What are you reading to start of 2014

I've just discovered the poet Mary Oliver. This is from Dog Songs:

Luke's Junkyard Song

I was born in a junkyard,
not even on a bundle of rags
or the seat of an old wrecked car
but the dust below.
But when my eyes opened
I could crawl to the edge and see
the moving grass and the trees
and this I began to dream on,
though the worms were eating me.
And at night through the twists of metal
I could see a single star--one, not even two.
Its light was a thing of wonder,
and I learned something precious
that would also be good for you.
Though the worms kept biting and pinching
I fell in love with this star.
I stared at it every night--
that light so clear and far.
Listen, a junkyard puppy
learns quickly how to dream.
Listen, whatever you see and love--
that's where you are.

I also just finished the 2nd in the Chocolate series, The Girl With No Shadow or in Europe The Girl With Lollipop Shoes. A witch who gives up magic in order to be normal is never my favorite topic, but this witch not only gives it up, she ceases to believe it exists and thinks her daughter is only playing games. How does that make sense? Add to that a very poor taste in men - a romantic loser vs a control freak and I'm wondering what happened with this sequel. Admittedly I only saw the movie and didn't read the book, Chocolate, but this seems a limp follow up.
Also just finished was Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline, a very interesting look at some of the children who were shipped from New York to the midwest in the first part of the 20th century. But again I had a problem with a major decision the main character makes. It was so out of character I can't imagine why the author could write such a thing, even to lead up to the ending she wanted. It doesn't make sense to me to write a character one way then wrench her around in another direction for convenience.
But Dog Songs is perfect in every way.

I just got a few books from the library I'm eager to dig my teeth into: Drinking at the Movies, Stuck in the Middle, Unbearable Lightness and The Talented Miss Highsmith. It's going to be a fun weekend full of reading for me. :-D

I'm on Jane Smiley's Moo and Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth, both re-reads.

>3 LyzzyBee:: I love Moo, it's far and away my favourite of Smiley's books. I spent a year studying at University of Kansas in the '90s, so some of it felt quite familiar!

I have to say I like her horse ones better - but I last read it in 1997 and have built it up in my head to being the best book EVER so it's never going to live up to that. I'm enjoying it, though!

I love Moo and Horse Heaven too. But my favorite Jane Smiley is The Greenlanders, which seems to be completely unlike anything else by her I've ever read.

And my first book of the year was by a woman, Shirley Jackson -- The Road through the Wall, which was her first book and isn't up to what she later achieved.

My first two books of the year are by women. Late last year I started Grotesque, a Japanese crime novel by Natsuo Kirino, a feminist writer whose novels contain interesting insights about life in Japan for women. I'm not enjoying it as well as her excellent Out, but it's ok.

Then, because I only have limited days left on my library rental, I started Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, a debut and one of the most lauded science fiction novels of last year. It takes some work to understand the technological and political system of the novel, but I'm getting the hang of it and like the story very well.

> 2 I took The Talented Miss Highsmith out of my library also as it sounded so good, but I didn't get a chance to read it and it's due back already. :/ I'm going to have to try it again some other time. Let me know what you think of it!

>8 sweetiegherkin:. Will do. I'm reading the shorter books first and I'm really looking forward to sinking my teeth into that one.

Started Olive Kitteridge while waiting for tire service this afternoon. A TBR pile random pick.

i'm reading a few books, mostly by men beforehand, but in the next week or so need to read the trilogy by atwood as the last in the series, maddaddam is due back at the library in just over 2 weeks. (yikes.) and this will sound bad, but i'm reading the english patient right now and it feels like it's written by a woman. this is a compliment, but i still don't like the way it sounds.

>1 Citizenjoyce: i don't know much about poetry but when customers in my little bookshop wanted a poetry section i looked into who is popular now and she is top of the list. i've seen a bit of her stuff in these last months and all of it is lovely.

Finished Ancillary Justice (may be an interesting read for spec fic fans on this board), gave up on Grotesque, and started Allie Brosh's illustrated essay memoir Hyperbole and a Half, based on her eponymous blog. Hilarious and just what I wanted as I get back into the swing of work again.

>just starting blue is the warmest color. i don't usually read graphic novels and am looking forward to it. and i never ever read anything this recently published so it's a treat in that sense, too.

#12> I've heard good things about Ancillary Justice, so nice to get another confirmation I should be buying and reading this one!

I've been dipping into books that have been on my shelves for too long so far this year, and have dusted off and enjoyed The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter (although I thought the ending was disappointing) and Joan Makes History, an early book by Kate Grenville, lots of Australian history.

I'm reading Golden miles by Katharine Susannah Prichard, a novel set on the Australian goldfields as WWI looms overseas.

I finished Longbourn which was very good in spite of an awkward ending. I'm hoping to re read Pride and Prejudice to get the Bennet's side of the story. There's a tutored read of P &P here if anyone is interested: http://www.librarything.com/topic/163892
On audio I've started The Chaperone an historical novel about Louise Brooks (whom I've never heard of). I'm amazed to find that it relates to the wonderful Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. I'm always surprised when unrelated books hook up like this.
For my RL book club I finished Sarah's Key and have ordered the movie from the library. I had no idea of the event the book is about, the deportation and murder of thousands of French children during WWII.

I am reading Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf. It is slow going but I love her style and wit. The novel is a letter in response to a man who wants advice (and maybe some money) on how to stop a war — the book was published in 1936. She ponders the question of how women (daughters of educated men) can influence men and notes that if they had as much influence as the letter writer suggests, there would have been far fewer wars throughout history. Very good so far.

I'm about to start Farthing by Jo Walton, an alternative history, where England agreed to peace with Nazi Germany in 1941.

I'm almost finished with The Chaperone and I absolutely love it. It's hard to tear myself away to do anything else. It's an interesting look at life and manners in the midwest in the early 1900's, the treatment of orphans, motherhood, Louise Brooks (whom I'd never heard of before) and relationship possibilities.

I just started Shine Shine Shine. It seems to have gotten very good reviews, but I'm not sure how I would classify it.

I missed this thread until rebeccanyc pointed it out. I joined the "75 Books Challenge" to do their Culture group read (http://www.librarything.com/topic/162776), and there are so many topics in that group that I am unable to manage them. I think that I am going to have to leave that group so that I can see the topics in the groups that I regularly post on.

There are so many topics in the 75 Books Challenge that I went three or four pages out and couldn't find a Girlybooks topic! Does anyone else have a way of managing these things?

#20 I go to the Group pages of the Groups I follow and star the threads I'm interested in. Then I view Talk by clicking on Starred (under Your World in the upper left-hand column). This reduces the number of threads to see. Every now and then, I go back to the Groups pages to see if there are new threads of interest.

Thank you, rebeccanyc!

It looks like I'm in trouble here. I flew through Longbourn and The Chaperone because the characterization and the story lines were so fantastic, now I've started Priscille Sibley's The Promise of Stardust, and I'm stuck. I had no idea this was going to be a pro choice vs anti choice book, and my blood pressure must have risen 20 points since I started. The premise is that a young woman falls off a ladder, hits her head, and is brain dead. After brain surgery they find she is 8 weeks pregnant. Before that finding, her husband is all set to disconnect her from life support, but they have been trying so hard to have a baby for years that he feels he must keep her body alive long enough for the baby to be born. Further complication is that her mother died of cancer and was kept alive on machines for 3 months and Ellie, the brain dead pregnant person, wrote a living will at the age of 18 saying that she didn't want to be kept alive artificially for any reason if there was no hope of recovery. So here's the problem, do you honor her advance directive and take her off life support or do you honor her intense desire to have a child and keep her on it. The further complication, the one that's raising my blood pressure, is that the rabid anti-choice folk are all over the case in an effort to get a precedent set that the fetus is a baby is a person thus over throwing Roe vs Wade. Ach, and I'm on the side of letting the fetus grow into a baby because I think that's what she would have wanted - not as a precedent, not as a comment on what should happen to all women, just so that she can have produced the baby she wanted. Me on the side of anti-choicers. It's very distressing, and I'm only 9 chapters in. Will I survive this book?

>18 wookiebender: Farthing was excellent. I'm not sure if I'll read the others in the series (just not in the mood), but it was very good.

>23 Citizenjoyce:
art mirroring life. there's a case in texas right now of something pretty similar (she was 11 weeks pregnant when she had a brain aneurysm and is brain dead, had a living will, her husband wants to take her off life support as it's what she would have wanted but the state has an exception to following living wills if the person is a pregnant woman). more or less.

Elisa, I've been following it a little. http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/01/09/dead-woman-incubate-fetus/
it differs from the book in that in the real case it's the state of Texas that wants to keep the woman on life support, not her family. In the book it's the husband fighting to have a child. To me that's more defensible because it's personal. But it is weird to have real life imitating the book.

>26 Citizenjoyce:
thanks, i meant to find a link and then got distracted. it's hard for me to justify a state making this kind of decision, but the personal moral one in the book is much more interesting (and less cut and dry) to me.

For the first-quarter RTT Theme Read, just finished a reread of Frankenstein using the Norton Critical and reading all the supplemental materials. 4½**** review. I've got Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Third Edition) (Norton Critical Editions) around somewhere and ought to get to it while Mary Shelley's still in my mind.

I was surprised at how good Frankenstein was, and like CurrerBell, I vowed to read A Vindication of the Rights of Women, but haven't yet done so.
I just finished the very moving, engaging, perceptive and inspiring eleanor and park and have to leave right now to give it to my daughter. I pretty much want to give it to everyone.

finally am starting atwood's trilogy! i've got a week before the last is due at the library. wish me luck. oryx and crake here i come!

>29 Citizenjoyce:: I read Fangirl by the same author recently and that was excellent. I'll be trying to get a copy of Eleanor and Park as soon as I can!

I'm about to start an SF novel, Ancillary justice by Ann Leckie, which has received high praise for its treatment of gender.

I'm on The Interestings. So far it looks like it might be a rehash update of The Group or one of those mousy-girl-gets-burned-by-cool-kids sagas.

Highever, willing to suspend judgment until I can see where it's going.

Viz a viz Joyce's comment (29), I have downloaded some novels by Mary Wollstonecraft, including Mary and the Wrongs of Women, which are available on Kindle for free or a pittance. Interested to see what those might be all about.

>31 Sakerfalcon: the audiobook of Fangirl is waiting for me at the library. I'll pick it up when I'm near finishing The Outcasts. Texas Rangers and a prostitute with epilepsy on the old west, now I couldn't resist that.

Just started The Fever Tree, a historical novel set in England and South Africa in 1880.

#32 I know that The Interestings was really well received, and I was planning to read it until a friend whose taste I trust HATED it -- and she had already been a fan of Meg Wolitzer's earlier work. Curious to learn what you think.

Mixed on Olive Kitteridge-- beautifully written, an excellent regional ear, but I found Olive unsympathetic. Not that I have to find a character likeable to enjoy a book, but her abrasiveness seemed to erupt from irrational anxiety, and not flow from depth of thought or experience, which is exasperating. Nor did she ever develop any self-awareness about it. Still, the best sections (mostly where she appears only as a peripheral character) reminded me of The Spoon River Anthology, which I like a great deal.

Moving onto something completely different, I'm three quarters through Machine. I don't read much speculative fiction, but it's certainly holding my attention. I'm a little nervous it's about to collapse into post-modern sexual-violence-is-redemptive hell, but hopefully it'll avoid that.

I finished The Outcasts and rated it 4.5 (the ending was just too perfect for my tastes), If you at all like tales of the west, prostitution and ruthlessness, this is the book for you. I'm going to have to keep my eye out for more by Kathleen Kent
Now I get to start on Fangirl. I have such high hopes.

>35 7sistersapphist:. I thought that the character Olive Kitteridge was an antihero in the classical sense. She IS unsympathetic, and yet she rises to some occasions and is truly admirable. For me, that's what it was all about--a very real person in very real situations.

Interesting that we've hashed over Olive Kitteridge's character on at least one other thread. If she's unsympathetic, she seems to be interestingly unsympathetic.

Olive is grief-stricken through much of the book--she grieves for her lost lover, her son, her sick husband. She doesn't get sympathy from other people because she is gruff and somewhat emotionally closed, frumpy and kind of imposing, big.

She reminded me a lot of the eponymous character in Gertrude Stein's study, "The Good Anna.

i've given up on the possibility of being able to finish maddaddam by the time it's due back to the library on the 19th, but i'm a little over half done with the year of the flood, which i'm not liking as much as i liked oryx and crake...

That's funny, I liked Oryx and Crake least of the trilogy and Year of the Flood best. I keep thinking that now that I know how it all resolves I should go back to Oryx and Crake and see if I like it better.
I just finished my first ever Alice Munro, The View From Castle Rock and liked it very much. I know there is such a big push for Joyce Carol Oates to win the Nobel, and I like much of her work but not all. Munro seems much more accessible and relevant to my life, but that's hard to judge from one book. Besides, the Nobel committee seems to have little interest in accessibility or relevance to the average person. I'm thinking of one of the Japanese winners I tried to read and found very misogynistic, but I cant remember who.

>40 Citizenjoyce:
i went back to reading as soon as i posted 39 and within a page something happened that i found so satisfying that i am immediately liking it much better. i'm not disliking it, just not loving. didn't love the first, either, but definitely interesting. i like what she does with language and i like what (i think) she has to say. just not super into the story.

Speaking of The Year of the Flood, Hymns of the God’s Gardeners is available on CD. I read those hymns in TYotF satirically, but maybe that just says something about me because the music on the CD actually takes itself seriously and comes off with a rather "churchy" sound, and Atwood encourages its use in the environmental movement.

I've started an audiobook of The Goldfinch. At almost 800 pages it's going to take me a while. So far it seems good, I love the art history. I looked up the picture of the chained goldfinch that the book refers too. Very bleak. I'm hoping it won't be 800 pages of unremitting despair.

> 43 Hm, I looked at some of the reviews for that. It seems like you're in for a long ride. The reviews all seemed very mixed; even the people who liked it seem to have rather critical thoughts about it. I'm interested to hear your thoughts when you're done.

#43,44 I'm 60% of the way through The Goldfinch (on a kindle, obviously) and my opinion has gone up and down and, for a while, sideways as I stopped it to read something else.

Finished The Goldfinch over term break. Overall, I thought it was quite good, but the epilogue was over-written and heavy-handed.

Having finished The Interestings, another over-written novel with too many irrelevant side-tracks, I have to wonder where all the book editors are these days.

I have fantasies that some starchy editrix who lives on black coffee and cigarettes will take a pair of shears to these works and tell the authors, "Look, dear, you're a good writer and your characters are compelling, but you have GOT to break your tendency to preach to the reader and confuse her with dead-end sub-plots."

Kill your darlings, girls, kill your darlings.

>40 Citizenjoyce:

really, really enjoyed the last 1/3 or 1/4 or so of the year of the flood. couldn't put it down!

maddaddam is due at the library tomorrow. the race is on!

Reading White Oleander, at long last.

I too have often wondered about the limited amount of editing that is done to many books these days. "kill your darlings." I love that concept. Much of what is in these over-lomg books is good. It's just unnecessary and even asphyxiating.

i just soft edited (i'm not an actual editor but tried it for an acquaintance) a book for someone and told him to take out the best chapter in the book. it was probably the best written part of the book but otherwise added absolutely nothing; therefore detracted. he was more than hesitant. when i told him he could save it and rework it to use in something else, so wouldn't just necessarily be throwing it away, i might have convinced him. it's hard to edit out stuff you love but it has to be done!

Right. I think they need to be convinced to " save it and rework it to use in something else, so wouldn't just necessarily be throwing it away,". They might never do that, but it would be a way of easing it out of the present work. And if they loved it enough, they might use it again.

My guess is that editors and critics are a dying breed.

The NYT Sunday book review supplement, for example, hires other writers to write its reviews. While what Stephen King thinks of, say, Joyce Carol Oates latest novel, is certainly interesting, that's not literary criticism.

IMO, the critic elevates the reader's taste while holding the writer to some kind of standard that goes beyond mere coherence and continuity. The literary critic ought also to have some fairly well thought-out idea of what literature IS. A good critic doesn't just hate EVERYthing just to fool readers into thinking he has standards. And a good critic has read literary critical theory, however tiresome that sometimes is.

The critic also has to be a far-ranging reader who is reflective, sensitive to genre, open to innovation, appreciative of the creative process, and understanding of the intended audience.

I just don't think publishing houses and publications that do literary criticism are willing to shuck out a living wage to people who have the qualifications to be real critics.

When I went to the Columbia Publishing Course, we heard legendary editor Robert Gottlieb tell this story: his author Michael Crichton read a book Gottlieb had edited, and contacted Gottlieb to tell him how TERRIBLE it was and to ask him, why didn't he fix it? Gottlieb said: "You never saw what it looked like BEFORE I edited it."

It's a lot easier to insist that a debut be picture perfect and sparkling like a diamond. The publication of debuts is flexible, and, well, the editor and author only get one shot at book one. Books two and three and beyond are, unfortunately, not quite as flexible editorially. And as a reader, you can never really know what happened. Was the first draft truly shitty beyond your comprehension? (this has happened to me). Was the book scheduled for release soon, and the pressure was on to get it out on time? (this also happens...). Has the author grown so powerful that his or her word goes? (Yup, though usually this is a bit more obvious to the reader, because it usually applies to big bestselling authors only).

All I can say is, I believe true editors are not a dying breed. I see passionate, thoughtful, engaged editors at work every day.

SaraHope, yes, good point that something could be even more awful before the editor did what he could to fix it. Did I read somewhere that after Harry Potter became such a cash cow that JK Rowling insisted that her work only receive only editing for errors; no developmental editing was allowed?

I used to work for a textbook publishing company. My department head was eventually persuaded by the developmental editors that it would be cheaper and quicker to interview a subject matter expert, ghost the book (my job), and then give the SMEs authorial credit and royalties, than to try to make something of the dreck (some of it plagiarized) that they wrote.

We would have the MS fact-checked and then sent to the SME for final approval.

I generally enjoyed the work, and most of the SMEs I worked with were quite appreciative and collaborative.

Frankly, I think being an editor would be a much harder job than ghosting. You have to suggest, push, guide, prod, but you can't really take the thing into your own hands.

I have worked as an editor for many years (now freelance) including, years ago, for a textbook publisher. I have had authors I work with tell me they don't get as much attention from their publisher's editors as they get from me, but that's just anecdotal. I do think that the trend towards freelance editors has meant that younger editors are not getting the benefit of working with more experienced editors as they learn. And yes, although I have not ghosted, I do think editing is more difficult. I recently had to turn down a project because I could tell from the manuscript that it had to be so completely rethought that I knew both the author and I would end up tearing our hair out and hating each other.

ETA I have never worked on fiction, only nonfiction.

#55 I think things are probably different on the popular fiction and non-fiction side (as opposed to academic, technical, or textbook). All of our books are acquired by a particular editor, not by the publishing house in general--and bringing in those projects and making them shine is how editors make their reputations and continue to get the best submissions. The only occasions on which a freelance editor might be hired is usually for narrative non-fiction, if the author has a great story but isn't a great writer, and I've only known that to happen on a couple occasions. Most non-writers who are proposing a book (athletes, celebrities, people with a true-life story to tell) come to the table with a co-writer already, and the book is edited directly by the acquiring editor.

I'm listening to an audiobook of Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, (who is becoming one of my favorite authors), and got to a part today in which one of the male characters has written a story and the female character edits it. He says, "You've cut out all the best parts. What's left?"
"Rhythm," she says. "You have good rhythm."

I'm thinking of the 2 books I've read that suffered the most from lack of editing: I Know This Much Is True in which Wally Lamb tells us everything he's ever learned about everything in the world, and 1Q84 in which Haruki Murakami seems to be trying to sustain a kind of nebulous mood by repeating, repeating, repeating until I wanted to throw the book against the wall. I didn't know J. K. Rowling had a policy about light editing, but it doesn't seem to have done her any harm. To me these 2 guys sunk themselves so far in their books that I don't know if I'll ever read anything else by them .

I'm enjoying The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby at the moment - I just had great gulps of it reading in bed for a couple of hours!

I've started listening to My Beloved World. Thanks for mentioning it, Citizen Joyce. It is really wonderful that we have someone with her experience on the SCOTUS.

nohrt4me2, Did you finish Hild? What did you think? A friend was horribly disappointed by it, so now I am wondering about it, despite the gushing reviews that I keep reading.

My first disappointment of the new year was the YA book Divergent. Not only was the writing not very good, and the inclination toward teen romance really banal, but I interpreted it as an allegory for the religious right's crusade against the intellectual elite. Yuck. Anyone else get that?

@59 re Hild. I had to put this aside, and I may not be able to stomach a return.

I left off when Hild was age 8. So far, she is incredibly insipid and shows none of the aptitude for leadership, scholarship, or administration that she was known for.

Her sister Hereswith, who was also extremely influential in her own right (and also a canonized), comes off as a snotty teenager. Fine, but the Griffith is going to have to patch that relationship up, as the sisters seem to have become very close later in life and were similarly dedicated to promoting scholarship and political stability.

However, what really took the cake for me was the depiction of their mother, Breguswith, as ***SPOILER*** a poisoner and intriguer, whose methods would likely have been suspected, given what was known about herbal medicine at the time, even had she managed to avoid detection as the perp. How such a woman would have inspired her daughters to the accomplishments they managed is beyond me.

I left off Hild even earlier, at page 38. I found it absolutely uninteresting which is disappointing since it's one of the few new books I've bought recently instead of checking it out from the library. I wonder if Ill ever get back to it.

Thanks, both of you. I guess that I can cross Hild off my list since you have echoed what my trusted friend told me. I wonder where the heck all of these glowing reviews are coming from??

Griffith certainly seems to be giving St. Hild the "Mists of Avalon" feminist revisionist history treatment, but, to be fair, it was just very dull and maddening, and I will probably go back and slog through it later just to see where Griffith takes it.

But the first 15 or percent was sure dreadful.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through The Goldfinch and I have to say, the editing is not bothering me at all. Things I would have left out or curtailed turn out to be quite necessary. Like Gone Girl it's full of unexpected twists. I can't stop reading.
On audio I just finished Fangirl and Rainbow Rowell once again is the perfect YA auhor. The chaacters are interesting; the romance is necessary because these kids are 18 - hormones and all - but surprise, romance doesn't solve the world's problems. It's not the end of all things but rather a way to help the character be her whole self. 2 really good books this week. Lucky me.

i've had some pretty great reads this month so far; probably one of my best quality months of reading in a long long time. now i'm just starting carry the one and only 3 pages in am pretty sure i'm going to really like this one, too!

Joyce, will be interested to see what you make of the epilogue in The Goldfinch re length and necessity.

I don't mean to bash the book; I felt it was worthwhile. The Interestings was much more of a disappointment.

Have downloaded some Frances Trollope (mother of Anthony) novels. She launched her career with Domestic Manners of the Americans, and apparently it was a big hit and encouraged her son to write. Also downloaded That Unfortunate Marriage. Will be interesting to see how mother and son compare as writers.

I just started The Snow Child this morning. It has been on my TBR pile for a while, and I think that the frigid weather reminded me to read it. I seem to have been on an unintentional theme read about motherhood lately (just read The Language of Flowers and The Light Between Oceans) and, since I am not a mother, I never seem to be as enthusiastic about these books as others. But we'll see.

This morning started Sarah Addison Allen's latest, Lost Lake. Generally light with a little magic, Allen is a go-to comfort read and a nice change of pace from the fantasy I've been reading lately.

I've finished and recommended The Goldfinch to my daughter but doubt she'll read it because of the size. That almost put me off too. Donna Tartt takes 700 pages to write a compelling, tortuous story about art and loss, then, just in case we don't get the point, she writes a lengthy epilogue explaining the Woody Allen defense, "The heart wants what the heart wants." That's a pretty indefensible statement (as it was when Woody said it), which is why, I guess, she feels the need to spend so much time working it out. I think that was a brilliant ploy. Most of us have had some dealings with the kind of person who is willing to rationalize forever, we may even have done it ourselves. All the excuses sound so reasonable. I think she was taking a chance with the epilogue, but for me, it worked as excellent character development.

Joyce, interesting take on the epilogue, but I'm not quite following what you think it adds to our understanding of Theo. That he is still rationalizing? I'd say he's trying to get beyond the rationalizing, but he's not there yet ... which we knew before the epilogue. But Tartt spends so much time on it, I hate to just blow it off.

I'll duplicate this on a separate thread for anyone who wants a "spoilers allowed" thread on this book.

Thanks for starting that thread. I already feel that I've said too much here because I think this is a book best read with no knowledge of any of its plot or characters.

Started Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House by Mary Lincoln's "modiste" Elizabeth Keckley.

The "30 years a slave" part is dispatched pretty quickly. So clearly, harrowing as some of Keckley's experiences were in slavery, slavery isn't going to be the focus of the book. As far as I can tell, this is more the story of Keckley's business acumen and ability to make her own way into society circles as a dressmaker, despite the looming Civil War.

Interesting fact: Keckley was dressmaker to Mrs. Jefferson Davis, and was almost persuaded to go South with her as secession was discussed. She speaks kindly of the Davis family and Sen. Davis in particular.

finally finished carry the one last night and was mildly disappointed with it. it's decent, but i was coming in with high hopes. now about to start the autobiography of my mother, recommended to me probably about 10 years ago. (my tbr pile grows faster than i can handle it!)