rainpebble turns orange in 2015

glitter-graphics.com

MMmmmm, ORANGES. Vitamin C is so good for you!
And Baileys is just plain good.




And because I am still reading last year's lists:
a list for ranking the L/L as I read them:

http://www.librarything.com/list/9446/all/Your-favorite-books-from-the-2014-Bail....

MY 2015 ORANGE/BAILEYS READS:

ORANGE JANUARY:
1. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent; S/L, 2014; (5+*)
2. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt; S/L, 2014; (3 1/2*)
3. Honor by Elif Safak; L/L, 2013; (4 1/2*)
4. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver; S/L, 2013;
(2 1/2*)
5. Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson; L/L, 1997; (1*)
6. Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill; L/L, 2005; (3*)
_______________________________________________________

7. Lost in the Forest by Sue Miller; L/L, 2006; (3 1/2*);
8. A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie; S/L, 2015; (5*)
9. The Bees by Laline Paull; S/L, 2015; (4 1/2*)
10. Outline by Rachel Cusk; S/L, 2015; (3*)
11. Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey; L/L, 2015; (3*)
12. Dear Thief by Samantha Harvey; L/L, 2015; (2 1/2*)
13. Spinsters by Pagan Kennedy; S/L 1996; (2 1/2*)
14. How to be Both by Ali Smith; S/L 2015; (1 1/2*)
15. The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan; Orange L/L, 2011; ROOT, {acquired 8/16/2011}; (1*)

I am looking at my first Orange of the year to be Burial Rites by Hannah Kent from the 2014 Orange/Baileys short list.

1. (5+*)

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent; S/L, 2014; (5+*)

This is an amazing historical novel. I will be remembering this one for a long time. The story is so heartbreaking that I wish it wasn't true. The writing is beautiful and just everything about this book is wonderful except for the horror of the truth.
The book is well written, interesting, emotional and informative. It is a very compelling read about a woman who was abandoned at an early age by her unmarried mother. She was left to take care of herself and defend herself while working as a servant girl. The coldness throughout the story made me feel chilled even as I read the book, as though I were in the croft itself.
The protagonist fell in love with a cruel man who owned a very isolated farm (though all the crofts seem isolated in this story) and went to live with him there where murderous and manipulating individuals greedily decided her fate.
This is strong fiction based on fact. Iceland is fascinating. The way the people lived is fascinating. The story is compelling and the characters are very well developed.
Burial Rites is so amazing that it may well be my best read of the year. I very highly recommend it.

Burial Rites was a solid 5* read for me. I don't know if I will find a better book this year.

Good luck with *Goldfinch*, Belva. It was O.K. or a little better for me, but the writing irritated me.
Now you have me eager for Burial Rites. I'm stringing out An Unnecessary Woman because it's so good. Two in a row will be fantastic!

Goldfinch will be my first Tartt so I know nothing about her writing as of yet. I hope I like it but one never knows. As for Burial Rites, it is not a difficult read but is a bit (or a lot) dark. That being said, I cannot praise it enough.

I am going to have to see if my library has An Unnecessary Woman. It sounds really good and the reviews read that way, the star ratings read that way so I may have to read it.
Two in a row is always fantastic Peggy!~!
hugs,

2. (3 1/2*)

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt; S/L, 2014; (3 1/2*)

Late last evening I began my 2nd Orange of ORANGE JANUARY: The Goldfinch. So far, 80 pages in, I am liking it a great deal. We will see how it plays out.

Edited to sat that now 519 pages in, I am being held hostage by this book!

I adored this book and was totally fascinated by it until about 7/8 into it and then suddenly it all went to hell on me. I had to force myself to read the last bits of the book. Had it continued in the same vein as the former part of the book, it would most likely have been a 4 1/2* or 5* read for me. But sadly this was not to be.
I loved how Tartt grows her characters but the characterizations did not seem to follow through til the end.

3. Honor by Elif Safak; L/L, 2013; (4 1/2*)

This is a beautifully written book of a Turkish family that comes to be separated by those going off to England & other places in an attempt to make a better life for themselves and their families. One daughter, one of a pair of twins, remains behind and eventually grows into becoming a midwife. Her twin lives in England with her family.
This is a difficult book for me to review in that there are so many story lines within these covers. But they were all easy to follow and very interesting. The book contains many incidents of great beauty and also many of horrific events. I learned about the Turkish/Kurdish cultures and appreciated the knowledge & sharing of this author.
I rated the book 4 1/2 stars and fully intend to read more by her. She is a beautiful writer. I highly recommend this book to any who are interested in reading about cultures other than their own.

4. (2 1/2*)

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver; S/L, 2013; (2 1/2*)

The summary for Flight Behavior and the first part of the story caused me to look forward to an unusual and interesting read. I was disappointed when the unusual turned out to be the mundane life of Dellarobia Turnbow and her impoverished family. However the book did hold my interest only because of the information regarding the life cycle and migratory habits of the Monarch butterfly. Other than that the book became boring very quickly.
I have read more than one book on this subject matter that was much better written and far more interesting.

5. (1*)

Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson; L/L, 1997; (1*)
My thoughts & comments:

Well, I hacked up a hairball with this one and am sitting here showing my ignorance.
Giving this read 1 star and that is simply for originality. Reading this book, I felt that Winterson was writing for the shock factor & to just write something over-the-top. I can understand the brilliance of the author's mind but not of her writing.
I have read her before and really enjoyed her writing but not here.
My unwanted advice: put it in a textbook. But then again, perhaps I simply prefer a plot-driven novel.

6. (3*)

Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill; Orange JANUARY; L/L, 2005; (3*)

This was a very good book. Not great but good. It is the story of 2 1/2 year old Ursula Wong who, while visiting the Upper Peninsula with her parents, falls down an abandoned mineshaft. While her parents and rescue workers scramble to rescue her the story goes back into time to tell the story of her ancestors. We learn that they came from China, Sweden, and Finland. All of them lived with secrets and heartache. Combined and now at the epicenter of all of this ancestral genealogy is this little girl No one knows if she has survived the fall.
Inter-chaptered with the ancestor's stories and the current events are the stories of the lives of Ursula's parents. The story of how Ursula came to be is interesting and moving. The underlying theme of the book is that we are all interconnected and the actions we take and the choices we make in our lives affect far more and reach out further than our lives.

Overall a very underwhelming ORANGE JANUARY for me. My one shining star was Burial Rites which I am still crowing about. Such a wonderful book even though such downtrodden subject matter.
The Goldfinch & Ursula, Under were both good and I think that The Goldfinch 'could' have been great but was not in the end, for me.
I hope for better choices in my monthly Orange/Bailey reads & for ORANGE JULY.
later days,
belva

My February answer to Darryl's An Orange/Baileys a month:



7. Lost in the Forest by Sue Miller; Orange L/L, 2006;
(3 1/2*)

I thought this to be a brilliant novel in many ways. It's also frightening as it begins with a with the death of a husband and parent. Miller wrote this first part so well that I physically felt an unrelenting sense of doom.

The novel is set in the wine country of the Napa Valley in California of the 1980s. The story is drawn against the this backdrop. The stories within the novel are written exquisitely and lives are lived and torn apart. I thought the book to be quite good but in the end it got away from the author in a way that was disheartening for this reader.

2015 ORANGE/BAILEYS LONGLIST:

Rachel Cusk: Outline; (short listed); (1 1/2*)

Lissa Evans: Crooked Heart

Patricia Ferguson: Aren’t We Sisters?

Xiaolu Guo: I Am China

Samantha Harvey: Dear Thief; (2 1/2*)

Emma Healey: Elizabeth is Missing; (2*)

Emily St. John Mandel: Station Eleven

Grace McCleen: The Offering

Sandra Newman: The Country of Ice Cream Star

Heather O’Neil: The Girl Who Was Saturday Night

Laline Paull: The Bees; (short listed); (5*)

Marie Phillips: The Table of Less Valued Knights

Rachel Seiffert: The Walk Home

Kamila Shamsie: A God in Every Stone; (short listed); (5*)

Ali Smith: How to be Both; (short listed); (1 1/2*)

Sara Taylor: The Shore

Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread; (short listed)

Sarah Waters: The Paying Guests; (short listed)

Jemma Wayne: After Before

Paul P. Wong: The Life of a Banana

AND THE WINNER IS: HOW TO BE BOTH BY ALI SMITH

My March answer to Darryl's An Orange/Baileys a month:



8. A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie; S/L, 2015; (5*)

Stretching from the ancient Persian Empire to the waning days of the British Empire, this novel has an enormous span that immediately captured this reader.
It begins on the eve of World War I, with Vivian Rose, a young British archaeologist on a dig in Turkey with an old family friend, a Turkish man, Bey. He is searching for an artifact from the earliest days of the Persian Empire, a silver circlet once belonging to an early Persian king, which Alexander the Great himself supposedly carried to India. Vivian falls in love with both man and profession and becomes smitten with every part of this foreign world.
As the war overtakes such civilized practices as archaeology, Vivian returns to England never to see Bey again. Years later she travels east again, this time to the Peshawar Valley as an independent new woman but inside she is still on a quest for the circlet that had so obsessed the man she had loved. Her vision is still deeply bound to the landscape and the light of India.
On her long train ride through this fabled territory she encounters Qayyum Gul, a young Muslim man from Peshawar. He is a soldier of the English Crown, who lost an eye in combat at Ypres. She was the nurse who gave him a cloth in which to keep his glass eye but they do not remember one another from those days.Both Qayyum and his mountainous home become part of Vivian's life as does his younger brother Najeeb.
Najeeb becomes an archaeologist and one of the directors of a small museum in Peshawar. In the spirit of E.M. Forster and his own attempt at fusing east and west in A Passage to India, Shamsie portrays Najeeb as the successor to the Englishwoman's vision of the region. The past has its glories and its beautiful images.
Meanwhile, in the novel's present-day Peshawar, tension between the occupying English and the militant Indians, Hindu and Muslim, grows more menacing by the day. But even as disaster looms, so does our fascination with these characters. — the possibility that British forces may massacre peacefully demonstrating civilians — seems imminent, our empathy for the Gul brothers and their civilized British friend grows. As does the novel's breadth.
From the far distant past of the Persian Empire to the British massacre in Peshawar, we can see the outline of that ancient circlet boldly portrayed, representing a bond between times and peoples that brings to mind Forster's famous edict about linking people, places, histories: "Only connect." In this way, Najeeb looks at the circlet and sees "a greeting across centuries."

I highly recommend this novel to anyone who, as I do, has a fascination with the time of the Raj or Indian history. I love the storyline, the way it was written (though if it had one falldown that would be it), the characters and most everything about it. I will be reading more of her work.

My April answer to Darryl's An Orange/Baileys a month:



9. The Bees by Laline Paull; S/L, 2015; (4 1/2*)

I read this one in bed in two nights. What a fascinating read. I was enchanted by the storytelling and the characters of the bees.
The only thing I can find myself comparing this book to is the movie Bugs and I loved it even more.
The Bees is a very nicely done bit of fiction on the life of the hive and all of the workers & the queen therein. I loved reading about the hierarchy of the hive and all of the different jobs of the workers told in the voice of a sanitation worker. I realize that this is a work of fiction but it has spurred me on to find a good nonfiction book on bees.
I can definitely see why this one is on the short list for the Bailey's Women's Fiction prize.

My May answer to Darryl's An Orange/Baileys a Month:



10. Outline by Rachel Cusk; S/L 2015; library book; (1 1/2*)

no review, just my thoughts and comments:

While Cusk's writing is very good this book felt like an opportunity for her to attempt an experimental writing style. It's body consists of a series of conversations, with the only links being the narrator and Greece, where most of the 'novel' takes place. There is no story nor is there a plot and I guess I favor plot driven novels.

The book could not hold my interest. I thought there were too many uninspired thoughts to pull it together and lastly I guess I just didn't like it.

My June answer to Darryl's An Orange/Baileys a Month:



11. Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey; L/L 2015; (2*)

no review, just my thoughts and comments:

Thought to be brilliant, this book just did not work for me.
I was unable to stay in the story/narrative. I found no interest, no fascination and no curiosity. My brain must be dead.

Though a very interesting and timely premise (I am a 67 year old woman with a 97 year old mother who suffers from dementia) yet I could barely get through it. I found it extremely slow going. For me the concept was better than the execution. Certainly the pace and writing mirrored the internal life of the protagonist. Slow, frustrating, and confusing. The book quickly became tiresome for me.

ORANGE/BAILEY'S JULY:



12. Dear Thief by Samantha Harvey; L/L 2015; (2 1/2*)

no review; just my thoughts & comments:

I gave this book 2 1/2 stars for the writing, which I thought lovely.
But here again, I have chosen a book (3 in a row) to read that is not plot driven but instead a letter to an old friend. I engaged with the beginning of the book but lost any bond between myself and the narrative about a third of the way through. From that point on I simply felt as if I was flailing in the River Thames where our protagonist found the beautiful bones.
Perhaps I will revisit these books again one day. My head is just not in the right place for this type of book at this time.

Lovely review of A God in Every Stone.

Thank you Jane.

It's been interesting to read your thoughts on the short listers, Belva. I've just given five stars to a book that had very little plot, so certainly not a deal breaker for me, but you've reinforced my suspicions that Outline is not for me.

ORANGE/BAILEY'S JULY:



13. Spinsters by Pagan Kennedy; S/L 1996; (2 1/2*)

Spinsters is a story about two single sisters in their thirties who head out on a road trip after the death of their father who had suffered a lingering illness.
Being used to caring for him, it takes them a few days to shake off the feeling of freedom and the knowledge that their time is their own. It is a short and simple story that reads well and easily but is nothing to write home about. I did find it to be a good and a comfortable book to curl up with.

ORANGE/BAILEY'S JULY:



14. How to be Both by Ali Smith; S/L 2015; (1 1/2*)

I will give this one 1 1/2 stars for originality. How to be Both perhaps put more words on the written page that seemed to be there for the benefit of the author's psyche than for the/this reader but talk about strange................ This book felt & read so strangely for me.
I know a lot of readers thrilled to this book and indeed at the beginning it comes off charming and fresh but it quickly became overly wordy and boring. I can see what would draw some readers in but I was not one of them. The duel nature of the novel could have been fascinating but I didn't find it so in this case though I can understand how some would love it. For me, it was a waste of my precious reading time.

I must say that I have never felt more illiterate or more unintellectual than while reading this year's Orange/Baileys listed books. While I do have many more to read, after reading six of them with four of them being short listed, I have found only 2 of them to be worthy contenders. Most of them have felt like experiments in writing.

Belva, I've had years when I've felt completely in sync with the judges and years when I've concluded they must have very different literary tastes to myself! I'd already been underwhelmed by previous novels by several of the shortlisted authors so decided not to rush to their new ones.

I am still intrigued by the Samantha Harvey though and will read Elizabeth is Missing at some point.

My answer to Darryll's An Orange/Bailey's a Month challenge:



15. The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan; Orange L/L, 2011; ROOT, {acquired 8/16/2011}; (1*)

I have tried to read this novel twice, however I can't seem to make it through. (rather like Moby Dick in that way for me)
I found the writing is just not good enough to carry the story/stories (?). I didn't like it and in the end I was unable to make myself care enough to read the darned thing.