Darryl's Orange in 2013

Better late than never!

2012 Orange books:

1. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (2011 longlist) {January}
2. There but for the by Ali Smith (2012 longlist) {March}
3. Gillespie and I by Jane Harris (2012 longlist) {April}
4. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (2012 winner) {April}
5. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (2012 shortlist) {May}
6. Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding (2012 shortlist) {May}
7. The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright (2012 shortlist) {May}
8. Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick (2012 shortlist) {May}
9. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (2013 shortlist)
10. NW by Zadie Smith (2013 shortlist)

2011 Orange books:

1. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (2010 shortlist) {January}
2. Annabel by Kathleen Winter (2011 shortlist) {April}
3. The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (2011 shortlist) {May}
4. The Outcast by Sadie Jones (2008 shortlist) {July}
5. The Swimmer by Roma Tearne (2011 longlist) {July}
6. Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig (2010 longlist) {July}
7. The London Train by Tessa Hadley (2011 longlist) {July}
8. On Beauty by Zadie Smoth (2006 winner) {July}
9. Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch (2011 longlist) {August}
10. The Submission by Amy Waldman (2012 longlist) {September}
11. Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan (2012 shortlist) {September}
12. Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela (2011 longlist) {September}
13. The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht (2011 winner) {October}
14. Old Filth by Jane Gardam (2005 shortlist) {November}

2013 Orange books:

1. Great House by Nicole Krauss (2010 shortlist)
2. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (2013 shortlist)

My list of unread Orange books:

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2001 shortlist)
*The Siege by Helen Dunmore (2002 shortlist)
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros (2003 longlist)
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2004 shortlist)
*We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (2005 winner)
The Accidental by Ali Smith (2006 shortlist)
*The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (2007 shortlist)
*The Road Home by Rose Tremain (2008 winner)
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant (2008 longlist)
The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer (2008 longlist)
Home by Marilynne Robinson (2009 winner)
Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman (2009 shortlist)
The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey (2009 shortlist)
Evening Is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan (2009 longlist)
Intuition by Allegra Goodman (2009 longlist)
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2010 longlist)
*The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton (2010 longlist)
Small Wars by Sadie Jones (2010 longlist)
The Still Point by Amy Sackville (2010 longlist)
*Great House by Nicole Krauss (2011 shortlist)
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin (2011 longlist)
The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen (2012 longlist)
*Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon (2012 longlist)

*Books I'm most interested in reading in 2013

My goals for 2013 will be the same as the past two years:
● Read a dozen or more Orange Prize longlisted books from any year
● Read 8-10 books from the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction longlist**
● Read all 6 books from the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist**

**This assumes that the basic structure of the prize remains the same.

My book for Orange January will be Great House by Nicole Krauss, the only book from the 2011 shortlist that I haven't read yet.

Darryl; you have some really good Oranges on your shelves. My favorites on your list are: Great House, The Little Stranger, The Siege, Purple Hibiscus and We Need to Talk About Kevin. I hope you enjoy Great House as much as I did. Enjoy your Oranges. Vitamin C is good for you.

Hi Darryl,
I have to say, We Need to Talk About Kevin is one I would recommend for this year. It is an intense and wonderful read. Purple Hibiscus I liked too, and even though it covers intense issues, it didnt feel as important as Kevin....if you know what I mean.
:)

>5 LovingLit: Absolutely right, Megan. I'll definitely read We Need to Talk About Kevin very soon, given the horrible tragedy last month in Newtown, Connecticut, and I may decide to read it in place of Great House this month.

We Need to Talk About Kevin garnered 5 stars from me. It was a tough book to read but was so well done and the story just sucks one in. I think it a very important book. We all need to be more aware. Great House got a 5+ star rec from me. I loved it but I don't feel that it has the importance that 'Kevin' does. At any rate whichever you choose Darryl, I hope you like it. I don't see how you can go wrong with either of these.

Thanks, Belva. I'll almost certainly read both books this year.

Congratulations on your hot review Darryl. Very nice.

I missed the hot review, but I like a number of your next-up candidates. The Road Home lives in my mind as an all-time favorite. I also loved We Need to Talk About Kevin and Lord of Misrule with Great House and The Siege being wonderful but a trifle less meaningful to me.

Darryl, you are up for another hot review on The Walls of Delhi. Way to go dude!~! CONGRATS! I am sure it would not be the same one that was there on the 21st?

>10 LizzieD: Thanks for your comments about those books, Peggy. I might decide to read We Need to Talk About Kevin next week instead of Great House.

>9 rainpebble:, 11 Thanks, Belva. I think that my hot review on the 21st was for Communion Town by Sam Thompson.

I didn't finish it in time for Orange January, but here is my review of Great House by Nicole Krauss.

My rating:

"I inherited it {the desk} from the former owner of the house. And I began to think about how I hated this desk. I wished I could get rid of it, and yet something in me wouldn't allow for that. It'd be a waste. You'd have to chop it up to get it down the stairs. It was built into the room and all that. So I began to think about this idea of the burden of inheritance. Now as I said at the same time I was a new mother, and of course I wasn't writing about furniture, I wasn't writing about physical objects really. I think what I thinking about was the idea of what is it that our parents pass down to us emotionally in terms of moods, griefs, sadnesses, angles at which we view and face the world and what then do we pass down often unknowingly to our children. This became a subject of great intense importance to me as I was facing the idea of bringing up my own child."

     —Excerpt from Conversation: Nicole Krauss' 'Great House', PBS NewsHour, October 22, 2010

This difficult but brilliant and affecting novel consists of four sets of disparate characters, who all share a direct or obscure connection to a writing desk, which is imposing and overwhelming in size and filled with secret drawers and odd features, yet intensely memorable and deeply comforting to those who have possessed it.

The 'Great House' of the title refers to the school built by the 1st century rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai after the destruction of Jerusalem during the First Jewish-Roman War, in which Judaic law and religion was re-established:

Two thousand years have passed, my father used to tell me, and now every Jewish soul is built around the house that burned in that fire, so vast that we can, each one of us, only recall the tiniest fragment: a pattern on the wall, a knot in the wood of a door, a memory of how light fell across the floor. But if every Jewish memory were put together, every last holy fragment joined up again as one, the House would be built again, said Weisz, or rather a memory of the House so perfect that it would be, in essence, the original itself.

Great House consists of two parts, with four chapters for the four stories in each part, followed by a short chapter at the end of Part II that helps link the characters together. In the first chapter, "All Rise", a middle aged woman speaks to a judge about her life as a writer, her failed relationship with her husband due to her need for solitude and devotion to her work in exclusion of him, and how she came to acquire the desk, and to give it away. "True Kindness" is an emotional and internal plea by an old man to his estranged child after the death of the man's wife in Israel, one filled with intense hatred, bitterness and love. In "Swimming Holes", an Englishman recalls his long term marriage to his eastern European Jewish wife, who emigrated to the UK at the onset of World War II and withheld her past life and its secrets from him until the end of her life. Finally, "Lies Told By Children" is narrated by an American woman who studies at Oxford, where she meets and falls in love with another student, a rootless young man who is crippled and fortified by his intimate connection with his sister and his overbearing father.

Each of the major characters in the novel share a need for solitude and an inability to establish trust with the person who is most dear to them. Unrequited love is the necessary result, along with grief and regret for what was lost to them. Past memories resurface frequently, which are generally unpleasant and only add to the characters' loneliness and despair.

Great House requires substantial attention and work by the reader to connect the characters to each other, which seemed to me as though I was trying to build a single puzzle from pieces from four different puzzles mixed together and scattered in different rooms of a large house. I suspect that the novel may hold different meanings for each reader, based on their own histories and experiences, and that a second reading of the book would be rewarding and enlightening. It is a beautifully written book, whose characters deeply touched me, and I am tempted to immediately start reading it again to find those missing pieces.

Again, lovely review Darryl and many congrats for your hot review on it. Very well deserved. They just keep rolling. :-)

Thanks, Belva!

Wondering what you are planning to read in Orange July? It's almost upon us.

I'm leaving open the possibility of reading The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber, which I have on my Kindle. I'll be in London from July 13-26, and the Booker Prize longlist will be announced on July 23, so I'll focus on possible shortlisted books from now until then. I will read at least one book that stands a good chance at making next year's Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction longlist, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Americanah is wonderful. For me, Adichie keeps getting better and better.

I agree bucket! Adichie is always at least a 4 1/2 star read for me. Americanah is on my wish list.
And Darryl, I so want to read The Marlowe Papers as I am fascinated by way it is written and also the subject matter. Enjoy your Bookers too & your time in London. I hope you have time to 'meet-up' with some L.T.ers while you are there.

>18 Yells: I'm glad that you enjoyed Americanah; I'm looking forward to reading it within the next few days.

>19 rainpebble: Thanks, Belva. Yes, there is a LT meet up in London planned for June 16th, two weeks from today.

How wonderful Darryl! I can't wait until you get back and can share all about it. Please take photos for us. But I am sure that the food won't be as good as in Philly. ;-)

Will do, Belva. Bianca (drachenbraut23) has picked out an interesting vegetarian restaurant in Camden Town for us to try. We've also planned to go book shopping in Kensington and visit the Victoria & Albert Museum, which is also in Kensington.

Oh Joy!~! I would be over the moon. I hope you are allowed to take photos in the museum. And book shopping in the U.K. as I understand it, takes on a whole new meaning.

Yes, we should be able to take non-flash photos in the V&A. I've taken photos at the British Museum, the Tate Modern, the Tate Britain and elsewhere on past visits to the capital. I haven't been to the V&A, even though this will be my sixth visit to London in the past seven years.

I love book shopping in London, in part because many currently released books there are not available on this side of the pond or are difficult to find, at best. My #1 favorite bookstore is still City Lights in San Francisco, though.

I think we all know how much you love City Lights and none of us would dare to go to Frisco without going there. That is so nice that you will be able to get your photos in the museums & galleries.
Enjoy........

Just don't try to take photos of the Queen's jewels! They really don't like that...