SassyLassy sets sail for shore and year end

New season, new term, new year... I've always loved this time of year, so new thread and new start, but first some continuity from earlier in the year.

From my first thread this year:

2012 was my first year in Club Read and paradoxically, although I read some excellent books, it was my worst year in terms of amount read. This year I hope to address that and have some broad categories to help me focus.

Ahoy
This is one of the tags in my LT library, indicating my love of books dealing with any and all aspects of life in, around and on the seas. An early book to read will be The Toilers of the Sea as part of a group read for Author Themed Reads.

China
If you followed my threads last year, you know that books from and about China are a big part of my reading and this year I hope to read some of the excellent recent non fiction about China, along with trying to complete all Mo Yan's books in the Read Mo Yan group.

Russia and Scotland
Two countries I love reading books from and about, although my attention to them has fallen off lately with last year's reading slump. I hope to address this in 2013. Club Read 2012 certainly added to my wish list on Russia!

The European Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
One of my goals last year was to read more about these fascinating times when people were torn between the old beliefs dictated by religion and the new ways of thinking arising from contact with new worlds and the developing sciences. If ever there was a time for individual turmoil, this was it. I didn't achieve this goal at all last year, but since I'm still interested, I've rolled it over to this year.

Victorians
I am a member of Victoriana, a decorous group on LT. I have been amassing quite a collection of social history from this era in my TBR pile and want to get to it. This is also a favourite area for rereads, like going home again is supposed to be. There are always new books to read too.

Books from the Rest of the World
Like many other Club Read people, I'm also in Reading Globally and hope to keep up my reading from around the world. I'll probably be focussing on South America in preparation for the Reading Globally fourth quarter, but will also be participating in the Zola year long read.

All in all, reasonably ambitious. I wonder what it will all look like by December 31st because after all there's the

And Now for Something Completely Different category which always seems to come hurtling at me out of left field and throw all planning out the window.

Then naturally there's the ever growing wish list. This is my primary one for this year to date:

The Google Book V C Vickers 1913 edwinbcn
Fiere Jackie Kay edwinbcn
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow Wang Anyi steven03tx
A Walk on the Wild Side Nelson Algren deebee1
Firefly Severo Sarduy steven 03tx
One Day the Ice Will Reveal Its Dead avaland, linda92007
Communion Town Sam Thompson kidzdoc
Le colonel Chabert Balzac edwinbcn
Soldiers of Salamis Javier Cercas arubabookwoman
Decadence Mandchoue Edmund Backhouse tomcatMurr
Fanon John Edgar Wideman kidzdoc
Leonardo's Judas Leo Perutz baswood
The Island of Dr Moreau H G Wells baswood
The Crime of Father Amaro Jose Maria Eca de Queiros arubabw
Crimson China edwinbcn
The Witness Juan Jose Saer steven

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo rebecca
The Perfumier and the Stinkhorn Richard Mabey letterpress
My Century Aleksandr Wat rebecca
Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence baswood
The Land That Never Was: Sir Gregor MacGregor and the Most Audacious Fraud in History NielsenGW
The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England's Self Made King Ian Mortimer baswood
The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to the Ornamental Gnome Gordon Campbell NielsenGW
The Biggest Estate on Earth Bill Gammage Polaris Beacon
The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824 henkmet
The Songlines TonyH
Sacred Tears: Sentimentality in Victorian Literature Fred Kaplan Nielsen GW
The Wars of the Roses: England's First Civil War Trevor Royle steven
Watergate Thomas Mallon arubabw
Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia Erik Reece neilsenGW
Adam, Eve and the Serpent Elaine Pagels DieF
Travels in Alaska John Muir edwinbcn
The Lost Art of Finding Our Way John Edward Huth rebecca
Dersu the Trapper V K Arseniev rebecca
The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society and the Birth of the Modern World Edward Dolnick dchaikin
The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance and Strangeness of Insect Societies wildbill
Between Hell and Reason: Essays from the Resistance Newspaper Combat, 1944-1947 baswood

It seems like I've been away from LT forever. August and now September was/is all travel and visitors.

Travel without electronic devices + computer in guest room = no LT contact. I'm not sure I'll ever catchup.

Here is my idea of a perfect August day, Chester Race Week, Canada's largest keelboat regatta:





These pictures are from the Chester Race Week website for 2011

Thanks to avaland for this one



44. The Long Silence of Mario Salviati by Etienne van Heerden, translated from Afrikaans by Catherine Knox, Etienne van Heerden and Isobel Dixon
first published 2000 as Die swye van Mario Salviati
finished reading August 12, 2013

This book started out as a straightforward tale. Ingi Friedlander wanted to make a name for herself in the art world. She was a fairly new curator at the National Gallery in Cape Town. Word had come in of a spectacular new sculpture, The Staggering Merman, to be found in the farthest reaches of the Karoo region in the yard of one Jonty Jack, a sculptor. Found, that is, as Jonty insisted he had nothing to do with its creation, insisted that it just appeared there one day fully formed.

Ingi was determined to acquire this work for the gallery and persuaded the senior people of its merit, sight unseen. Museums almost always bought works on hearsay, desperate to capture the new spirit of now, desperate to remain relevant in the context of merciless cuts in government culture budgets. When she arrived in Yearsonend though, trailer firmly attached to Peugeot in full blown anticipation of attaining her goal, Jonty turned her offer down flat, not even allowing her a glimpse of the merman. Determined not to return to Cape Town without the sculpture, Ingi decided to stay in Yearsonend until she could persuade Jonty to change his mind.

This is where the novel veers away from narration and into a world of magic realism. Bit by bit Ingi learns what makes Yearsonenders tick, staying first in the Stonecutter's Cottage, then in the Drostdy with its turrets, gables and secrets. Bit by bit she becomes attuned to the spirit world of the town, a town where the dead continue their lives unseen beside the living townspeople. Unseen, but not unnoticed. These spirits are some of the strongest characters in the novel.

Van Heerden has created a tandem universe of townspeople going about their daily lives and vivid ghosts still going about theirs, still shaping and guiding the town, still splitting the town along the old family loyalty lines in the never ending search for the gold of the doomed President Kruger, the gold brought to Yearsonend in 1901 and hidden. The only person untouched by all this is the other outsider, Mario Salviati the stonecutter. Mario had arrived in the town with a convoy of Italian prisoners of war in 1940, prisoners sent to work the hinterlands. Mario was deaf and dumb then; by the time Ingi met him he was blind as well.

Fact, speculation, myth: lust, love, longing... Ingi patiently worked through the layers as the townspeople, left with nothing but the past, became more and more possessed by the thought of the lost gold and the search for its hiding place. For them, there was no other future. Despite what she managed to learn

...Ingi knew she couldn't intervene; that events took their course and that stories completed themselves in their own time. Life went on its tragic way; irrevocably, forcefully, as water flows along a channel. You couldn't stop it.

My only difficulty with this book was that the ending fell somewhat flat. Seeing that was almost a month ago, I have had time to reconsider and realize that it made complete sense. I suspect I just wanted to stay in other worlds a bit longer.

Great review of The Long Silence of Mario Salviati, Sassy.

Yes, another great review!

Never heard of this one before -- sounds enticing.

Thanks for the beautiful sailboat pictures, Sassy. It all looks so peaceful. Ahhh!

Great review of The Long Silence of Mario Salviati.
Sounds like a wonderful escape book.

Rats! I was going to be the first one on your new thread this afternoon, but got distracted by the kiddo. Great review!

ETA: I wanted to give you a thumb, but I didn't see your review.

Lovely start to your new thread. People in the world of education get two new years a year: The start of the school year and then the 1st January. It's a good feeling however many you get.

Enjoyed your review of The long silence of Mario Salviati I agree with Lisa you should copy it to the book page.

Fabulous review of The Long Silence of Mario Salviati, Sassy!

Yes, excellent (and tempting) review.

Nice review and nice photos! Welcome back!

And don't worry about catching up -- just re-start now.

Thanks all and thanks for the encouragement: now posted. One of the things I couldn't fit into >44 NanaCC: was the way van Heerden captured the unease over the lead up to the implementation of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 and the Population Registration Act of 1950, which formalized apartheid. Many of the characters in the book are of what was called "mixed blood" and it was obvious that the town was going to have to reorganize along group lines. I guess I had thought there was always this formal split. This didn't really fit into the review, but I thought it was important.

As avidmom says, a wonderful escape book but with enough real life to keep you thinking.

Great to read your thread again Sassy and a great review to kick it off. Nice photos of the regatta as well!

I loved your review of The Long Silence of Mario Salviati. It is one for the wishlist. Your pictures of the regatta remind me of similar pictures I took in Portland Harbor, Maine from my daughter's house on Great Diamond Island. Your pictures are lovely.

Polaris and Nana, you certainly can't beat sailing. Only nine more sleeps till I'm on the ocean again, with a great week in Vermont first. Until then, here are two more catch ups.

This book was prominently displayed at the library one day. I had heard an excellent interview with the author on the radio the day before, so I picked it up.



45. The Memory Clinic by Tiffany Chow
published 2013
finished reading August 17, 2013

How do you write a book about a disease with no known causes and no known cure? Tiffany Chow, a neurologist and geriatrician, has managed to pull it off, albeit unevenly. One of her activities is running a memory clinic in the Brain Health Complex at Toronto's Baycrest Centre, for patients with early onset dementia and their families. Each chapter has anecdotes about these patients or about her late Hawaiian grandmother who developed Alzheimer's disease.

While the radio interview had been focussed and succinct, I didn't like these folksy additions in the book. I had been expecting something more scientific and prescriptive, concentrating on her research. While there are chapters on tau proteins and possible prevention/delaying measures, all in all the interview would have been enough. The attempt to be all things to all people didn't quite work.

What did I learn? Chow puts a heavy emphasis on brain function, and to that end she recommends an hour of exercise a day (ouch!), lots of reading (need to do more), always learning new things (probably okay there) and sound sleep (I wish). No surprises.

What was interesting was her recommendation for what she call "caloric deficit"; consistently eating less than the recommended caloric intake in order to maintain a BMI in the low range. She relates this to prevention against diabetes and heart disease and their contributions to vascular problems, including vascular dementia.

I'm not sure if this is classified as a self help or a health book. I've never read anything in either category and now I know I won't again. Having said that, if anyone I know develops dementia, and according to Chow someone will, I hope they end up in her clinic. It sounds innovative and therapeutic.

Last year there were many positive reviews of Jacques Poulin's Mister Blue on LT. I never did manage to get that book, but when I saw this one displayed at the library, I didn't hestitate to pick it up.



46. Wild Cat by Jacques Poulin translated from the French by Sheila Fischman
first published as Chat sauvage in 1997
finished reading August 18, 2013

This book was a delight to read on so many levels that I certainly didn't expect to find even more to ponder when I got to the end, but that was exactly what Poulin provided.

The narrator is Jack, who has created a niche for himself with a very old fashioned kind of work. He is a scribe, a public writer, writing letters for people, doing translation, and working on the odd freelance article. In his office hangs a picture of the "Crouching Scribe", a four thousand year old statue of a man whom he sees as full of gentleness and infinite patience, a man whom he regards as a model and spiritual guide.

Jack appears to lead a fairly settled life, despite some recent heart problems. He has the second floor flat in a house in old Québec. Above him is the owner, Kim, a psychotherapist and companion. Below him, the ground floor flat is always unlocked, available for street kids needing a temporary shelter.

The scribe takes great care over his work. His visits to used bookstores yield wonderful old volumes of letters. He has developed a small library of them, memorizing quotes to insert where he feels an extra added touch was needed. Since letters are written while the client is there, he would work and rework phrases after hours, storing them up for his sessions to gently guide his clients who were often at a loss for words. Great thought went into his work. As Jack describes it:

My clients knew nothing about this turmoil. I wanted my relations with them to be characterized by confidence and serenity, and my office was set up to suggest precisely that. The walls were a peach colour that held the light and softened it. My computer and its accessories were relegated to a corner of the room, behind a screen. I liked to work in a warm and slightly old fashioned atmosphere. My desk held only a bouquet of flowers, a pad of paper, and my Waterman pen. I wanted as few objects as possible between the client and me: no file folder, no appointment book, no telephone-- nothing that could give the client the impression that he was not unique in the world.

Although Jack's world is small and contained, he gets to see the larger world through his clients, many of whom he has worked with for years.

One evening, an odd sort of man appeared and without dictating anything, left almost immediately. Jack became obsessed by him, determined to unravel his story. He discovered the man was a calèche driver, taking tourists through the round of old Québec. One night he saw the Old Man with a young girl, the girl he would later know as Macha. The two had words and the young girl disappeared into a youth hostel.

Poulin leads the reader on gently, much as Jack coaxed his clients along. The details of Jack's daily life are presented in such a way that at times the reading is more like a series of mental images. We see his surroundings and his books, know his people, all without paying any particular attention to how Poulin manages to do this. Jack's journey with the Old Man and Macha is the reader's journey too. In the end, the reader must come to terms with Jack's future just as he must.



The Crouching Scribe, Egyptian 5th Dynasty 2494-2345 BCE

Re The Memory Clinic:

Ouch indeed! An hour a month is more my speed.

consistently eating less than the recommended caloric intake... And how are we to enjoy life or even get a good night's sleep when we're constantly hungry?

As you said, no surprises in the rest of the recommendations.

I love Jacques Poulin! Thank you for bringing Wild Cat to my attention, as I hadn't heard of this one before.

The feeling of hunger abates after prolonged fasting (fasting meaning eating less, not eating nothing). Nor does it have to be a drastic reduction--benefits are seen at 20-30% fewer calories than the RD. Also, eating more on some days doesn't matter if it is offset by eating less on other, i.e. if a lower average caloric intake is maintained.

Chronically high circulating glucose levels, stress, depression and other psychological trauma (to say nothing of progressive degenerative diseases) are tough opponents to neutralise through CR alone, though.

21 -
"consistently eating less than the recommended caloric intake... And how are we to enjoy life or even get a good night's sleep when we're constantly hungry?"

I've done this most of my adult life and I eat wonderful foods and enjoy eating. Basically, one day I realized that I hated the feeling of being full. You eat this wonderful meal but if you stuff yourself you feel sluggish after and I hated that feeling. So I started to always stop eating right before I knew I'd reach that point. You keep doing that and the threshold for fullness gets lower and lower.

This allows me to eat the foods I love without the consequences others feel. Granted, genetics help as well but just so you know, I enjoy life very much, and enjoy eating very much and usually get a very good night's sleep.

The Poulin sounds so intriguing! I loved the writing in his Translation Is a Love Affair but not enough to read more by him. Now maybe I'll try this one.

Interesting review of the memory clinic, but as you say nothing really new, however it is good to take positive action and if all those experts are saying basically the same thing then there ought to be something in it.

Another excellent review of a Jacques Paulin book. They seem such gentle thoughtful books, I am sure I would love them.

bas thoughtful gentle books is a perfect description. I think you would like him, and rebecca, I would say give him another chance... all his books look short! labs, glad there's another Poulin book out there for you.

Lola and lilisin, there are things we know we should do and then there are the things we do. If only they were the same! I do try (she said plaintively)

Off now for two weeks without stress (device free, but then that means no LT, so probably a little withdrawal), probably with the hour of exercise a day in the form of hiking, with lots of books and book buying opportunities and almost certainly not meeting the caloric deficit. That what coming home is for, but then it will only be two weeks until Canadian Thanksgiving. Oh dear.

Have a great time. Enjoyed your latest reviews and that was an awesome review of The Long Silence of Mario Salviati.

Have a great vacation, Sassy!

Happy device free, book laden vacation!

Enjoy your holiday!

Have a great vacation, Sassy, and don't worry. Since you burn more calories when standing than when sitting, book-buying counts as a form of exercise!

Back again. It was indeed a Happy device free, book laden vacation, but will I ever catch up on LT?

Book buying is indeed exercise Linda, because after all, not only is there all that time standing, there's the upper body workout as you carry the haul away.

This year I found some great books, but I had been restraining myself somewhat, anticipating a full day in bookstores in the vicinity of Harvard Yard at the end of the trip, but in the end I didn't make it there. I suspect I still have more than a few books to read though.

One of the highlights was discovering the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport MA. How could you not enjoy a performance in a place that looks like this:



After all, that's the ocean out there.

We got into town on Saturday afternoon, walked down to the harbour and there it was. Not only that, here was the performance for that night:



Purchased the tickets immediately. It was one of those wonderful nights when you know the musicians are having a wonderful time and the music really reflected it. They played two sets of a full hour each plus encores. New CD out in February 2014.

Also playing there was The National Theatre's film of a live version of Othello. I had just seen this performed traditionally at Stratford Ontario this summer, so I went to see this version, which is somewhat controversial as the time is updated to the present. Some people did leave.



My thought is that is was a superb version and I can't rave enough about the acting of Rory Kinnear and Adrian Lester. If your community has these broadcasts, don't miss them, but skip Emma Freud in the intermission as it is jarring to see the performers out of context once you're immersed in the play.

As for books, I found several for the Reading Globally fourth quarter on South America, quite a few gardening books, and some books on China, including the new tome Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, just out in paperback. Throw in a few more novels in translation and I think I did well. Not only that, I found something that combines two of my favourite categories, China and pirates: A Lady's Captivity among Chinese Pirates. This is a real story from 1852 and can keep my version of I Sailed with Chinese Pirates company.

The last book I got was a present from an exhibition in at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Hippie Chic (touchstone isn't working yet as I appear to be the first person to add it):



Where did colour go?

How about we get someone in to play the piano and line the side walls with books, take out the seats and put in some big easy chairs with ottomans? Oh man that place is stunning!

Welome back, SL.

Sometimes the unplanned surprises while on vacation are the best. Beautiful venue.

A real blast from the past: The savoy Brown Blues Band. Who said that white boys can't play the bues? they have been doing so for nearly forty years. I think I have most of their early discs around here somewhere.

Sounds like a lovely trip, even though your book buying was curtailed. Beautiful venue, interesting exhibit, and books--what more could one want?

>33 SassyLassy: That is a spectacular scene! Almost too good to be true. Looks like you hit the jackpot with that little discovery. :)

Thanks rg.

Nana those unplanned surprises are definitely what makes a holiday

bas, time to get out those early discs. Kim said he had been playing on stage since 1965 and all that performing really shows, not in the taken its toll sense as with so many others, but in the sheer professionalism and enjoyment the group displayed.

mk, great idea... the Club Read clubhouse.

avidmom, apparently others were just discovering it too. People came from Boston where Othello was sold out, to see it in Rockport and were amazed at the venue.

labs, it was a lovely trip, but now it's time to get back to "work".

Wonderful photo of what looks like a wonderful spot for a performance center! Welcome back!

After reading bragan's great review of this back in March and the discussion that followed, I finally picked it up at the library I've just started going to, so thanks to bragan for getting me to read about something I would never have considered otherwise. You do read the most interesting nonfiction!



47. Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O Frost and Gail Steketee
first published 2010
finished reading August 28, 2013

We all collect things. Just for a start, everyone reading this has what would probably be considered a significant number of books. We all probably have collections of other things too that we've acquired over the years. So when does collection cross the line into hoarding? One test might be that collecting focuses on a defined group of items, be they pinball machines, textiles or coasters. Hoarding is more indiscriminate. Frost and Steketee suggest two questions to ask yourself about the stuff in your house:
1. Does it cause stress for you or others?
2. Does it cause dysfunction in your daily routine, for example, by making living space unusable?

Psychology professor Randy Frost, and Gail Steketee, a dean of Social Work, have studied hoarders for years. Their book features some of their volunteer subjects, who are used only to illustrate and carry forward some of the authors' ideas and theories about excessive accumulation to give a more rounded picture of people who hoard. Hoarding can lead to both major depression and social withdrawal as it begins to interfere with routine activities, so initially it was often difficult to find people willing to talk about their lives.

Extreme acquisition and marked difficulty in getting rid of things cause the hoarder both pleasure and pain. Strong emotional attachments form to the objects, be they expensive jewellery or a scrap of paper with an unidentified phone number written on it. Frost feels it may be that hoarders find it easier to form attachments to objects, rather than to people, as objects provide more stability and security. Some actually anthropomorphize the objects.

The objects we collect give us a sense of self; we are what we own in many ways. This is one very basic reason for collecting. What the hoarder lacks though, are the executive functions of decision making, planning and categorizing that allow most people the ability to say "I'll never use that/ wear that/ need that again," and then dispose of the object appropriately. People who are unable to do this have a variety of reasons for hanging on to a particular object: fear of not having it on hand when they need it, as it may be useful someday to someone else even if not to the hoarder; fear of being wasteful, fear of not having necessary information when it's needed; fear of losing one's identity; and fear of losing the remembrance of a time, place or person. In one fascinating case, a highly successful event planner actually needed physical contact with objects from a given event in order to recall it.

In what might initially appear paradoxical, Frost feels many hoarders are actually perfectionists, and that this accounts for the huge masses of material that accumulates in their homes. Most of us writing a paper or working on a project go through the information acquisition process, often feeling we'll never have enough to procede, but when the deadline looms, we get down to it and produce whatever is required. Hoarders keep searching for that elusive fact or perfect fabric sample, whatever is required to allow them to feel that the process is complete, without being able to discard anything accumulated along the way. Overload leads to defeat and the paper or project is never finished. One subject had dropped out of university because of this inability to complete tasks.

The authors also theorize that some hoarders, perhaps defensively, perceive their environment differently. Asked to draw floor plans of their residences, the result often shows much smaller rooms and narrower halls than are actually the case, for the person is only seeing available space. Some people left out whole rooms, rooms that were later discovered to be so full of items that they were no longer usable, so they no longer existed in the subject's mind.

Some jurisdictions will order forced clearing of a property where hoarding has become a problem. Others like Nantucket abandoned this when it was discovered that some hoarders returning home died within the year. The person has lost all sense of self with the loss of the possessions and suicide seems to be the answer.

Therapy is sometimes successful with motivated subjects, but it is not always a permanent solution. One of the techniques tried is a non acquisition trip, in which a person is taken to a favourite store, flea market or other venue, and encouraged to walk through without buying anything. Another technique to to get the person to decide on just one object to dispose of, an often excruciating task.

This was one of those books that kept me saying "Did you know...?" or "This is amazing". Indeed, it keeps me running on here. However, in no sense did I fell the presentation was voyeuristic. The authors' professional relationship to their subjects is evident and the writing definitely keeps you reading.

Fascinating. I watched an episode of a show about hoarders once, and the woman profiled felt that she wasn't a hoarder because she kept all her stuff in bins. Lots and lots of bins stacked everywhere. I found it particularly interesting that some of the subjects in the book committed suicide after losing their stuff, like they were the sum total of their belongings. If you asked me, I would say that I am the sum of all my thoughts. Without the ability to think, my life wouldn't be worth much; except I might not know that I was missing them. A friend of mine became very depressed when he could no longer ski professionally. Skiing was such a big part of his identity. I guess we all have something that we need in order to be us. It's just with hoarders that something is more visible to others.

I remember the discussion that followed bragan's review. The concept of collection vs. hoarding is really interesting. Thank you for another great review.

Hoarding is such a fascinating subject. I still have boxes of things from my parents' apartment that I can't bring myself to go through, but can't throw out without looking at. And then, there are all my books . . . I certainly would be depressed without them, but I could easily get rid of at least half of them on the basis of I've read them and will never reread them or I've had them for years and am no longer interested in them (as opposed to books I've had for years that I still would like to read someday). I do worry about hoarding a little -- I kept my college notebooks for decades, as well as letters from my college boyfriends. But I did eventually get rid of them!

Always glad to contribute to the eclecticization of someone's reading! (OK, I don't believe that's a word, but is should be.) I'm glad you found it as interesting and worthwhile as I did.

Great review of Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, and the Rockport venue in post 33 - wow! - what a stunningly beautiful place.

Hhm, I am clearly a hoarder, but following TBR theraphy last year, I'm a little bit better now.

Since three years, I get rid of books I did not like very much. In that way I have shed about 2500 books.

Holy moly Edwin! That is impressive!

TBR therapy!

You need more therapy Edwin, that's too many books to get rid of.

I enjoyed bragan's review as well of Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things. I am a bit of a hoarder but I am not compulsive and if I lost everything I had collected I would not be greatly upset. The interesting part of the book for me is why people collect things, in my case it is the enjoyment of the actual collecting and I was wondering if that area was explored in the book.

I am definitely a collector. I am not sure at what point it becomes hoarding, but I definitely have things I would hate to get rid of. There are things that were my mothers, and are probably not worth anything to anyone but me. I also have a box in the attic that has lots of the things that my kids made in school when they were little. Just can't part with those.

I got rid of two books that I decided I would never, ever read. Does that mean I'm not a hoarder, and I don't have to worry about the 8 books I've added since getting rid of the 2?

No labgs - it means you will change your mind and regret it and have to buy them again.

LOL! You're probably right!

bragan, eclecticization what a great word and concept. You could be an eclecticizer (can't quite work out how to spell such a word)

labs, interesting about the bins, as apparently many hoarders don't put things away. They want to see them, which of course is impossible as the objects get buried by more and more accumulation. Frost speaks of a subject who had empty drawers in her chest of drawers, with everything stacked on top, so that she wouldn't forget what she had.

Your idea of being the sum of your thoughts, and your skier friend's feeling of loss of self as his ability decreased, were apparently described by Jean Paul Sartre. Here is a passage from Frost, with Frost explaining Sartre:

Jean-Paul Sartre insisted that we learn who we are by observing what we own. He argued that ownership of most tangible objects occurs with their acquisition or creation. Actively creating or acquiring the object is key. If something is passively acquired, ownership has to come from mastery over it or intimate knowledge of it. He suggested that ownership extends beyond objects to include intangible things as well. For instance, mastering a skill conveys an ownership of sorts. Also, by knowing something intimately, we come to own it, like a hiker who "knows" every inch of a mountain trail and come to feel as if he or she "owns" the trail. Reflecting on the meaning of existence, Sartre wrote that "to have" is one of the three basic forms of human experience, the other two being "to do" and "to be."

Sounds sort of like a lesson in French auxiliary verbs. Unfortunately he doesn't give a reference for this, although the book is quite well documented.

bas, collecting seems to be normal behaviour and so was not really explored in this book, but like you, I would like to know more about it. There is a great museum in Glasgow, which is filled with just one person's collections, containing over 8,000 objects. but I don't think anyone ever suggested he was a hoarder! It's actually called The Burrell Collection, not museum: http://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/museums/burrell-collection/Pages/default.aspx I used to go there about twice a month.

rebecca and nana, so many people are working through parents' belongings now and it is a process definitely filled with mixed emotions. It used to be that people didn't buy much that was new and relied on things being passed down and the world was a lot less cluttered. I remember a great line from a book I once read, where a member of an old New England family was expressing his disdain about someone whom he considered nouveau, summing it all up by saying "He has new furniture". How damning was that!

edwin, I started the painful process of actually parting with books this summer (before I read Stuff) but I can't imagine being that thorough. I think I might feel as if something had been amputated.

labs again at 52, not at all... you've merely replaced inferior articles with objects of more value! However, there is always that nagging suspicion that mk may be right

Thanks polaris. I was thinking of your book buying expeditions while your car was being repaired, when I met a book store owner down there. I said "That's quite a collection you have here" to which he replied "I prefer to think of it as inventory. Collection sounds far too permanent." A good lesson in perspective.

Maybe even "my current inventory" LOL

This has been a fun discussion Sassy.

Altho I still like E.O. Wilson's description
"They're friends."

A week before reading this book, I saw an exhibit of photographs by Ansel Adams and Edward Burtynsky documenting the impact we have on the natural landscape. I thought of those photographs often as I read this book.



48. 419 by Will Ferguson
first published 2012
finished reading Sepetember 3, 2013

Until the publication of 419 and its subsequent award of the Giller Prize, Will Ferguson was best known in Canada as a humourist and satirist who also wrote travel books. Neither his humour nor his books particularly appealed to me and I found his persona grating, so I had not really considered reading 419, even when it won one of Canada's foremost fiction prizes. After all, juries often get it wrong, don't they?

Then several things happened. I became intrigued by the idea of how a supposedly normal person gets drawn into an internet scam. The book received some definitely favourable reviews on LT. Finally, I picked up a good friend one day and she thrust it into my hands, saying she would like to know what I thought of it. I started reading the next day and couldn't put it down.

I won't really get into the story itself since it's been covered so well by others. Instead, I'll offer a few reflections on what seemed to me to be a strong subtext. The Nigerian portions of the book take place along the river. Ferguson spends a lot of time detailing the effects of the oil industry on the river and the land that borders it, on the people who work in the oil industry, and on the people living in the path of development who up until then had lived on the land in traditional ways.

Crude oil had been spilling into the creeks beyond the lagoon for more than a week, spraying a mist of fuel that slicked the water's surface, light and sweet. A faulty valve, heat from a circuit, and the river burned for days, burned even after crews had managed to reroute the flow. You could see the flames against the underbelly of sky, the black wall of smoke spilling its ink across the sun. The river burned and burned, and when it was done burning, only blackened stumps and charred mangroves remained. Bodies, too.

I don't think it was an accident that Ferguson selected Calgary as Laura's home. The parallels between what has happened to Nigeria and what environmentalists and First Nations communities fear as the outcome of Canadian oil and gas development, transport and export are too strong.

Calgary, the city where the Canadian portion of the novel takes place, is on the banks of the Bow River, which flows from the Rockies, through the city, then joins other rivers to eventually reach Hudson's Bay. Calgary is the centre for oil and natural gas companies in Canada. Major development has already occurred in northern Alberta, attracting workers who cycle in and back to homes hundreds of kilometres away on a regular basis. Whole communities exist solely to support these workers. The environmental degradation in the extraction fields is phenomenal. If the oil and gas barons in Calgary have their way, pipelines will be built across northern Alberta and British Colombia to the Pacific, down through the US to the Gulf, and now across most of Canada east to the Bay of Fundy.

And so, as you read Ferguson's compelling story of present day Nigeria, give a thought to his background narrative of the land itself and consider the true price of oil and gas.



Edward Burtynsky: Alberta Oil Sands #6

You are offering such a different perspective of 419 from some of the other reviews I had read. I like how you tie it in to what's happening in Calgary. I wouldn't have made that connection, or with the Adams and Burtynsky photos. Brava!

I have not been reading much nonfiction this year, but your reviews are prompting me to branch out. The discussion of hoarders has been fascinating. As regards Sartre: I wonder if we collect things that reflect the image we have of ourselves or if the flotsam and jetsam of life in some way influences who we become (which seems to be what Sartre was implying). Sometimes I think people buy things to reinforce the image they want others to see, irregardless of whether that is their true self. For instance, people who buy entire book collections wholesale to decorate a public room of their house.

Edited to add: I hope you add your last two reviews to the book pages, as they are very good and offer interesting perspectives.

I have always collected, but I'm not sure if I have done to project an image or more to just keep a sense of order to my view of the world. Anyway, Sassy and Lisa, you have inspired some thinking.

SassyL - Loved reading your response to Stuff, and great discussion afterward. Your review of 419 makes me sad - not just that we have this oil industry, but that I'm part of it and give so much of myself to it.

I had just visited the "Interesting Articles" thread where StevenTX has posted a link to a video about the river's impact in Nigeria for people who plan to read 419, clicked again and whammo! - right to your review. What are the odds?

Great review.
I'm off to add my thumbs .....

I'm glad you enjoyed 419, Sassy. Thanks for pointing out the special relevance to Calgary. Of course here in Texas the oil and gas industry runs the show. Last year at this time they were excavating my front yard to replace a 12-inch natural gas transmission line. The big battle now is over hydraulic fracking, a technology used to extract natural gas. They are drilling under urban neighborhoods, poisoning the groundwater and causing earth tremors.

>57 SassyLassy: Nice review of 419. Your perspective lends more food for thought on the environmental questions that we should all be thinking about.

Thanks Sassy for giving us the heads up on Edward Burtynsky: there are some great images by him on the net.

Interesting perspective on 419, it makes you wonder whether it was a political decision to award him the Giller prize.

Very interesting review of 419, Sassy! I missed that aspect of the book entirely, so thanks for mentioning it.

That is really interesting, and adds something to my understanding of 419. I still think it's a flawed book, but you've given me food for thought, and I'm still looking forward to reading Oil on Water which was recommended in someone else's thread and which is by a Nigerian writer.

Thanks all for your response to 419. I was afraid I might have been way off base as I hadn't seen these ideas elsewhere, but the image of Laura looking out at the Bow River winding its way through Calgary was there a few times and these connections were my first response. I will look for Oil on Water.

Just because I'm such a huge fan, here are more photographs from Burtynsky's website

http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/ These are from the China series which gave him an international reputation



Deda Chicken Processing Plant, Dehui City, Jilin Province, China, 2005



Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, China, 2002

It's been a long time since I last read Vargas Llosa and this book made me realize what I'd been missing.



49. The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa translated from the Spanish by Helen Lane
first published as El Hablador in 1987
finished reading September 17, 2013

A middle aged Peruvian, possibly a linguist or an ethnographer, possibly an art historian, is on sabbatical in Florence. His aim was to study the works of Dante, Machiavelli and various Renaissance artists. All was going according to plan when one day, passing a small gallery, he spotted an exhibit of photographs titled "Natives of the Amazon Forest".

Entering the display, he was immediately taken back in time, not just three years to when he had last been in the very settlements depicted, but thirty years to his student days in the mid 1950s. At that time his closest friend had been Saul Zuratos, a fellow student. Two things distinguished Saul: his unforgettable appearance and his profound belief that the indigenous peoples of the Amazon should be left in a state of nature, free of contamination by outside influences.

How does one study a culture one can't approach? Should development of Peru's natural resources be halted to accommodate the Amazonian tribes? Where do these tribes fit in a Marxist structure? Questions like these were the stuff of their student discussions. The answers put the narrator and his friend Saul on different paths, so that almost thirty years had now passed since they last met.

This is a multilayered novel with several different threads. There is the main narrator reflecting on his own career, and on Saul and what might have happened to him. There is the tribal storyteller walking from one far flung settlement to the next, keeping alive the beliefs and stories of the Machiguena, "the people who walk". Finally there is Tasurinchi, "the all-powerful, the breather-out of people", living one life after another, telling the stories of his people to the storyteller to tell to the tribe.

Vargas Llosa weaves it all together, from the myths of the Machiguenga and their struggle to remain a distinct people; and the story of Saul, son of a Jewish immigrant, haunted by the spectre of ethnic annihilation. Magically, what emerges is a novel addressing the very roots of identity.

_________________________________________

The cosmogony of the Machiguenga as told by Vargas Llosa:

The earth was the centre of the cosmos and there were two regions above it and two below, each one with its own sun, moon, and tangle of rivers. In the highest, Inkite, lived Tasurinchi, the all-powerful, the breather-out of people, and through it, bathing fertile banks with fruit-laden trees, flowed the Meshiareni, or river of immortality, that could be dimly made out from the earth, for it was the Milky Way. Below Inkite floated the weightless region of clouds, or Menkoripatsa, with its transparent river, the Manaironchaari. The earth, Kipacha, was the abode of the Machiguengas, a wandering people. Beneath it was the gloomy region of the dead, almost all of whose surface was covered by the river Kamabiria, plied by the souls of the deceased before taking up their new abode. And last of all, the lowest and most terrible region, that of the Gamaironi, a river of black waters where there were no fish, and of wastelands, where there was nothing to eat, either. This was the domain of Kientibakori, creator of filthy things, the spirit of evil and the chief of a legion of demons, the kamagarinis. The sun of each region was less powerful and less bright than the one above. The sun of Inkite was motionless. The hesitant sun of earth came and went, its survival mythically linked to the conduct of the Machiguengas.

I'm sorry to say that I have never read Vargas Llosa. The Storyteller sounds very interesting. Of the works you've read, is there one book that you would recommend as a starting point? I think Rebecca recommended The War of the End of the World, but I haven't gotten it yet.

From your quote on the bottom, I can tell Llosa is a beautiful writer. Our library has quite a few of his books - none of them in English, though! *sigh*

I enjoyed The Storyteller and it was one of the first Vargas Llosas I read, but I found some of it a tad didactic. Lisa, The War of the End of the World is probably my favorite MVL, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a starting point as it not only is a tome but also uses his style of mixing up speakers within a single paragraph without attribution, which can be confusing. But, on the other hand, it is wonderful and will hook you on MVL, as it did me, so that you will, again if you are like me, even read some of his less good works! I could go on and on, so don't get me started.

Today I was reading a blog interview with Karyn Reeves, whose goal is "to find (and read) all of the titles Penguin published before Allen Lane died in 1970". She currently owns over 2000 of them and reviews them in her blog A Penguin a Week. In reading the interview, I was reminded of the conversation about collections and identity back around post 55. Here are some of the things she said:

There is simply no limit to the number of books I would like to own. I would happily cover every wall of our home with bookshelves, so I could never contemplate any sort of culling system like one in, one out. I love that I own such a large number of unread books so that each time I am ready to read another one I have many hundreds to choose from, from a variety of genres. I think of the books I own as providing some kind of record of my life, and the collection is a reminder that time has passed to some purpose. The books capture the memories of the holidays on which they were purchased, and of what I was thinking or experiencing when each one was read.

Which books would you try and save if (heaven forbid) there was a fire?
The vintage Penguins are the things I would need to save, all 2000 of them, for the reasons that I mentioned early, for the memories they capture. As books they are all replaceable and most of them are not particularly valuable, but as artifacts of my life I would have difficulty living without them.

I suspect people probably think I am a little obsessive, and I agree that choosing what you would read according to the backlist of one particular publisher is an unusual way to go about things, but it works for me. In a world in which there are more books available than you could possibly hope to read, you have to find some way to make a choice, and this one introduces me to books and stories I would otherwise know nothing about.

I like the idea of her books being artifacts of her life.

I own such a large number of unread books so that each time I am ready to read another one I have many hundreds to choose from, from a variety of genres.

Probably there are a few people here who could say the same thing, myself included.

Sassy - thanks for reminding me I need to read MVL.

#83 :-) Unfortunately, Kay, I often seem to be in the mood for a book which is not among those hundreds and resort to borrowing from the library. Somehow my TBR pile on my shelves isn't shrinking as rapidly as it could!

Great review of The Storyteller, Sassy!

Sassy, I have to go back, back back to your post #19: The Memory Clinic. I too found it with the new books at the library and it looked inviting. Chow didn't really give me the information I had hoped for, and the chapter on Parkinson's related dementia was alarming (my husband has Parkinson's Disease). But like all self-help and health books advise: eat less, get more physical exercise, and get more brain exercise.

>82 labfs39:, 83 I'm one of those people....(I like to have choices)

Sassy, so glad you enjoyed the Van Etienne novel. It's been ages since I read it, but I very much enjoyed revisiting it through your review.

That hoarders book...hmmm...I might have to break down and get that. Your review is the third I've read (MaggieO, bragan and yourself).

I seem to be slow at getting back here, but here goes the catch up.

labsf, Vargas Llosa will take you in many different directions, often all at once. The first of his books that I read was The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta from 1984. It's a political novel about the struggles between all the various leftist groups and the Peruvian military, but there is certainly a lot of action as well if the politics doesn't interest you (I love it). I would say it is as good a place as any to start as there is not quite as much temporal layering in it. As rebecca says, even his lesser works will draw you in, for to me at least, they are only lesser in comparison to his own work, not to that of most other authors.

dan, I think you would really like MVL.

avid, it looks like you live in California. Is your library a Spanish one? Maybe it's time to hit some more library sales of the English persuasion!

rebecca, The War at the End of the World was great, wasn't it.

labsf again, that was a wonderful blog. This week's feature Esther Waters is also a great book. Reading the blog took me right back to my parents' and grandparents' houses, where most of those books were in residence, so I grew up with ancient Penguins and like Karyn will often buy them when I see them, even if I have a different edition at home. I really like the idea of the books being artifacts of her life too. I never write notes in books, turn down a page, underline or highlight, or heaven forbid damage the spine, but I do write the place and date I acquired a book in the front and the place and date I finished it in the back and it does bring back memories in a way that nothing else seems to, as I remember the settings in which they were read.

Odd rg, avaland and labs that how no matter how big the TBR pile, we still feel the need for another book sometimes. No wonder some of those books stay buried for years. The feeling that there will always be something to read in the house though is comforting.

Thanks doc... looking for you on the Reading Globally fourth quarter thread!

vivienne, it was too bad that the book couldn't have been more clinical. As I said, the interview with her on the radio was much more focussed on the science and on caregivers. I see you belong to the Cookbookers group. Another Baycrest researcher who works with Chow has just published a book Mindfull on the links between nutrition and brain health.

avaland, thanks again. I'm still thinking back to that novel and the story of Mario.
Maybe the library is a good place to pick up the book on hoarding, rather than actually accumulating it! I admit I did go back and read it again though, which is usually an indication it's time to get the book. Repeat after me, "Books are collections, books are collections". All guilt gone.

>89 SassyLassy: Ha! Sassy, the libraries out here are of the English persuasion - which makes the lack of English translated Llosa books just that much more irritating! Guess they figure the only people who would know about or be interested in his books are Spanish speakers. Ah, Mexifornia ......

This is the first J M Coetzee book I have read. For some reason, I've always avoided him, although I really knew nothing about him. However reading reviews last year by several Club Read members changed my mind, so this was the first book I bought on my recent holiday. I will be buying more by Coetzee.



50. Age of Iron by J M Coetzee
first published 1990
finished reading September 19, 2013

Reading this book felt like a vision of the end of days. As the apartheid regime in South Africa was fighting its final losing battles, Mrs Curren, a classics professor, received a terminal diagnosis. A true stoic, she thanked her physician and made her way home, where she anticipated being able to break down in private. The professor had lived alone for many years. Her marriage was long over, her only child had married and moved to the US. Privacy was not to be, however. Arriving home, she discovered a vagrant and his dog had set up a shelter in the alley next to her garage.

Two things, then, in the space of an hour: the news, long dreaded, and this reconnaissance, this other annunciation. The first of the carrion birds, prompt, unerring...The scavengers of Cape Town, whose number never dwindles... Cleaners-up after the feast. Flies, dry-winged, glazen-eyed, pitiless. My heirs.

Wishing to keep her mental and physical pain to herself, but desperately wanting to confide in someone, Mrs Curren took the scholarly route, deciding to pour out thoughts, events and feelings in a journal/letter to her daughter. There were no plans to notify that daughter of the illness and prognosis; she merely hoped that the missive would somehow be sent to her once she herself had died.

Through her letter we see her inevitable deterioration, the struggle to manage pain yet stay alert, her battle to come to terms with her own demise, and the idea of her physical world continuing on without her. This personal struggle is lived against the background of a city and country descending into chaos. Accepting the need to have someone around, if only nominally, she allowed the vagrant Vercueil to stay. Vercueil was like a feral dog, happy to have food and shelter, occasionally accepting of company, but always living on his own terms. Knowing she will never discover if he carries out her request or not, she eventually entrusted him with the mailing of the letter.

There were others living on the property. Mrs Curren also had house help in the form of Florence, a black woman from the townships. Florence had been away when Vercueil appeared and it seems unlikely he would have been allowed to squat had she been there. Florence lived in the back with her two young daughters. Soon her fifteen year old son also moved in, for the schools had closed and she would not leave him alone in the townships to get into trouble.

Trouble came to them though. Mrs Curren learned far more than she had ever imagined or wanted to know about the impact of apartheid on those surrounding her. While she had always been against the regime, seeing its collapse at first hand in her own domain challenged many of her long held beliefs about the very basis of society. Knowing she did not have the time or resources to think these things through is one more devastation for someone who had always been able to hold things together.

Coetzee's constrained writing style combined with Mrs Curren's restraint, makes her a far more powerful character than a more emotional person would have been in the same circumstances, for loss of self control is that much more of a betrayal to someone who had always reined herself in and curtailed her feelings. And just as Mrs Curren sought to conceal her illness from her daughter, chronicling it in secret, so the South African state sought to conceal its demise from newspapers, television and radio, while carrying out its own clandestine operations. This pairing of individual and national doom gives a picture of decline that's impossible to forget.

Did these things really happen? Yes, these things happened. There is no more to be said about it.

I've always sort of avoided Coetzee, too. I even own one of his books (Boyhood). It really is time to pull it out and read it.

I read Disgrace years ago for a reading group I was briefly in, and it didn't do anything for me. I know I should try him again . . . but I've been avoiding him ever since.

I loved your review of Age of Iron, Sassy. It is one of Coetzee's that I have not read and do not own. I would have rectified the latter immediately if there had been an English edition for Kindle, but sadly, only one in Spanish.

Excellent review of Age of Iron. That one goes onto the to buy list. I can't remember if I have read any J M Coetzee, but if not Age of Iron sounds like a good place to start.

Ditto what Barry says. I hope you put your review on the book page, as yours is very good and the others there are brief.

Lovely review of Age of Iron -- I'm another who has avoided Coetzee, though I'm a big fan of Nadine Gordimer. Not sure why -- but now you've tempted me.

Wow Age of Iron sounds amazing and awful and painful and wonderful. Onto the WL.

Great review of Age of Iron, Sassy! I've read and enjoyed several of Coetzee's books but I hadn't heard of that one, so I'll add it to my wish list.

I've only read one novel from South America so far, Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra. Now that I've finished with the Booker Prize shortlist and returned from London I'll spend more time in SA. I'll finish The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato today, and probably read The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa this weekend.

Thanks all, it's wonderful to "discover" an author you instantly glom on to, especially one with such a body of work. I'm really looking forward to reading more. rg, bas, labfs and mk, I think you would all like him, but in different ways.
labfs, I did just put it on the book page.

jane, the Nadine Gordimer comparison is certainly apt, so I suspect you would like him too. Age of Iron was if anything even more spare than Gordimer.

linda and doc, your reviews of other works by Coetzee were certainly among those who persuaded me to read him.

rebecca, it's funny how that works when certain authors strike us like that. I had the same problem with Saul Bellow for years, then one day I picked up an essay by him and suddenly all was well. Maybe that could be a question some time, along the lines of "Is there a famous author you have been studiously avoiding and why?"

added note that didn't fit in above: all the way through, the vagrant's name, Vercueil, had a vague resonance of a picking or gathering toward in a sort of bastardized French. Mrs Curren made a bit of wordplay with the name, but this was not an option she considered.

A book I discovered while doing some background for the Reading Globally South America quarter:



51. Barren Lives by Graciliano Ramos translated from the Portuguese by Ralph Edward Dimmick
first published as Vidas Sêcas in 1938
finished reading September 20, 2013

Even in translation, never did a book have a more fitting title than Barren Lives. This is the story of a family considered to be of less consequence than the cattle they herd.

Living in the interior of north eastern Brazil, the family is entirely dependent on others for a living. Uneducated, landless, illiterate, their plight was a common one in the 1930s when Ramos wrote this novel. In fact, it was so prevalent that a whole school of writing developed around it, driven by authors with strong social consciences.

This particular family is in transit. Drought has ruined the ranch where Fabiano once worked. Now he and his wife Vitoria, along with their two sons and a dog, are walking who knows where, looking for another ranch that will offer work. There was a parrot too, but they ate it the day before, for food and water are in short supply.

Told in an episodic fashion akin to a succession of related short stories, we get a composite picture of the family from the individual perspectives of each member, including the dog. Eventually the family came upon an abandoned ranch and took shelter there. Shortly thereafter, the owner returned and hired Fabiano as his herdsman. Things should improve for the family, but life is so marginal they are unable to move beyond their immediate concerns.

Although Fabiano received a quota of calves and kids at year end, he lacked the foresight to have grown feed for them and had to sell them back to the rancher one by one. Vitoria would work out how much money was due to him at the annual reckoning by moving seeds around on the ground, but unable to calculate interest and unfamiliar with taxes, she was never right. Fabiano always took home less than anticipated; each year reminded him anew that his fate was to always be a peasant.

Couldn't they see he was a man of flesh and blood? It was his duty to work for others, naturally. He knew his place. That was all right. He was born to this lot; it was nobody's fault that it was a hard one. What could he do? Could he change fate? If anyone were to tell him it was possible to better one's lot, he would be amazed. He had come into the world to break untamed horses, cure cattle ailments by prayer, and fix fences from winter to summer. It was fate...He accepted the situation; he did not ask for more. If they only gave him what was coming to him it was all right. But they didn't. He was a poor devil; like a dog, all he got was bones. Why then did rich people go and take part of the bones?

Vitoria had one dream in life: to own a real bed. She had seen one once in a village where they used to live, but she and Fabiano slept on tree branches with a big knot in the middle. Vitoria's thoughts included God and the Virgin Mary, but her faith was instinctive and unexamined, offering no real solace. Life did not allow time for reflection and extended thought processes.

The two boys are not even named, a reflection of the very basic level at which they lived. Playing naked in the mud each day, they are known only as the older boy and the younger boy. Occasionally Fabiano would try to teach them something, but frustration at his inability to explain and the boys' lack of comprehension would soon lead him to give up in anger.

This lack of language was striking. Ramos skilfully incorporates it into the tale. The parrot heard so little speech it could only mimic cattle sounds. Fabiano was constantly frustrated by his inability to express what he felt. Even the boys felt it. One day the family had gone into the local market town for a feast day. The boys were struck by this new world:

Looking at the stores, the stands, and the auction table, they conferred together in amazement. They had accepted the fact that there were a lot of people in the world, and now they busied themselves with the discovery of a huge number of things. They discussed in a whisper the surprises with which they were filled. It was impossible to imagine so many wonderful things all at one time. The younger boy timidly expressed a doubt to his brother: Could all that have been made by people? The older boy hesitated. He looked at the stores, the stands with their lights and the girls in their pretty dresses. He shrugged his shoulders. Perhaps it all had been made by people. Then a new problem presented itself to his mind and he whispered it in his brother's ear: In all probability those things had names. The younger boy looked at him questioningly. Yes, surely all the precious things exhibited on the altars and on the shelves in the stores had names.

They began to discuss the perplexing question. How could men keep so many words in their heads? It was impossible; no one could have so vast a store of knowledge.

Lacking words, the boys are not far removed from the animals they resemble. Thought is almost impossible if there are no means to formulate it. This terrible deficit is underscored by the dog. Although nameless, she is a sentient being with her own chapter, placing her on the same level as the humans in her family, and making her fate all the worse. Perhaps the only thing that keeps the five going is the shared basic animal instinct for survival. A very powerful book.

_______________________________

This edition is illustrated with stark black and white drawings, further reducing these barren lives to their elements.

Your reviews of The Storyteller, Age of Iron, and Barren Lives are excellent. You make me want to read them, and they are authors I have not read previously. I am putting them on my list of books/authors I hope to get to eventually. That list just seems to get longer and longer every day.

Great review of Barren Lives. A striking theme that very poor and uneducated people did not know the names of things in a shop. The world must have been a very small one to them.

"Life did not allow time for reflection and extended thought processes."

This just kills me and I have thought so many times that this is the biggest issue right here. Well said.

Hope you put your review of Barren Lives on its book page.

Great review of Barren Lives. I have to add that one to my list. It's interesting to think about the links between thought, language, and emotion.

Love your reviews. Fascinated by Barren Lives and by your descriptions of how The Age of Iron is written and how it works. I have no excuse for not having yet read Coetzee...

Barren Lives sounds fascinating and horrifying. Have you read Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector? It's later and describes the life of a young, poor woman in a Brazilian urban environment, who not as culturally deprived as the characters in your novel, is yet totally under-aware of the the environment in which she lives. And Lispector is an incredible stylist.

That does sound like a fascinating book, and your review is great.

Fabulous review of Barren Lives, Sassy. Please do add it to the book's work page.

Yes, please do as there is not one in English yet, and yours is great.

Unfortunately reading is not going well lately, so I haven't been here much.

bas, mk and labs: The connection between language and thought has always fascinated me for some reason. I don't have any formal training in it, but I think part of it comes from the days when I used to study existentialism. I had had some courses in French and German, and although I was reading most of the work in English (I did struggle through one Sartre book in French), it struck me that the fundamentals of the different languages caused the ideas to be expressed very differently. You can also see this with people who can switch from one language to another in a conversation; their personalities seem to switch too. Listening to small children as they learn to express themselves and then learn to use language in all its many facets is also fascinating. Comparing idioms between languages and cultures is also another great way to look at the thought and language connection.
I could keep going, but enough for now. I don't want to launch forth on the harm done by not being able to formulate and articulate thoughts!

Nana, I suffer from the same affliction. I am now at the stage where I have lists of lists: novels, travel, history, on and on...

jane, I haven't read anything by Lispector but that does sound well worth it. I have Child of the Dark on my "soon" list.

Interesting that there are no English reviews, so I did add mine. Thanks for recommending it.

A vacation break



52. Garnethill by Denise Mina
first published 1998
finished reading September 24, 2013

After a week in which I had read about the destruction of indigenous tribes in Peru, the breakdown of civil society in South Africa, and the plight of landless peasants in Brazil, I felt the need for something lighter. After all, this was a vacation. Bad mistake.

I had brought a Denise Mina book with me to try, but quickly realized it was part of a Rebus like series, so I decided I should start with the first one. I bought Garnethill, her first novel, not realizing it was not part of the series I wanted. Oh well, I thought, Garnethill is one of my favourite areas of Glasgow: read on.

I was disappointed. The story of Maureen out there on her own trying to outwit the police seemed somewhat improbable. The idea that the Glasgow police would let her try seemed even more improbable. Part of my disappointment I put down to a first novel and a new to me author. I think my real problem was that I had just read three really excellent books and Garnethill was not the book to pick up next. It should have been something like The Long Ships or The Summer Book.

I know that when full blown winter arrives will pick up Mina's Alex Morrow series to alleviate the total reading sloth that hits each year. In the meantime, I have to find something to get me back on that brilliant reading run from mid September.

Garnethill is both a street and a district. Here is just a taste of the area:

Stained Glass Windows in the Garnethill Synagogue:



Glasgow Film Theatre:



Glasgow School of Art Details:

 


Green Space in Garnethill Park (an amphitheatre)

I am sorry you are in a reading slump and also sorry you didn't like Garnethill better. It was my second Mina, and I had been disappointed with the first one I read (the first Alex Morrow), but it got me hooked. I can see that it wasn't something you should read after all those good books, unless you wanted or needed a real distraction, which I have needed lately. I don't disagree with you about the plot, but the real attraction of Mina for me is the wonderful characters and the wonderful sense of place, not so much the plot.

And thanks for the photos.

Great photos Sassy!

#111 I think my interest in the links between language and thought stem from studying other languages. My ineptness in a language can not only make me sound like an idiot, but dulls my thinking as I struggle to understand syntax and translate clumsily in my mind. Also, I find it fascinating when a language will have many words for a single word in another language, or none at all. Dream in Polar Fog touched on this. On my thread, I talk about a recent podcast by Chad Post where he talks about a translator's comments on the difficultly in translating between Swedish, English, and Japanese, as some concepts just don't compute in the same way.

Nice review of Barren Lives, Sassy.

I love those photos as well! Thanks for sharing them with us.

At the risk of being SO simplistic re language, I used to show my students a picture of a dandelion and ask them what it was. Some said a weed, some said a flower. I next showed a pic of a man wielding a hoe and said my husband calls it a weed so he spends his Saturday like this. Then a pic of a woman reading in a garden with a glass of iced tea and said - I call it a flower so this is how I spend my Saturday. Oh I thought I was so funny. My daughter always says, "As long as YOU think you're funny Mom!"

rebecca, you're absolutely right about Mina's sense of place; it's what got me daydreaming about the area yet again. As I said, I know I will read her Alex Morrow series this winter, as my current series is definitely fizzling out (see next post).

labs, interesting how we feel that ineptness in another language dulls our thinking (this happens to me even in my own language when I'm too tired to think) but at the same time, another part of our brain is being really active as it seeks out the vocabulary and syntax we want in order to express those increasingly muddled thoughts. I follow your thread and saw the Post discussion which I enjoyed. I think the idea of concepts just not translating in the same way happens even within a language group if the speakers are from different parts of the world with completely different referents.

Polaris and doc, glad you like the photos. Although the School of Art and the window date from an earlier time, there is still a lot of creativity in the city, although to quote Jargoneer from yesterday: Everyone in Scotland gets rave reviews due to the small size of the scene, everyone knows everyone. Following from afar, it does seem that way sometimes, but more often than not, the rave reviews seem well deserved.

mk, loved your teaching story... I think you're funny. All agriculture/horticulture students have it drilled into them that A weed is a plant out of place. Ralph Waldo Emerson had a somewhat benign way of defining them: a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. I am still reading Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants, by Richard Mabey, a book I discovered on zenomax's thread last year (the touchstone seems to be giving it a more dramatic title)

Another disappointment



53. Lehrter Station by David Downing
first published 2012
finished reading September 26, 2013

For several years now I have been reading David Downing's "Station" series on holiday. The last one I read (Potsdam Station) was disappointing and this one was worse. The continuing saga of John and Effie finds them in grim post war London, at loose ends and not quite sure how to adjust to life after war. It takes 189 pages for anything to get going. They return to the devastation of Berlin, yet to be divided by the Allies, but even in a setting like that, there was nothing of interest. I suppose this book was written as a setup for what I believe is the next and final volume. I think I would have ended the series with John's escape Stettin Station from occupied Europe.

I'll read the next one as I'm a completist. Others seem to have like this book more than I, but many commented on the lack of focus.

I too thought Downing's books nosedived. The first couple I enjoyed, but then the coincidences just got to be a bit much and the writing was very uneven. He seemed to drag things out (to get more book royalties?). I stopped after the fourth.

Trying a favourite author again:



54. The Paperboy by Pete Dexter
first published 1995
finished reading October 1, 2013

In 1965, when Jack James was fifteen, the sheriff of Moat County Florida, where Jack lived, was murdered. Not just murdered, but gratuitously gutted and left on the highway. Thurmond Call had been sheriff since before Jack was born, but lately he had not been himself.

The sheriff's malady was viewed as having been imposed on him from the outside, and was therefore forgivable, even if it could not be cured. Like tuberculosis, Hippies, federal judges, Negroes -- he couldn't keep track of what he was allowed to do to them and what he wasn't, and that had spawned a confusion in his mind which, the body of Moat County thought went, led him to more immoderate positions than he otherwise would have taken. And that, in turn, had spawned a general unease in the population.

Which is all to say that the man he had handcuffed and then stomped to death in the spring had been white.

Sheriff Call, after murdering "an immoderate number of black men", had crossed a community line.

A week later, the dead man's brother, Hillary Van Wetter was arrested for Call's murder. Tried and convicted, Van Wetter was sent to Florida State Prison to await execution in the electric chair. The town of Lately and Moat County in general felt justice had been served without too great a cost, for the Van Wetters were a no account extended family skirting the law in their collection of swamp dwellings. One less Van Wetter made no difference.

Four years passed. Jack now found himself driving the delivery van for his father's newspaper. He had been expelled from the University of Florida in his freshman year for draining the university pool after losing his swimming scholarship. Now he was just marking time, waiting for who knew what. The what appeared soon enough, in the form of his older brother Ward.

Ward was a rising young reporter with The Miami Times. He was his father's chosen successor, although there was no indication he wanted such a position. He arrived in Lately with his fellow reporter Yardley Acheman. The two rented an office, trucked in boxes of files and hired Jack as a driver. Their aim was to investigate the murder of Sheriff Call. More significantly, they were also investigating the evidence that had convicted Hillary Van Wetter. Another person appeared to help them with their work. Charlotte Bless, one of that community of women who write to men on death row, had become engaged to Hillary without ever actually meeting him. Charlotte had started her own investigation, but joining up with the reporters would give her the access she craved.

This all sounds like the setup for a great southern noir novel. However, in the hands of Pete Dexter, it goes well beyond a conventional mystery. Dexter uses the story to dissect the James family as it falls apart. He has a fine ear for local speech and all the messages that lie behind it. He recognizes the waste of human lives in communities where no one ever expects to leave, where everything is local. Speaking of a deputy drawing a map, Jack, who has been away, tells us

The man's fingers were thick and blunted, as if the tips had been caught in a car door, but he drew with a delicate motion, careful of the shapes of intersections, the size of his roads, the shoreline of the river. He stopped from time to time to judge the proportions of the drawing and then leaned back into it, filling certain areas with shading, or erasing part of the shoreline, remembering a place where the land hooked into the water. He labeled roads and intersections in perfect block letters.

My brother stayed still waiting for him to finish. The man enjoyed sketching and Ward didn't interrupt to say there was no need for block letters and shading. A pest strip hung from the ceiling near the window, covered with flies.

I wondered what the man might have done with his talent if he hadn't caught on with the sheriff's department. If it might have made him into something else.

In those days, it didn't seem possible that someday I might wonder what I would have become if things had gone differently for me. I thought all the choices would always be in front of me.

There is skilfully wielded tension in Dexter's narrative. Sexual tension, driven by Charlotte; scary tension in the backwoods, as the brothers try to visit the Van Wetters; dramatic tension as we read on to find out what happened to Ward, for on the very first page there were strong intimations that something would indeed happen.

Then there is the world of newspapers. While the actual story is narrated by Jack, so that we only see events from his perspective, the story of the newspaper world to which Ward and Yardley belong, is pure Dexter. A journalist himself, he knows the world of manipulation by interviewer and interviewed, of double cross, coverup, reputations and prizes. He has no illusions, most of all about reporters themselves.

No one interested in how newspaper reporters find their stories should imagine that the compass needle is reset each time out. What they find attractive doesn't change, only where they find it.

The Paperboy sounds quite good. Are Dexter's books stand-alone, or parts of a series?

Whew, finally caught up on your thread. I've been missing some good conversations.

Great review of The Paperboy -- I read it years ago when it first came out. Have you seen the film with Matthew McConaughey and John Cusack? It's pretty harrowing.

Excellent review, Sassy.

I also thought the movie was pretty harrowing! I'm a Cusack completist! ;) I bet the book is way better than the movie but now I'm wanting to read it and then watch the movie again. Because you got WAY more out of the book than I did the movie - what an amazing review!

I wonder why I never heard of the movie. The DVD is too expensive, but I put it on my wishlist anyway. Now I have to go consider putting the book on my wishlist.

Robert

Thanks for mentioning Richard Mabey's Weeds Sassy - looks like my kind of book! I love to know what some of the brambly-brackeny-barby little b*s*a*r*s are that I traipse through from week to week. It'd also be nice to know what they contribute to the masterplan as well. Some people ask me if a Sycamore tree is a weed (that's Acer pseudoplatanus my non Anglo-Welsh hortico friends!)!! The Celtic Maple - a weed??!! It's a fine large robust deciduous tree that thrives in almost every environment - one of nature's great successes. Weed...

Thanks for letting me know about the movie. Thanks to Mr D, I'm now a Matthew McConaughey completist, so will have to see it. Several of Dexter's other works have made it to film or television: Deadwood, the notorious Paris Trout, and God's Pocket, which will be coming out next year. He also did the screenplay for Mulholland Falls.

Mr D, you're right about the DVD. I suspect the book might be less expensive. I'm hoping to find the DVD at the library of video store. Our town still has such a thing.

Polaris, my most disliked tree weed is Fraxinus pennsylvanica, the green ash, not at all to be confused with Sorbus aucupario, the mountain ash, which we all need for protection from the evil fairies in our gardens. Unfortunately, your "Celtic Maple" doesn't seem to grow around here, which is too bad because that bark would be great in winter and it has a nice form. I do have various other maples though.
I think you would enjoy the Mabey book. It's very non antagonistic!

labs, will you be reading the final Downing book to see how he wraps it all up?

Nana, Dexter's books are stand alone, but share many of the same themes. Train might be a good one to start with.

I see that way back in >78 SassyLassy:, the computer monkeys have changed my cover. I noticed it was changed in My Library and changed it back, but never thought to change it in my review. Here is my real cover, which represents the book far better:

I do like this cover much better. As regards the Downing series, I have no plans to read more, as I'm not curious as to what happens and my TBR is ginormous!

Thank you, Sassy. I added Train to my wishlist (although it shows that my daughter has it). But when I check her comments it says "read, lost". I may need to get it elsewhere.

Read this based on several positive LT reviews and was not disappointed at all:



55. Old Filth by Jane Gardam
first published 2005
finished reading sometime in October 2013

This was a book that I loved. However, I'm not going to write a long review of it as it would be too difficult. Old Filth's life constantly reminded me of my father's. If you've read the book, my father didn't have the same youthful life altering experience that the old judge had, (deliberately vague to avoid spoilers). That aside, he and many others of that generation had upbringings, educations, wars, career paths and even retirements similar to Sir Edward's. Even the judge's speech pattern is the same; a way of speaking I haven't heard since my father died. I think it was hearing that voice and accent again in my mind that made such an impact.

Don't get me wrong. This is no maudlin, sappy book at all. It is a reflection back on a long life, told episodically as these things are, moving back and forth in time, told by an intelligent narrator, with exceptional wit and attention to the small things of everyday life. Gardam does an excellent job of portraying a certain slice of the twentieth century world. Her book was shortlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize.

Thanks to VivienneR, I know there are two more related novels which I'll certainly read.

It's already on the pile, but I need to dig it out!

Thanks for the mention Sassy. I'm glad you enjoyed Old Filth. I'm saving the third in the series Last Friends (Veneering's story) for my favourite authors category in 2014 Category Challenge.

The comparison to your father is interesting; I imagined readers might know of someone like Old Filth and it looks like it hit the mark with you.

On the last weekend in October I found myself in Toronto and went to see an exhibit by this man



It was the last day of the exhibit Ai Weiwei: According to What? and unfortunately it was sold out. I had been looking forward to this all summer and was crushed. I should have made arrangements to go for just this one exhibit, but I tend to try to roll many things into my city visits. Anyway, there I was at the AGO, so decided to see the other major exhibit, which was about this man



David Bowie is

Could there be two more different people?

I had never really thought much about Bowie one way or another, but this exhibition certainly changed my thinking. It was enormous: fifty years of his life and hundreds of objects spread out over two floors with that music going all the time. Looked at like this, his life made sense. I had no idea his interests were so wide ranging. My lasting image from this exhibit though will be of a small girl, about three years old, totally transfixed by a full wall projection of Bowie and a mirror image Mick Ronson duelling it out with a track from Ziggy Stardust. I'm not sure what captivated her so much, the costumes, the movement, the lights, but she was completely absorbed. Then I wondered if small children ever saw large screens anymore, which left me wondering if anyone like Bowie could emerge today in a world of miniature visuals.

This exhibit is from The Victoria and Albert. Toronto is its first North American stop, so if it comes to a city near you, give it a try. I'm glad I did.

That had to be interesting, to say the least! Can't say that I'm a big fan of David Bowie, but I was pretty transfixed with his "Glass Spider Tour" concert when they aired it on TV back in the mid to late 80s. Quite a show! My mother owns the DVD of that concert now.

Cute story about the three-year-old. :)

This exhibit is from The Victoria and Albert. Toronto is its first North American stop, so if it comes to a city near you, give it a try. I'm glad I did.

My husband and I wandered into the Victoria and Albert on our last day in London this summer. The Bowie exhibit was sold out, but we looked at the exhibit book in the gift shop and it looked interesting indeed. I am a fan, and I knew about it before I left home, but I had so many other priorities that it didn't make the list. Having looked at the book though, I would defintely go out of my way to see this.

We had a great time at the Victoria and Albert anyway, and I will make a point to go back there on future London visits.

Can't say I'm a Bowie fan, but that was interesting. Too bad about Ai Weiwei.

Great to read your take on the Bowie show - I didn't know the V&A were taking it 'on tour' - but lucky for Torontonians (? - Torontites? Torontini?).

Shame you missed out on the Ai Wei Wei though - I bet that would have been fascinating and very thought provoking.

Must be Torontovians. - but its probably not.

Not sure I would have gone to a David Bowie exhibition - but there were some great songs.

I've always heard Torontonians, but I don't live there so I'm not an expert. Definitely Vancouverites though. And Montrealers, and Winnipegers. Who comes up with these names?

I'm going with Toronton Bowieites.

That does sound interesting.

Where do these suffixes come from? There doesn't seem to be a general rule for how they are added. Nickelini gets the prize with Torontonians, Montrealers, Winnipeggers and Vancouverites. I would add Haligonians. I get the general sense that "er" is added to cities that end in a consonant and maybe Vancouverers would be just to awkward, so they made them Vancouverites. Are people from Victoria Victorians? The "ian" seems to be added to cities ending in vowels, (Toronto, Victoria), but how does that explain Halifax? Maybe there are no rules for x. Going further afield, it certainly doesn't explain Mancunians.

Then there are the people from St John's. Everyone knows they are townies.

Bas, I wouldn't have gone to the Bowie exhibition had I not been at the gallery, but it was excellent. Back in the summer they had one on Patti Smith.

Too bad about Ai Weiwei. Here are two of the missed displays:



A snake installed on the gallery ceiling. The snake is made of children's backpacks and represents more than 5,000 children killed in their poorly constructed schools in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.



Qing dynasty wood joinery techniques with traditional three legged stools.

Art is even more dangerous than dissent. Steven Marche reviewing the exhibit.

Dangerous not just metaphorically. The picture in 136 was taken after neurosurgery necessitated by a beating by the authorities.

The snake is wonderful, but I could not enter that room!

Halgonians is a weird one! I would have thought Halifaxian.

When I was in St Louis I asked the cab driver what they call themselves but he didn't know. He didn't know a bunch of things, it turned out. Anyway, if anyone stopping by here can fill me in on the St Louis thing. . . .

A friend lent me this.



56. The Deception of Livvy Higgs by Donna Morrissey
first published 2012
finished reading November 16, 2013

Livvy Higgs is both deceiver and deceived. Her early life on the French shore of Newfoundland was miserable. Caught between two quarrelling parents, slow in school, unable to play because she couldn't speak French, Livvy endured a solitary life. By the time World War II came, the family was destroyed. Livvy left for Halifax to live with her Grandmother Creed. Determined to find the answers to all her questions about her parents, she discovered that her grandmother was just as determined not to provide them. A bitter standoff ensued.

Livvy's story is told by the Livvy of today; a stubborn old lady, still living in Grandmother Creed's house. Not in the best physical health, she is also slowly dementing. As she sits in her rocker by the window, fretting over cats and neighbours, she slips back and forth from her present state to her girlhood. Through these mental wanderings, we learn her story and how she wound up in the house of the woman she detested.

Donna Morrissey is a well known writer in Canada's Atlantic Provinces. I'm not sure how well she is known outside that region, for her stories and characters are very localized, with strong connections to Newfoundland. That's not to take away from her writing, it's just to say I don't think it translates into more universal themes and readership in the way that other Atlantic writers like Michael Crummey or Alistair MacLeod do.

What she has done here is illuminate some of the background history for readers from outside the Atlantic Provinces who may be unfamiliar with it. Newfoundland was not a part of Canada when Livvy was a girl. The west coast of the island was a remote area until World War II when the British allowed the Americans to create the air base at Stephenville. Moving to Halifax was not only moving to another country, it was moving to a war zone. German U boats patrolled off shore. The city was the departure point for most Canadian troops heading to Europe. Merchant shipping to Europe was done in huge convoys from the enormous inner harbour. Shipyards and wharves were busy round the clock. The city was strained beyond capacity with soldiers, sailors, prostitutes and everyone else remotely involved in the war. Tensions culminated in the VE Day riots.

It took the city decades to recover. A generation of Canadian men never really forgave the citizens, whom they felt had used them for financial gain, never realizing the demands they had put on the small city. It is the Halifax segment where Morrissey does the best. Her tale of the wartime city from the citizens' side is well told.

The Deception of Livvy Higgs sounds intriguing to this non-Canadian. :)

Well, BN.COM knows the author but not the book. I'd like to see that history in readable fiction.

Robert

146 Call him a cabbie silly! Couple of my favorite books were about taxi drivers .... Melissa Plaut How I Stopped Worrying about What to do with My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab

#150 - ?? Did I misunderstand you, or did you misunderstand me? Okay, I think you're joking 'cause you don't know the answer! But now that you've gone down that road, ...a good friend of mine used to be a taxi driver and has the wildest stories to tell. So I trust that would be a very entertaining book indeed!

LOL yes I was joking and bummed because I actually asked someone recently what they called themselves if they were from St. Louis (he was) and I have already forgotten what he said! That's some sad stuff!

Oh that's funny. Our ailing memories. (and it's not like I couldn't just google it. But this is more fun)

For a while when I was in my 20s and 30s, several of the men I went out with had been a cabbie at one point or another. And yes, they had crazy stories.

Maybe those from St Louis could be Levites? In the way that James becomes Jacobite...

Sassy - Very interesting review of The Deception of Livvy Higgs, and I appreciated the background information on Newfoundland and Nova Scotia during the war. In 2011 I read Westsiders (Stories from old Corner Brook, Newfoundland) by Tom Finn for the Early Reviewers. It was nicely written but I remember not being too engaged in the late-40s set stories and only gave it a measly 2.5 stars, though I recall it might have been more interesting to one who knows that part of the world. Maybe my score was a little harsh...

Merrikay, thanks for mentioning Melissa Plaut's Hack. Looks like a fun and original read.

Nice description of the David Bowie exhibition, Sassy. It was on at the V&A when I visited London this summer, and although five of us LTers visited the museum none of us saw Bowie at that time (although I think one of them went back to see it later that week).

Great review of The Deception of Livvy Higgs, and I enjoyed your comments about Newfoundland.

I think that residents of St. Louis are called St. Louisans. Checking...yes, that's what they call themselves, according to St. Louis Magazine.

101 Things Every St. Louisan Must Do

Mr D and others who might like more history of Halifax in that time: Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs by Stephen Kimber. Here is a brief synopsis:
http://stephenkimber.com/books/sailors-slackers

Nana, one of the best novels I ever read about Newfoundland was written by an American: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. She picked up the speech marvellously. Granted, she did spend some time living on the west coast (of Newfoundland) while writing it, but not the three generations anyone from there would require to give her credibility!

St Louisan sounds awkward. How is the city pronounced, Lewis or Louie? Then how is the Louisan pronounced? Maybe they could just be called Saints for living there.

Polaris, not familiar with the Tom Finn book, but I have been to Corner Brook, which has a beautiful natural setting. The decline of the paper industry has helped somewhat to restore it.



Call him a cabbie silly! That's too funny.

The David Bowie exhibition apparently has only one stop in the US, in Chicago from September 2014 to January 2015. It is going to Sao Paolo from Toronto, then Paris and the Netherlands from Chicago.

Sassy, The Shipping News is one of my favorite books from 2012.

Meanwhile, in another part of the world:



57. The Scheme for Full Employment by Magnus Mills
first published 2002
finished reading November 19, 2013

E P Thompson gave generations of students the official version of The Making of the English Working Class. Its foremost unofficial chronicler though has got to be Magnus Mills. Take the Scheme for Full Employment. Lovingly called the Scheme by all whom it employs, it is a brilliant concept cooked up by some anonymous think group.

The Scheme uses thousands of specially designed rustproof Univans, all with interchangeable parts, to move crates of goods around the country. Goods are duly signed for and time sheets marked. Each van has a two man crew (this is a man's world), working an eight hour day time shift, starting and ending at the same depot each day. As one driver explains it when asked what the crates hold, by Jonathan, a curious trainee,

' ...all the parts. Everything. Wheels, panels, mudguards, mirrors, lamps. Not to mention all the engine components. Look at this crate here: what's it say on the label? Radiator grilles: one dozen. There you are: perfect example.'

'So we're driving around in Univans full of bits of Univan?'

'Correct... it's self-perpetuating. We move the parts from one depot to the next and it keeps us all in work.'

...In thoughtful silence Jonathan gazed at the unhurried activity taking place all along the bay.

The workers carefully fill their days, so as to occupy their full shift. One of the perks of the job is the occasional short day, a swerve, but there is a fairly general consensus that this shouldn't be used too often. Young Jonathan questions why there should be swerves or the need to fill time if it truly is a scheme for full employment. Once again, his trainer provides the answer:

'...there's a difference between full employment and being fully employed. True, there is a lot of spare capacity in the Scheme, but it's better for people to be paid to do very little than have no job at all isn't it?'

Any lingering doubts Jonathan may have are quickly overcome when he receives his first paycheque. Even though he is paid at a basic trainee wage rate, there are extras for cost of living, dry cleaning of uniforms, attendance awards, holiday bonus, and most surprising of all, a productivity bonus.

'But how can we have a productivity bonus when we don't produce anything?'

'It's a notional payment... equivalent to what we might earn in a comparative industry.'

Despite all this, workers being only human, dissension appears even in this workers' paradise. The flat eight hour guys break with the swervers and a strike ensues.

Mills has done a wonderful job of sending up the whole Scheme. He captures the conundrums of working life with humour and insight, despite the laconic nature of many of his subjects. Magnus Mills has written several other books on working life. He calls his books fables, not novels. Here is just a taste of some of his work:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/6006219/Booker-prize-w...

That sounds like a lot of fun, Sassy!

Those Magnus Mills books sound great, I must get myself one.

They do sound fun and thanks for the link.

St Louisan sounds awkward. How is the city pronounced, Lewis or Louie? Then how is the Louisan pronounced? Maybe they could just be called Saints for living there.

Lewis. I've only heard St Louie as a joke, but maybe locals call it that? I've been there and I can't remember if that was a thing. NHL announcers definitely say "St Lewis Blues." I have to say that St Louis is one of the friendliest places I've ever been--the people were all very nice. The crime reporting on the TV was scary though. But I didn't feel that walking around downtown.

I agree that St Louisan sounds awkward, but maybe it's just because it's not familiar to us.

rebecca and mk, they were fun. We all need some. bas, I suspected you might like Mills. You've probably seen some of his characters in action!

For anyone who thinks Mills is exaggerating though, The Globe and Mail quoted from The Mirror on a study of about 2,000 office workers in the UK. Their day broke down as follows:
- 44 minutes on social media
- 1.5 hours on online news
- 40 minutes chatting with coworkers
-17 minutes making coffee
- up to 45 minutes having lunch
- 26 minutes looking for a new job
- 45 minute snacking, food preparation, texting and calling home

which leaves

- 2 hours and 54 minutes to work!

Nickelini, you know how it is in Canada where you are always wondering about whether a given word has an English or French pronunciation, so thanks for the Hockey Night reminder. When I lived on the east coast, we were in a great broadcast market (Montreal, Boston, the New Yorks and so on), so I hardly ever got to see the Blues. For the past while, there's been only one channel where I live now, due to the analog to digital change and it wasn't the CBC. A friend recently told me about the CRTC mandating access to Canadian channels with a free programme to connect you. The TV was hooked up this week and now I have all three major Canadian channels plus TVO. That means Hockey Night in Canada is back, but unfortunately now I live in the Toronto broadcast market and the Leafs drive me crazy. No matter where they are playing, that's the game you get. No Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, even if they're playing at home and the Leafs are in Vancouver. You could go a whole year and never see the Ducks (no loss) or Coyotes unless they make the playoffs. I could have stayed with one channel as far as hockey watching goes! I guess at least now I will get to see the Olympics.

I remember a couple of years when Menachem Begin and Monique Bégin were both often in the news. Decoding headlines with those completely different names, not to mention the verb "begin", was often tricky. Begin begins new health initiative was easy, but Begin travels to Rome took a bit more thought: travel section, international news, domestic politics?

hmmm after that study the ratio for time spent looking for another job may change.

SassyLassy, absolutely disgraceful #164. How can they possibly eat their lunch in 45 minutes. Lunch times here are a minimum 1.5 hours.

For the past while, there's been only one channel where I live now, due to the analog to digital change and it wasn't the CBC.

OMG--is it legal to not get the CBC? I would expect that who ever was responsible for that would now be serving time.

unfortunately now I live in the Toronto broadcast market and the Leafs drive me crazy. No matter where they are playing, that's the game you get. No Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, even if they're playing at home and the Leafs are in Vancouver.

Well, if Vancouver isn't playing, then we default to the Leafs too! My husband calls Hockey Night in Canada "Hockey Night in Toronto." Makes him crazy too. He's a long-time Habs fan, and we don't even get them on the French station any more. He grew up watching Montreal with French announcers, and his hockey-French is excellent. Did not help us out on either of our trips to France, unfortunately.

but Begin travels to Rome took a bit more thought: travel section, international news, domestic politics?

That's funny!

This is all funny! Enjoying the whinge about Hockey Night in Canada - reminds me of my own gripes with our Match of the Day, and normally having to watch dull games with Manchester United or Liverpool before we reach the likes of my own West Ham United nearly an hour or so later...

As for Magnus Mills - I'm glad you read him now Sassy, because, and I'm ashamed to say this, he's a totally new name on me! I've never religiously followed the Booker shortlists as some do, and must I think put it down to being absent from Britain during most of the 1990s... Such is the constant wonder of LibraryThing of course. Because it seems to me that I will like his books quite a lot. I like blue collar work in writing, satire, London writing, a dash of the absurd - all good stuff. I've just added a couple of titles to the wishlist.

Of course Begin and Bégin! Imagine if they'd ever gotten together as a musical act and performed "Begin The Beguine"! The headline writes itself...

>168 Polaris-: :D

oh Lord LOL!

Thank you so much for your recommendations. Great insights.

St Louisan sounds awkward. How is the city pronounced, Lewis or Louie? Then how is the Louisan pronounced?

I agree, it does sound awkward. Lewis. Lewisan.

All this St. Louis talk is making me homesick. I'm not technically "from" there - but close enough. When I was a little kid in Southern Illinois, I could see the Arch from our backyard. I kept asking my dad to take me to the "big McDonald's"! HA!

I think it would be pronounced "St. Louis (Lewis)- un." (Throw the "un" in at the end like an afterthought.)
It is awkward.

>159 SassyLassy: & 164 That does sound like a fun book. What I don't understand is why look for other employment when that sounds like a pretty sweet deal, really. :)

bas, my feeling would be that not only should you have the minimum lunch you suggest, there should also be a break in the afternoon as there is in highly civilized Italy.

nickelini, I suspect not having the CBC is the reason that the programme for hooking up "lost" people exists. Apparently it has something to do with being able to reach all Canadians in time of national emergency. My feeling is that in a national emergency there might not be hydro, so no TV, and there would certainly be other things to worry about than not having the TV. The programme ends November 30, as it's been a while since the switch. Go Habs!

mk, you may be right about looking for another job, but as avidm says, why look for other employment when that sounds like a pretty sweet deal, really. Just goes to show that people are never content, or maybe they're just curious.

Thanks all you people from south of the border, as well as Nickelini for the pronunciation help. Too bad they're not all cabbies and we could use mk's suggestion in >150 mkboylan:.

polaris, you've just planted today's earworm... at least it's a pleasant one. Do read Magnus Mills. He's probably much easier to find where you are.

Hello parrysound, home of Bobby Orr. Will you be adding books to your page?

Just had another thought in light of The Mirror study; how many people access LT at work?

Nothing like nonfiction to stir the sluggish mind:



58. Angel of Vengeance: The Girl Who Shot the Governor of St Petersburg and Sparked the Age of Assassination by Ana Siljak
first published 2008
finished reading November 20, 2013

The story of what Vera Zasulich did is fairly straightforward. In 1878, pretending to be just another petitioner in the office of St Petersburg's governor, she shot him twice at point blank range. She was arrested immediately. Luckily for Vera, General Trepov survived.

Why Vera shot the governor is far more complex. At her first interrogation she said she did it "For Bogoliubov", someone she had never met. Arkhip Bogoliubov, an educated man and political detainee, was unlucky enough to have been selected at random from a group of prisoners whom Trepov felt had not paid him enough respect. Trepov had Bogoliubov flogged with birch rods, and act that had been all but banned in 1863. A prison riot ensued and then a show trial of the rioters.

Astonishingly, at her own trial for the attack on Trepov, Vera was acquitted after only thirty minutes of jury deliberation. More riots ensued. A warrant was issued for her arrest, but she was able to flee the country.

Today Vera is practically unknown, but in her time she was internationally famous. Her trial was covered in major world papers. People as disparate as Frederich Engels and Oscar Wilde wrote about her. Dostoyevsky attended her trial and used parts of it as material for his House of the Dead.

Going beyond the facts of Vera's life, Siljak immerses the reader in her time. This is where the book excels. Starting with the publication of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons in 1862 and its ideological antithesis What is to Be Done? in 1863, she shows how a succession of reform movements developed in Russia. She offers a social history of those involved in these movements and the measures taken by those opposed to them. Nihilism, anarchism, terrorism; they're all here along with Nechaev, Bakunin, Kropotkin and others. These weren't just isolated movements. They pervaded the urban and prison cultures as Siljak demonstrates by linking them to well known writing and fiction of the time. She also discusses the role the peasants' lack of interest played in their failure.

Siljak manages to take all these swirling currents of thought and tie them to Vera's life, showing how a fairly uninteresting girl from the country progressed through protest, imprisonment, solitary confinement in the notorious House of Preliminary Detention, and eventual release from prison, to joining underground movements and becoming a revolutionary. Today her story would be sensationalized and touted as "the trial of the century". Siljak shows however that while Vera was perhaps the best known, she was just one of a generation of revolutionaries committed to changing the world for the better, even if it involved political assassination.

Siljak traces the role of assassination and its spread across late nineteenth century Europe. Political assassins knew they were offering their own lives in the process, but did so gladly, with an almost religious fervour, believing their acts would spur others to do the same, making the world a better place, one dead leader at a time.

This was a fascinating book. It doesn't require a background knowledge of nineteenth century Russia, although that would enhance it. It would certainly be of interest to Russophiles. Most of all, what it does demonstrate is that although Vera's Russia was a very different time and place, her motivations and actions have a very current feel when read in the light of today.

What an interesting book -- and person! Thanks for that review, Sassy.

Thanks for the review -- sounds fascinating.

Great review Sassy, and a really interesting sounding book. This sounds like an excellent candidate for a book that sheds some good light on Russia's condition precisely in the era when most of my ancestors were getting out of dodge! Thumbed review - and wishlisted.

>174 SassyLassy: - on the subject of accessing LT at work... Interesting, because it was in the wake of reading your excerpt of the office workers study that I considered for the first time in ages checking out LT at work. My job has me in the office and outside on site in fairly equal measures, and I really don't have time to 'relax' a little when I'm at the desk. On the other hand - the County I work for has a fairly rigorous regime of blocking many innocuous - but not work related - websites.

(In fact it's a pain in the whatsit as quite often I have to send a special request to IT to 'unblock' routine websites which are useful tools - such as Bing Maps (love that Birdseye view!) or a fungus ident page for example!)

All of which long-winded explanation leads me to trying LT the other day while taking a diverting tea break. No block! What a pleasure - that furtive glance at my LT Homepage - the 'recently added' shelves winking at me... I don't think it's a habit I'm going to cultivate as I know how much I enjoy LT and I know how little time I have to spare normally...

Ask me again a year from now!

Angel went straight to the WL. Sounds great and I enjoyed your review.

Angel of vengeance sounds very interesting. From your review the book seems to achieve so much.

Thanks all, and bas, one of the things the book did achieve was to revive my interest in nineteenth century Russian authors. Nothing like having some idea of the context in which they were writing.

Polaris, my IT department did somewhat the same sort of lockdown and everyone moaned and groaned, but for some reason the department didn't seem to consider sources outside Canada. To my delight, BBC, The Guardian and NYRB remained available. The powers that be decided that fifteen minutes a day browsing was allowable as they couldn't stop it completely, so that was my escape. That was pre LT, but I'm told it's also available. It seems that having access to maps would certainly be useful in your work. Makes you want to take an IT person out in the field with you someday.

More turmoil:



59. The Armies by Evelio Rosero, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean
first published as Los Ejércitos in 2006
finished reading November 21, 2013

Everyday, Ismael, the retired profesor, climbs a ladder against the wall in his garden to pick oranges. It sounds like an idyllic life in the small Colombian town of San José. Then we learn that he is also spying on his neighbour Gracelita, as she sunbathes nude in her garden next door. Ismael doesn't see his voyeurism as a problem, since she does it in front of her whole family. However, her husband the Brazilian sees things differently as does Ismael's wife Otilia. Both in their own ways tell him to stop.

Small domestic conflicts, but enough to send Ismael out roaming the streets of his town to fill the time. As he roams, he renews old acquaintances and catches up on the news. He visits old Maestro Claudino, the traditional healer, who tells him about being taken by guerilla soldiers. Out walking one morning, Ismael is caught up temporarily in an army roundup. The café owner's pregnant wife is kidnapped and held for ransom. Ismael's reveries are interrupted more and more frequently by such events. As Ismael is forced out of his self absorbed complacency and into the lives of others, Rosero skilfully draws the reader deeper and deeper into the chaos that is rural Colombia. Gradually routines lose their structure, people flee, and the town loses its purpose. The profesor must decide what to do and what he can live with doing.

All this would be enough if the novel was just about Ismael and his town. Rosero goes further though. The Armies is a universal novel, telling through the tale of one man the tales of generations of people around the world whose lives have been overrun and destroyed at random by marauders foreign and domestic, in a cycle that never ends.

The Armies sounds excellent.

Yes, The Armies does sound very good. I even have a copy which I bought because simply it won the Independent Foreign Fiction Award, but I didn't know what it was about. I just wish I had a neighbor like Gracelita. (Or maybe I do--I just don't have an orange tree.)

Nice review of The Armies, Sassy. I enjoyed it as well.

Agreeing with everyone else, The Armies does sound good. Angel of Vengeance also sounds like one I should add to my wishlist.

Hi Sassy, trying to catch up. Halifax, Angels, Armies. Got it!

Adding The Armies to the wishlist Sassy. Great review!

The IT gang do unblock the sites I ask them to - if they're work related. It's just a pain really - one of those little niggles of modern life. So have you been LT'ing at work at all...?

Excellent reviews of Angel of Vengeance and The Armies. I'm adding both to my wishlist.

The Armies was an excellent book. I don't rate books as I tend to be somewhat harsh. "Okay" is high praise in my lexicon, so "wow" would be really unusual. Given this, I don't want to prejudice others against particular books that they might enjoy by appearing to underrate them. That said, I do rank books against each other mentally, and this would certainly be one of the best I read this year. As steven says, it won the Independent Foreign Fiction Award in 2009. Rosero himself has been awarded Colombia's National Literature Prize in recognition of a life of writing. He's certainly someone I will read again.

Still in South America



60. Clandestine in Chile by Gabriel García Márquez, translated from the Spanish by Asa Katz
first published as La aventura de Miguel Littin, clandestino en Chile in 1986
finished reading November 24, 2013

Miguel Littin is a Chilean film director. When the American backed coup overthrew President Allende in 1973, he was head of Chile Films, a state organization. An obvious target for the new regime, he fled Chile. Years later, in 1983, with General Pinochet still in power, the dictatorship started publishing names of exiles who would be allowed to return to Chile. Littin's name did not appear. A later list of five thousand people who absolutely could not return did have his name on it.

Littin, however, was determined to return. Not only that, he was determined to make a film about Pinochet's Chile. He concocted an elaborate scheme which involved months of planning and untold underground connections. Someone provided Uruguayan identification. Littin relocated to Paris from Spain. Three weeks with two psychologists, a makeup artist, a Chilean specialist in clandestine operations and others changed his mien from that of a bearded European intellectual to that of a smug bourgeois businessman. Accent, walk, laugh: all were changed. A suitable spouse was provided with her own background story.

Three film crews had already been sent to Chile: one French, one Italian, one Dutch led. None knew about the others. Littin and his "wife" arrived in Santiago with Littin travelling as a Uruguayan advertising executive headquartered in Paris. His story was that he had chosen Chile for his promotional perfume films for its range of climates and scenery on any given day.

While the stories of Littin's two months of adventures in Chile and his eventual hasty exit are interesting in themselves, the excellent preface by Francisco Goldman was a story on its own. Immediately after the coup against Allende, Gabriel García Márquez, his friend, announced that he would neither write not publish fiction until Pinochet was overthrown. Time passed. Pinochet was still in power. The Cuban Revolution lost its lustre among many South American intellectuals. Civil wars and dirty wars in Central America diverted attention from Chile.

Gabriel García Márquez was getting impatient. In 1981, he published Chronicle of a Death Foretold, causing consternation among idealists who had truly believed in his vow. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 and published Love in the Time of Cholera in 1985. His status seemed unassailable, so in what Goldman terms an "act of revenge" against Pinochet, García Márquez returned to his earlier political reporter self. He had met Littin after Littin returned to Spain with over 100,000 feet of film from his Chilean adventure. García Márquez interviewed Littin on tape for eighteen hours. The result was Clandestine in Chile, written using Littin's first person voice, but with strong authorial overtones.

While Pinochet may not have particularly feared Littin's film, he did fear García Márquez' book. Fifteen thousand copies were seized and publicly burned in Chile. The film itself did not receive widespread distribution or acknowledgement, but by the time it appeared, Pinochet's regime was destined for defeat in the 1988 election. Knowing this lends Littin's story a certain sense of anticlimax, but it was still a worthwhile read for those who still believe in idealists.

Clandestine in Chile sounds great. Wishlisted! Really interesting review Sassy.

An interesting story.

I've seen that book around, but now I feel motivated to get it!

The only journalistic book by GGM that I have read is The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, which was more adventure than politics. Your review has intrigued me to buy a copy of Clandestine in Chile when I get the chance. Sounds like adventure plus politics.

Very interesting story and a great review.

Great story. I'm a bit intimidated by Márquez, but this sounds approachable.

Dan, if you read Garcia Marquez's autobiography (well, the first part of it, which is the only part that's been written and is likely to be written), Living to Tell the Tale, you will get some insight into his writing that might make you less intimidated. I went back and read some of his novels after I read the autobiography, as I hadn't read them for decades. However, I have mixed feelings about his work.

I'm curious, Rebecca. What are your mixed feelings about Garcia Marquez?

Well, I read a lot by him in the 80s when there was such a burst of translated Latin American literature and really liked him. Then, after I read Living to Tell the Tale I went back to reread One Hundred Years of Solitude because the autobiography provided a lot of insight into that story and I found I didn't like it as much as I remembered. I also reread Love in the Time of Cholera, which I had liked better originally and still liked it better. And I read two novellas I hadn't read previously, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, which I loved, and Memories of My Melancholy Whores which I didn't like at all. So I guess what I mean by mixed feelings is that I like some of his books but don't like others. Of course, this is probably true about many authors . . . hmm, I feel a Question for avid readers coming up.

Thanks R. I'm impressed how much Marquez you have read. Living to Tell the Tale might be the right place for me to start.

Thanks, Dan, but I read a lot of it a long time ago when Marquez was the most highly praised South American writer (when there wasn't as much of it in translation as there is now). Living to Tell the Tale was a really interesting book.

I'm not sure what the drift of the book may be and whether this needs saying at all, but to be on the safe side: it's fair to say that Zasulich was a revolutionary before she shot Trepov; someone with a definite political background and goals, deliberately planning action, including liberation of imprisoned comrades and a string of assassinations.

For anyone interested in the big picture, as far as Russian revolutionary left is concerned, I cannot recommend highly enough Franco Venturi's Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia--I believe the first English edition is available free somewhere, but if you can, it's worth finding the later, with a revised introduction, in which Venturi explains various historiographical approaches and his own attitude, especially in contrast to standard Soviet and marxist historians.

It's noteworthy that Venturi criticised harshly the tendency of Westerners to "learn" about Russia from fiction and insisted that literature must be understood in terms of history, not vice versa. (I happen to agree 100%--I've come to believe literary fiction is perfectly useless when it comes to "understanding" a place.) Turgenev and Dostoevsky neither give an objective view of the populist revolutionaries, nor do they adequately "explain" them. Tolstoy himself is part of the great regressive reaction, someone who cries out for decipherment and putting in context, not the key to understanding. And so on...

dan and anyone else slightly intimidated by Marquez, this is a good place to start, because Littin is allowed to narrate although the words are from Marquez. rebecca mentioned Love in the Time of Cholera and that would also be a great one to start with. I haven't read Living to Tell the Tale, but should. Goldman highly praised Gerald Martin's biography Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life, so that might be a good one too.

labs, I have The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor and I'm looking forward to it. Most of his reporting was political and social in nature and written for Spanish language papers, so like most journalism, I suspect it was not translated, other than in essay collections.

Lola, welcome back. You're absolutely right about Zasulich being a revolutionary before she shot Trepov; it was these convictions that led to the attempted assassination. I tried to briefly trace the trajectory of her development, but perhaps the timing didn't come out properly in my summary. I just had a look for Venturi's book and did find it. It looks fascinating, however the later edition is quite expensive. I will look next year when I am in university towns with good second hand stores. My search did take me to the dangerous abe books though, where I found all kinds of temptation. So far I am resisting, but the wish list is growing.
I like a balance among history, theory and fiction when it comes to things like nineteenth century Russia or twentieth century China. Perhaps part of the problem with some literary fiction about place is that only the victors/landowners/collaborators were published, as you suggest with Turgenev, Tolstoy and company. For me, however, that doesn't detract from their literary worth. I think it bothers me more in more contemporary fiction, when I expect a diversity of opinions about place to be reflected in literature.

That Venturi book sounds interesting. I'm going to look for it too. And, like Sassy, I enjoy Russian fiction, but I like to think I'm aware of the perspective of the writer as well as the literature itself.

Thanks for the welcome! Venturi's a brick of a book, but if, as seems from your reading, you have an abiding interest in these themes, I'm sure you'd find it a page-turner.

The complexities of connections and cross-talk between literature, reportage, propaganda and "real life" in general would take lots of discussion, especially concerning a country like Russia, remote in several ways--but at the same time much closer and intelligible than the average foreigner might think, even in the 19th century. Literature mythologises itself; books speak to other books, often of other books, they become part of history, an event, more than they ever are A history, a chronicle of an event. Or they can be both at the same time, and with context gone, it's impossible to tell fact from fiction. A good history restores the context--not in some impossible "photographic" way, capturing things "as they were", but, more subtly and importantly, in a way that balances the scene properly, includes all the relationships and explains what is significant. That's the least I'd want to say about Venturi's criticism, hoping not to derail the thread.

(P.S. Oops, didn't see your post, Rebecca, sorry, wasn't talking past you!)

The Armies sounds like an amazing piece of writing.
Think I'll also hunt down the Venturi. What interesting reading.

So much to catch up on here, Sassy! There's been some intriguing reading over the last few months. The Mina caught my eye though as I'm informally on the lookout for my next series of decent crime novels (that don't drift into thriller territory).

Time to catch up on my own reading before the dreaded end of the year. This next wasn't from an orthodox path to book selection, but it did work.



61. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
first published 2003
finished reading December 3, 2013

In an effort to make my house more presentable, I've been tackling unshelved piles of books. One such pile is books friends have lent me, thinking I would enjoy them. Shutter Island was physically the largest, so I decided it would free up the most visual space and picked it up.

Shutter Island, a forbidding place off the coast of Maine, housed a large psychiatric institution. US Marshall Teddy Daniels, a WWII veteran, was being sent there to find an escaped patient, deemed criminally insane. He and his partner for this expedition met for the first time on the ferry to this bleak spot. Naturally, when they arrived, the staff of the hospital didn't offer much help or divulge much information.

Lehane sets up the atmosphere of the island well. As the book progressed, it screamed "Make me into a movie", without reading like a screenplay made into a novel. It was 1955 and the world of psychiatry was moving away from soul destroying surgeries like lobotomies, to strictly pharmacological intervention. The treatment methodology to select for any given patient created tension among the clinical staff. A lot of the work on the island was experimental in nature. Like any other psychiatric hospital, there were locked wards. The information for the escaped patient was unavailable and her psychiatrist was off the island. Throw in a devastating hurricane that cut all power and access to the island, and the tension mounts.

Then, out of nowhere it seemed, Lehane was able to deliver a plot twist I hadn't seen coming. It was a completely believable sideswipe, but no less impressive for that. If you need some mid winter escape from storms and blackouts, this might just do it.

Dennis Lehane is probably even better known for films based on his books that for the books themselves. After finishing the book, it seemed odd to me that it hadn't been made into a movie, so I checked it out. Lo and behold, there was one and I had missed it completely. Martin Scorsese filmed it in 2010 with an all star cast. I'll have to see how it translates.

>209 SassyLassy: I have Shutter Island and keep overlooking it. Your review makes me think I might like it. Maybe in 2014.

Thanks to avaland



62. The Perfectionists by Gail Godwin
first published 1970
finished reading December 9, 2013

Majorca has a completely different quality of light than does London. Its light brings clarity, a way of noticing details that would be missed completely in London's winter. So it was, that when Dane went on holiday to Majorca with John, her husband of ten months, she started to see him differently. Things that had been minor quirks or annoyances assumed major proportions.

Dane and John were not alone on this vacation. They were accompanied by John's young son Robin, a child who had never spoken to Dane. Along with Robin was Penelope, a patient from John's psychotherapy practice, there to look after Robin.

Gail Godwin is a writer I hadn't heard of before LT, but she is highly regarded here and as I discovered, for good reason. This first novel gave rise to many conflicting thoughts. Godwin seems to write with a scalpel, at times with the intensity of Doris Lessing. The subject matter was good. It was the characters that distressed me. Not for the good reasons that make you think about a book no matter how unpleasant, but rather for their sheer idiocy. What therapist takes a patient on vacation? Lots of alarm bells there. What really frustrated me though was Dane, a happy bright woman living in a cheerful Cheyne Walk flat, starting a promising career, who suddenly immersed herself in the world of that awful brown paint in London bedsits and cheap hotels with a man she finds brilliant, but whose "...daily dealings with life were so much smaller than the panoramic sweep of his mind; his actions were never quite worthy of the clean, heroic beauty of his best ideas."

It was the ideas Dane had fallen in love with and now she was living with the actual man with his "flesh and blood failings" A true case of marry in haste, repent at leisure? I found myself willing Dane to just abandon the whole enterprise; to leave and pick up her old life. "It's not too late" I would tell her repeatedly, hoping all the while she would listen. Whether she did or not would fall into spoiler territory.

This is a book very much of its time, when careful analysis of relationships was everywhere, but the ideas behind it are still out there and always will be. People continue to seek the perfect mate as well as perfection in that mate. I'll read more Gail Godwin and hope for different characters.

I could have sworn I read a book by Gail Godwin years ago, but when I looked at the list of the books she's written I didn't recognize any . . . And I haven't read anything by Dennis Lehane, but I thought the movie of his Mystic River was great. Enjoyed both your reviews.

I hope you post your review of the Perfectionists because there isn't one and yours is great.

I have seen the film Shutter Island and its a story that depends on that plot twist and so I would not be tempted to read the book.

Excellent review of The perfectionists I have never come across the author before.

>212 rebeccanyc: That's funny as I could have sworn I had read a review or at least mention of Godwin by you.
The movie of Mystic River was my first exposure to Lehane and I thought it was great too.

>213 labfs39: Surprised to see no other reviews, so have posted this one. Thanks labs

>214 baswood: I suspect Godwin was tagged with being a feminist writer back in 1970 and took some time to emerge from that. It seems that around about her fourth novel she departed from those themes, but the marketing damage may have been done. One of the things I thought she did really well was convey the background to their lives in London, considering she came from the Southern US. She now seems to be described as a southern writer.

Now, can I get in thoughts on five more books by tomorrow midnight?

Thanks for those two last reviews Sassy.

Nice review of The Perfectionists, Sassy.

Happy New Year!

Janette Turner Hospital is on my list of favourite authors, so I had to get one of her books in this year.



63. Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital
first published 2007
finished reading December 14, 2013

Starting each new Janette Turner Hospital is always a journey. There are recurring themes which make the new book feel familiar, but this particular author is never one to offer warmth and comfort, let alone go down previously trodden paths. Her refrains deal with instability, rootlessness, the threat of chaos, the role and nature of the random, and are often set against the menace in the natural world and political instability. At the same time, she always has a remarkable eye for settings, be they urban subways or the wilds of Australia.

It was clear from the outset that Orpheus Lost had all this. Then it added the magic of music in the form of language and composition. Two of the three main characters have devoted themselves to music, two of the three to mathematics. Leela May Moore is the common link. A southerner, she was doing post doctoral work at Harvard in mathematics as it relates to music, publishing on such topics as "Mathematical Frequencies and the Cultural Construction of the Twelve-tone Scale" or "Trigonometric Identity in the Compositions of John Cage".

Her partner, Michael Bartok (no relation to that Bartok), was doing a doctorate in music composition. Michael was almost completely inarticulate verbally when it came to his feelings, pouring them all into new compositions, which to him clearly expressed his thoughts. Michael had grown up in the Australian rainforest, already an outsider there, because of his family background.

The third person was Leela's childhood friend Cobb Slaughter, another mathematical prodigy. The two had lost contact, but Leela thought of him often, believing she could communicate with him through the power of thought. She had recently heard that he was a decorated major, but no longer attached to the armed services.

This book confronts the unwanted touchstones of today's world: domestic terrorism, rendition, surveillance, and layers them onto those of previous generations: PTSD from Vietnam and the damage suffered by Holocaust survivors. Nothing is cliched or formulaic however. Hospital weaves these threads together into a contemporary myth of the underworld. The reader in drawn in from the time Leela first met Michael in the subway, as he played Gluck's "Che faro senza Euridice"* to Leela's recurring question that resonates for everyone; What will I do without that which I cannot do without?"

*from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice , roughly "What will I do without Euridice?"

other books I've read by Janette Turner Hospital:
The Ivory Swing
The Last Magician
Oyster
Isobars short stories
Due Preparations for the Plague
North of Nowhere, South of Loss short stories

Janette Turner Hospital sounds like an interesting author. Would you suggest Orpheus Lost as a good place to start with her works?

I always learn something new from a Janette Turner Hospital book. Here are two new things to me from this one:

John Cage, composer, musician and artist, who believed in silence like Michael, numbers like Leela and in the role of chance.

The quandong, Elaeocarpus angustifolius with its blue fruit and brain shaped seed, found in the Australian rainforest. In the novel, Michael had written "Sonatina for Quandongs and Parrots", as the plant had a particular significance for him.



photograph by Galileo Feynman

Wow, that is really blue.

>219 labfs39:, just saw your question. Due Preparations for the Plague was the one that got me going and is probably the closest to this book but Orpheus Lost would probably be a better starting point, as it could be considered less jarring.

Thanks, I added it to my wishlist.

Ah! John Cage's 4.33 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fYvfEMUJl8

Part of the Global Reading South American fourth quarter:



64. Paradises by Iosi Havilio, translated from the Spanish by Beth Fowler
first published as Paraísos in 2012
finished reading December 15, 2013

Paradises picks up the story of the anonymous female narrator of Havilio's first novel Open Door, but can be read separately.

The young woman leaves the countryside where she has been living and starts off for the city, taking along her four year old son Simón. Friendless, she must find work, shelter and someone to care for her child as soon as possible. She finds a job in the reptile house at the zoo. Eventually, she moves into an apartment tower squat, controlled by low level gangsters. In exchange for the apartment, she must administer morphine twice a day to the enormous Tosca, who lives on the main floor and decides who is lucky enough to live in the building.

Lucky, yes, for this is a novel of the dispossessed in modern day Argentina; those who do anything just to get by. At times the mental images reminded me of Iñárritu's film Biutiful where the characters where faced with similar dilemmas. Then I decided there was no real comparison, as Paradises was episodic in nature; things just happened and sometimes they just didn't happen. Whether they did or not was of no particular interest to this reader, as there was nothing to make me care about the narrator, a sentiment expressed by others in reviews of Open Door. This episodic telling may have been the whole point, meant to show the lack of control the characters had over their lives and the ways they were forced to deal with it, but it was hard to tell. This was a shame, as the story itself was well written and the translation appeared to do it justice.

In one of these odd tricks the brain plays, when I first saw this book, I read the title as two separate words: "para dises", just the way it appears. I went from there to something like "for telling" or "through telling". This led me to the idea of stories, which is basically what the narrator has here, a series of stories about her life. While I don't think there is any significance to the cover, I did feel better about the content when I thought of it this way.

However, I would say if you want to enter the world of the struggle to survive in some many cities, see Biutiful instead.

I think I tried and failed to read a Janette Turner Hospital book back in the 90s, but your review makes me think I should give her another try.

Having read Open Door, I had no interest in finding out what happened to the narrator later, so I was glad to read your review and realize that although I still have no interest in reading Paradises, any curiosity I might have had has been relieved!

Janette Turner Hospital came highly recommended to me a few years ago. Thanks for reminding me--must pull one of her books out of my TBR pile.

Another book from the pile of books lent to me by others. There were actually two copies of this book in the pile, so I am making progress in reducing it.



65. The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens
first published 2006
finished reading December 25, 2013

This book comes with quite a pedigree: Winner of the Governor General's English Language Literary Award, Finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Finalist for amazon.ca's First Novel Award, a Globe and Mail "Top 100" book for 2006, and translated into nine languages. I was all set for a great reading escape from December.

My first quibble is that Peter Behrens, although born and educated in Canada, actually lives in the US. Not quite as bad as awarding Eleanor Catton the Governor General's award for 2013, but still. Seems it was a good idea to have this book published in Canada. My thoughts on national awards aside, on to the book itself.

This is a story that has its roots in the Irish Potato Famine. Young Fergus O'Brien is orphaned and driven off the land where his family had been tenants. No child could survive alone in the Ireland of 1847 and Fergus soon picks up with a group of children who actually think they can defeat the English soldiers engaged to clear the countryside. There is some borrowing from Robert Louis Stevenson's The Black Arrow here.

Once again Fergus is the sole survivor. Realizing he has to do something, he makes his way to Liverpool, where he meets up with a Dickensian group of children. Not content to stay there, he strikes out on his own and joins a gang engaged to build the new railway to Wales. I won't get into all his adventures, but his goal is to reach "America", which is only a vague notion in his mind. He actually manages to set sail for Québec City. With weeks and weeks in steerage, there is lots more time for adventure, betrayal and other life lessons.

Behrens has said he didn't want to write an "Irish" novel and feels he succeeded because there is no fiddle. Hopefully this last was tongue in cheek.
- uncaring landowners - check
- prostitutes with hearts of gold - check
- drunken Irish overseers - check
- fine horse handling abilities - check
- older man looking for the son he doesn't have - check
- old hag with mysterious healing abilities (among other skills) - check

Apart for a role for a nun or priest, there weren't many more Irish clichés I could think of to fill a non Irish novel.

Having said all that, I did keep reading. The story was predictable, but the background Behrens offered was done really well. The descriptions of the lives of the Irish tenants, the building the railroad, life on board a famine ship, all were done well. I would damn this novel with faint praise, saying it is a great escape for a rainy day or vacation, which is exactly what I read it for. Not everything has to be great literature, although it would be nice if the Governor General's committee thought so for its awards.

More from South America



66. The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez, translated from the Spanish by Randolph Hogan
first published as Relato de un náufrago in 1970
read December 25, 2013

In 1955, Luis Alejandro Velasco was washed overboard from a Colombian destroyer, along with seven of his crew mates. Velasco survived alone on a life raft in the Caribbean for ten days, before being washed up on the shores of Colombia. He was the only survivor.

That was the official story. It received widespread publicity in Colombia and Velasco briefly became a celebrity. As his story waned as news, he approached Gabriel García Márquez, offering to sell him the "real" story. Márquez was sceptical, assuming the sailor had merely run out of money. However, he listened to him. What he heard convinced him to write the story for the newspaper El Espectador.

While it was true that Velasco had been washed overboard, declared dead and then found, the reasons for the accident had been concealed by the Colombian navy. There had not been a storm. Instead, there had been at least three violations of naval rules. The ship, a destroyer, had been transporting cargo, which was forbidden. The ship was sailing overweight, due to the cargo. Thirdly, the cargo consisted of contraband in the form of domestic appliances from the US. The illegal contraband had shifted in high winds, then washed overboard, taking Velasco and the seven other men with it. The overweight meant the ship was unable to manoeuvre finely enough to attempt to rescue the sailors, so they were basically abandoned in the water.

García Márquez wrote Velasco's account as a series of articles. As the real story emerged, the military dictatorship attempted to deny it, but the author was able to back it up with eye witness accounts from the crew. Velasco had to resign from the navy. Retribution for Garcia Márquez came when the dictatorship shut downEl Espectador several months later.

Like the later publication of Clandestine in Chile, (>191 SassyLassy: above), García Márquez tells the story in the subject's voice, lending an immediacy to details like the school of sharks that surrounded Velasco's raft each evening at five. However, both these books are more interesting now for the story behind them, then for the actual journalism. The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor was not published until 1970, fifteen years after the incident. García Márquez in his introduction freely admits that it would not have seen publication as a book had it not been for his own fame.

Enjoyed reading your last three reviews, which came in just under the deadline. It's already 2014 here, your celebrations are still to come?

My celebrations are yet to come, although I was just speaking with my sister outside London and heard fireworks in the background. So, time for one more before my deadline, although I don't think I will finish reading a last book. After all, it is time to celebrate. As Scarlett O'Hara says, "Tomorrow is another day"

67. Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman
first published as Lituma en los Andes in 1993
finished reading December 28, 2013

A mute, an albino and the highway foreman have all disappeared separately from the remote Peruvian village of Naccos. Shining Path guerillas, malevolent spirits, or just plain left town: the possible explanations are endless.

Corporal Lituma, a favourite character of Vargas Llosa, is in the village to protect the highway crew trying yet again to build a new road. He and his deputy Tomás must now investigate these disappearances. Lituma and Tomás are outsiders, shunned by the villagers, so there will be no help from them. The road crew won't help either. Dionisio, the proprietor of the cantina where workers gather nightly to drink reality away merely hints at possibilities and evades any follow up questions.

Each night, Lituma and Tomás creep into their respective cots and Tomás tells stories of the beautiful Mercedes. These stories, the investigations, and stories of the disappeared themselves are separate, but are told in the same time frame, switching seamlessly from one to another in classic Vargas Llosa fashion. As the stories unfold, other possibilities arise, connections develop and the lines among what could happen, what might happen and what did happen blur, until Vargas Llosa magically gathers them all up and presents his final version.

A wonderful book to end the year.

Off now to celebrate the best holiday of the year, so to everyone the best New Year's Wish of all: Slàinte mhath. For those who are allowed,



Note the absence of ice!

I loved Death in the Andes too, and isn't it great to end the year with a great book?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Sassy - LeChaim! back at you!

I really liked your review of Orpheus Lost - looks very good to me. I've got Isobars on the TBR, so you've reminded me to get that one nearer the top of the pile. (I've been thinking of making January a regular Aussie reading month with at least one title each year - so that I think of my great time down under last year - and don't delay getting back there again soon...). I've gone back to add Due Preparations For the Plague - which looks like a great book.

And as for those Quandong fruits and seeds - they look so Australianly unreal! Great photo.

I have The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor on the wishlist (probably thanks to you, not sure...), so appreciated your review as well.

See you over on your 2014 thread.