Nickelini Reads in 2021, part 2

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Nickelini Reads in 2021, part 2

1Nickelini
Modificato: Set 30, 2021, 2:44 pm

We are entering the second third of the year, so I think it's a good time to start a new thread.

BOOKS READ IN 2021


This might be my favourite bridge in the world: The Ponte Della Madelina, aka The Devil's Bridge. We make sure we visit this spot just north Lucca, in Tuscany, whenever we visit my husband's family in Italy. It is a crossing on the Via Francigena-- the medieval pilgrimage route from Canterbury through France and Switzerland, on the way to Rome, and then on to the Holy Land.

September

67. Life on the Refrigerator Door, Alice Kuipers
66. Fluent Forever, Gabriel Wyner
65. On Being Ill, Virginia Woolf
64. All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews
63. The Last September, Elizabeth Bowen
62. Wave, Eric Walter

August

61. Wildlives, Monique Proulx
60. The Emissary, Yoko Tawada
59. The Italian Matchmaker, Santa Montefiore
58. In Other Words, Jhumpa Lahari
57. The Garden of Monsters, Lorenza Pieri
56. After Hannibal, Barry Unsworth

July

55. Imaginary Homelands, Salman Rushdie
54. Breath, Tim Winton
53. Bitter Orange, Claire Fuller
52. Bridget Jones's Diary (And Other Writing): 25th Anniversary Edition, Helen Fielding
51. Feminist City, Leslie Kern

June

50. The Godmother, Hannelore Cayre
49. Machiavelli, Ross King
48. Dreaming of Italy, TA Williams
47. Why Should I Learn to Speak Italian: The Strugglers' Guide to "le Bella Lingua", Gerry Dubbin
46. Spring, Ali Smith
45. We All Fall Down, Daniel Kalla

May

44. One More Croissant for the Road, Felicity Cloake
43. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton
42. On the Edge, Markus Werner
41. A Girl Returned, Donetella Di Pietrantonio
40. The Likeness, Tana French
39. Volatile Texts: Us Two, Zsuzsanna Gahse
38. Food Floor: My Woodward's Days, Margaret Cadwaladr
37. Hansel & Greta: a Fairy Tale Revolution, Jeanette Winterson

April

36. Beyond the Pale, Emily Urquhart
35. Anxious People, Fredrik Backman
34. The Housekeeper & the Professor, Yoko Ogawa
33. A Fairy Tale, Jonas T Bengtsson
32. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
31. Bride of New France, Suzanne Desrochers
30. Tales From The Inner City, Shaun Tan
29. The Cockroach, Ian McEwan

March

28. The Wanderer, Peter Van Den Ende
27. How To Build A Girl, Caitlin Moran
26. Here Is the Beehive, Sarah Crossan
25. Whatever, Michel Houellebecq
24. Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Winnow
23. Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
22. Passing, Nella Larson
21. Mothering Sunday, Graham Swift
20. Venice Rising: Aqua Granda, Pandemic, Rebirth; various
19. Down By the River, Edna O'Brien
18. There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
17. The Chalet, Catherine Cooper

February

16. The Better Mother, Jen Sookfong Lee
15. The Weather Detective, Peter Wohlleben
14. Theft By Finding, David Sedaris
13. Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
12. Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill, Dimitri Verhulst
11. The Hunting Party, Lucy Foley
10. Peace Talks, Tim Finch

January

9. Alpine Cooking: recipes and stories from Europe's grand mountaintops, Mereditth Erickson
8. Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice
7. The End of Her, Shari Lapena
6. The Gilded Cage, Camilla Lackberg
5. Fantasviss, C.H. Roserens
4. Happisland, C.H. Roserens
3. Dunger, Joy Cowley
2. The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry
1. The Lost Spells, Robert MacFarlane

Earlier header pictures, changed each season:


Summer in Ticino, Switzerland


Magnolia blooms in Ticino, Switzerland

2Nickelini
Modificato: Ott 1, 2021, 1:09 am

READING STATS 2021 (updated monthly)

Nationality of author:

UK - 20
Canada - 14
Switzerland - 4
Italy - 4
Ireland - 4
USA - 4
Australia - 3
Sweden - 2
Belgium - 2
France - 2
Japan - 2
New Zealand - 1
Nigeria - 1
Germany - 1
Russia - 1
Denmark - 1
It's complicated - 1

Female/male authors:

Female - 38
Male - 27
Mixed - 2

Original language:

English - 49
German -3
French - 3
Italian - 3
Swedish - 2
Japanese - 2
Dutch - 1
Russian - 1
Danish - 1
No words - 1

Year published:

1929 x 2
1930
1972
1991
1994
1996
1997
2003
2004 x 2
2006
2007 x 2
2008 x 3
2009 x 2
2011 x 3
2012 x 2
2013 x 2
2014 x 4
2015 x 2
2016 x 5
2017 x 3
2018 x 4
2019 x 13
2020 x 9
2021

Travels in reading (where my books took me) :

Victorian-era Essex / Marlborough Sound, New Zealand 2013 / Iceland 2012 / Switzerland 2017 / Stockholm 2018 / fictional upstate New York town 2018 / foodie places in the Alps 2018 / dystopian Northwestern Ontario 2018 / Austrian Alps 2018 / Scottish Highlands over New Year's 2018 / village in Belgium / Nigeria 1980s / Sedaris's world 1977-2002 / Vancouver 1948 - 1982 / French Alps 1998 & 2020 / Soviet Russia & Post-Soviet Russia 1972 - 2002 / Ireland 1992 / Venice, Italy 2019 & 2020 / Berkshire March 30, 1924 / Chicago & NYC 1929 / Louisiana & SoCal 1958 - 1986 /France 1990s / London & Cork 2020 / Wolverhampton & London 1990s / oceans of the world / UK 2019 / Paris & Quebec 1600s / Invisible Cities / Denmark 1986-1999 / Japan 1992 / Sweden 2019 / Canada & Tanzania 2010-2015 / Vancouver 1890s - 1990s / Switzerland 2015 / Ireland 2005 / Italy 1976 / Lugano, Switzerland, 2003 / France 2018 / Genoa, Italy 2018 / England & Scotland 2018 / Pretty places in Italy 2019 / Renaissance Italy / Paris, 2017 / Hampshire 1969 / SW Ausralia 1970s / Umbria Italy, 1995 / Maremma, Tuscany, Italy 1980s / Amalfi Coast, Italy 2008 / Japan The Future / Laurentians, Quebec 2008 /

Author's nationality 2021


Create Your Own Visited Countries Map


DNF -- abandoned books

The Gift of the Game - Tom Allen
Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay

3Nickelini
Modificato: Mag 2, 2021, 3:24 pm

37. Hansel and Greta: A Fairy Tale Revolution, Jeanette Winterson, 2020


Cover comments: It’s okay. By that I mean, it’s rather nice. However, this is Hasel and Gretal – a story that has so much to offer an illustrator. This could have been done better.

Comments: This is a modern retelling of the Hansel and Gretal fairy tale, which is probably my favourite fairy tale after Red Riding Hood. It has an environmental twist, Gretal’s name is changed to “Greta” after Greta Thunberg, and the witch is a sympathetic character.

I’m a fan of retellings, but this one didn’t work for me. The author says she wrote this with pantomime jokes and larger than life silliness, but I don’t know who would find this funny. On top of that, I don’t find the illustrations attractive. There is a wealth of potential to illustrate H&G, and these black, white and green silhouettes don’t impress me at all.

Other readers have noted the fat-shaming and fat phobia.

Recommended for: I actually don’t recommend this.

Rating: I’m forgiving with my opinion when it comes to fairy tale material, so I’m generously giving this 2 stars. This is one of four in the Fairy Tale Revolution series. I won’t look for any of the others.

Why I Read This Now: I always love a fairy tale.

4Nickelini
Modificato: Mag 2, 2021, 3:25 pm

38. Food Floor: My Woodward’s Days, Margaret Cadwaladr, 2020


Cover comments: Yep, that’s the store she writes about.


Comments: Woodward’s was a chain of department and grocery stores in Western Canada that operated between 1892 and 1993. My husband heard about this on CBC Radio, and thought I’d be interested because I worked for Woodward’s Food Floor for two years in the early 1980s.

This short book covers a bit of history of the main store in downtown Vancouver (I worked at a different location), the unique neighbourhood, and her time working there as a university student. Tons of coloured pictures that cover a century of the area, the people, and ephemera from the store.

Why I Read This Now: Before the age of mega-super-grocery stores and big box stores, Woodward’s was THE go-store if you wanted specialty items or quality house-brand products. They also had killer $1.49 day sales once a month. The store loved to hire students, and I was one of the lucky teenagers in Vancouver to get this plum job packing groceries. It paid $7.68 an hour when minimum wage was $2.25. We were paid in cash every Saturday, and had a 15% discount in the department store, so a lot of my pay was spent at the Lancome, Estee Lauder, and Shishado counters.

Rating: 5 stars

Recommended for: people interested in the history of Vancouver.

5labfs39
Mag 2, 2021, 6:26 pm

>3 Nickelini: Have you read The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy? It's set during WWII. I gave it four stars, but I didn't write a review, so I can't give details of why I liked it. The cover is nice, I think:



>4 Nickelini: How interesting. And thanks for sharing your personal connection to the book.

6Nickelini
Mag 2, 2021, 7:05 pm

>5 labfs39:
I do know that book, and I've owned it for years (over 10, I think). It's always on my "someday" list. I guess since I bought it I've actively been avoiding books about WWII, which is why I never get to it. I have heard excellent things about it though.

7labfs39
Mag 2, 2021, 8:08 pm

>6 Nickelini: May I ask why you actively avoid WWII books? I'm curious since sometimes it seems like that's all I read about!

8Nickelini
Mag 2, 2021, 9:09 pm

>7 labfs39:

I read my first WWII book in 1973. It was The Diary of Anne Frank and it gave me nightmares. My parents talked about WWII a lot. I continued to read WWII books and watch WWII movies until about 10-15 years ago I said "enough!" Once in a while one will sneak in (If This Is A Man, for example), and they are often excellent, but still, I prefer not to got there. They give me nightmares and I feel like I've heard it all. Which obviously I haven't, so I know there are more in my future. I'd like to pick and choose them carefully though.

I feel exactly the same way about American slavery. It was a few years later that the miniseries Roots came out, and I was horrified, but very interested about the topic for years to come. Enough! Again, I know that I will read something about slavery and see an amazing film about it, but I will be careful about which ones.

I sometimes see people say "I just can't read about cruelty to animals", and that bothers me too. But it's nothing compared to reading about widespread methodical and systemic cruelty of one group of people to another. I read for entertainment and relaxation. Reading about people suffering is poor entertainment.

As for just plain old WWII, by which I mean war stories, I'm not much interested in battles and politics. I don't mind the occasional WWI story, because I find the human element in the trenches to be interesting.

9labfs39
Mag 2, 2021, 9:58 pm

>8 Nickelini: For me I find fictional accounts of torture, assault, etc intolerable, for example Girl with Dragon Tattoo. The world is horrible enough, why create sensationalized violence. As you say, people suffering is poor entertainment, and fictionalized accounts are that, entertainment. But for me, history is different. It happened, it was real, and I feel an obligation to remember what happened in order to try and understand it, and out of respect, if that is the right word. I don't know. Some think that to read about actual people and events is more difficult than fiction, but for me it's the other way around. Yet I hate reading about true crime. I think what I find compelling about history is trying to understand how and why large groups of people can be convinced to act in horrible ways and how others act heroically despite the dangers. I completely understand the need to say "enough" though.

10dchaikin
Mag 3, 2021, 2:35 pm

Finally got caught up here, so just posting a hello on your new thread. Enjoying the books and your commentary.

11Nickelini
Mag 3, 2021, 11:49 pm

>9 labfs39: - fictional vs real suffering . . . I definitely get your point, but I think I have more of a problem with real suffering. The scariest movie I ever saw was Platoon (it's about young men in the Vietnam War -- terrifying).

12sallypursell
Mag 4, 2021, 11:30 am

I'm here catching up as well. I take it that If This is a Man is the same book as Survival at Auschwitz? I wonder why they changed the title. They moved from a fine title to a boring one, even if it is descriptive.

13sallypursell
Mag 4, 2021, 11:51 am

Thank you for your answer on Jane Urquhart, Joyce. I will start with Away or The Stone Carvers, if my library has them.

14Nickelini
Mag 4, 2021, 1:37 pm

>12 sallypursell: The original is Se Questo E' Un Uomo and I have seen that title translated into English -- going out on a limb and thinking maybe in Britain? I think the Survival at Auschwitz title was to dumb it down for the North American audience. I find that books are too often translated to American English and it always seem insulting to everyone involved

15dchaikin
Mag 4, 2021, 1:54 pm

>14 Nickelini: that’s all correct. Reception was quiet at first. Uk translation was released with If This is a Man. Later the US version was titled Survival in Auschwitz. I don’t recall whether it became well-known before or after the US release.

16sallypursell
Mag 5, 2021, 12:18 am

>14 Nickelini: You are right, that does seem insulting. It is as if North Americans don't read, when plenty of us do. In fact, I think more of us read than don't, although the material is sometimes not of a high caliber.

17sallypursell
Mag 5, 2021, 12:20 am

>15 dchaikin: Very interesting, Dan. Thank you for that information.

18SandDune
Modificato: Mag 5, 2021, 3:37 am

>14 Nickelini: My U.K. edition of the Primo Levi book is called If This is a Man. I’d never seen it referred to be another title until today.

19Nickelini
Mag 6, 2021, 11:56 pm

39. Volatile Texts: Us Two, Zsuzsanna Gahse, 2005, translated from German by Chenxin Jiang, 2016


cover comments: On one hand, it fits with the Dalkey Archive look in general. But on the other hand, ugh! This is a book set all over Switzerland -- is this grainy, underexposed photo the best they can do? Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Comments: Zsuzsanna Gahse was born in Hungary and grew up in Austria and Germany. She now lives in Switzerland. The translator Chenxin Jiang was born in Singapore and grew up in Hong Kong and studied at Princeton. Volatile Texts: Us Two is a literary exploration that explores the accents, languages, and landscapes of Switzerland, which is a stand in for all of Europe. The 13 chapters are called "prose miniatures," and they are bits of story and writing with varying degrees of obliqueness.

What I Didn't Like: I'm not in a place in life where I can appreciate high brow literature such Volatile Texts because there is very little narrative. Some of the pieces are more like poetry that anything else.

What I Liked: it was only 121 pages. It takes the reader all over Switzerland, and explores language, and touches on the four national languages of Switzerland (German, French, Italian and Romansch).

Recommended for: readers who love languages -- I admit that quite a bit of the playfulness went over my head. I also think that a knowledge of Switzerland would help picture the author's descriptions (it did for me, anyway).

Rating: 3 stars. At another time of life it would have been more.

Why I Read This Now: I'm always up to try a book from Switzerland

20Nickelini
Modificato: Mag 14, 2021, 10:34 am

40. The Likeness, Tana French, 2008

cover comments: not terrible, fine, I guess, although with the country house setting, I could imagine a hundred more interesting covers

Rating: 4 stars. I enjoyed this a lot, but it was slow and overly long. Otherwise I found it interesting, atmospheric, and well written

Comments: The Likeness is book two of the Dublin Murder Squad series. I started with Broken Harbour, which I liked very much, and then the first book In the Woods which was a huge disappointment. I think The Likeness is my favourite of the three.

This one follows police officer Cassie Maddox going undercover to solve the mystery of Lexie Madison, a young woman who has turned up dead, and who could be identical twins with police office Maddox, and who is using one of Maddox's discarded undercover aliases. To solve the murder, Maddox goes undercover with the victims room mates, an eccentric group of Trinity College PhD students living in a fabulous rundown great house in the Irish countryside.

To enjoy this book, the reader must completely suspend disbelief and go with the premises. And then it's lots of fun. But slow -- I feel like I've been reading this 466 page book for weeks. The scenes in the country house with the tight knit group of five was wonderfully evocative.

Recommended for : thinking of reading Tana French? I really don't think you have to read them in order. Try this one.

Why I Read This Now: It fell into my "read on work breaks" pile, but then I ended up packing it home every day and just reading it

21ursula
Mag 14, 2021, 2:05 am

I have read a couple of Tana French books, also not in order. I read Faithful Place and then The Likeness. I thought they were both okay. Looks like I rated Faithful Place slightly higher, although I don't remember anything particularly better about it.

22Nickelini
Mag 16, 2021, 9:00 pm

>21 ursula:
I read reader comments when I finished this, and it's common that everyone has their own opinion of which of French's books are the best. Many loved In the Woods, which I thought was okay at best. I do like the Dublin Murder Squad in general though. I own Faithful Place, so I will probably read it in 2022. I'll let you know what I think ;-)

23NanaCC
Mag 16, 2021, 10:30 pm

I’ve read all of the Dublin Murder Squad, Joyce, and I enjoyed them all. I think Faithful Place was my favorite, and The Secret Place was my least favorite by far. I did read them in order and enjoyed that a minor player in one book became the primary player in the next.

24Nickelini
Modificato: Mag 17, 2021, 12:12 am

41. A Girl Returned, Donatella Di Pietrantonio, 2017; translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein, 2019


Cover comments: I like it, especially after reading the book.
The original Italian cover was also lovely:


Rating: 4.5 stars. A Girl Returned also won the 2017 Campiello Prize, among other awards.

Comments: A Girl Returned opens with the unnamed 13 year old narrator being dumped at her biological family, who she didn’t even know existed. Brought up an only child in middle class urban comfort, suddenly and without explanation, she is living in poverty with parents who hardly notice her, sleeping with her bedwetting younger sister, and dealing with three dangerous older brothers. There’s the mystery to figure out about why she’s here, along with watching her learn to live in this messy, difficult family and mourning her past life.

Under 200 pages, A Girl Returned moves along quickly with clean writing and short chapters. While I was wrapped up in the narrator’s struggles, an Italian reader pointed out to me that in the original Italian, the main point of this book was an exploration of class struggles. The text was in Italian and all the dialogue was in Abruzzo dialect. This theme isn’t exactly a surprise as the English translation certainly captures that idea, but the nuances and subtleties just didn’t come through in the translation. Despite that, I think this is a great read for the non-Italian reader.

I have to add that there are some wonderful characters and relationships. I especially loved her younger, plucky sister, Adriana.

Recommended for: Fans of Elena Ferrante Neapolitan Novels will probably like this book, both of which were translated by Ann Goldstein. Personally, I much preferred A Girl Returned, but I couldn’t get past My Brilliant Friend.

Why I Read This Now: I'm trying to read more Italian literature.

25AlisonY
Mag 17, 2021, 4:18 am

>24 Nickelini: I haven't heard of this title or author - another one to note. I quite fancy being taken back to Abruzzo through a book.

26dchaikin
Mag 17, 2021, 8:08 am

Never heard from of A Girl Returned. Noting the recommendation, since I loved the Neapolitan quartet.

27lisapeet
Mag 17, 2021, 10:56 am

I hadn’t heard of it either, so thanks! I love that illustrated cover version.

28BLBera
Mag 17, 2021, 11:11 am

I will definitely check out A Girl Returned, Joyce. Great comments.

I read In the Woods and liked it. I recently read a standalone by French, The Searcher, which I thought was well done. She does so well with the setting. I will definitely continue to read her books. I do like the idea of main characters changing through the series.

29sallypursell
Mag 18, 2021, 2:24 pm

>19 Nickelini: Why wasn't it "we two", I wonder. For a book mostly about languages, that seems a deficiency. Or a mistranslation.

30sallypursell
Mag 18, 2021, 2:26 pm

>20 Nickelini: I liked In the Woods very much. I'm sure I will like this one more.

31Nickelini
Mag 18, 2021, 4:13 pm

>29 sallypursell: I can see this book doing that "mistranslation" entirely on purpose. It was very playful and creative with language and that sounds exactly like one of its twists

32RidgewayGirl
Mag 18, 2021, 5:19 pm

>20 Nickelini: Absolutely yes. How one reacts to The Likeness depends entirely on whether or not one can just go with the bonkers premise. This remains my second favorite French; I liked The Tresspasser slightly more. Broken Harbor is also excellent.

>24 Nickelini: A Girl Returned is such a delight. I'm so happy about all the translated fiction coming out of Italy right now and suspect that some of this is due to Ferrante's success. I've also liked Domenico Starnone's novels that were recently translated.

33Nickelini
Mag 18, 2021, 8:31 pm

>25 AlisonY: I quite fancy being taken back to Abruzzo through a book.

Oh, do tell about your travels please. My husband is always coming up with travel ideas quite different from mine, and he's starting to convince me to do southern Italy (I know Abruzzo is central, but culturally it's south). We always have to visit family and friends in Tuscany, so I try to be strategic with our choices and not just spend all our time moving around. What did you see and do in Abruzzo?

34Nickelini
Mag 18, 2021, 8:34 pm

>32 RidgewayGirl: I'm so happy about all the translated fiction coming out of Italy right now and suspect that some of this is due to Ferrante's success. I've also liked Domenico Starnone's novels that were recently translated.


That's an interesting idea. I'm all for more translated literature becoming available. I'm sure I'll buy something by Domenico Starnone before the year is over.

35Nickelini
Mag 24, 2021, 11:35 pm

42. On the Edge, Markus Werner, 2004; translated from German by Robert E. Goodwin, 2012

No cover comments because my cover is not available on LT

Comments: Lawyer Thomas Clarin escapes to his second home in Lugano, Switzerland (Italian Switzerland) to write some work-related papers over the Pentecost long weekend. On his first evening, he goes for dinner at an upscale restaurant terrace and strikes up a lengthy conversation with another diner. They drink and chat into the early hours, and then continue the next evening, with their conversation getting more personal as they go on. Sunday noon, Clarin realizes that everything was not what he supposed.

I read Werner's Cold Shoulder last year, and enjoyed it very much indeed. As with that book, this novella started out with paragraphs that sometimes went on for a page or two, and covered the random thoughts of privileged, educated, white men; thoughts that were sometimes interesting, but often navel-gazing nothings. Cold Shoulder had an unexpected twist at the end, and I was promised that On the Edge did too. Unfortunately, the twist came very late in the book, and honestly, I thought it was less than intriguing.

Fun fact 1: On the Edge sent me to google a few times. Most of the novel was set on the terrace at the Hotel Bellevue in Montagnola, which is a real hotel and restaurant: http://bellevue-bellavista.ch/index.php?node=302&lng=4&rif=40f8cd060a (Hmmm, next trip to Lugano?)

The other key location is the Sanatorium and wellness hotel in Cademario, which I googled and found this: https://kurhauscademario.com/en/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&ut... (Hmmm, maybe I want to stay here instead)



Fun fact 2 The original title is Am Hang, which translated into English is "On a Slope". Both of these are a clever play of words on the content of the novel, as well as the three settings of hillside buildings over Lake Lugano. But in French, the title is Langues de Feu, "Tongues of Fire," which I guess also has at least two clever connections to the novel, and ties to what the novel has to say about Pentecost (I never did get why Pentecost was important to this story). But in Italian, it's Quando la Vita Chiama, "When Life Calls," which isn't clever at all, and as my Italian-speaking husband just said, "it sounds like a Harlequin romance."

Rating: Most readers appreciate this more than I did. The writing is good, and I hear it's an excellent reread, but I can't imagine caring enough. I loved the setting in the various hill communities around Lugano. Being generous, I'll give it 3 stars.

Why I Read This Now: it was on my to-read in 2021 list, and I noticed it took place over Pentecost weekend, so I looked up what that was, and this year it coincides with the Victoria Day weekend in Canada, so I saved it for this long weekend. The Pentecost weekend in the book was actually in June (it's tied to Easter, so one of those moving holidays)

Recommended for: Most reader reviewers liked this more than I did. If it appeals, go read it.

36avaland
Mag 29, 2021, 9:09 am

>3 Nickelini: Oh dear, that could tempt me back into reading re-told fairy tales. But sometimes I like Winterson and sometimes not; I'm thinking this could be a "not" (and I did pick up three new books at the bookstore yesterday...) I was just reminiscing about it over on a new member's thread (her moniker begins with "Toast").

My favorite as a child was Bluebeard.

37Nickelini
Modificato: Mag 29, 2021, 3:45 pm

43. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton, 2018


cover comments: I think it's terrific. Very simple, but is subltly evocative of the setting and mood of the book

Rating: This wildly popular book just didn't work for me. 2 stars

Why I Read This Now: Book club

Comments: When I started this, it felt like a novelized version of the game of Clue. "Col. Mustard in the library with the knife," "Miss Scarlett in the conservatory with the lead pipe," etc. The cover of my edition says "Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day. Other comparisons include Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson; Downton Abbey, Gosford Park, The Time Traveler's Wife, and Black Mirror. All of that sounds great to me.

Aiden Bishop finds himself in a stranger's body at a country house gathering. He body hops and time travels through eight characters and eight "days", trying to solve (and stop) the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle. I really enjoyed the country estate setting at Blackheath House, and vaguely 1920s mood (it's really more of an alternate universe rather than a real time and place).

Readers praise its ingenuity and intricacy. However, I found this to be an overly long, overly manic, overly complicated, and confusing enough to make me not care. What killed this book for me was the overall premise. There were intricate rules to follow, but who was making these rules and who were these characters who showed up to explain them? It made no sense. This book raised a lot of questions and offered flimsy half-answers. I would have DNF'd this early on, or anywhere along the way, actually, but I paid $25 for it, and I've skipped 50% of our book club books this year, so I decided to suck it up. And now I'm so happy to get back to the book I was enjoying previously.

Recommended for: Lots of 4 & 5 star reader reviews, so if you think it sounds interesting, give it a try.

38japaul22
Mag 29, 2021, 5:15 pm

>37 Nickelini: I read this when it came out and I don't remember what I rated it. I enjoyed it's uniqueness but I do remember telling people that you have to be able to suspend reality and accept the basic premise for it to work for you. The bigger picture of why it's all happening and who is controlling it is never resolved, which was annoying.

I do remember enjoying the ride though. Enough that I read Turton's new book that recently came out, Devil and the Dark Water. After reading that, I realized that overly complicated plots are Turton's thing and it's not for me. Even though his books are entertaining and I think exciting for a certain type of reader, that reader is not me.

39labfs39
Mag 29, 2021, 8:38 pm

>37 Nickelini: And now I'm so happy to get back to the book I was enjoying previously.
And what was that? Seven deaths does not sound like something I would enjoy.

40karspeak
Mag 29, 2021, 10:34 pm

>37 Nickelini: I DNF’d it. Did the author even have a plan for the plot when he started writing it? I felt like he was winging it, without success.

41Nickelini
Mag 29, 2021, 11:08 pm

>38 japaul22: I do remember enjoying the ride though. Enough that I read Turton's new book that recently came out, Devil and the Dark Water. After reading that, I realized that overly complicated plots are Turton's thing and it's not for me. Even though his books are entertaining and I think exciting for a certain type of reader, that reader is not me.

There was a lot about The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle that I did like. I thought there was some very good writing at the sentence level, for example. Also, I searched the author on YouTube because I wanted to know if he pronounced "Evelyn" as "Ev-lynn" or "Eve-lynn".* He's very likeable, and I'm open to reading more of his writing, but I won't rush in. If he can write a book like this in 200 pages, and it makes a bit more sense, I'd be happy to read it. I hear that The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is being made into a Netflix series and I'll definitely watch it with my husband. And I'll complain the whole way through, and have fun on a rainy Wednesday night in the future.

*I know this name from family history as Ev-lynn, but it seems the British version is Eve-lynn (as in Evelyn Waugh) (and Crabtree & Evelyn, which is/was an American company playing at being English). I was surprised that he said it the right way ;-) -- Ev-lynn.

42Nickelini
Mag 29, 2021, 11:15 pm

>39 labfs39: And what was that?

One More Croissant for the Road, by Felicity Cloake. This is a book I stumbled upon earlier this year. I didn't know the author at all (she's famous in some UK circles) and now I feel like if we met, we'd be best friends. Well, her, Emma Thompson, and me.

I've been picking this up and then having to put it down for other things all month, but I'm loving it, and not sorry that I've taken my time with it because it's just a delight to read. But as it's a memoir of her bike ride around France, there is no burning plot that I must discover. It's just someone cycling in France and eating good food. I can't travel, so this is lovely.

43Nickelini
Mag 29, 2021, 11:24 pm

>40 karspeak: I DNF’d it. Did the author even have a plan for the plot when he started writing it? I felt like he was winging it, without success.

Good for you! There wasn't a point when I didn't want to DNF it, but I stuck with this one. I don't think I'd ever have heard of it or noticed it if it wasn't for book club. I did think it sounded like fun, and I like all the comparisons. Funny you mention the plot and the plan -- apparently it was intricate and detailed, but I was so confused that I couldn't make myself care. I certainly have watched a several BookTube reviews where they ask some very good questions, so I don't agree that it's foolproof and I just wasn't paying attention.

I'm curious to hear what everyone says at book club Monday night. I'm sure the woman who suggested it loved it, because she doesn't get too hung up on things like "details" or "bigger picture."

44labfs39
Mag 30, 2021, 9:27 am

>41 Nickelini: And I'll complain the whole way through, and have fun on a rainy Wednesday night in the future.
:-)

>42 Nickelini: and now I feel like if we met, we'd be best friends. Well, her, Emma Thompson, and me.
I love it!

I'm eager to read your review of One More Croissant for the Road when you finish it. I too look forward longingly to travelling again one day.

45SassyLassy
Mag 30, 2021, 9:31 am

>41 Nickelini: Round here there is another pronunciation: Ev-e-lynn. The 'e' syllable sounds almost like 'uh', only shorter. Sometimes life is too confusing.

46labfs39
Mag 30, 2021, 9:37 am

>45 SassyLassy: That is the pronunciation around here as well. My four-year-old niece is an Ev-uh-lynn.

47Nickelini
Mag 30, 2021, 12:49 pm

>45 SassyLassy:, >46 labfs39:

Ah yes, the Ev-(uh)-lynn variation. A subtle difference. My Evelyn is called both and no one bats an eye, but if anyone used "Eve-lynn", it would be weird. Actually, she's mostly called "Ev". It's nice to hear that this name is coming into fashion again. I always thought there was an elegance to it.

48Nickelini
Modificato: Giu 1, 2021, 1:03 am

44. One More Croissant for the Road, Felicity Cloake, 2019


cover comments: tres bein!

My quotation for 2021: "Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are" (M Cooley)

Rating: 5 stars.

This book should automatically be deducted one star for not including a map (or 21 maps), and photos. Apparently the hardcover edition has a lovely hand drawn map, but, alas, my paperback did not. Despite that, I loved this reading experience so I'm in a forgiving mood. It really was so much fun.

To make up for this map flaw, before I started reading, I printed out a map of France, and based on the Table of Contents, marked her route.

Comments A British food writer's personal Tour de France where she cycles around France in search of the best classic French cuisine. A few years ago my husband and I started planning a cycling-food trip in France with friends. My husband and his lifetime friend are avid cyclists, the friend's wife and I are friends who are happy to drive the support vehicle and nosh our way through France. Life happened, and the trip didn't happen, but I still hope to do a version of this at some point. I'll even cycle if I get an e-bike for the hills. So when I went down some internet hole on a January 2021 night and found this book, I had to order it right away. I didn't know the author, but now that I google her, I've probably looked at some of her "How to Make the Perfect . . . " in the Guardian.

Cycling around France! In search of good food! What's not to like about that? I also liked to read how she had a budget, so it wasn't just all nice hotels and grabbing a ride when things got ugly (which would definitely be my plan). She had friends and family show up now and again, but had long stretches alone, and 150km rides in the rain. And then pitched her wet lycra-clad self into a tent. There were train strikes. And arriving in towns to find almost everything closed (I've shared that traveling in Europe experience).

Also there are asides about French food culture, and each of her 21 Tour de France stages includes a recipe, which is influenced by French locals' advice. Yesterday I made the ratatouille, which was easy, delicious, and also vegan. (I googled her online Ratatouille recipe, which is much more complicated. I'll stick with this local version).

Part way through this book, I found this author on Instagram and she's lots of fun. In the last two weeks she's been in Iceland and is now cycling and camping in her tiny tent in Devon. I commented elsewhere that I think if we met in person we'd be great friends (Emma Thompson would really round out this friend trio).

Why I Read This Now:: See my quotation, above. I've wanted to read it since I discovered it in January.

Recommended for: Armchair travelers. Foodies. One More Croissant for the Road is focused. While it was utterly delightful for me, it's not for everyone: My cyclist husband would be irritated at her how ill-prepared she was for the technicalities of the trip (I read him passages, and he had lots of comments); people looking for a French experience--this is very much a British person's memoir (she does speak fluent French, if that make a difference to you); her travel details are not enough to plan a trip based on this.

But if you have a sense of humour, and want some fun, with learning a few things about French food, I think you might like this one.

49NanaCC
Giu 1, 2021, 7:50 pm

>48 Nickelini: This one sounds like fun. You’ve added it to my wishlist.

50arubabookwoman
Giu 5, 2021, 9:06 pm

>47 Nickelini: My grandfather's name was Evelyn (pronounced ev-lynn), and he hated having that name all of his life, considering it a "girl" name. My grandparents named their first daughter, my mother, Evelyn, though, so he must have liked the name itself. He usually introduced himself to others by his first and middle initials, E.M. or Ev.

51Nickelini
Giu 5, 2021, 10:34 pm

>50 arubabookwoman:
I can see his struggle. It's hard when names switch gender, and that happens all the time. There are so many of those names that were once male and became female, and also the reverse. I have a running list of current names that are commonly used for both -- Dylan, Jordan, Morgan -- are 3 of many. Which makes me think, "oh, that's nice, let's not gender people!" . . . except my day job is a fraud investigator, and I look for people online, and it makes my job so much more difficult when I'm looking for a male with the name "X", but then my searches give me males and females. Asian names, for example, use the same names for both genders (Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese). I know when I'm searching a "Ricardo" or a "Natalia" that my online search results won't just be a mass of noise.

52Nickelini
Giu 6, 2021, 3:00 pm

45. We All Fall Down, Daniel Kalla, 2019


cover comments: it's a thriller cover. They aren't supposed to be artistic

Comments: Dr. Alana Vaughn, a NATO specialist in bioterrorism, is called to Genoa, Italy where a critically ill patient has a mysterious disease that turns out to be the Black Death. Vaughn and her team race to find out the source of the disease before the plague gets loose and kills billions. There is a connection to an 800 year old monastery and a smaller subplot from a diary kept during the plague of 1348. Parallels to the COVID outbreak in Northern Italy were interesting.

Rating: 3.75 stars. Medical thrillers aren't really my thing, but this one was a solid good read.

Why I Read This Now: Five months ago I had never heard of Daniel Kalla and now he seems to be everywhere, possibly because his last three novels have been incredibly relevant to current events. We All Fall Down has a potential pandemic, The Last High is set against the fentanyl crisis in Vancouver, and his latest, Lost Immunity features anti-vax fundamentalists. I now own them all and may even read all three this year.

Daniel Kalla is the head of emergency at St Paul's Hospital, one of Vancouver's busiest, and he also teaches medicine at the University of British Columbia. In his spare time, he's managed to write a stack of novels. Apparently, the medical details in them are excellent (even if some of the other details are not).

Recommended for: readers who enjoy medical thrillers

53Nickelini
Modificato: Giu 6, 2021, 9:37 pm

>36 avaland: Oh dear, that could tempt me back into reading re-told fairy tales. . . . My favorite as a child was Bluebeard.

I just realized that there is a retelling of that one as part of this Fairy Tale Revolution series. It's called Blueblood, and it's by Malorie Blackman

54labfs39
Giu 6, 2021, 9:00 pm

>52 Nickelini: I haven't read medical thrillers in years, not since John Case and Michael Crichton, but these sound interesting. I wish you had read all three, so you could tell me which one is best. ;-)

55Nickelini
Giu 6, 2021, 9:36 pm

>54 labfs39:
Stick around -- I'll read the other two and let you know!

56labfs39
Modificato: Giu 7, 2021, 6:54 am

>55 Nickelini: It's a deal!

And if I haven't mentioned it before, I love the format of your reviews. I've never read a thread with cover comments, what a great idea. After all, I do judge a book by its cover, at least as my first impression (unless I've read about it here on Club Read).

Have you read anything by Peter Mendelsund? I read What We See When We Read and found it very interesting. I hadn't given much thought about the mental images that I create when reading, other than that I make them. Lisa (lisapeet) recently read another book by him called The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature. That sounds right up your alley.

Edited to add: Duh. You were on that thread too. Sorry!

57Nickelini
Giu 7, 2021, 7:35 pm

>56 labfs39:

I put in cover comments because I enjoy art just as much as I enjoy reading. I like to acknowledge good covers, and chide the poor ones.

I'd forgotten that conversation about Peter Medelsund, so I'm happy that you reminded me. Those books really do sound interesting.

58Nickelini
Giu 12, 2021, 2:20 pm

46. Spring, Ali Smith, 2019


cover comments: I think the covers on the Seasonal Quartet series are lovely. This one is a 1922 painting by Boris Michaylovich Kustodiev called Summer, which I find amusing

Rating: There were a few interesting parts in this, but overall I found it more of a muddle than anything. 3 stars

I rated Autumn (read Sept 2019) and Winter (read Dec 2020) 4 stars. I'm hoping to read Summer later this year, and hope the series gets back on track

Comments: This disjointed tale of a has-been filmmaker, a detention centre worker, a magical refugee child, and Alba (what even was she?) covers all the hot-button issues in 2018 Britain. I did not get on with it, but it wasn't all bad. Most of it wasn't even set in spring, and that made it even worse. So much can be done with a spring theme, but this book just wanted to be dark and grumpy.

Why I Read This Now: I think the Seasonal Quartet is written to be read as close to publication as possible.

Recommended for: completists of the series

59SassyLassy
Giu 13, 2021, 10:12 am

>58 Nickelini: Spring in the UK can be pretty 'dark and grumpy'. It's not all hosts of golden daffodils, often more clouds!

Interesting about your thoughts on this book. I had meant to read it this spring, like you going in order from Autumn, but now there is only a week left until summer. Better get to the library.

60Nickelini
Modificato: Giu 18, 2021, 1:43 am

47. Why Should I Learn to Speak Italian?: The Strugglers' Guide to La Bella Lingua, by Gerry Dubbin, 2016


cover comments: this is lovely, especially for a self-published book

Why I Read This Now: I stumbled across this one night this past January when I was clicking around the internet. The title, "Why Should I Learn to Speak Italian?" is really dumb, but I was drawn to "the Struggler's Guide" part. I had been struggling, but winning!, with learning Italian in late 2019-early 2020, but then my classes shut down in March 2020, and my May 2020 trip to Italy was cancelled, and I completely lost all my steam. I was hoping that this book would inspire me to get back on the Italian learning track.

Rating: 1.5 stars . . . terrible writing, says almost nothing, so 1 star, but I added half a star because as bad as it was, I flew through the 209 pages and was consistently amazed at the atrocious sentences.

Comments: The author fell in love with Italy over his career as an Australian businessman selling wool to the fashion producers in Italy. He wanted to be able to speak to the Italians in their language, but was frustrated by his lack of progress. The fact that he's writing a book tells me that he's figured it out and is going to share how he can help you avoid some of the inevitable struggles. I was also hoping he'd include a few tips specific for English speakers learning Italian.

I have never read so many words saying so little.

He's crazy repetitive. I'm not talking about an author saying the same thing 2 or 3 times, but actually countless times. I'm sure he said the "learn a language in 2 weeks programs don't work" at least 20 times. Yes, we all know that. He'd explain concepts at the highest and vaguest levels. No evidence he did any research at all about language learning. Clearly he'd never head George Orwell's advice to "never use a long word when a short one will do." Nothing in this book began, instead it always commenced. Why use something when you can utilize it? He made footnotes out of information that belonged in the text. He described a website and quoted paragraphs from it, twice, but not only did he not give the URL, he didn't even give the name of the site. He went on a page and a half rant against people who go on cruise ship vacations (fine, but it nothing to do with helping people learn Italian). It made my editor-self twitch. No exaggeration: if I deleted all the repeated info, deleted all the paragraphs that said absolutely nothing, rewrote the ridiculous wordy sentences, deleted all the comments added by Captain Obvious, and reorganized the material so it made sense, this book would be 20 pages long maximum.

As for helpful info, he missed a wide variety of tools available to the language learner who has a smart phone and the internet. Info that's easily found over an evening of searching.

I'm not sorry I read this. Sometimes it's fun to read absolute garbage. If you're still here, enjoy some random excerpts that I marked. Keep in mind that he's trying to help and encourage people thinking about or starting out learning Italian:

On Italian verbs, he didn't give much past: "The different ways in which various verb forms need to be linked when discussing a variety of differing situations is more advanced and can prove difficult to remember which combinations to use, and where, during conversation." (yeah, thanks man. That helps a lot)

"As a learner, it is not recommended that you even attempt to read works written by Dante Alighieri, Italy's claimed equivalent to England's Shakespeare."

"....I was to some extent lucky in my Italian studies at the time, in that the then lady in my life was a Melbourne-born lass of Italian extraction, the daughter of dialetto-speaking Italian parents." (Ew, of all the ways you could have said that, this was what you came up with? This was probably the icky-est worst tho -- he didn't seem like a complete creepoid otherwise).

Ah, the beauty of self-publishing: you don't have to worry about those pesky editors with their "ideas." As I said above, but have to repeat: I have never read so many words saying so little.

Recommended for: absolutely no one

61SandDune
Giu 18, 2021, 6:03 am

>60 Nickelini: When I saw that title I thought that looked interesting, as I am intending to do an Italian course next year. But maybe not!

62NanaCC
Giu 18, 2021, 7:16 am

>60 Nickelini: I love when you slam a book, Joyce. 😄

63labfs39
Giu 18, 2021, 7:18 am

>60 Nickelini: The book may be atrocious, but your review is a riot!

64ursula
Giu 18, 2021, 8:05 am

>60 Nickelini: On Italian verbs, he didn't give much past: "The different ways in which various verb forms need to be linked when discussing a variety of differing situations is more advanced and can prove difficult to remember which combinations to use, and where, during conversation."

Honestly, reading that made me wonder for a second if I was a native English speaker. I mean ... ow.

"As a learner, it is not recommended that you even attempt to read works written by Dante Alighieri, Italy's claimed equivalent to England's Shakespeare." Yes, Shakespeare is not renowned as a tool for ESL either...

Thanks for reading (and writing entertainingly about!) garbage.

65SassyLassy
Giu 18, 2021, 8:57 am

>60 Nickelini: Well that was fun!

Maybe his family name is a clue?

66Nickelini
Giu 19, 2021, 1:57 pm

67Nickelini
Giu 21, 2021, 1:49 am

>61 SandDune: When I saw that title I thought that looked interesting, as I am intending to do an Italian course next year. But maybe not!

OMG , there are so many, many better sources to help and inspire you with learning Italian! Let me know if you need specific help.

68SandDune
Giu 21, 2021, 3:59 am

>67 Nickelini: At the moment I’m working through some graphic novels:

Un’altra via per la Cambogia Takoua ben Mohamed
La profezia dell’armadillo Zerocalcare

Nice short pieces of text to get my head around! I used to be much better at Italian than I am now, and I’m thinking these will help get my eye in before I start my course in September.

69Nickelini
Giu 23, 2021, 12:42 am

>68 SandDune:

I struggle with graphic novels a bit, so I'm not sure I'd like to tackle them in Italian. Does it work well for you?

70Nickelini
Giu 23, 2021, 2:09 am

48. Dreaming of Italy, T.A. Williams, 2020


cover comments: this is the style of cover that I've walked past in drug stores for most of my life without blinking. I was not a reader of these sorts of "little" books. But a couple of weeks ago I had about two and a half minutes to pop into a mall book store to pick up a baby book gift, and as I trotted past the $6 table, this one jumped out at me. Who doesn't want to ride in a red convertible in Vernazza on the Cinque Terre? (this scene did not happen in the book, but close enough. The lone woman in the car is more a suggestion of where this book will take you). I scanned the description and I thought, "I'm taking a $6 chance."

Rating: 4 solid stars for a light but satisfying book.

Comments: As Dreaming of Italy opens, we meet Emma, a 35 year old English woman with a successful career as a location scout working in Hollywood. She's assigned a project to scout locations for a historical romance set in pre-WWI Italy. She's told that everyone has already seen Rome and Florence on film, and the touristy places are logistically prohibitive for filming anyway, so she's tasked to find fabulous filming locations that are 1914 Italian eye candy where a film crew can go. I ADORE this premise. One of my dream jobs in another life is to be a location scout. I live in Vancouver, where zillions of movies and TV shows are filmed every year, so this could be a realistic career for me. But I only want to do this job if I'm driving around Shropshire looking for that perfect country house for the adaptation of some 1920s novel (not interested in finding zombie locations back here at home).

The catch is that Emma has to take along the boss's 28 year old son who just got out of rehab. They meet up with their Italian expert, Marina, in Turin, and off they go driving around Italy, with a generous budget. They soon meet up with the English-Italian historical advisor, Mark, and then along the way, the big name actors and director. All very light and fluffy and clearly a romance is building between Emma and Mark.

The story was fine. No big stakes, no melodrama, fairly predictable but nice to ride along and enjoy. What really made this was all the locations they visited -- some that I've been to, and some I've never heard of. I certainly took notes for my future trips back to Italy. For interested travelers, I skimmed over the novel at the end and pulled out these locations (clearly I missed some others): Turin, Valli di Lanzo, wineries in Alba & Asti, Bordighera (on the sea, near France), Hanbury Botanical Gardens, Rapallo, Monterosso & Riomaggiore on the Cinque Terre, Pisa, Lucca (where my husband's family lives), Certaldo, Staggia, Siena, Orvieto, Gubbio, Umbrian villa, Bologna, Ferrara, Padua & Venice. That's one sweet Italian tour!

The author: surprised me. First, T.A. Williams is Trevor Williams, who lives in Devon with his Italian wife. He has a degree in modern languages and has lived in Switzerland, France, and Italy. Back in the UK, he runs a prestigious language school. His hobby is long-distance cycling. Not your usual "romance" book writer. I found that he's written a bunch of these sorts of books, several of which I've now ordered, including La villa dei sogni (The Villa of Dreams), which he wrote in Italian. I bought it to give to my mother-in-law (she adores Nora Roberts, and also Danielle Steele, who she reads in Italian). Now I'm wondering if I might be able to read it after a bit more study.

Recommended for: someone looking for pure escapism that includes beautiful but nice people exploring Italy and falling in love. Heavy on the dream trip through Italy aspect. The romance was of the "will they, won't they" genre, where of course they always will. Sex eventually happens off screen with no cringy descriptions. Sorry if that's a spoiler, but if you don't know that going in, well I don't know what to say to you.

Why I Read This Now: I always promise myself I'll read more light books. I think I'm getting a bit better at it. Especially when "reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are." (My COVID motto)

71SandDune
Giu 23, 2021, 4:00 am

>69 Nickelini: It seems to be working. My Italian is good enough to get the gist of what is written in most cases (although I have to resort to the dictionary to get the exact meaning at times, especially with the Zerocalcare one. But it feels a lot less daunting than taking on a normal novel.

72Nickelini
Modificato: Giu 25, 2021, 12:22 am

49. Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power, Ross King, 2007


cover comments: lovely, but why is there a picture of my father-in-law on this cover? Since my father-in-law looks so much like Machiavelli, and he was born about 60km away, I've decided that my husband is a descendant of the famed Renaissance political philosopher. (Machiavelli's descendants live on, so technically we could do a DNA test. Or I can just decide it's true)

Comments: Pretty much a just-the-facts telling of Machiavelli's life, with a discussion of his legacy in The Conclusion. I've actually read a lot about this time period. It was a bloody, violent series of conflicts between the Borgia, Medici, and Sforza families, the French, Spanish, and Popes. I heard this described as reading a game of snakes and ladders, and that's a perfect description.

This is part of the Eminent Lives series.

Why I Read This Now: I've enjoyed this author before and I like reading about Renaissance Italy.

Recommended for: readers interested in the politics of Renaissance Italy.

Rating: 3 stars. I think I'm done with non-fiction from this time period. In the future I'll look for historical novels when I want to read about this period.

73BLBera
Giu 25, 2021, 7:31 am

Dreaming of Italy sounds like fun, Joyce. Lighter books have their place. When I am busy, sometimes I just need a place to escape to without the need for too much deep thinking.

74SassyLassy
Giu 25, 2021, 10:29 am

>72 Nickelini: Have you read The Enchantress of Florence? You'll find M there too, and so many more.

75Nickelini
Giu 25, 2021, 2:09 pm

>74 SassyLassy:
Is that one worthwhile? I didn't get to that one while I was in my Rushdie phase but it's always been on my someday list

76baswood
Giu 25, 2021, 4:59 pm

>72 Nickelini: If you reconsider your resolution not to read anymore non fiction then I can recommend:

Machiavelli and his friends : their personal correspondence
The comedies of Machiavelli - yes he was a playwright as well

I am assuming that you have read The Prince

There is also

The New Machiavelli by H G Wells - this has nothing to do with Niccolo, but it is H G Wells best non SF novel

77SassyLassy
Giu 25, 2021, 5:22 pm

>75 Nickelini: I did enjoy it, finding it quite humourous. I'm also a fan of his kind of magical realism. I read it after being away from Rushdie for a while, and it was good to be reading him again. It may however be one of those books you have to be in the mood for - that just occurred to me.

78Nickelini
Giu 25, 2021, 11:56 pm

>76 baswood:
Thanks! I'll take note of those. I did know about him being a playwright. This last book went quite into how he was renowned for it in his lifetime. And yes, I read the Prince for at least two university classes, and I remember using it in an essay I wrote on some Shakespeare play (which one? no clue, but it would have been one written for James I, and about the Divine Right of Kings).

79Nickelini
Giu 25, 2021, 11:57 pm

>77 SassyLassy: I did enjoy it, finding it quite humourous. I'm also a fan of his kind of magical realism. I read it after being away from Rushdie for a while, and it was good to be reading him again. It may however be one of those books you have to be in the mood for - that just occurred to me.

That's sounding even better. I completely get what you mean. Bumping it back up my wish list.

80Nickelini
Modificato: Giu 30, 2021, 2:19 pm

50. The Godmother, Hannelore Cayre, 2017, translated from French by Stephanie Smee in 2019


cover comments: I like it. Blue covers are generally pleasing. I wonder if it looks too chick lit though. This book isn't chick lit.

Why I Read This Now: I can't remember what book-net rabbit hole I was down when I discovered this book a few months ago, but I had to order it right away. I'm interested in reading more non-literary translated fiction

Comments: I'll share the description that hooked me:

For 25 years she has toiled honestly, translating police wire-taps of north African drug gangs. She knows she's just a footsoldier in a senseless politicians' war against high-grade hashish, a tiny cog in the state machinery of racism and repression. But it's always paid the bills -- until now . . . With her mother's extortionate care home eating her savings, a lonely and impoverished old age lies ahead.

So when Patience gets the chance to take possession of a vast stash of top-quality Moroccan Khardala, she doesn't hesitate long. Exit the grey-suited civil servant. Enter "the Godmother." Life in the banlieues will never be the same again."


Rating: A quick, fun read, and most unique. 4 stars

Recommended for: Readers who want to see an unglamorous side of current day France.

81labfs39
Giu 30, 2021, 3:44 pm

>80 Nickelini: Unique indeed. The cover reminded me of Where'd You Go Bernadette?, a very different type of book:

82Nickelini
Giu 30, 2021, 4:41 pm

>81 labfs39:
Yes, I thought so too -- the covers have strong similarities. The books don't though, although I liked both

83Nickelini
Lug 4, 2021, 11:09 pm

I just got back from a 4-day weekend in one of my favourite cities, Victoria, BC. One of my favourite things to do there is go to Munro Books, which often makes the lists of most beautiful bookstores in the world.

My happy place

This time I came home with:

Bitter Orange, Claire Fuller (my current read)
Nives, Sacha Naspini - another Europa Editions
Kink, edited by RO Kwon & Garth Greenwell
Family and Borghesia, Natalia Ginzburg - NYRB edition
Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (I recently found out that this Mexican-born author lives in my city, Vancouver, and graduated from University of British Columbia)

I also went to my favourite used book store and found the Enchantress of Florence, which I picked up due to an earlier conversation with >74 SassyLassy:

84labfs39
Lug 4, 2021, 11:40 pm

>83 Nickelini: I'm envious. I love Victoria and Munro Books too. We used to either take the ferry up from Seattle, or drive up. Is the coffee shop next door still there? I would always sit and browse my purchases over a scone. I remember one time a border guard asking whether we had made any purchases while in Canada, and he was incredulous when I said only books.

85Nickelini
Lug 5, 2021, 12:15 am

>84 labfs39: LOL - yes, Murchies is still there. It's one of those places we go to every trip, but somehow didn't this time. When we came home today, my daughter said "what do you mean you didn't get to Murchie's" (as in , how is that even possible?). I've been to Victoria countless times over the past 25 years, and we are still discovering new things. We used to always stay by the harbour, somewhere, but the last two trips we've stayed in Chinatown, which is a whole new angle that we are enjoying.

86SassyLassy
Lug 5, 2021, 8:45 am

>83 Nickelini: Like >84 labfs39:, so envious. It is such a beautiful store. I really need to get back to the West Coast sometime.

>85 Nickelini: Agreeing with your daughter - "How is that even possible?!"

Hope you enjoy the Rushdie.

>84 labfs39: That same response happens on this side of the border too. Whenever I come back from New England to Canada, I always get the same response to the books answer. Once I really confused them by having some artwork too!

87kidzdoc
Lug 5, 2021, 12:29 pm

That is a beautiful bookshop! That's a nice book haul as well.

88AlisonY
Lug 5, 2021, 2:26 pm

When I retire I'm definitely doing some holidays based around incredible book shops - looks great.

89labfs39
Lug 5, 2021, 8:47 pm

>85 Nickelini: Victoria is a wonderful small city. I like the Royal BC Museum, including the outdoor buildings and totem poles. I saw a memorable IMAX documentary on beavers there. It's a nice city to walk, and a drive up the west coast is beautiful. I remember the huge chitons we found at China Beach and some wonderful seafood restaurants.

>86 SassyLassy: Yes, books and art. "What, no tchotchkes, maple leaf t-shirts, or moose hats? Are you really an American? Let me see your passport again." lol

90Nickelini
Lug 5, 2021, 9:35 pm

>89 labfs39: Wow, you beat me -- I haven't made it to China Beach yet (although most of my family has). I'll get there yet.

91Nickelini
Lug 5, 2021, 9:37 pm

>88 AlisonY: When I retire I'm definitely doing some holidays based around incredible book shops - looks great.

Obviously the British Isles are full of wonderful bookshops, but I see that Portugal has an impressive number for such a small country

92Nickelini
Lug 9, 2021, 12:36 am

51. Feminist City: A Field Guide, Leslie Kern, 2019


cover comments: I like it! There is black on black writing that says: "public space is not designed for women. My fear is not irrational. Headphones on--don't talk to me. City space is my space. The city needs to hear my voice." and on the back cover, "I am not public property. Don't tell me to smile. I can't take a shortcut home. A woman's place is in the city. Dude, really--two seats? Whose streets? Her streets."

Why I Read This Now: a few months ago I heard the author interviewed on CBC and I ordered this book the same day. I've been reading it in bits and pieces over the past few months.

Comments: Leslie Kern has a PhD in women's studies and teaches geography and environment, and is the director of the gender studies program at Mount Allison University. In this readable fairly short book, she shows how western cities are built to maintain traditional gender roles and assist cis white middle class males. She uses many personal stories to illustrate her points. The sections are City of Men, City of Moms, City of Friends, City of One, City of Protest, City of Fear, and City of Possibility.

Overall, it was an interesting read and pulled together various issues into one narrative. Although focused on women, she also included all groups that aren't cis white middle class males. I was hoping for more solutions, rather than just describing the problems.

Rating: 4 stars. When I heard her interviewed, she gave an example of the Cornell University Library:



Apparently this architectural marvel was designed to showcase the books. And no one ever thought about usability. Women with skirts and thin heels have trouble using this space, as do people who use canes or crutches. I'm sure this cost jillions of dollars to design and build, and no one thought about usability?

I was hoping for case studies like this in the book, and more detailed urban design, and less at the high level problem identifying.

Recommended for: you know who you are. I'm passing my copy along to my daughter who is in 3rd year geography and thinking of doing a masters in urban planning.

93NanaCC
Lug 9, 2021, 6:28 am

I just passed your review on to my granddaughter who just graduated from northeastern university in Boston. She majored in environmental and political science. Of the three co-op semesters she did there, she liked the one she did with the city of Boston planning department. I thought she’d find this book interesting.

94Nickelini
Lug 9, 2021, 10:37 am

95BLBera
Lug 9, 2021, 5:59 pm

Hi Joyce: The Godmother sounds like one I would enjoy. Onto the WL it goes.

Munro's does look beautiful. Lucky you.

96Nickelini
Modificato: Lug 15, 2021, 12:05 am

52. 25th Anniversary Edition Bridget Jones's Diary (And Other Writing), Helen Fielding, 2021


cover comments: I'm a huge Bridget Jones fan, so I don't care what the cover looks like, and this could be so much worse. But! I'm not crazy about this, to be honest. Obviously they had some fun with it, by combining the granny panties with the motif of Penguin Classics hardcovers, but I just find it cheap looking. That said, I'm not sure what a better motif for BJ would be if not the giant granny panties. Maybe a wine bottle? But that could apply to a lot of literary characters. And the granny panty scene in the movie still makes me laugh out loud, even after about 70 viewings. Perhaps it's that the execution could be better.

Lots of words, and I haven't made it to my book comments yet . . .

Comments: I adored Bridget Jones's Diary when I read it in the 90s, and then I loved the early 2000s rom-com film version. It's one of my top go-to comfort movies. When I heard they were releasing a 25th Anniversary Edition Bridget Jones's Diary, I didn't think I needed it until I heard there was over 100 pages of new material. And that's what I'm reviewing here-- the 126 pages of content outside of a reprinting of the novel. (If you want to know my thoughts on that, see my review from 2015 https://www.librarything.com/topic/184941#5050106)

25 Years of Bridget Jones

These are the extra wobbly Bridget Jones bits that I'll review here. Each has a half page introduction by the author, and then the rest is in Bridget's voice. These author introductions put the pieces in context and were gold:

Life Before Bridget: How Helen Fielding ended up writing BJD. At some point, she got a gig writing restaurant reviews for the Sunday Times and she included a few, starring her mum and her aunt, who turned into her mum and Aunt Una in the novel; and in another, her friends Sharon and Tracey, who became Shazzer and Jude.

The Diary of Bridget Jones: some of her newspaper columns that became the novel, not all of which made it to the novel. (There are alternate Bridget universes)

Bridget Becomes a Thing: After the novel became a best seller, one of Helen Fielding's highlights was when the Independent arranged for her to meet up with Colin Firth (her muse as Mr Darcy/Mark Darcy/himself) in Rome. They had lunch with a bottle of wine in one restaurant and because they were having so much fun they went to a second restaurant and a second bottle of wine and then did an interview of Fielding being in character as Bridget interviewing Firth. There is a version of this in The Edge of Reason and another version on YouTube of Renee Zellweger in character (search Bridget Jones interviews Colin Firth), and this is the original.

Bridget in the 21st Century : This might be my most favourite of the sections.

First, Fielding's goddaughter asked her to contribute to an edgy collection of essays about feminism. She wrote this: Bridget on attending the 40th Anniversary viewing of Saturday Night Fever with her friends. Shazzer loudly loses her shit over the insanely sexist script. I found this funny because a few weeks ago my 21 year old daughter told me that she'd just watched and hated Saturday Night Fever. She was very puzzled about how it could be a "classic." I said, "oh, that's a terrible movie." (I was too young to see it when it was a phenom, but I was old enough to babysit for couples going to see it. Saw it 25 years later. I was bored). Anyway, Shazzer's take on it was spot on. And why IS it a classic? Ugh.

Then March 2019 on freaking out about impending Brexit (among many lists, "Are we going to run out of wine?" was my fav entry, to which I say, with global warming, England will return to producing wine as it did in the 1200s)

This was followed by 29 March 2020 - Britain in full lock down, and then 24 May 2020, being allowed to maybe gather outdoors, with all its variations.

Finally, some pictures to suggest a self-help book written by Bridget Jones.

Why I Read This Now: it arrived in the mail 2 days ago

Rating: 4.5 stars. BJ has been a big part of my life. And I still relate to her. I think it's because she's always striving to do her best, and tries to meet society's or culture's expectations and mostly not making it. And being so human about it. Probably a few of us can relate to that, although over the past 25 years, I care a whole lot less! (and when I met Bridg in my early 30s, I already cared less than she did). But her character has grown, and she's a good person, and also, Mark Darcy!

Recommended for: anyone who has read this far has some warm spot for BJ and should probably read this. If you're here, and haven't read Bridget Jones's Diary, and it sounds good, go read that, but take it in context. As the author says in one of the introductions:

I tend not to read my own books (once I've written them, obviously) or re-watch the movies, but a couple of years ago I took my children, Dash and Romy, to see a screening of the Bridget Jones's Diary (event) . . . I was shocked at the casual sexism in every scene, which an unenlightened Bridget just put up with as part and parcel of having a job. Honestly, in this day and age all of Bridget's bosses would have been fired and shamed on the spot. Solemn Feminists could get angry about what Bridget put up with, but the fact is, I didn't write the diary as a sociological treatise. It became widely read because there was recognition. It was reflecting a reality, not creating it. .

I saw the movie opening weekend, and in my corporate experience, we all knew it was exaggerated for comedic purposes.

Comfort read.

97AlisonY
Lug 15, 2021, 4:42 am

>96 Nickelini: Fun review. It's a long time since I read the novel, but like you I've seen the films many times. There's an honesty about Bridget that I think many women of a certain age related to - she didn't have the perfect body, she made colossal screw ups and she didn't always choose the right guy, but as you say she was ultimately a good person as a character.

So many great scenes in the films. I loved when she got out of the soft-top car on her weekend away with Hugh Grant and her hair had gone totally crazy but she was still trying her best to act sophisticated, as if she had these types of trips away all the time.

98NanaCC
Lug 15, 2021, 10:02 am

>96 Nickelini: Loved your review. I’ll have to get this one. Loved it originally.

99rhian_of_oz
Lug 15, 2021, 10:15 am

>96 Nickelini: I want to start by saying I enjoyed your review.

I found Bridget Jones's Diary and Edge of Reason (which I read because my mum said it was better than the first one) infuriating. I was 30-something when I read it and I think I found her character personally insulting - my friends and I were *nothing* like BJ and her friends. The naivety that was hilarious in teenage Adrian Mole was a lot less amusing in an adult woman.

I wonder what I would think of it now that I'm older - would I have more sympathy for her? The extra bits you've described are making me consider reading this 25th anniversary edition.

100Nickelini
Lug 15, 2021, 10:34 am

>99 rhian_of_oz:
I totally get thinking she was . . . an idiot? unrealistic? frustrating?

When it came out, I was in my early 30s. She reminded me of my teenage self, but with a job and her own apartment. Her diary entries with her weight, # of cigarettes and # of alcohol units was something I did when I was 15 (except it was weight, calories, and hours of fasting -- I didn't smoke and I couldn't risk my mom seeing if I drank ;-) I was about the same age as her, but married with a career, a house and a baby. So not like her at all. I found her entertaining in much the same way I loved Sex and the City a few years later. Now there's a show that hasn't aged well!

101AlisonY
Lug 15, 2021, 10:42 am

>100 Nickelini: Have you seen the pics from the shooting they're currently doing for the SATC follow up (minus Kim Cattrall)? I think it's called 'And Just Like That'.

102kac522
Lug 15, 2021, 12:09 pm

>96 Nickelini: I just happened to re-watch the film last night, and I had much the same reaction as Fielding did on her re-viewing. I enjoyed it (book & movie) soon after the movie came out, mostly because of Colin Firth, I think, but I haven't watched it since until now. This time I did appreciate Zellweger's performance and, surprisingly, the music.

Re: the cover: well, better than reindeer, I suppose....

103Nickelini
Lug 15, 2021, 6:49 pm

>97 AlisonY: So many great scenes in the films. I loved when she got out of the soft-top car on her weekend away with Hugh Grant and her hair had gone totally crazy but she was still trying her best to act sophisticated, as if she had these types of trips away all the time.

That was a great scene. My favourite, if I have to pick one, is Firth and Grant's very realistic looking fight

104Nickelini
Lug 15, 2021, 6:50 pm

>99 rhian_of_oz:, >101 AlisonY:

One of my reactions to BJ is to cringe. She has a huge cringe factor. That can be a real turn off, or it can be funny. Humour is always so subjective.

105Nickelini
Lug 15, 2021, 6:53 pm

>101 AlisonY: Have you seen the pics from the shooting they're currently doing for the SATC follow up (minus Kim Cattrall)? I think it's called 'And Just Like That'.

I did hear it was happening, but I haven't seen any photos. I'm not sure how I feel about this project. I heard Kim Cattrall hates Sarah Jessica Parker because SJP treated her horribly. Makes me feel "meh" about this. I did so love that show back in its day though

106Nickelini
Lug 15, 2021, 6:54 pm

>102 kac522:
Yes! The sound track is great!

Reindeer jumpers would have been pretty good, actually

107AlisonY
Lug 16, 2021, 2:54 am

>105 Nickelini: I'm Team SJP all the way. From what I've gathered, most people involved in the series seem to think Kim is the one with the issues and that SJP has never said a negative word about her. I was a big fan too, so I'm looking forward to the new series.

108Nickelini
Lug 16, 2021, 10:35 am

>107 AlisonY: Interesting. I'll defer to your opinion, as I just heard a rumour in passing ;-) If I hear good things about the show, i'll make a point of looking for it. I'm not much of a TV watcher, but when there's a good show it can be a lot of fun

109Nickelini
Lug 17, 2021, 2:49 pm

53. Bitter Orange, Claire Fuller, 2018


cover comments: This is gorgeous and drew me right in. The background pattern is "Bird and pomegranate' wallpaper from William Morris. I always love William Morris on a cover

Why I Read This Now: When I was browsing in Munro's books a couple of weeks ago, I was considering the same author's Unsettled Ground (which sounds excellent), and then I noticed this, and I was drawn to the title and the spine art. I have a thing for books with fruit in the title, don't ask me why. The blurb on the back sounded irresistible, especially this bit, "hot summer rolls lazily on", as I was very hot when I read that. (We're having a lengthy heat wave here in Western Canada.) Bitter Orange bypassed my massive TBR pile and I started it right away.

Comments: It took me about 10 days to read Bitter Orange because I was absolutely savoring it. It just dripped with stifling summery atmosphere.

Thirty-nine year old Frances arrives at the decaying Hampshire country house in the summer of 1969 with the job of cataloguing the garden structures for the new owner. Also staying there are bohemian Cara and her spouse Peter, who is documenting the house. Frances has spent her adult life in isolation caring for her ailing mother, who has recently died, and she is socially awkward and naïve. The three form a friendship of sorts, and spend the sultry summer drinking wine and smoking cigarettes, and slowly secrets seep out.

Bitter Orange is compared to: Daphne du Maurier, Anita Brookner, We Have Always Lived in a Castle, and A Month in the Country. I could list a lot of other books it reminds me of, but I think it's just that the English country house in summer setting is one of my favourites.

Rating: Absolutely loved this, perfect summer read. 4.5 stars.

Recommended for: There isn't enough action in Bitter Orange for many readers, but if you like an atmospheric, intriguing and elegant novel, check it out.

110RidgewayGirl
Lug 17, 2021, 2:58 pm

>109 Nickelini: I am keeping an eye out for this in the summer booksales and if I don't find it there, I'll pick up a new copy. My local bookstore has three of her novels on the shelf. I really loved Unsettled Ground and Frances sounds similar to a character in that book.

111Nickelini
Lug 17, 2021, 3:10 pm

>110 RidgewayGirl: Yes, I can see similarities between these two books. I own the author's Swimming Lessons, which also sounds like my sort of book.

112lisapeet
Lug 17, 2021, 10:16 pm

Jeez, I have her four most recent books (maybe that's all her books)—I need to read a few. This one sounds like just the thing for right now... I've been describing the weather this month as "sultry."

113AlisonY
Lug 18, 2021, 1:09 pm

Onto my list too. Sounds just like my kind of read.

114BLBera
Lug 18, 2021, 10:25 pm

I also loved Unsettled Ground and would like to explore Fuller's work more. Great comments, Joyce, and I love the cover of Bitter Orange.

115Nickelini
Modificato: Lug 21, 2021, 12:10 am

54. Breath, Tim Winton, 2008


cover comments: I really like this cover, but I don't think it fits the book

Rating: for most of this, I thought it had great atmosphere, but perhaps lacking in story, and then in the last third, bam! It turns and everything comes together. I was wowed. It went from 3.5 stars to 4.5 stars over a few pages.

Comments: Bruce Pike, a paramedic, looks back on his early teen years growing up in the 1970s in a small town on the south coast of Western Australia. Before extreme sports were a thing, he makes friends with Loonie through their mutual interest of risk taking. While out surfing, they are swept into the world of Sando, a retired pro-surfer, who becomes a guru to them. Together, and then apart, they take on increasingly bigger risks.

Winton writes beautifully, and I enjoyed more pages about waves and swells than I would have thought possible. The story flowed nicely, even if I wasn't completely invested in it. Then Winton steered the proverbial surfboard of this novel sharply and pulled me in. Lots of layers on the theme of "breath" were handled beautifully. After finding this author's In the Winter Dark to be forgettable, and Dirt Music to be better but a bit "meh", I thought I was done with him, but now I will definitely pick up at least Cloudstreet.

I see in my 2015 comments on Dirt Music that I complained about the lack of quotation marks around dialogue. Oh my, how things change. I was 3/4 of the way through Breath before I noticed they were missing.

Recommended for: I'm not sure. Would someone with no interest in surfing still like this? Surfing is minor in my life, but it's always been out on the periphery -- whether through my older brothers surfing in SoCal in the 1970s, or watching surfers in Australia and Hawaii. There is something mesmerizing about watching them, especially in bigger surf like the North Shore of Maui. And I've had enough body surfing mess ups to relate in some small way to what Pike was talking about. I guess if Breath sounds remotely interesting, give it a try.

Why I Read This Now: a beachy Australian book sounded like a good summertime read, even if my own summer is spent mostly in an air conditioned office

116lisapeet
Lug 21, 2021, 8:10 am

>115 Nickelini: I have no interest in surfing and I thought it was great. I think it gets to the bonds between people, the power of friendships, and a bit of that obsession that isn't just unique to surfing. Though I read it when it first came out and don't remember a lot of details...

117Nickelini
Lug 21, 2021, 10:32 am

>116 lisapeet: Oh, good point! Yeah, I've enjoyed a short story or two about baseball, and I can't think of anything more boring.

118SassyLassy
Modificato: Lug 22, 2021, 9:31 am

>115 Nickelini: Like >116 lisapeet:, I thought this book seemed to be about so much more than surfing; that surfing was just the glue that held the characters together. I suppose with a different title it could have been built around anyone of several other high risk individual sports.

Winton is a favourite of mine, with each book around a completely different topic, but always powerful. Having said that, I haven't read In the Winter Dark, so may be wrong there.

Have you seen The Endless Summer which captures that mesmerizing motion you spoke of.

________
ETA the first description on LT is incorrect

119japaul22
Lug 21, 2021, 4:57 pm

>109 Nickelini: just wanted to chime in that, as you saw, I just finished Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller and loved it. I’ve put Bitter Orange on my wishlist as well.

120Nickelini
Lug 21, 2021, 6:22 pm

>118 SassyLassy: That link is weird . . . I thought Endless Summer was an old documentary about searching the world for the perfect wave. The picture suggests possibly the same link. But the description is about racial unrest in 1991. Colour me confused.

If I have the right documentary, yes, I've seen it but I think it was 1981 so my memory isn't crisp

121SassyLassy
Lug 22, 2021, 9:30 am

>120 Nickelini: You're right - it is weird. It is the surfer movie you describe, looking for the perfect wave, and the other descriptions confirm it. It was produced by Bruce Brown, so I don't know how that first LT description crept it, nor do I see a way of suggesting it needs corrected.

122Nickelini
Lug 22, 2021, 11:54 am

>121 SassyLassy: If I came across Endless Summer, I'd rewatch it

123Nickelini
Modificato: Lug 30, 2021, 12:42 am

55. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991, Salman Rushdie, published 1991


cover comments: why is he leaning against a wall with two graffiti scrawls. I don't really get this. Not the worst; could be better

Comments: A collection of non-fiction writing by Rushdie during the Thatcher years. Main themes are immigration, politics, religion. There were many pieces that I didn't care about, so I read selectively--53%, or 235/439 pages. When Rushdie is good, he is very, very good. But not going to read about EL Doctorow, or Rian Malan, or all sorts of other 80s topics. I couldn't tell from the title of a piece whether I'd be interested or not. For example, "Hobson-Jobson" was one of my favourites, although starting it I didn't have a clue what it was about (which was Indian words that we use in English, such as "shampoo" or "muddle"). There are many reviews of other writers' works, and he tells us how he feels. Rushdie did NOT like Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, for example.

Many times Rushdie make precise and exact comments about politics, racism, immigration, and religion. The years in-between have provided many examples to show that he was spot on. The only thing that really stood out different today is that he wrote during an AIDS crisis. I was surprised to be reminded how progressive Rushdie was.

Recommended for: you know who you are. If you've been wanting to read Rushdie but don't know where to start, I think his non-fiction is more accessible than his novels. Get this from the library and read what interests you.

Why I Read This Now: I've owned this since university, when I read several things by Rushdie, including the title essay "Imaginary Homelands." I wanted to read more, but never found a time to fit it in until now.

Rating: Based on the 35 essays I read, 4 stars.

ETA: 20 years ago, Salman Rushdie was the guest speaker at a professional conference I wanted to attend. When I submitted my request to my employer, my spell checker changed Salman Rushdie to "salmon residue". He'll always be Salmon Residue to me. (I promptly changed jobs and didn't attend the conference)

124thorold
Lug 31, 2021, 1:42 am

>123 Nickelini: I’d forgotten that book, it’s so long since I read it, but I do remember enjoying the essay on Hobson-Jobson. There’s an online version of the original Hobson-Jobson dictionary here: https://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/hobsonjobson/

125Nickelini
Lug 31, 2021, 1:54 am

>124 thorold: It was surprising how some things haven't changed all that much. Clearly, since I didn't read 48% of the book, lots of it is just, whatever. Now off to explore Hobsonjobson . . . thanks for the link

126BLBera
Lug 31, 2021, 1:14 pm

Great comments on the Rushdie - your approach seems like a good one to an essay collection. I usually plow through and end up reading many that don't interest me, which skews my view of the collection.

On another topic, enjoy your birthday weekend. Many happy returns.

127RidgewayGirl
Lug 31, 2021, 3:33 pm

Have a lovely Birthday, Joyce!

128SassyLassy
Lug 31, 2021, 4:32 pm

>123 Nickelini: salmon residue - Must be a BC spell check!

129torontoc
Lug 31, 2021, 4:36 pm

Happy Birthday!

130kidzdoc
Lug 31, 2021, 5:12 pm

LOL at Salmon Residue.

Happy Birthday, Joyce!

131lisapeet
Ago 2, 2021, 8:04 am

It's the stuff that sticks to the package when you pull out the big piece of lox? Anyway, happy birthday, Joyce!

132Nickelini
Modificato: Ago 4, 2021, 11:12 pm

>126 BLBera:, >127 RidgewayGirl:, >129 torontoc:, >130 kidzdoc:>, >131 lisapeet:

Thanks for the birthday wishes! On my birthday we went into the close-by small city and went to some book shops, and then had a fabulous lunch (halibut, yum!) on at a restaurant built over the water. Our campsite was lovely - right on the water which was shallow and refreshing for swimming, which was great because we are in the midst of another heatwave. We went kayaking for one day, another we rode bikes to view some petroglyphs, and another we hiked up to a huge crack in the earth called the Abyss. In the campsite, there were lots of herons, bald eagles, hawks, rabbits, and bats. My daughter and my husband also saw a mink.

Here's a picture of the Abyss that I found on the internet:


This is a petroglyph of a sea-wolf (not my photo):

I'd never heard of sea-wolves, and now they are on my top ten list. Sea-wolf - how cool is that?

Now I'm home and clean.

133Nickelini
Modificato: Ago 4, 2021, 11:34 pm

56. After Hannibal, Barry Unsworth, 1997


cover comments: Another disjointed 1990s cover where none of the elements go together. It really looks like it was created on 1990s software, rather than something a renowned publisher such as Norton would produce. The photo is grainy. The elements suit the story, but the execution is poor. A much nice cover:



Comments: This was an interesting read, although I had heard it was "light" and I thought, humorous. I didn't find it funny at all, and once I got past that expectation, I enjoyed this story of a group of neighbors living on a country road in Umbria, Italy. There is the Italian family who has been there forever, the English couple who fight with them, an American couple who dreamed of restoring a house in the Italian countryside for their retirement, a professor from Turin who is wrapped up in the Renaissance history of the area, a German who is wresting with his childhood spent in Italy with his Nazi father, and the gay couple, Fabio & Arturo. (The names of this couple make me laugh because my husband's name is Fabrizio, but shortened to "Fab", and most Canadians assume he's a Fabio; he has a close friend from childhood who for the past 5 years, he has gone on 75km-100km bike rides with a couple of times a month, and his name is Arturo.) There is also an English "property manager" (aka con-artist) and his wife who dreams of starting a medieval-style restaurant, and an Italian lawyer who stirs things up.

In each group of characters, there is betrayal. It's interesting, and sometimes frustrating, and often heartbreaking.

Recommended for: #1 - if you know anyone who watches films set in Italy, or reads fantasy memoirs such as Under the Tuscan Sun, or dreams of Italy after their 2 week trip there, and now wants to buy a house in Italy . . . put this book in their hands immediately. Other than that, I think most people who read my thread on LT would enjoy After Hannibal.

Why I Read This Now: I'm always up for a novel about the Italian-dream (for foreigners) gone wrong. COVID is still blocking my travel to Italy, so I might was well read a book set there.

Rating: probably a hair under 4 stars

134ursula
Ago 5, 2021, 12:09 am

Ah yes, I read this one and also thought it was great as counterpoint to Under the Tuscan Sun syndrome.

135Nickelini
Ago 5, 2021, 12:14 am

>134 ursula: Ursula - it might have been you who drew my attention to this book. Thank you.

136AlisonY
Ago 5, 2021, 4:28 am

>133 Nickelini: It's hard to go past anything set in Tuscany...

137BLBera
Ago 8, 2021, 9:32 pm

Great comments on After Hannibal; it sounds like one I would like.

It sounds like your camping trip was a success. Thanks for sharing the photos.

138Nickelini
Modificato: Ago 11, 2021, 11:31 pm

57. The Garden of Monsters, Lorenza Pieri, 2019; translated from Italian by Liesl Schillinger, 2020


cover comments: I like the bright colours but the image puzzled me. Now that I know it's taken from an actual art work in "the garden of monsters," I get it. I like the font. 3.5 out of 5 stars, but much nicer than most Europa Editions (I think they have been doing better the last few years)

Comments: An Italian family drama, set in the 1980s Maremma, which is the southwest corner of Tuscany. Until the 20th century, the Maremma was a malaria-infested swamp. The Garden of Monsters begins after the swamp has been drained, Italy is recovering from the devastation of WWII, and money and investment is starting to flow into the region. The Biagini family are local ranchers, and the head of the family, Sauro, goes into business with the wealthy Roman politician Filippo Sanfilippi. Together they create rustic retreats where wealthy Romans can come to ride horses, enjoy the beach, eat high quality local food cooked by Sauro's wife, and drink a lot of local wine.

The book blurb describes this as a "war between families," but I'd say it was more a novel about two families who were frenemies, with the lower class famiglia Biagini usually getting the short end from the upper class famiglia Sanfilippi. If there is a main character, it's Sauro's teenage daughter Annamaria--intelligent, observant, anxious and so naïve. Filippo has a daughter the same age--thin, blonde ballerina Lisa. There is a cast of other family members, some with sizeable story tangents. But of the other characters, none is more important than Niki de Saint Phalle, a French-American artist who is creating a garden of massive sculptures nearby. This is the "Garden of Monsters" in the title, named thusly because the locals saw this as a folly and didn't recognize as having value. Annamaria visits this garden while it's under construction, and gets to know the artist, and these encounters spur her self-confidence and growth.

The Garden of Monsters has been described as a bildungsroman, and I agree it would be if only the novel were tighter and focused on Annamaria. However, it wandered off on tangents about several other characters, so maybe I'd call it a bildungsroman with tangents about adultery, discovering sexuality, disappointing sons, bribing politicians, anxious parents, historical background, and so on.

I found the Italian details to be authentic and insightful, and helped me understand my husband's Italian family and culture better. I say that because many Italian novels I read do that old school thing of not naming the place and trying to make it universal.

Let's Get Personal: 1. Part way into the book I realized that even though it wasn't a name I recognized, Niki de Saint Phalle was a real person, and her Tarot Garden in SW Tuscany is a real place. http://ilgiardinodeitarocchi.it/ I wanted to know how to pronounce her name correctly (my French really stinks) so I searched her in YouTube and came across an hour long documentary about the artist that was fascinating. And who would have guessed? She created one of my all time favourite sculptures! I just hadn't taken note of the artist. And I even wrote about this sculpture a few years ago here on LT, because the statue was discussed in the book Hausfrau and I saw it in real life the same week I read the book: https://www.librarything.com/topic/245600#6302058


You can find "L‘ange protecteur" hanging in the Zurich train station, blessing all the passengers who rush past underneath her. Turns out, this is one of Niki de Saint Phalle's "nanas" . . . I just adore them, and now that I know more about the artist, I'm amazed that such happiness and feminine joy came out of such a traumatized and sometimes angry woman. Off on a tangent to learn more about Niki de Saint Phalle . . .

2. The main characters, who are from SW Tuscany, have the surname "Biagini," which is my husband and daughter's surname. My husband is from NW Tuscany, and we do know there are other Biaginis in the area who we don't know . . . but it's a fairly uncommon surname. There is a baseball pitcher named Joe Biagini who plays for the Chicago Cubs (maybe? I don't follow baseball at all and people started reaching out to my husband when Joe played for Toronto). (Oh, I just googled him and he comes from San Francisco, and there's a branch of the Biagini family who went to San Francisco and were disowned, so maybe this is second cousin or something? I digress). Anyway, I've only found my surname once in a novel (main character Naomi Nickel in A Complicated Kindness) and this is the first time I've found my husband and kids' surname, and it's even for a main character. That's the kind of thing that I like. I guess if your surname is Smith or Lee or something your experience is different.

Why I Read This Now: Europa Editions always sit close to the top of my TBR piles; this seemed like a summer read (set on a beach and all); the main characters are Biaginis (see above); August is "women in translation month"

Rating: 4.25 stars. The writing was good, the detail was excellent, the characters were interesting, unique, sometimes sympathetic . . . but it just rambled from here to there too much.

139arubabookwoman
Ago 13, 2021, 3:57 pm

I've really liked Nikki di Saint Phalle's work when I've come across it over the years, but I've never investigated her, or delved more deeply into her work. Your comments and this book make me interested in following through now. I really like the Angel-it sounds like there are other similar sculptures.

140RidgewayGirl
Ago 13, 2021, 8:05 pm

I pick up Europa Editions whenever I find them (I skip the French ones that sound twee).

141avaland
Ago 14, 2021, 2:21 pm

Popping in to see what you are reading these days, Joyce. Sounds like some great stuff and you do such a great job reporting on them (above and beyond!) Has it really been that long since Bridget Jones came out???? (I liked the movie better:-)

142Nickelini
Ago 14, 2021, 2:52 pm

>139 arubabookwoman:
I stumbled onto this documentary on YouTube that was really good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZnQijyAsgU

Yes, she has made many sculptures similar to the angel. They are called Nanas. Happy investigating!

143Nickelini
Ago 14, 2021, 2:55 pm

>140 RidgewayGirl:
I keep returning to Europa Editions because they are most hits for me, but yeah, they have some stinkers too. It's funny that some of their very best sellers are the ones I disliked (Elegance of the Hedgehog and My Brilliant Friend, for example)

>141 avaland:
Hi Lois! Thanks for the compliments :-)
Yes, Little Bridget has gotten old!

144Nickelini
Modificato: Ago 15, 2021, 6:11 pm

58. In Other Words, Jhumpa Lahari, 2015, translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein, 2016


cover comments: it's okay I guess but not very interesting

Comments: This is Jhumpa Lahari's memoir of learning to speak, and then write, Italian. Unlike me, she has no good reason to learn Italian, but finds herself inexplicably drawn to the language. This was significantly better than Why Learn to Speak Italian, which I earlier this summer.

Rating: 4 stars. As someone who is struggling to learn Italian, I found this super interesting. However, by the end I was finding it repetitive and self-indulgent. She oddly seemed to only care about Italian language, and not Italian people or culture.

Recommended for: readers interested in adults learning a new language.

Why I Read This Now: one of the challenges for Women in Translation month is to read a work of non-fiction. This is the only book I own that qualifies.

145arubabookwoman
Ago 15, 2021, 7:11 pm

>142 Nickelini: Thanks for the link!

146RidgewayGirl
Ago 16, 2021, 10:20 am

>144 Nickelini: Lahiri's whole process is interesting to me -- at first I was skeptical, as in, it felt so artificial to me. Why would someone choose to learn a new language and then write in that language. But people do that all the time, except the adopted language is English, so it feels normal. Lahiri has chosen to move away from English and I'm fascinated. I've spent years living in Germany, can hold a conversation, read books, watch films easily enough, but as for writing something more complex than basic instructions, I would not even dare.

In the discussion about her new book (written in Italian, then translated into English) some have pointed out that Whereabouts is simpler both in structure and in language than her previous books. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, though. And I've read a novel she translated from Italian to English and thought it was excellent. Anyway, more than you wanted, but them's my thoughts.

147Nickelini
Ago 16, 2021, 10:39 am

>146 RidgewayGirl:
Not more than I wanted, actually. I find the whole thing fascinating.

Yes, you're right about how now one blinks when the 3rd language is English . . . as Nabokov and Joseph Conrad did. But when Lahari writes in her 3rd language, people are confused because it seems her audience will be smaller. I don't know that she cares all that much.

She admits she doesn't have nearly the range in Italian that she has in English, and she gets A LOT of help too. I'm hoping that one day my Italian will be good enough that I can read the originals of In Other Words and Whereabouts.

148ursula
Modificato: Ago 19, 2021, 1:28 am

Your copy of In Other Words was only in English? Mine had Italian and English on facing pages.

149Nickelini
Ago 19, 2021, 9:12 am

>148 ursula: mine was the same. One day I’ll go back and read the Italian

150ursula
Ago 19, 2021, 10:46 am

Ah okay, I just wasn't sure. I read the Italian with support from the English. Her level was just about right for my reading abilities - I ran across some words or turns of phrase I didn't understand but not a ton.

151Nickelini
Ago 19, 2021, 12:27 pm

>150 ursula: yes, I read some of the Italian and it appears she wrote it at a level that is realistic for me to achieve.

152BLBera
Ago 21, 2021, 9:06 am

Hi Joyce - I also find Lahiri's experiment fascinating. As a fluent Spanish speaker, I don't know that I would attempt to write a novel in that language...I did find Whereabouts simplistic, but still.

153Nickelini
Ago 22, 2021, 12:31 am

59. The Italian Matchmaker, Santa Montefiore, 2009


cover comments: The type of cover I’ve walked by without a glance for decades. Gag. What makes this especially awful is that this book is firmly set on the Amalfi Coast, and this is clearly not the Amalfi Coast. Italy, maybe, but not where the book is set for sure. Also, the title font is ugly.

Comments: Last year I knew I needed to read more light and fun books and found The Temptation of Gracie by Santa Montefiore. Much to my surprise, it was fairly well written, with good sense of place, interesting characters and an engaging storyline. I was expecting mediocre and it wasn’t. So this year I tried The Italian Matchmaker that the same author wrote a decade earlier. Unfortunately, this one could be better described as mediocre.

The main story involves Luca, a mover and shaker in the London finance world, recently divorced, and finding his life pointless. Lucky for him, his parents have recently restored a villa in a village on the Amalfi Coast of Italy, so he quits it all and goes to the palazzo to recoup. And falls in love. I guess it’s nice to read a love story from a guy’s point of view.

The problem with The Italian Matchmaker is that there were too many characters and little side stories, and too many odd connections between people. I didn’t really connect with any character, although Luca was drawn interestingly enough. The author did write his two small daughters very well. There were many phrases that were lovely, and she captured the feel of a small Amalfi village quite well. The characters in the novel were distinct enough, but all their inter-tangling and their ties back to history (a previous novel set many years in the past) were terribly confusing and not interesting at all.

As I said, many lovely bits of writing and world building, but ach! My red editor’s pen was twitching. This needed an overall story arch rewrite. But also, so many tiny details were eyerolling, wrong, or silly. The tall, dark, handsome Luca did not have to be 6’4’ tall in southern Italy! That’s monstrously tall in that world, not attractively handsome. Make him 6’, 6’1” tops to be better suited and accepted. And don’t get me started about naming the mafia boss “Lupo Bianco.” Groan. (It translates to “white wolf”). Silly mistakes, those are the first two that come to mind. An abundance of silly mistakes.

And then! There’s a whole supernatural element. Oh my. Just no. I’m not opposed to supernatural, and I love me some magical realism, but this was just a ghost story wedged into a normal escapist romance novel.

Rating: Generous 3 stars. At least 1.5 of those stars are because the author did the setting quite well. I don’t regret the time I spent with this. I was engaged and entertained. Just so many flaws. But her later novel was much better! I will read this author again

Why I Read This Now: I make myself fit in a frothy novel every few months because it’s a healthy thing to do. Romances set in Italy are good fits for this purpose.

154SassyLassy
Ago 22, 2021, 9:29 am

>153 Nickelini: I make myself fit in a frothy novel every few months because it’s a healthy thing to do. Romances set in Italy are good fits for this purpose.

Have you read Adriana Trigiani? She would certainly fit the bill. I blush to say it, but the first novel in this mini series is Very Valentine. Naturally it was the custom shoe making that appealed, right before a trip to Italy.

155Nickelini
Modificato: Ago 22, 2021, 10:56 am

>154 SassyLassy: that’s a new name for me. I’ll keep my eyes open for her. Thanks!

156AlisonY
Ago 22, 2021, 11:41 am

>154 SassyLassy: Her sister was the socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, who was that rare thing of being a very loveable toff. I was sad when she died a few years back - she was a rascal, but a vulnerable one too.

157Nickelini
Modificato: Ago 22, 2021, 11:47 pm

60. The Emissary, Yoko Tawada, 2014; translated from Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani, 2018


cover comments: I love this. I had never heard of this novella when I came across it in my favourite book store last summer, and the cover drew me right in

Comments: It's Japan, sometime in the future, and something has gone terribly wrong. The land is completely poisoned, and the children who are born are very weak and delicate, whereas the older people are in comparison, thriving. Yoshiro is over 100 years old and still rents a dog for half and hour and goes for a run every morning. The rest of the time he takes care of his great-grandson Mumei. Their world of future-Tokyo is a struggle, and Yoshiro remembers before . . . before Japan went full-on isolationist, before the internet went down, and before all the foreign words and ideas were outlawed. The world building was extremely inventive and memorable, and the characters of Mumei and Yoshiro were fully sympathetic.

Unfortunately, this 137 page novella has no chapters, sections or breaks at all. It's all one go from the beginning. There is no plot to speak of, and it's a disjointed read, abruptly going from one character to another, sometimes in first person, more often in third. This would have been so much better if they had thought to give it some little ~~ or *** breaks to help the reader along. And also, more of a story would be better.

I was surprised that this dystopian novel has many science fiction tags, because scifi is a genre I usually want nothing to do with. Good to be reminded that not all scifi involves robots on space ships.

Rating: Glad I read this, liked it more than I disliked it, but the pages-long paragraphs, total lack of plot, and abrupt head jumping lands this at 3 stars.

Recommended for: dystopian fictions fans looking for a lighter, not disturbing read.

Why I Read This Now: it's been top of my TBR pile since I bought it last year, but it was a must-read for "women in translation August"

158AnnieMod
Modificato: Ago 22, 2021, 11:56 pm

>157 Nickelini: Under some definitions of Science fiction, dystopia is one of its subgenres. :) I personally think it and its siblings are a separate genre inside of speculative fiction but people tend to bundle the genres a bit sometimes.

159stretch
Ago 23, 2021, 7:57 am

>157 Nickelini: This one seemsed to have landed about the same way for everyone I've seen read it. I had issues deciding what Twada was saying about a greater theme. It just kind of was muddled togehter. In the end it felt a lot longer than its 137 pages. There's good writing and an interesting concept, not sure any of it went anywhere.

160Nickelini
Ago 23, 2021, 11:45 am

>159 stretch: Perfectly stated! Glad it wasn't just me

161ursula
Ago 28, 2021, 6:18 am

>157 Nickelini: I read this one, I guess in the last few years when I'd drifted away from LT. I rated it 3 stars as well, felt like I wanted there to be something more to it.

162Nickelini
Ago 31, 2021, 11:12 pm

Women in Translation August

I did pretty well. Of the 6 books I read in August, 4 were women in translation:

1. The Garden of Monsters, Lorenza Pieri, Italian, bonus point for being translated by a woman
2. In Other Words, Jhumpa Lahari, Italian (Indian heritage, UK birth, US citizen), bonus point for being translated by a women, another point for non-fiction
3. The Emissary, Yoko Tawada, Japanese, bonus point for being translated by a woman
4. Wildlives, Monique Proulx, French, Canadian (Quebec)

Points not earned: new to me language or a language I haven't read for 5 or more years

This was a fun mini-challenge and I hope to participate again in 2022

163ELiz_M
Set 1, 2021, 7:33 am

>162 Nickelini: who was hosting this WiT challenge?

164Nickelini
Set 1, 2021, 11:10 am

>163 ELiz_M: From what I can tell at this point, it's a phenom that is without a host. This is my first year participating, just because it aligns with my reading anyway, so why not make a little challenge and have some fun? I knew about it because it's all over bookstagram and booktube. Your question sent me to google to see. It looks like it started in 2014 from a book blogger. But participation is even wider than I knew -- many independent publishers are celebrating it, as are uni presses, PEN, and the Women's Prize (UK). And bookish people on Instagram and YouTube.

165Nickelini
Set 3, 2021, 1:03 am

61. Wildlives, Monique Proulx, 2008; translated from French by David Homel & Fred A Reed, 2009


cover comments: just gorgeous, especially when you turn the book and see the spine and back cover. Captures the feel of the book rather beautifully.

Comments: Wildlives covers the lives of a handful of people staying the summer in cabins and cottages around a lake in the Laurentians of Quebec. The forest, hills and waterways are another character in this novel. The writing is lush and unique. Unfortunately, the middle third of the book bogs down with too many characters and too little story. It picks up again for an interesting ending.

Rating: Wildlives had some of the most beautiful writing I can remember reading, and then I grew bored with it's seeming lack of purpose. At times I thought of this as a 5 star read, but in the end I'm giving it 4 stars. A strong edit of the rambling bits mid-story is needed.

Recommended for: people who love to read about nature and who appreciate a solid representation of summertime. Readers who like a clear plot shouldn't bother

Why I Read This Now: I've owned this for a decade and finally picked it up months ago, and then realized it's clearly set in the summer, so I put it aside for a summer challenge read

Interesting note: This was originally published in French with the title "Champagne," which I don't really understand. I'd like to know more about that. Maybe time to go and google . . .

166Nickelini
Modificato: Set 4, 2021, 2:51 pm

62. Wave, Eric Walters, 2009


cover comments: absolutely love this - great design, Jennifer Lum & Eyestalk

Comments: Every year, Sam Brooks, his older sister Beth, and their parents would spend Christmas holidays at a beach resort in Thailand. In 2004, Beth stays home to train with her university swim team. On Boxing Day 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami hit the resort. The first half of the book is Sam's story of being in Thailand and the tsunami, and the second half is Beth's story of the aftermath and trying to find her family.

Recommended for: the target audience for this novel is middle school readers. I think Walters has a gift of writing realistic style books that will appeal to both boys and girls. This should be in all the libraries for this age group.

Rating: A solid book that I read mostly in one sitting. 4 stars

Why I Read This Now: I was looking for a short break between some other, slower reads. This was the last book I bought when I used to organize the Scholastic Book Fairs at my daughters' school, so it's been in my TBR for over a decade for a someday read. Today was that someday.

Note: Eric Walters is a prolific Canadian writer who has won many awards. I guess his publisher wanted to sell more books in the US, so they had the family come from New York instead of Toronto. You know, because kids in Iowa or Indiana can't possibly relate to any characters from other countries. I really hate that :-(


167SassyLassy
Set 6, 2021, 9:14 am

>166 Nickelini: ...kids in Iowa or Indiana can't possibly relate to any characters from other countries. I really hate that :-(

Me too, but possibly even scarier is that they might think Toronto was in the US!

168AnnieMod
Set 6, 2021, 11:15 am

>167 SassyLassy: Sometimes I wonder how much of that mentality/expectation comes from the fact that children in big countries are rarely exposed to translated literature early on (that seems to be changing these days - or so it seems looking at what is getting published) - there is enough local literature (for some value of local) unlike smaller counties where kids learn to read with translations (or see them very early on). I know Canadian is not translated but translations teach you to expect foreign names and places - which local literature rarely does. Oh well.

169SassyLassy
Set 6, 2021, 4:18 pm

>168 AnnieMod:
I expect you are right about the differences in attitude to translated works between larger countries like the US, and countries with smaller populations like Canada, where if you want to read more, you have to look elsewhere.
Unilingual Canadians who read "CanLit" (not sure how many people outside Canada read it except for the works of St Margaret) do read in translation between English and French. I like to think that encourages them to try other translated works, but suspect I am wrong in this faint hope, at least as applied to most anglophone Canadians.

Maybe if Canada's official languages were languages with fewer speakers, like Dutch or Icelandic, translated works would be read more frequently.

>165 Nickelini: Did you find out anything about the title differences? I've been contemplating this book since reading your review.

170lilisin
Modificato: Set 7, 2021, 3:57 am

>165 Nickelini:

I remember reviewing Wildlives for Belletrista. I remember the atmosphere so vividly even now. I don't recall there being so many characters and I certainly remember nothing that would make me think Champagne would be a good title. . How curious about the original title.

171Dilara86
Modificato: Set 7, 2021, 5:30 am

>165 Nickelini: Interesting note: This was originally published in French with the title "Champagne," which I don't really understand. I'd like to know more about that. Maybe time to go and google . . .

Looking at the French book description, it looks Proulx is playing with the word's multiple meanings: "Champagne" is the name of a French region (and the name of the fizzy wine made there), but etymologically, it just means "countryside" - "champagne" and "campagne" are linguistic doublets, although in contemporary standard French, only the latter still carries this meaning. I am also wondering whether she is alluding to the song of the same name by Jacques Higelin: Champagne

172SassyLassy
Set 7, 2021, 10:16 am

>171 Dilara86: I was hearing 'campagne' in my head too, and read Nickelini's note that way originally, and thought it fitted, so interesting about the linguistic doublets.

173thorold
Set 7, 2021, 12:11 pm

>171 Dilara86: >172 SassyLassy: I was wondering if Québecois might have kept "champagne" in both senses, but if you try googling it you just get a lot of ads for Canadian sparkling wine.

174Dilara86
Set 7, 2021, 1:02 pm

>173 thorold: Yes, this is frustrating! I don't know enough about Canadian French to claim with certainty that "champagne" is never used to mean "countryside", but it can't be widespread, or I think would have heard it and remembered it. I did find a quote from the novel in a review that seems to support it not being in use:

«Il avait dit : "je viendrai sabler la campagne", et ils avaient ri comme à un lapsus amusant. . Qui sait encore qu'au Moyen Age tout ce qui n'était pas la ville, tout ce qui était territoire sauvage s'appelait la champagne ?» I feel sorry for the translator who had to deal with this! "Sabler LE CHampagne" means to drink a lot of champagne (or figuratively, to celebrate something). This is quite a common phrase. But the main meaning of the verb "sabler" is to cover with sand/grit (to treat snowy roads, for example), or even sandblast. So when the character says "sabler LA Campagne", his joke or verbal slip means either to spread sand all over the countryside or sandblast it. Hmm. I really want to read this book now, and see the quote in context. It looks like there is a lot going on, linguistically!

175stretch
Set 7, 2021, 3:05 pm

>166 Nickelini: The frustration of New York publishing arrogance. I can't speak as a child of the midwest, but as a child of the rural Central Valley on the west coast, New York is as foreign as place as Bangkok. We could no more relate to a New Yorker as a Martian. There is no more logic in changing cities other than an arrogant superoity complex that treats their costumers as fools incable of having a learning expeierence.

176SassyLassy
Modificato: Set 7, 2021, 4:55 pm

>173 thorold: >174 Dilara86: Sounds like a book for me and my Québecoise tutor - lots of opportunities for discussion!

177Nickelini
Set 9, 2021, 8:13 pm

Oh, I've had visitors! And my visitors have been having lovely conversations amongst themselves.

>167 SassyLassy: possibly even scarier is that they might think Toronto was in the US! I hadn't thought of that. Very true.

>168 AnnieMod: ometimes I wonder how much of that mentality/expectation comes from the fact that children in big countries are rarely exposed to translated literature early on (that seems to be changing these days - or so it seems looking at what is getting published) - there is enough local literature (for some value of local) unlike smaller counties where kids learn to read with translations (or see them very early on). I know Canadian is not translated but translations teach you to expect foreign names and places - which local literature rarely does.

I never thought about it like that, but you make a lot of sense. I think Canadian students probably read almost no translated literature. On a positive note, from what I remember when I used to volunteer at the school library and book sales, there is a lot of diversity available in the books being published for the school market. And all they have to do is read their class lists -- I look at names of people who live in my province all day long at work, and unusual names are far more common than the "Doug Johnsons" and "Kathy Browns" that I grew up with.

>175 stretch: The frustration of New York publishing arrogance. I can't speak as a child of the midwest, but as a child of the rural Central Valley on the west coast, New York is as foreign as place as Bangkok. We could no more relate to a New Yorker as a Martian. There is no more logic in changing cities other than an arrogant superoity complex that treats their costumers as fools incable of having a learning expeierence.

Yes indeed!

178Nickelini
Set 9, 2021, 8:26 pm

>170 lilisin: I remember reviewing Wildlives for Belletrista. I remember the atmosphere so vividly even now. I don't recall there being so many characters and I certainly remember nothing that would make me think Champagne would be a good title. . How curious about the original title.

I didn't realize that was you who wrote the Belletrista review! Lovely review! It was definitely key in getting me to read Wildlives, even though it took me a decade to get around to it.

>171 Dilara86: Looking at the French book description, it looks Proulx is playing with the word's multiple meanings: "Champagne" is the name of a French region (and the name of the fizzy wine made there), but etymologically, it just means "countryside" - "champagne" and "campagne" are linguistic doublets, although in contemporary standard French, only the latter still carries this meaning. I am also wondering whether she is alluding to the song of the same name by Jacques Higelin: Champagne

Yes, that's mentioned in the book at least once. It didn't really stand out for me, but it fits the book because the location was perhaps the most major character. Funny, when I think of countryside, I don't picture anything like the Laurentians, which sounded quite wild. I think of countryside as rural land that has a lot of human influence and probably farms. More like the English countryside. I'm not sure that song was mentioned; because I don't know it, I would probably have glossed over it.

>174 Dilara86: . . . Oh, that's all super interesting. Thanks for adding that.
t looks like there is a lot going on, linguistically! Yes, a lot! I clearly missed much of it, but what I understood I enjoyed very much.

>176 SassyLassy: Sounds like a book for me and my Québecoise tutor - lots of opportunities for discussion!

I'm curious what you're studying with a Quebecoise tutor, but yes, read this novel. I think you'd enjoy it very much, and I, in turn, would enjoy hearing your thoughts. And even though I found it uneven, I think it's a novel that deserves a wider audience. I'll definitely look to read the author Monique Proulx again.

179Dilara86
Set 10, 2021, 6:55 am

>178 Nickelini: I'm not sure that song was mentioned; because I don't know it, I would probably have glossed over it.
For what it's worth, the song, which we call The Hallowe'en Song in our house, is sung from the point of view of the devil who is preparing for a sabbath in the marshes with all sorts of strange people and creatures.

180lilisin
Set 17, 2021, 3:53 am

>178 Nickelini:

I'm glad the review proved tempting. Especially considering my brief stint with Belletrista made me realize how much I'm NOT a book reviewer. Leaving that to the professionals. :)

181Nickelini
Set 26, 2021, 9:01 pm

63. The Last September, Elizabeth Bowen, 1929


cover comments: Rather nice, suits the story well. These Anchor classics, with their gold spines, are nicely printed books that feel lovely to hold

Comments: It's 1920 and eighteen year old Lois Farquar is living with her uncle and aunt at their large country house in Cork, Ireland, wondering what she's going to do with the rest of her life. Learn Italian? Or German? Go to art school? Get married? This what occupies her mind, while the adults around her go about their privileged traditional Anglo-Irish lives, mostly ignoring the uprisings in the background that will forever end their way of life.

What I Liked About This: I'm a fool for a novel set at a country house or villa. This novel had beautiful atmosphere, and Bowen can pull off some lush, gorgeous sentences. I liked the obliviousness of the characters while clearly bad things are happening right outside. Great use of foreshadowing.

What I Didn't Like About This: I've read that Elizabeth Bowen was really into Henry James when she wrote this, and his influence shows. Sometimes her sentences confuse me . . . she uses words I know, but the way she puts them together make me scratch my head. With other books by Bowen, I've been frustrated at the unnatural sounding conversations; I didn't think this as much here because it is set in 1920, so it seemed more natural. But still, I occasionally thought "who talks like that?"

Previous Books I've Read By This Author: I once believed that Elizabeth Bowen was an author who I was going to fall in love with. After four books, I can confidently say that I do not love Elizabeth Bowen. But I do like her, and I have two more on my shelves that I will eventually read. The first Bowen I read was her last novel, Eva Trout (1968) which I enjoyed but thought was really strange. Then I read the Heat of the Day (1949), a book that is supposed to be the quintessential novel about the London Blitz. I super hated it. It felt like watching a bad Joan Crawford movie. Next was The Death of the Heart (1938), a book I knew about from trusted sources who raved about how amazing it was. I liked it, but it was ssssllllooowww with lots of weird dialogue.

I'm still looking forward to reading The Hotel (her first, 1927) because it's set in Portofino, Italy. I'm all over that. And then I have the classic, The House in Paris. I know nothing about this, but "house" and "Paris" sound good to me.

Why I Read This Now: Not every September, but often in September, I like to take on a book that is historical or classic. This seemed to fit, and also "September" was right there in the title like an instruction. (Some epic-September reads from past years: Tess of the D'Ubervilles, The Story of Lucy Gault, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Possession, the Children's Book, Howard's End. I didn't note the authors because I think most people who read my threads are a little familiar with each of these).

Rating: 3.5 stars

Recommended for: Henry James fans, people who generally like these sorts of books

182kac522
Set 26, 2021, 9:52 pm

>181 Nickelini: I've read 3 Bowen novels: Eva Trout (my first, like you), which I read many years ago and I didn't understand or like; Friends and Relations, which I enjoyed--a bit more accessible and satirical; and The Last September, which had bits that I understood and liked, but a lot I didn't understand. After finishing The Last September I watched the movie (1999, I think), and a lot more of the book became clear, probably because it put the Irish/British historical events in context to the story.

I have lots of her books on the shelves, including a short story collection, so right now I feel committed to at least reading a few more.

183Nickelini
Modificato: Set 26, 2021, 10:43 pm

>182 kac522: Oh, I'll have to find that movie now while the book is somewhat fresh in my head. I think a lot of the stuff that's confusing is just them being oblivious to what is really happening around them. Or so I'm told.

184AlisonY
Set 27, 2021, 4:18 am

>181 Nickelini: Not sure I've read any Bowen novels - I must look into her work.

Very much with you on your past September epics - I think the only one of those I've not got to is Possession (is that the one that has lots of passages of poetry/verse in it? I seem to remember that kept putting me off in the past).

185SassyLassy
Set 27, 2021, 9:09 am

>181 Nickelini: September is definitely a good reading month for you.
I haven't read Bowen yet, probably mainly because I never see her books in my favourite used book stores. I'll look more closely.

>184 AlisonY: I think you would like Possession

186Nickelini
Set 27, 2021, 10:47 am

>184 AlisonY:, >185 SassyLassy:

LOL and I was just going to say to not bother with Possession. I remember I gave it a good rating at the end, but my memories of it are much worse. First, it took me over 200 pages to get into, which now is just not acceptable at all. Yes, lots of long poems . . . I tried to read them, but then ended up skipping them. I think it's a grossly over-rated book, but probably still has merit as a literary experiment

187japaul22
Set 27, 2021, 11:08 am

Totally agree on Elizabeth Bowen. I want to love her books, but I always seem to end up scratching my head. I still have The Heat of the Day on my shelf and I will read it some day. I read To the North first and liked the story and characters though my review also says "Bowen's writing style is a little odd and took me a while to get used to. There's something about the way she crafts sentences that does feel a bit stilted - I think she puts clauses and descriptors in unexpected places which makes for a different reading flow than I'm used to." Then I read The Last September and I really just couldn't get into it.

Bowen is an author that I'm glad I've read and know about but I don't completely love her books.

>184 AlisonY: On Possession, I loved this book despite the long poetry passages (I really have never learned to read and appreciate poetry). This is on my reread shelf because I'm curious if I would like it as much the second time around.

188AlisonY
Set 27, 2021, 12:24 pm

>185 SassyLassy:, >186 Nickelini:, >187 japaul22: Does Possession still work if you glaze over the verse? I must admit poetry is one of those things I'd like to be into but somehow it just never takes me.

189Nickelini
Modificato: Set 27, 2021, 2:38 pm

>188 AlisonY: I did like it very much at the time, after the first 200 pages of struggle. I'm sure someone who gets poetry better then you or me would say "no," but I was fine with skipping it.

But now I'm too old to give a book 200 pages before it grabs me, so that's more my issue with it. If you write a long book, it better flow well or be spectacular if you want me to give it a chance

190SassyLassy
Set 27, 2021, 8:16 pm

>186 Nickelini: I would say you can skip the poetry, maybe look for key words. It didn't seem too onerous at the time, but I can see skipping it.

191Nickelini
Set 27, 2021, 8:40 pm

>190 SassyLassy:
I'm an English major who is pretty negative about poetry. But sometimes it can be lovely or interesting or fun

192japaul22
Set 27, 2021, 9:02 pm

I’m positive I skipped or skimmed the poetry. And still loved the book.

193kac522
Modificato: Set 27, 2021, 11:23 pm

>193 kac522: Same here. I had to look back at my minimal notes because I read Possession in 1997: "poetry was boring" but loved the book.

194AlisonY
Set 28, 2021, 10:58 am

That's interesting. I'll maybe not go past it the next time I see it in the second hand bookshop then. I find it hard to skip parts of books (somehow it feels like cheating) but I could skim...

195Nickelini
Modificato: Set 28, 2021, 9:55 pm

64. All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews, 2014


cover comments: This is fine but doesn't inspire me

Rating: 5 stars

Comments: Wow. Can I just leave it there? I find it difficult to write comments about a book when I loved it so much. I feel like I'm going to gush like a 13 year old talking about her favourite boy band.

Yoli is a 40-something author of middle school novels about rodeo girls, and she has a messy life with two failed marriages and a child from each. Her older sister Elf has it all together -- beautiful, polylingual, intelligent, world class pianist, but she suffers from debilitating depression. For most of the novel, Elf is in the psych ward, wishing for death. Minor characters are their fun-loving mother, mom's sister Tina, and Yoli's teenage kids. This is a novel that exudes empathy and love, and brought me from tears to laughter.

I don't know when I last bent down so many page corners and penciled in happy faces in the margins. Loved. This. Book.

My favourite quotation, because I could picture this in my family too: . . . One day at dinner, a few weeks before she was due to leave, Elf casually mentioned that while she was in Europe she might as well go to Russia to explore her roots and my father almost stopped breathing. You will not! he said. Yeah, I might, said Elf. Why not?
My grandparents originally came from a tiny Mennonite village in Siberia in 1917, the year of the Bolshevik revolution. Terrible things happened to them there in the land of blood. Any hint of the place, the slightest mention of anything Russian, and my parents would start clawing the air."

I can just picture this air clawing, because that's exactly what my parents would do when the topic of Russia came up. Toews then goes on to talk about how trauma is passed down through generations, an idea that fascinates me. Last year I read a German book that was about this, and I looked back at my comments and saw that I surmised then that this might explain my family after surviving the Russian Revolution. Who knew that Miriam Toews had already written about this?

Recommended for: People with empathy. I think fans of Heather O'Neill would like this. Both writers tackle dark, serious subjects but inject a sense of humour into their stories.

Why I Read This Now: I just never seemed to get around to it, and I hadn't read anything by Toews for a few years. Before I buy her newer novels, I should probably read the ones I already own.

196Nickelini
Set 28, 2021, 9:58 pm

>187 japaul22: Bowen's writing style is a little odd and took me a while to get used to. There's something about the way she crafts sentences that does feel a bit stilted - I think she puts clauses and descriptors in unexpected places which makes for a different reading flow than I'm used to."

Jennifer - I forgot to comment on this, but that explanation sounds accurate to me. It definitely can make the reading feel like work at times.

197labfs39
Set 28, 2021, 10:23 pm

>195 Nickelini: This sounds wonderful. I'm going to look for it.

198NanaCC
Set 29, 2021, 4:32 pm

>195 Nickelini: Great review, Joyce. I’m adding to my list.

199Nickelini
Set 29, 2021, 6:36 pm

>197 labfs39:, >198 NanaCC:
I hope you can both find a copy and that you enjoy it as much as I did

200mdoris
Set 29, 2021, 8:19 pm

>195 Nickelini: I loved that book too and know I must have given it 5 stars as well! I'm looking forward to reading her new book.

201kidzdoc
Modificato: Set 29, 2021, 8:41 pm

Great review of All My Puny Sorrows, Joyce. I purchased it after it was nominated for the 2015 Wellcome Book Prize but I haven't read it yet; I'll be sure to get to it next year. I enjoyed her earlier novel The Flying Troutmans, and I suspect that she's an under-the-radar author (at least in the United States) that I'll be reading far more often in the future.

202mdoris
Set 29, 2021, 8:53 pm

Hi Joyce Have you read Women Talking by Miriam Toews It is very powerful.

203Nickelini
Modificato: Set 30, 2021, 2:12 pm

>200 mdoris: I'm looking forward to her new book too, and it might skip to the top of my unread Miriam Toews list. Along with Heather O'Neill, she is one of my auto-buy authors . . . but not necessarily right away. After All My Puny Sorrows, I find them very similar, in that they have the same mix of tragedy-humour that I really get.

>201 kidzdoc: Darryl - the Flying Troutmans was solid (I see I gave it 4 stars), but I don't think her best. I LOVED A Complicated Kindness, but then her heroine had the same surname as me, and her Mennonite jokes -- from one apostate Mennonite to another -- were so sharp, so I kinda got that book in a way that a you might not. LOL. After a slow start, I thought her "memoir" of her father (who commited suicide) Swing Low: A Life was really beautiful (4.5 stars). I didn't get on with Irma Voth until the end, and then it was too late, so that one was my biggest disappointment (2 stars). Like Heather O'Neill, I think they are both way under the radar internationally. Anyway, like me, I know you have a massive physical TBR (good on us for supporting the book industry), but I hope you get to All My Puny Sorrows.

>202 mdoris: I have NOT read Women Talking. That novel freaks me out due to its content. I DO want to read it, but it needs to be the right time, because even though I don't know any of my South American Mennonite relatives, there is still some sort of weird connection. My mother used to tell me about her uncle who couldn't come to Canada with everyone else because he was missing an arm (farm accident) and so he went to Paraguay. . . . and I have other distant South American Mennonite relatives with vague stories. . . anyway, I need to be at the right headspace to tackle Women Talking, because I've heard a lot of great things about it. (You should see the physical stack of books I'm avoiding! I think I need to read them, but then . . . ) My book club has picked Women Talking for our November book. I've decided I'm not going to this meeting. When I process this book, I will do it with people who understand; and not with people who I will need to explain basics to (which will totally be my book club . . . lovely, understanding, but a bunch of progressive white middle age west coast Canadians)

Am I wrong? Should I talk it out with my book club if a book triggers me?

(edited for clarity)

204torontoc
Set 30, 2021, 7:55 am

Oh, Women Talking was an excellent but painful read for me. Too much suffering.

205mdoris
Set 30, 2021, 11:52 am

HI Joyce. I get that you need to have the time right to read Women Talking and the time right to discuss it with others. It is a very powerful story and these stories need to be told and read/listened to but the time must be right to receive the stories too. Have you read the Blue Mountains of China by Rudy Wiebe? It was an amazing book for me to give me background in the Mennonite diaspora. I had no idea before I read the book. But I'm sure you have read it. It is now an old book (1995). I also get the composition of your bookclub! Me too, that is an apt description of mine too.

>204 torontoc: Yes a painful read for sure but a necessary one. Based on a true story and there are videos of the men involved.

206Nickelini
Set 30, 2021, 2:15 pm

>204 torontoc: I have a hard time reading about suffering. There's just so much of it in the world.

>205 mdoris: I actually haven't read Blue Mountains of China yet. It's always on my someday list. I think also when it came out, I had just read a book that my mom's friend self-published about how they escaped Russia in WWII by walking to China and then eventually, years later, making it to Canada. I wanted some distance before I started Wiebe's book. I must change that!

207Nickelini
Set 30, 2021, 2:41 pm

65. On Being Ill, Virginia Woolf, 1930


cover comments: Paris Press copied the original Hogarth Press edition of this book as best they could. It's a lovely edition. As for the art, of course it's designed by Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell. Not my favourite of hers, but it's fine.

Comments: This edition includes the 1930 version of Woolf's essay. She first wrote this essay in 1925 and edited it over the next 5 years. Here it's 28 pages long. There is also an introduction by Hermione Lee that is 34 pages. I find that rather amusing.

In this piece, Woolf asks why literature ignores illness, when it's just as important in our lives as the prime themes of love, battles, and jealousy. This is her opening sentence, except the way she puts it takes 184 words. The then rambles on for the next 27 pages in the way that only VW can do.

Two bits I liked a lot:

"We float with the sticks on the stream; helter-skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up . . . "

"Meanwhile, with the heroism of the ant or the bee, however indifferent the sky or disdainful the flowers, the army of the upright marches to battle. Mrs. Jones catches her train. Mr. Smith mends his motor. The cows are driven home to be milked. Men thatch the roof. The dogs bark. The rooks, rising in a net, fall in a net upon the elm trees. The wave of life flings itself out indefatigably. It is only the recumbent who know what, after all, nature is at no pains to conceal--that she in the end will conquer; heat will leave the world; stiff with frost we shall cease to drag ourselves about the fields; ice will lie thick upon factory and engine; the sun will go out. Even so, when the whole earth is sheeted and slippery, some undulation, some irregularity of surface will mark the boundary of an ancient garden, and there, thrusting its head up undaunted in the starlight, the rose will flower, the crocus will burn."

It felt great to read Woolf again.

Recommended for: oh who knows

Why I Read This Now: it checks off a box in my reading bingo challenge

Rating: 4 stars

208Nickelini
Set 30, 2021, 3:19 pm

66. Fluent Forever, Gabriel Wyner, 2014


cover comments: fitting cover for the topic

Comments: A step-by-step how-to guide for learning a language. Because we all know the way they teach high school French doesn't work ;-)

Lots of good tips here, some that I hadn't heard yet. One of these is called back-chaining, or as he says, "How to Get Ridiculous Words into Your Mouth." In 10 minutes he taught me how to pronounce vzdrognu (Russian for "flinch"). The basis for his technique is a flash card system. I won't adapt it 100% because I already using a different flash card app, but he gave me some great tips on how to improve my flash card game.

Recommended for: anyone who wants to learn a language. It's not a magic bullet -- following his technique will take lots of time. There are other ways to learn languages too, and they all take time. However, by pulling out the best techniques, you can stop wasting time on things that don't work. And delete DuoLingo from your phone.

Rating: 4 stars. I found the organization confusing at times because he will steer the reader to other places in the book and then as I read along I wasn't sure if I'd already seen that part. A bit repetitive in parts.

Why I Read This Now: Fluent Forever was one of the language books I discovered this year, and I wanted to read it so I could stop wasting time, and also I wanted it read before I started working with my Italian instructor.

Note: The author has a Ted Talk about adults learning languages (yes, it is possible)

209Nickelini
Set 30, 2021, 3:44 pm

67. Life On The Refrigerator Door, Alice Kuipers, 2007


cover comments: suitable for this story

Comments: This is told entirely by notes that Claire and her mom leave for each other on their fridge. Mom is a busy doctor and Claire is a busy high school student with a baby sitting job and boyfriend. Then mom gets breast cancer. I admit I finished this with a tear in my eye, which was unexpected.

Why I Read This Now: This was a quick dish of sorbet between my end-of-summer course of reading, and the upcoming Spooktober.

Rating: 4 stars

Recommended for: This YA novel has wide appeal. However, I don't recommend it to a teen who has a parent with cancer. Don't use this one for bibliotherapy

Note: Life On The Refrigerator Door won a bunch of awards, was published in 28 countries, and is blurbed by Joanne Harris. Pretty good for an under-30 yr old from Saskatchewan.

210labfs39
Set 30, 2021, 5:28 pm

>208 Nickelini: I have studied French, Russian, and Czech in the past, but none of them seem to stick. I watched the TED talk by Gabriel Wyner and was inspired to think that maybe it wasn't too late to revisit them. I would definitely need to approach it in a different way. Would you be willing to list three or four resources that you have found helpful in understanding how best to learn a language? Thanks!

211kidzdoc
Set 30, 2021, 6:43 pm

>203 Nickelini: Thanks, Joyce. I also gave 4 stars to The Flying Troutmans, and I've added Swing Low: A Life to my Kindle wish list. You're right; I could easily go 10 years, and perhaps 20 or more, before I exhaust the unread paper and electronic books I own, but I have no plans to stop buying books anytime soon! (I may need to buy a new Kindle, though, as I've exhausted its capacity.) I'll try to get to All My Puny Sorrows next year.

Must spending more time reading, or learn to read faster...

>207 Nickelini: On Being Ill sounds interesting; I will...um...do nothing at the moment.

>208 Nickelini: Dang it. You may have gotten me with this one. Earlier this afternoon I purchased a 12 month subscription to Canopy's three part Medical Spanish program, including an online comprehensive quiz that should give me more evidence to present Children's head of Translation Services that I do not need to use a Spanish translator in speaking with Latinx families in the hospital. I also own the Living Language complete Spanish series, and I intend to use both programs to move from being comfortably conversant in Spanish, which I am now, to truly fluent between October and the end of May, and then take a 4 week course in Intensive Portuguese when I return to Lisbon for the month of June next year, assuming that I'll still want to retire there after I spend time with deebee1's husband at the end of next month. I need to learn both languages, especially the former one, and Fluent Forever might give me some tips on learning Portuguese. Thanks for mentioning it!

212Nickelini
Set 30, 2021, 8:47 pm

>207 Nickelini:

I forgot to add in my comments of Virginia Woolf's On Being Ill that somewhere I saw a summary of her complete works that went something like:

Life is beautiful and tragic. Let's put some flowers in a vase

This summary captures On Being Ill perfectly.

213Nickelini
Ott 1, 2021, 12:36 am

>210 labfs39: I have studied French, Russian, and Czech in the past, but none of them seem to stick. I watched the TED talk by Gabriel Wyner and was inspired to think that maybe it wasn't too late to revisit them. I would definitely need to approach it in a different way. Would you be willing to list three or four resources that you have found helpful in understanding how best to learn a language? Thanks!

Whatever you decide to use, you need to do lots of it. I'm going to give you more than you asked for, because I have more than 3 or 4 ideas, and some will work for you better than others. Pick which ones work for you. There are TONS of resources for French, so lots of choice there. I'm going to use French in my examples, but you can swap out Czech or Russian too.

---
Flashcards: Fluent Forever is all about flashcards. I use Quizlet on my phone and desktop. I like that it does correct Italian pronunciation for everything I put on a flashcard. There might be better flashcard apps out there. I know a lot of language learners use Anki, and I think Fluent Forever might have their own. This is my #1 tool. It's so much more effective than DuoLingo

---
Listening:
I think it's super important to listen to the language . . . to understand, but also to learn what it's supposed to sound like. I've often heard the advice "just start speaking!" but how are you supposed to speak if you don't even know what the language is supposed to sound like? Never mind that you only know 10 words.

Netflix is a perfect way to do this. For example, you can search "French" and you'll get a wide selection of French movies and shows. Turn on the English subtitles. Also, a lot of the regular shows will have a French option. Turn it on with English subtitles. Your goal is to be able to switch the subtitles to French so you're reading the French while listening to it (I haven't gotten that far yet with my Italian, but one day!).

How to change your Netflix to French:

From the show's splash page, on the left, go down from Play to Audio & Subtitles. If French is available, click on it (not every show will have it). I think this now defaults your Netflix, and every time you watch it will automatically come up. I find that watching things I already know or simpler shows works best . . . like stupid romance movies that I probably wouldn't watch in English. I also rewatched all of Grace and Frankie in Italian.

Podcasts - just search, there are lots of French for Beginners podcasts. Listen while you clean the house, go for walks, drive in the car

---
While we are talking about Frenchifying electronics, you want to turn on the French keyboard and dictionary on your iPhone (I don't know other phones, but I'm sure they all have this)
Settings > General > Keyboards> French and
Settings > General>Language & Region > French
When you get brave, turn off the English . LOL

---
Music
Find some French music you like that has lyrics (you can find this on YouTube). Google the lyrics for the song, and sing along. Sometimes you can find a translation of the lyrics too, but if not, just copy and paste them into Google Translate. Although songs sometimes don't use the language correctly, singing along helps you train your mouth around the French sounds. And some of the lyrics might stick with you . . . . I always remember that "quando" means "when" because Englalbert Humperdink sang "quando, quando, quando, when will you be mine?" We also listen to the music app that comes with our TV cable and have it set to Italian hits.

---
YOUTUBE is an amazing resource. I recommend you listen to some polyglot channels, particularly https://www.youtube.com/user/lingosteve - Steve Kaufamn is a retiree from Vancouver who speaks something like 18 languages, including all of your 3, and most of which he taught himself after he was 60. He has a lot of videos, some about language learning in general, and some specific to French.

https://www.youtube.com/user/poliglotta80 - Luca Lampariello is helpful and inspiring. When you listen to him, remember that he has never lived in an English-speaking country. He has a slight accent, but his English is amazing

I like this guy too, although he's not as good as the other two:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3_iSRqqZ7DTVlBNd9lv8jA Days of French & Swedish (he's Australian)

Did you know you can change the speed on YouTube? On the right side of the control bar (the bottom of the video where the play button is), click on settings and you can slow down the speed and sometimes turn on subtitles.

I have about 5 YouTube channels that I follow that teach Italian. Some use English and Italian, some only Italian. See what you can find for your languages. One I like for French is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF572T7F6ydlziihabFL8jA (StreetFrench.org). There is also a chain of YT language channels called "Easy ___". I love the Easy Italian version, and I know there is Easy French, Easy German and Easy Spanish (Yes, I just searched and there is also Easy Russian and Easy Czech).

If you're thinking of paying good money for a language app, check out reviews on YouTube. You might be able to get a sample lesson too to see if it will work for you.

Is there a topic you're interested in? I like to watch cooking videos from Italy on YouTube. Learn about something your interested in, in your target language.

---
Pronunciation - mostly I use my Quizlet app, or Google translate, but if you really want to hear native speakers, go to https://forvo.com/languages/ They have zillions of languages

---
These also look interesting, but I haven't explored them much yet:

https://www.thoughtco.com/french-4133079

I also just learned about this in Italian, and voila! they have a French version too. Not sure how far we can go before we have to pay, but they have a free trial, and if it's useful I'd consider buying it for a few months: https://www.newsinslowfrench.com/home/news/beginner

--
I also take in person classes and I'm working through a text book

--
If you listen to the YouTubers I mentioned above, you'll get even more ideas. It's a lot, I know! Good luck

214Nickelini
Ott 1, 2021, 12:43 am

>211 kidzdoc:

sounds interesting; I will...um...do nothing at the moment LOL - good move

Good luck on learning Portuguese! That's a tricky one. At least there's a LOT of amazing music in Portuguese. And good luck with the medical Spanish too. Sounds challenging for sure

215ursula
Ott 1, 2021, 3:39 am

I also read Fluent Forever a number of years ago. You give great tips in >213 Nickelini:

I think the difficulty of learning a language as an adult has been overblown, although there are a couple of major stumbling blocks: the willingness to make dumb mistakes essentially constantly (kids have no problem just throwing out whatever words they know and getting corrected), and the time to devote to learning. And it's true that as an adult you often have less disposable time, but it's also a matter of priorities. Ten minutes doing whatever you normally do, or ten minutes reviewing flashcards? Etc.

General thoughts:

Making it past the very basics creates a sort of positive feedback loop, where you start understanding more and making connections between words and phrases, which leads to more understanding, etc. I also think the most important thing is to use as many different methods as possible in concert, much like Nickelini outlined above. First, because you'll figure out what works best for you, but also because you can integrate things you learn in different places/ways.

Now that I'm beyond the basics, one of the things I've been doing to learn how casual language is spoken is to watch reality shows on Netflix in English with the subtitles set to Turkish. In the early stages, you're better off with dubbing in the target language and subtitles in English, then dubbing and subtitles in the target language, but now I want to know how people say the equivalent of things like "oh my god, he's nuts!" or "dude, stop that" or whatever.

216AlisonY
Ott 1, 2021, 4:47 am

Picking up plenty of BBs from this thread this week. Loved the Woolf review - the quotes reminded me just how special her turn of phrase was.

Will also have to take a bullet on All My Puny Sorrows.

>215 ursula: Are you in Turkey now, Ursula? I remember you had just moved to Italy when you had an active thread on CR a few years back (unless I'm mixing up names - always possible).

217labfs39
Ott 1, 2021, 8:20 am

>213 Nickelini: Wow! Thank you, Joyce! This is fantastic information. Having last studied language 25 years ago (eek), I have no experience using any of these tools. Netflix, google translate, podcasts, iPhones, YouTube, instant dubbing and subtitles, apps simply didn't exist. I think this will be fun. Now to choose a language...

218kidzdoc
Ott 1, 2021, 10:35 am

>213 Nickelini: Thanks for those great suggestions, Joyce!!

>214 Nickelini: Thanks, again! I took four years of Spanish in high school, and a year of it as an undergraduate student at Rutgers, and on a typical day on service I'll take care of three or more Latinx children whose parents speak little or no English. Speaking Medical Spanish is a daily occurrence to me, and it's easier that holding a regular conversation due to the similarity of the words in English and Spanish. I need to work on verb conjugation and in building my vocabulary, which will help when it comes time to learn Portuguese next year.

219Nickelini
Ott 1, 2021, 11:02 am

>217 labfs39: Wow! Thank you, Joyce! This is fantastic information. Having last studied language 25 years ago (eek), I have no experience using any of these tools. Netflix, google translate, podcasts, iPhones, YouTube, instant dubbing and subtitles, apps simply didn't exist. I think this will be fun. Now to choose a language...

Try this video first- "How to Choose Which Language to Learn": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKZ_z6XKrs&t=4s

I'm happy to help. This has been one of my largest areas of interest over the past few years and I'm glad to share what I've learned

220ursula
Ott 2, 2021, 10:42 am

>216 AlisonY: I am in Turkey now, yes! I was in Italy in 2015-2016, Michigan 2016-2017 and California 2017-2020. Now in Istanbul. I just returned to LT a few months ago.

221Nickelini
Ott 3, 2021, 9:31 pm

>217 labfs39:, >218 kidzdoc: & >220 ursula: And anyone else who is following this language learning conversation . . .

I forgot another good resource . . . Olly Richards . . . his YouTube channel is at https://www.youtube.com/c/OllyRichards - he has many helpful and inspiring videos, and is another polyglot who speaks all our target languages. He also publishes books, and he's another who is into the reading before getting too worried about actually speaking (again, how do you say anything if you don't have words, don't understand some basics)

I've bought a few of his Italian books, and I have a goal to work through one of them before the end of the year. They are a sort of reader for adults, and again, another great resource that didn't exist when we tried to learn languages 20 years ago.


Here is an example of one of his Italian books that I own, but he has books in many languages . . . https://www.librarything.com/author/richardsolly

222Nickelini
Ott 3, 2021, 9:32 pm

BEEP BEEP BEEP . . . moving over to https://www.librarything.com/topic/335733

Feel free to continue the language learning conversation here. I have some more fun links to share

223Nickelini
Modificato: Ott 3, 2021, 11:04 pm

Still on Olly Richards . . . he has these fun videos about famous people speaking other languages:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LDuegG-ZRQ - Celebrities speaking German. Sandra Bullock speaks like a native

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abr9nvImQVQ - Celebrities speaking Italian. I don't follow basketball so not a fan of any player, but Kobe Bryant is impressive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IOD6CR66iY - Celebrities speaking Spanish. Many of the comments note that Viggo Mortensen speaks perfect Argentinian Spanish (which Olly didn't pick up on) . . . also here's one of US politicians speaking Spanish (most of them are embarrassing, but they're trying . . . ?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-F86ZpKqRk - Worth watching just to see Rick Scott embarrass himself with his accent. And who knew Jeb Bush was pretty good? (yes, he's married to a native speaker. That means nothing). I'm surprised that these politicians weren't better.

(BTW - if you want to run for Prime Minister of Canada, you MUST speak both French and English. Candidates on both sides have been pretty sad)

>218 kidzdoc: Darryl, what accent of Spanish do you have?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f58ShY94pFk&t=17s - Celebrities speaking French. It's fairly well known that Jody Foster speaks perfect French, down to the face shapes that proper French involves. I love how Serena Williams learned to speak French so she could accept her French Open in French.

Not covered here, but I think Jacqueline Bisset (English) and Candice Bergen (American) also speak lovely French, based on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-VEPz0OfEM (first minute), and also other videos I've seen

I find these videos fun. Hope you do too. If you have any other entertaining videos of English-speaking famous people speaking other languages very well, or I guess very poorly, please send links



224kac522
Ott 3, 2021, 10:46 pm

>222 Nickelini: BEEP BEEP BEEP LOL!

225AlisonY
Ott 4, 2021, 4:13 am

>220 ursula: Great to see you back on LT. Do you have a thread going in any book?

Sounds like you've been having amazing adventures with your moves around the globe.

227AlisonY
Ott 5, 2021, 3:26 am

>226 Nickelini: Thanks Joyce

228labfs39
Ott 5, 2021, 11:36 am

>223 Nickelini: Thanks for those links. I'll check them out.

I think you want the language talk to stay on this thread(?), so I'll post my response to SandDune, who is studying two languages simultaneously, here.

If I had more time, I would study French, too. There would be no confusing it with Korean, and it is the language I have retained enough of to make reading possible (with frequent dictionary checks). But with limited time, I thought it would be best to focus on one.

I'm having a hard time distinguishing some of the sounds. For instance the character for g can sometimes sound like k, as well as d/t, p/b, and r/l. And there are a whole lot of vowel sounds, some of which are familiar, and some not.

I'm still having fun though!
Questa conversazione è stata continuata da Nickelini Reads in 2021, part 3.