question is focused on what it means to be Jewish, whether one can be Jewish and be ashamed of other Jewish people, and whether Jewish people who disagree with what other Jewish people are doing, especially in Israel, are anti-Semitic.

If you are Jewish, and are questioning your beliefs, this might be a great book for you.  I was actually not aware that some Jewish people don't support Israel, which I probably should have known.  So much of the book is about Jewish people as a group, and then the opinions of particular Jewish people.  All of this is great, but it just got old.  I was looking for another dimension to the characters.  Being Jewish, or being jealous of people who are Jewish, shouldn't be all that they are.

The Finkler Question won the Man Booker Prize for 2010. 

Challenges: Rewind, Audiobook, and I Love Library Books

Tags: British Stories, Man Booker Listed, Questioning Religions

. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

Well, I picked it up again.  This time I read from where I left off, at page 413 in 1880, until page 613 in 1887.  Some more club members have died, others have married, and the kids are mostly grown.  There are some hints that someone might be a lesbian, but I'm not sure if that was a topic discussed in popular fiction in 1982 when the book was first published, so I'm not expecting anything explosive.

The other members of The Typical Book Group are also struggling with this one.  We usually discuss our summer Big Fat Book in August, or possibly in September if everyone is out of town at the end of the summer.  This year, we have decided to move the meeting back until October.

Although this book is taking me forever, I am liking it.  It has a nice, soothing rhythm.  There's not a ton of action, but there is something about it that I like.  I'm taking a break again, but after I finish The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon, I'll try and knock out another 200 pages.

The Wife, the Maid and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon

In 1930, a judge in New York named Joseph Crater suddenly disappeared and became the "The Missingest Man in New York".  His wife, Stella was at their vacation home in Maine, while Crater went to Atlantic City with his mistress, Sally Lou Ritz.  He came back to the City, had dinner with Ritz and his lawyer, William Klein, then got in a cab, and was never seen again.  In her book, The Wife, the Maid and the Mistress, Ariel Lawhon offers a theory of what may have happened.

Lawhon's story focuses on the tangled connections between Stella and Crater and a cast of characters including a mob boss, Owney Madden, his unexpectedly friendly thug, Shorty, and the Craters' maid, Maria.  No one seems to actually have liked Crater, so there were lots people who might have preferred for him to disappear.  In fact, in real life as in the book it took 10 days for anyone to start wondering where he was.

During Crater's lifetime, there were rumors about how he secured his appointment to court. Lawhon speculates that Owney Madden was involved, and became worried when a grand jury was convened to investigate alleged corruption.  She then also guesses that the police investigating the crime may be indebted to Madden themselves.

Sometimes in a historical fiction book, there is something that happens that is so unbelievable that you know it must be true.  In this story, when it turned out that the Craters' maid was married to one of the policemen investigating the case, I knew that it must have been true, because there's no way that a police officer would be charged with investigating his wife's boss' mysterious disappearance, so no author would make that up.  However, when I got to Lawhon's end notes, it turned out that was a fictional twist.  The Craters did have a maid, but there's no indication that she was married to an investigator. 

All told, this was an interesting story, made all the more so with its morsels of truth.

Challenges:  I Love Library Books Challenge

Tags:  Historical Fiction   

In Other News

Pass it On

You might remember that I got my copy of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson from a Little Free Library.  I finished that book while I was staying that the beach house that I talked about in my review of Safe Haven, and so I left it there.  The shelves were crowded with more beach reads than literary fiction, but I found it a nice spot next to The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.  While Safe Haven would have fit right in, I wasn't done with it yet.  So, I'll return Safe Haven to my Little Free Library instead.  Pass it on!

Man Booker Short List

The Man Booker Prize Shortlist was announced on September 9.  To my surprise, David Mitchell's new book, The Bone Clocks, did not make the cut.  Instead, Joshua Ferris' book, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour made the list, along with books by Howard Jacobson, Karen Joy Fowler, Richard Flanagan, Neel Mukherjee and Ali Smith.  Despite an earlier so-so review, the Times published this almost glowing review of To Rise Again on September 15.  What brought on the reconsideration?  I just might suspect that they didn't want to be left on the wrong side of the hype if Ferris wins this one.  More power to him.

Blogging for Rivera

This month, I had dinner in the Rivera Court at the Detroit Institute of Arts.  No biggie really, I've been there before, and anyone in my tri-county area can go for free.  But it is pretty spectacular.  If you need a reason to visit Detroit, this could be it.

But anyway, sitting there, sipping wine, I was thinking about Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo, and I couldn't help but think about The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.  The thing about The Lacuna is that although I know that it was a good book, and it was about Rivera and Kahlo, I can't tell you much about it.  Unfortunately, I read it during the period when I had officially started my blog, but before my Parent Rant that got me really writing about what I read.  And this is why I'm still blogging.  I'm convinced that if I stop, I won't remember the details about the books that I read.  So, here I go, blogging toward another month.

October Preview

In October, I plan to read and review the following books:

On Paper or Electronic Format:

. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

White Woman on a Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey

Bread and Butter by Michelle Widgen

On Audio

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami



What Happened in July 2014

 

Reviews:

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal

Edmund De Waal is a famous twenty-first century potter (did you know that there was one?) who I first read about in this NYT article.  Although the article was intended to be about De Waal's new exhibit, the reporter talked enough about De Waal's family memoir, The Hare With Amber Eyes that I had to add it to my TBR list. 

What is amazing about Hare is that while it could have been the epitome of vanity publishing, instead it is a really great book, without bragging or pouting.  De Waal's family first made its fortune in Odessa through grain trading.  His great-great grandfather pushed the family into Europe, where they established banks in Paris and Vienna.  De Waal's great uncle was Charles Ephrussi, whose name was familiar to me, but for a while I didn't know why. Charles was the third son, and was able to avoid the family business and do things that were more interesting, like collect art.  He lived in Paris in the time of the Impressionists, and his collection included works by Pissaro, Monet, Renior, Cassatt, and Degas, all in one room of his home.  When De Waal discussed his uncle's relationship with Renoir, I knew why I knew Charles.  Charles Ephrussi is the man in the top hat in Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party.  Susan Vreeland's Luncheon of the Boating Party is a book that I loved reading, and is on my list of books that I would like to re-read this year.  Unfortunately (fortunately?) I lent my copy to my friend, Kim, so I couldn't take a detour into fiction while reading Hare.

That's OK, because in Hare, the truth is better than the fiction could have been.   When Paris became obsessed with Japanese art in the 1800s, Charles jumped in, and amassed a collection of netsuke.  Netsuke are small, intricately carved objects, made sometimes from stone, ivory, or even wood.  Time passed, and the netsuke went out of style.  Charles sent his valuable collection to a nephew, De Waal's grandfather, as a wedding gift.  De Waal's grandfather went on to live in Vienna, where he ran the family owned bank.  According to De Waal, his grandfather's pre-World War II wealth, in today's dollars, was $400 million.  Unfortunately for the De Waal family, they were Jewish, and living in a Nazi state.  By the end of the war, most of the wealth was gone, but amazingly, the netsuke survived and passed through another generation, before landing in De Waal's capable hands.

While billed as the story of the netsuke, this is really a story of a family living in an incredible time.  It somehow doesn't read as a memoir, so much as a telling of historical events in a new and interesting light.  Definitely worth the read. 

Challenges: I love library books

Tags:  Memoir, Non-Fiction, WWII Civilian Stories, Paris

McSweeney's 44

McSweeney's is a quarterly something that generally includes short stories and articles, and was created by Dave Eggers.  I say that it is a quarterly "something" rather than magazine or journal or book, because it is really none of these.  Sometimes it comes with the stories loose in a box, sometimes it looks more like a magazine.  Usually, it looks a lot like novel, which is the case with 44.  The main contributors to 44 were Joe Meno, Rebecca Curtis, Tom Barbash, Jim Shepard, Stuart Dybek, and Wells Tower.  There was also a 82 page tribute to Lawrence (Ren) Weschler, to which many others contributed.

One of my favorite parts of 44 were the letters to the editor, which were all witty and quirky, and generally what one would expect from McSweeney's readers who are hoping to get published themselves. 

Jim Shepard wrote a particularly un-McSweeny-ish story that I liked called "The Ocean of Air", about the Montgolfier brothers who were the first to invent a hot air balloon safe for human travel.  I also liked Stuart Dybek's piece, "Happy Ending" which tells the story of a man, Gil, attending a party thrown by a mogul who claimed to be unhappy.  Gil shows the mogul how happy he is by inventing a scenario which would make his life much worse.  Another interesting story was "Birthday Girl" by Tom Barbash, where a driver who is possibly (almost surely) drunk hits a young girl, and then tries to make things right.

The story by Wells Tower, "The Dance Contest" is well written and interesting, but also strange.  It is about a man named Osmund Tower, the fictional father to Wells, who finds himself imprisoned in the luxury wing of the Theb Moob Mens' Prison in Thailand, due primarily to his naivete.  While he may be in the best possible part of the prison, it is a prison none the less.  The Captain in charge comes up with the idea of rewarding the prisoners with prizes, based on their performance in a dance contest, as judged by Internet viewers.  Cruel and unusual?  You decide.  What I didn't get about this piece is why Tower wanted to make it seem like his character was his father.  Why not just name him Tom Sutherland or Osmund Miller?

Although I, personally, didn't need such a long, funereal, tribute to Ren Weschler, he seems to be a person I should know more about.   I would recommend starting with the Errol Morris conversation with Weschler, and then skipping ahead to Jonathan Lethem's tribute.   If they leave you wanting more, 44 is well stocked.  As always, I finished McSweeney's feeling a little smarter (and maybe a little more smug) than when I started.

Challenges:  Rewind

Tags:  Keeping it Short, Historical Fiction, Non Fiction

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

MaddAddam is the third book in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy.  The first book, Oryx and Crake, focused on Jimmy, a guy in his early 20s who survived some sort of a plague, and wonders if he is the only human who made it.  He lives among people he calls "Crakers" because they were developed in a lab by his friend, Crake.  Much of that book was told through flashbacks about Crake and their shared love, Oryx.  The second book, The Year of the Flood, was told mostly by Toby and Ren.  They are members of a group, The God's Gardeners, who try to live in a more simple way among the corporations and criminals of the modern world.  MaddAddam again focuses on Toby, but this time the story is more about two other God's Gardeners, Zeb and Adam. 

MaddAddam takes place after the waterless flood of the plague, and begins right where The Year of the Flood ended.  Toby, Ren, Amanda and Jimmy are all in a confrontation with dangerous painballers, who are criminals who have fought to the death and survived.  Toby is happy to be reunited with her old crush, Zeb, and much of the book is Zeb telling about his life as a boy with his brother, Adam.  Adam and Zeb had to flee from their abusive but powerful father, the Rev.  Zeb found adventure slaying bears and impersonating big foot, while Adam went on to recruit like-minded people to become MaddAddams and God's Gardeners.

While MaddAddam brought resolution to the series, I found it a little lacking compared to the earlier two books.  Ren and Jimmy were marginalized and treated like children here, when they had much stronger roles in the earlier books.  At the end of the trilogy, I still don't know what the point of the MaddAddams was.  Was it just to be a  group of people gathering information about the bad things the corporations were doing?  The MaddAddamers don't seem to do anything, although they investigate a lot, and know a lot.  Also I'm totally lost about Adam.  Was he really into his Adam 1 God's Gardeners persona, or did he establish the God's Gardeners just as a front to hide corporate escapees and further the MaddAddam cause?  Much of the plot was also redundant, with Zeb telling his story to Toby, and then Toby telling the same story to the Crakers.

My favorite part of MaddAddam was the Crakers.  When Crake invented them, he intended them to be post-religion, and had no idea that they would come to worship him and Oryx as deities.  He also didn't anticipate Toby teaching one of them, Blackbeard, to read, or the creation of a Craker bible, the Book of Toby.  Atwell was also incredibly timely in describing how the religion of corporations can lead to the destruction of mankind.  In light of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision, the world as she predicts it is all the more likely.  In MaddAddam, Adam and Zeb's dad was the leader of the Church of PetrOleum.  As he preaches, the "Petr" is from the apostle, Peter, and the "oleum" is because of all the references to oil in the Bible.  Clearly, God created oil for our use, and any government attempt to regulate the drilling or sale of oil is a violation of the religious beliefs of the Church.  Maybe, just maybe, we could learn from the mistakes that Atwood's characters make in the name of a self serving religious belief.

MaddAddam was a NYT Notable Book for 2013.

Challenges:  I Love Library Books and AudioBook

Tags:  NYT Notables, Sci-Fi-Ish, Questioning Religions

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

During the early days of  the siege of Sarajevo, in 1992, a cellist with the Sarajevo Opera named Vedran Smailovic, played his cello in ruined buildings and at funerals which were frequently targeted by snipers.  In The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway takes Smailovic's story, and sets it to fiction.  In Galloway's Sarajevo, a young woman who calls herself Arrow is working as a sniper defending the city.  A man with a young family, Kenan, walks from one side of the city to the other in order to fill water bottles for himself and his neighbor.  An older man, Dragan, tries to get to the bakery where he works and where he knows bread is waiting for him.  Each of these characters faces the possibility at every intersection that he or she may be shot by a sniper or hit by a shell.  All of  them are eventually drawn to the cellist.

Sarajevo fell from being the host of the Olympics in 1984, to being a place where a person could expect to get shot while walking down the street just eight years later.  Galloway's characters face their new reality while not quite believing that it could be true.  Each of them refuses to be that person, living in that city.  They believe that if they can hold on to their integrity and standards, Sarajevo has hope of being restored.  Unfortunately the siege and the war waged on for years after this story ends, and after Smailovic left the city.

The Cellist of Sarajevo is the story of life in a war zone, where no one is coming to help.  It tries to be a story of hope, but the reader is left with the feeling that if Arrow, Kenan and Dragan aren't killed on one day, they may be the next.

There was some controversy about Galloway's use of Smailovic's actions in this book.  Galloway defends his story as being fictional but inspired by Smailovic's public acts.  Smailovic apparently was not told about the book before it was published and felt exploited by it.  However the story came to be told, it is worth knowing.  

Challenges:  Rewind, I Love Library Books, Audiobook

Book Group Reports

The Neighborhood Book Group

The Neighborhood Book Group met in June to discuss This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper.  I was a lame book-grouper, and had to leave after only half an hour to go play bunco instead.  Life in suburbia!  Luckily, this book group is all business, so I actually got to do some book discussing before I left.  With the movie coming out this fall, we talked a lot about the characters and the stars who will play them.  Although I love Tina Fey, I just can't see her as Judd's sister, Wendy.  Like 90% of the characters in this book (Am I underestimating?  Is it 100%?), Wendy is having an affair, and her life is just basically  sad.  Maybe Tina will make her situation seem less pathetic.  We also talked about who was the most dysfunctional.  This discussion could last hours.  Most of the group sided with the mom, Hillary, or the younger brother, Phillip.  And, this is where I left them, so I'm not sure where the conversation went from there. 

Next month they (we?) will discuss The Vacationers by Emma Straub.  I'm so bogged down in The Typical Book Group's summer BFB, that I don't think I'll have time to get to this one.

 The Typical Book Group

The Typical Book Group never meets in July, but in June we pick a Big Fat Book (BFB) to read all summer long.  This year we picked . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer.  Talk about a BFB.  My copy is 1184 pages, and it's actually a little uncomfortable to hold. After two weeks of reading, I am only 200 pages in.  I'll have to pick up my pace if I'm ever going to make it through this!

Tags:  Book Group Reports, Big Fat Books

In Other News:

Local Libraries

Are these cute neighborhood libraries popping up near you? 

My friend, Debby's father-in-law installed one in his front yard.  There's another one in the park at the end of my street.  They are the cutest things.  The idea is, you can pick a book to take, and leave a book for someone else to read.  No sign out slips, no late fees.  It's the honor system at its best.  Debby's F-I-L lives in a bit of a hoity-toity neighborhood, but in an area where lots of people walk, so I think his library will get lots of action.  Doing my best to convert young future Republicans to a more reasonable party, I deposited a copy of The Believer, which is a book review magazine by the McSweeney's people, as well as a cookbook, and my copy of Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks.  In exchange, I took a copy of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, which has been on my TBR list since it became a NYT Notable.  Score!

Winner, Winner, Goldfinch Dinner

Guess what?  I won a copy of The Goldfinch audiobook by Donna Tartt.  Remember way back when when I was giving away a copy?  No, I didn't enter and win my own contest.  Because The Goldfinch won two Audies, there were two copies to give away, and I entered the giveaway on Wholly Books.  And I won!  I can't wait to get it and start listening!

Loss of a Legend

On July 3, we lost Louis Zamperini.  The real story here is not that a 97 year old man died, because really, what more could we expect?  What is remarkable is that Zamperini was still alive.  Zamperini was a former Olympic athlete who was shot down over the Pacific during World War II, and then taken as a prisoner of war by the Japanese.  His story is told in Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, which Angelina Jolie has turned into a soon to be released movie.  Here is a link to the NYT Obituary.

Man Bookered

On July 23, the Man Booker Prize Longlist was announced.  This was the first year that authors from everywhere around the world were eligible, rather than just authors from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth.  So, with Americans now eligible, 5 made the list.  The only author who made it this year who I have read is Joshua Ferris, and the reviews of his recent book, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour have been pretty mixed.  Some might have expected The Goldfinch, which already won the Pulitzer, to edge out a few of the lesser known picks.  However, it was no surprise that Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn didn't make the cut.  Lost for Words is a thinly veiled satire of the Man Booker Prize, and it would have been a shock if the Man Booker judges were thick skinned enough to select it.  The Shortlist will be announced on September 9.  My money is on David Mitchell's new book, The Bone Clocks, even though it hasn't been released or reviewed on this side of the pond yet.

Tags:  Man Booker Listed

August Preview:

In August, I hope to review the following books:

Audios

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - I'll only get started on this one - it's 32 hours!

Traditional or EBooks

. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks (IF I make it through Ladies)

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson  (OK - this will be a stretch!)

Such is Life

The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey is a novel.  Well, duh, right?  Not so fast.  As an American, I had never heard of the Kelly Gang, but it is quite a big deal in Australia.  In fact, the National Museum of Australia is developing a collection of "Kellyana", as they call it.  So, True History could have just as easily been nonfiction.

Ned Kelly and his family lived in the late 1800s in Australia.  His father was an Irish man, who was brought to Australia as a prisoner.  His parents became settlers, seemingly like American settlers in our West.  They were able to get an inexpensive piece of land, but were subject to strict rules as to what they had to do to keep it.  The police took an unusual interest in the Kelly family, and the Kellys believed that they were being unfairly targeted for prosecution.  One thing led to another, and Ned Kelly and his brother, Dan, became "outlaws" in the style of Jessie James, with a large dose of Robin Hood.

The most unusual thing about Ned Kelly was that he wrote letters to members of the government and others that he hoped would be published in the newspapers that explained what he was doing, and why he was being unfairly pursued.  Some of his letters are so long that they are sometimes referred to as "manifestos".  What Peter Carey does in his True History is to turn these letters into a 368 page novel.  Carey tells the story in Ned's voice, and with an almost complete lack of punctuation.  At first (as in on the first page) it is hard to read, but one quickly becomes used to the style and voice.  In fact, the narration reminded me a lot of the voice of Zachry in the "Sloosha's Crossin' an' Everythin' After" section of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. The interesting thing about this comparison is that Mitchell was writing about a fictional character in the (hopefully) distant future, and Carey was writing an authentic voice from the past, but somehow the same style works in both cases.   Don't let that comparison scare you off - if you like reading westerns, this one will fit right in.

The True History of the Kelly Gang won the Man Booker Prize in 2001.  That same year, David Mitchell was shortlisted for number9dream.  Cloud Atlas was shortlisted in 2004.  This is also one more to cross off my list for the Off the Shelf Challenge.

Next up:  Upload by Mark McClelland

Still Listening to:  The Iliad by Homer

Speculative Snowman

Where should I start talking about Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood?  If I start at the beginning I'll be starting at the end, but if I start at the end I'll start at a new beginning.  It's all so strange, and yet frighteningly familiar.

The book itself starts with post-apocalyptic Snowman, explaining simple objects to people who he calls "the children of Crake".  He is naked, with few possessions, and he sleeps in a tree to avoid the genetically modified animals who might attack him on the ground.  The time shifts between Snowman's present and his memories of his past, starting with his childhood.  Snowman, who was then known as Jimmy, grew up in a compound, like everyone else that he knew.  The compounds were owned by competing corporations, working to secure the smartest people who they could find to create new breeds of animals, new cures for diseases, and new sources of food.  The normal people who were thought not to be as smart as those living in the compounds lived in "pleeblands" between the corporate bases.

Growing up among the elite brains of the era, Jimmy lived a fortunate, but highly guarded life.  He never left the compound.  Ever.  The ocean was a few miles away, but he had never even seen it.  Still, he was certain that his life was better than that of the pleebs.

Jimmy's best friend in the compound was Glenn, who was also known as "Crake".  Together they played computer games and surfed the Internet.  There were sites where the tweenagers could watch live executions, sites where they could watch people commit suicide, and every variety of porn site that a person could dream up.  It was on an Asian kiddie porn site that Jimmy and Crake first saw Oryx.  While still kids themselves, they were mesmerized by something about Oryx's eyes as she looked into the camera.  They took a screen shot of her face, and each kept a copy.

The years go by, and the boys grew in different directions, with Crake becoming a rising star as a bioengineer.  Soon he was basically running his compound, and designing things that no one else fully understood.  Jimmy was working in a third or fourth rate compound when Crake brought him to work for him, eventually making Jimmy his second in command.  Obviously, since I started out by referencing an apocalypse, something goes wrong.  Jimmy/Snowman questions his culpability as he tires to help Crake's children make their way in the new world.

Atwood apparently does not feel that this book is science fiction, but instead is "speculative fiction", because it doesn't deal with "things that have not been invented yet."  That is scary, and I hope that she is exaggerating.  While listening to Oryx and Crake I thought a lot about what science fiction is, and why I am finding myself so attracted to it lately.  I was specifically thinking about Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and whether that is science fiction or not.  In Penumbra's case, I think it's even more likely that the technology mentioned in the book may already exist, in the hands of a chosen few.  With that in mind, Penumbra might also be considered speculative fiction. I'm tagging these, and the other sci-fi books that I've reviewed here as "Sci-Fi-ish" in deference to Atwood's assertion.  Whatever it is, I like them both.  With no offense intended to the reader of Oryx, I think that if Jeff Woodman or  Wil Wheaton had read it, I might have been persuaded to add it to my list of favorites.

Oryx and Crake was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for 2003.  It was also a NYT Notable for that year.  I hadn't heard of Oryx until I read a review of the book that is the third in the trilogy, MaddAddam, and I thought that if I wanted to read that one, I should probably start at the beginning (there I go again) with the first book in the series.  The second book is Year of the Flood, and I will be adding that to my TBR list.

Next Up on CD:  The Iliad by Homer

Still Reading:  True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

The Typical Book Group Report - 15

Tonight, The Typical Book Group met to discuss The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison.  While there were only 6 of us there tonight, we all LOVED the book.  In fact, we think that we might have talked about this book more than any other book that we have ever read.  Although the story was emotional and a few of us cried while reading it, we couldn't stop talking about the funny parts.  We were amazed by how well Evison thought out the characters and their ideas.  We also felt that Benjamin Benjamin's voice was so clear, that it was almost as though we knew him.

One obvious thing that came up in our discussion was the redemption of all of the dads in the story.  They had all screwed up, they all knew it, and they were all doing whatever they could think of to make it better.  Ben helped them to find more constructive ways to reconnect with their kids while finding a way to forgive himself.

We also talked about whether Ben and Trevor's trip was more an odyssey or a pilgrimage.  You didn't think we were that deep, did you?  We decided that it was more of an odyssey, because it was more about the journey and the challenges that they faced along the way than it was about the destination.

100% of Typical Book Groupers agree, The Revised Fundamentals is a great book. 

Next month we'll read The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan

In Other News, the Man Booker Prize winner was announced today.  And the winner is . . . Eleanor Catton for The Luminaries.  Apparently this is the longest book ever chosen for the prize, at 848 pages.  We'll have to consider it for The Typical Book Group's Big Fat Book next summer!

Still Reading:  Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfeld

Still Listening to:  In the Woods by Tana French

Nice Enough

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin is an exploration of the choices available to young women at the end of World War II, and the consequences of those choices.  Eilis (apparently pronounced "Elle-ish") is a woman from Toibin's hometown of Enniscorthy in Ireland.  Enniscorthy is portrayed as a small town, with very limited options for a smart girl who is not in a rush to get married.  With the help of her sister and a friendly priest, Eilis is given a chance to move to Brooklyn and work in a store while going to school. 

Throughout the story, Eilis makes a ton of life changing decisions, but in doing so, she barely considers the consequences that her decisions will have for her.  She thinks about what the other people in her life would want for her to do, and then that is what she generally does.  Although she is free to make choices, she restricts herself to what people around her would want. 

In the years after World War II, many women must have found themselves in similar situations.  They were encouraged to work, but only until they got married.  If they wanted careers, they didn't look for a husband.  They could live apart from their families, and even in distant countries, as long as they are under the supervision of a mom-like character or a friendly priest.

Eilis is a very pliable character.  When she is in Brooklyn, she likes it well enough.  When she is in Ireland, she might as well stay.  She is struck by how her not-so-exciting life in Brooklyn seems glamorous to her neighbors who have never left Ireland.  All told, while this was a nice story, that's really all that there was to it.  It had the Jane Austen feel of a book without a lot of action, focused on whether someone is or is not in love with someone else.

Brooklyn was long listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2009.  It is also another book of my list for the Off the Shelf Challenge.

Next Up on CD:  In the Woods by Tana French

Still Reading:  Who Asked You by Terry McMillan

The Story of the Son

The Testament of Mary is Colm Toibin's take on what Mary, mother of Jesus, would have written if she had the opportunity to write her own version of what happened when her son died.  Although Mary is said to be illiterate, Toibin's story is  in her voice, telling the truth as she knows it, as opposed to what Jesus' disciples would have wanted her to say.  In fact, throughout the story, some of Jesus' followers are asking her for her story, and claiming to write down what she says.  Mary doubts that they are really writing her words when they refuse to read her what they have written.  As time goes on, they worry less about offending her, and simply tell her that she is remembering wrong, but that they'll write the story as it "really" happened.

As Jesus is raising Lazarus from the dead and turning water in to wine, Mary doesn't doubt what her son is able to do, but she wishes that he would stop.  Like the worried mother that she is, she doesn't want her son to draw attention to himself. She is convinced that if she could just get him to come home and stay there for a while away from his friends, maybe the authorities would forget about him.  Like a typical son, Jesus is having none of that, even if he knows that his mother is right.

While I don't purport to be a Biblical scholar, even I can recognize that there are significant differences between the story of Jesus's life as we have learned it, and the story that Mary tells.  My major objection to the Bible is that although much of it has remained the same for hundreds of years, there is no denying that it has been edited, and entire books have been omitted or deleted.  There are many current versions, all calling themselves "The Bible", but using different words to say the similar things.  People who believe that the Bible is literally true are putting their faith in these editors, without knowing who they are or what motives they may be pursuing.  In Toibin's story, even the very first written version of Mary's testament has been shaped to fit the disciples' objectives.

At only 81 pages, The Testament of Mary  is testament sized.  It is a very fast read, and very well written.  It is believable that this could have been another book of the Bible.  I'm pretty sure that once again, I will treat historical fiction as fact, and will always remember the story of the crucifixion through the mother's eyes.

The Testament of Mary was a NYT Notable Book for 2012, and is currently on the Man Booker Longlist.  The Shortlist will be announced on September 10, and I would not be surprised to see Testament move up.

Next Up:  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Still Listening To:  The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison

Patrick in his 40s

In Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn, we rejoin Patrick Melrose several years after the party in Some Hope.  Patrick is now married, and has two children.  The story starts as his older son, Robert, narrates the birth of Patrick's younger son, Thomas.  Patrick and his wife, Mary, want to be sure that their children don't have the same damaged childhood that they had.  Mary's dedication to Thomas in particular drives an enormous wedge between her and Patrick, leaving Patrick feeling like a twice deserted child.

I had expected Mother's Milk to be the story of Patrick's reunion with his mother, Eleanor, and in a way, it was.  When we meet up with Eleanor, she is so feeble that even Patrick can't bring himself to unleash his anger at her.  Eleanor has dedicated her intervening years to philanthropy, which in her case meant allowing a charlatan to take her money and her house in the south of France for a questionable foundation.  Once again, she has left Patrick behind, even as she finds herself depending on him.

Patrick's children are incredibly precocious, and I wouldn't even believe that children like he describes could exist if I didn't know one myself.  My niece, Jane, who is about to turn five would fit right in with the Melrose children.  Toward the end of the book, Thomas, who is three at the time, says "Unfortunately . . .Beatrix Potter died a long time ago."  This is exactly the type of thing that my niece knew and would inform adults of when she was three.  He then goes on to tell a story that includes the sentence "And the ground opened up and California fell into the sea, which was not very convenient, as you can imagine."  I can just see Jane telling that story!  Thankfully she is being raised by more balanced parents than Patrick and Mary.

Mother's Milk is the fourth in St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose series, and it completes the collection, The Patrick Melrose Novels.   I have spent my summer reading the earlier novels, Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope, in between my book group assignments and industry requested reviews.   While I was reading them, I came across this great review by Rachel Cooke. It talks a lot about St. Aubyn, and his relation to the Patrick Melrose character.  One thing that I missed about the earlier novels while reading Mother's Milk was that few of the old characters were revisited.  Patrick's close friend, Johnny is back, but hardly anyone else reappears.  Julia is said to be one of Patrick's former girlfriends, but I don't remember reading about her in the earlier stories, and can't search for her name since I'm reading on paper.

The critics seem to have liked Mother's Milk much more than St. Aubyn's earlier novels.  It was short listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2006, and was a NYT Notable book for 2005.  The collection, The Patrick Melrose Novels is a Big Fat Book, with 680 pages, and is also the last book that I needed to complete The Off the Shelf Challenge.  I think that I under promised for that challenge by a little too much, seeing as it is only August.  I will up my goal to 20 books this year, and hope that I will still be able to over deliver.

Next up:  Next I'm going to read Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.  I have been listening to it on CD for about three weeks now, and will get through it faster if I can also read a few pages at night.

Half Time Update

I am now officially half way through listening to Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.  This is the big fat book (BFB) that the Typical Book Group picked to read over the summer.  Right now, the characters are in The Great War, the Schlieffen Plan is failing, England is storming a German entrenchment, and the Lusitania has sunk, but the US has not yet entered the war.  The story is focused on a British earl and his sister, a Welsh family, two Russian brothers, a German who is in love with the earl's sister, and an American who is in love with the daughter of a Russian immigrant entrepreneur.

Follett has allowed the reader to see all of the angles of story of the beginning of World War I, without seeming to choose sides.  All of the key characters are questioning the reasons for the war, and the strategies of their respective countries.  For as much as I am learning about World War I, however, I have to say that the story is a little fluffier than I would have expected.  While I don't think that Follett has actually used the words "throbbing member", the sex scenes are of that caliber, and so far two hymens have been painfully broken.  I know this because those are almost exactly the words Follett used.  Hmm. 

Once I finish reading Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn, I am going to read Fall of Giants in addition to listening to it, which should get me through the second half a little faster than the first.  Not that I'm rushing.

Giveaway Update:  Each time that I give a book away through this blog, I also offer the winner the opportunity to write a review as a guest blogger.  I recently checked in with Mary who received a copy of  Glow by Jessica Maria Tuccelli, to see how she liked the book.  The news wasn't good.  Mary reported that in her 70 years of reading, she had finished all but a handful of books, but that she couldn't bring herself to finish Glow.  She found it confusing, and wasn't sure why it had received so many "glowing" reviews online.  Oh well.  Hopefully the more recent giveaway winners will have better experiences!

In Other News:  The Man Booker Prize Longlist is out.  The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin, which is next on my TBR list, is on the Longlist, and so are a few others that look interesting.  I know it's only a matter of time until I read TransAtlantic by Colum McCann, and I've also read good things about A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.  How can I not want to read a book by someone named NoViolet Bulawayo, especially when it's called We Need New Names?  She certainly does not.  I'll wait for the Shortlist to come out in September to narrow down my choices.

Still Reading:  Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn

Still Listening to:  Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

Karma in the Psalms

I'm not sure that I can explain exactly what it is that I liked about The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, by David Mitchell, but I tore through it, and kept trying to sneak away to find time to read more. 

Set in 1799, the story is based in Dejima, which was an island in the port of Nagasaki.  At that time, the Japanese would not allow foreigners into Japan proper, but they had allowed the Dutch to establish a trading post on Dejima.  Dejima is full of politics among the Dutch, and more complicated politics between the Dutch and the Japanese.  DeZoet is a sincere character, who strives to maintain his integrity.  He is more respectful of the Japanese culture than most of his compatriots, and even makes efforts to learn the language.  Through the course of the story, Jacob falls in love, fights injustice, and stays true to himself. 

What is it about talking cats in books set in Japan?  There was a talking cat here, reminding me of the character in Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami who talked to cats.  Apparently, it's not just a Japanese thing.  When I was googling around about this, I found lots of YouTube videos purporting to feature cats speaking Japanese, but I also found this site, where avid readers posted a huge list of books set all over the world and in outer space, where the cats talk.  So, if you are interested in books including talking cats . . . . Funny that no one listed The Cat in the Hat which has to be the most famous talking cat book ever.

In Dejima, the Dutch were not allowed to practice Christianity at all, and had to turn over all of their Christian artifacts if they wanted to live there.  Jacob managed to conceal his family's book of psalms, which had been given to him by his father.  Although The Thousand Autumns was not an overtly religious book, my two favorite quotes both had to do with religion.  The first is the thirty-seventh Psalm.  It goes a little like this:

"Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of inequity.  For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.  Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in land, and verily thou shalt be fed. . ."

I had no idea that I liked a psalm, but I like that one.  Jacob tries to live his life by those words, and he does a pretty good job of it.  The other quote that I liked is "we have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love."  That may have been applicable in 1800, but it is certainly true in the modern day.

Mitchell also returned to his question of whether there is a light at the end of the working man's tunnel, which he first explored in the Sonmi chapters of Cloud Atlas.  As in Cloud Atlas, certain members of the society are slaving away at a truly terrible labor, with the belief that if they only do it for 20 years, they will be allowed to retire and be reunited with their families.  A little inquiry punches holes in the propaganda.  By returning to this question again in an entirely separate book, Mitchell is clearly posing a challenge to his readers.  Do you love your job, or do you just plan to suffer through it for another 10 or 20 or 30 years so that you can enjoy your golden years?  What if those golden years never come?  Mitchell wants us to realize that what we are living now is our life, not just something to do until we get to our real life in the future.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet was long listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2010.  It was also a NYT Notable book for that year.  This is the 11th book that I read for the Off the Shelf Challenge.

Next up on paper:  The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman

Still Listening to:  Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt.  Yes, I finally got it.

Two Thirds of Cromwell

In 2010, when I finished reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, I said that I liked it, but that if the sequel was out (Mantel was still writing it at that time) I would not rush to the bookstore on the corner to buy it.  Well, things have changed since 2010.  I no longer have a bookstore on the corner, or anywhere within 5 miles of my house.  Sigh.  And Mantel's sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, is not only out, it is a Man Booker Prize winner, like its predecessor, and a NYT Notable Book.  Mantel is the first woman to win the Man Booker Prize twice, and it is especially impressive that the wins are for two successive parts of a trilogy.  Expectations are high for the final volume, and I am sure that Mantel will not disappoint.

Mantel's trilogy tells the story of Henry VIII and his marriages through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell.  Cromwell was officially one of Henry's chief advisers, holding various titles of increasing importance.  In actuality, he was sort of an evil puppet master, coming up with ways of doing whatever it was that Henry wanted.  To say that Henry VIII was mercurial is a huge understatement.  He wanted what he wanted, when he wanted it, and until he didn't want it anymore.  Unfortunately for England, this spoiled child of a king, with the help of Cromwell, had the ability to change the laws to suit his needs, and to order the deaths of anyone who got in his way.

Want to know how immature Henry VIII was?  Here is a picture of his suit of armor that I took when I visited the Tower of London a few years ago. 

Yep, that is what you think it is, coming out of his mid-section.  One would think that this suit was designed by an optimistic 12 year old boy rather than by a reigning king.

After reading Bring Up the Bodies, I would suggest that a person should not try to read it without having read Wolf Hall first.  And I take back my earlier words.  If you can start reading Bring Up the Bodies as soon as you finish Wolf Hall, you absolutely should.  Mantel assumes that the reader knows a lot about the sixteenth century British royals.  If you allow too much time between the books, it will be harder to remember who the players are, and why Cromwell has grudges against some and wants to protect others.  Mantel's style is unusual.  The narrator's voice is incredibly passive for such an active story.  Many, many, many sentences include the words "he, Cromwell" as in "So the bargain is struck and sealed:  he, Cromwell, is to assist the old families . . . " on page 218, or as a variation, "This time he does go; but giving him, Cromwell, a sort of mock salute . . . " on page 217.  Even though I was really interested in the action of the story, and liked the tone of the book, I found myself falling asleep with the book in my hand more often than I would have expected, lulled by the narrator's voice.

Mantel is working on the final volume now, and it is presently titled The Mirror and the Light.  If I could start reading right now, I would! 

Next Up:  Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.  I was planning to read The Odyssey by Homer next, but then I got an email from my library saying that Gone Girl was available, but that I could only have it for one week.  Homer has already been waiting 2,500 years more or less for me to read his poem, so I guess one more week won't make much difference.

Still Listening to:  Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison