Mailbox Monday

Between vacation, Thanksgiving, and putting up the Christmas tree this weekend, there wasn't any time for book shopping. But my Mailbox Monday list is not entirely blank, thanks to the communal stack of books at our rental cabin.  One of my favorite things about a vacation is finding books up for grabs, left behind by prior visitors. On this trip, I found one book left behind that I was excited about:

Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin



I'm looking forward to this one!

And in keeping with the community spirit, we left behind the book Hubby finished: In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic by Valerian Albano. For cabin visitors like my husband who really only enjoy a book if it involves sled dogs, glaciers, and cannibalism.

Massacred for Gold -- Review Coming Soon

Readers interested in the experience of 19th Century Chinese immigrants or the development of the American West will want to read Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon, Gregory Nokes's thoroughly researched account of the murders of over 30 Chinese gold miners in 1887.

My review of Massacred will appear in the December issue of the Internet Review of Books on the 15th.I'll post it here on Rose City Reader after the IRB December issue finishes its run.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Good for the Jews

"Smoke at the horizon."

-- Good for the Jews by Debra Spark
Does an incomplete sentence count as an opening sentence? Oh well. It gets much better very fast. I was immediately plunged into the connected lives of two families in the high school academic circle of Madison, Wisconsin.

Review of the Day: Incidents in the Rue Laugier

The story of Maud Gonthier’s marriage to Edward Harrison is not a happy one. Looking back on their years together, their daughter – the self-described “unreliable narrator” of the book – creates a story to explain the sighs, attitudes, and distance she perceived between her parents.

Incidents in the Rue Laugier involves family conflicts and class differences, a doomed love affair, and a marriage that ultimately was, in its own crabbed way, successful. But Anita Brookner presents more than an interesting story – she examines the nature of marriage and the struggle to build a joint life using limited individual resources. As Maud described her marriage:

There was a slight additional loneliness in her increasing isolation from everyone but her husband, but her own calm good sense was there to remind her that she was not at home, that she had never expected to be at home, and that those who did not rely on their inner resources, as she had been obliged to do, were forever condemned to weep in other women’s drawing rooms . . . .

Like Maud’s life, this is a quiet book worthy of reflection.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Opening Sentence of the Day: A Century of November

"He judged men and he grew apples and it was a perilous autumn for both."

-- A Century of November by W. D. Wetherell

So begins Charles Marden's quest to understand his son's death, killed in battle in France in 1918.

This is a beautiful book. Heartbreaking, but beautiful.  They are making it into a movie, which should be very good because the book is full of images that will translate to the screen easily.

Teaser Tuesday: Massacred for Gold

"Not only did the Chieftain delay nearly a year before reporting the murders, the April 19, 1888, edition that finally carried the story was missing from the newspaper's files. Rick Swart, the editor of the Chieftain, helped me search through the musty cardboard boxes containing the newspaper's early editions, kept in the basement of the Chieftain's one-story Bowlby-stone building in Enterprise." -- Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon by R. Gregory Nokes This quote exemplifies the book by showing the detail Nokes includes about the 1887 massacre of over 30 Chinese gold miners in Oregon's Hell's Canyon (for further example, he had earlier explained what "Bowlby-stone" is), as well as his personal involvement in the more recent investigation. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

Before leaving for vacation, I had time for a quick visit to one of my favorite used book stores -- Booktique, run by the Friends of the Lake Oswego Library -- to stock up for Mailbox Monday. Altered States by Anita Brookner (my new favorite) Citizen Vince by Jess Walter (Edgar winner) Author, Author by David Lodge (an old favorite) The Sins of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno (guilty pleasure)

Box of Books

My vacation box of books includes several off my Guilt List and LibraryThing list. I look forward to cozying in the cabin for the next several days, reading in front of the fireplace.

I over packed, but better to bring too many books than to come up short.

Massacred for Gold by Gregory Nokes



A Century of November by W. D. Wetherell



The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley



Good for the Jews by Debra Spark



Portland Noir, edited by Kevin Sampsell



The Italian Lover by Robert Hellenga

On Vacation!

Hubby and I are off to the woods for a short, pre-Thanksgiving vacation. We've rented a cabin by a river and are heading out with a box of books, a box of booze, and groceries enough for the long weekend. I've lined up a few posts to last until we get back to town and back to wi-fi.

The New Classics

This week's Booking Through Thursday question asks what authors are going to last:

Do you think any current author is of the same caliber as Dickens, Austen, Bronte, or any of the classic authors? If so, who, and why do you think so? If not, why not? What books from this era might be read 100 years from now?

This is a graduate-level question. I mean, Dickens, Austen, and Bronte probably did not consider whether anyone would be reading their books 100 years later. And I like to think that all my favorite authors will retain their appeal, as unlikely as that would be. So how can we know? My stab in the dark list includes: Saul Bellow Ian McEwan John Irving My thinking is not subject to close scrutiny. It is not based on thorough knowledge because I have not read everything these authors wrote. Perhaps Bellow does not even qualify because his books already have some years on them and may not count as "this era." But I think that the books by these authors might last because they are character-driven, complex fiction, not tied to a particular period of time. Although the stories may include particular historical events, the books do not depend on those events. They are enjoyable because of the people in them and how those people relate to each other. For instance, I prefer John Updike to John Irving. But I wonder if his Rabbit books will carry the same charge 100 years from now. They so perfectly capture post-WWII America -- the sexual revolution, the Vietnam home front, all of it. But will readers 100 years from now care about, or be able to appreciate the nuances of, the shifting zeitgeist that so shaped Rabbit Angstrom's life? On the other hand, books like Irving's World According to Garp or A Prayer for Owen Meany, or Bellow's Herzog or Humbolt's Gift, are great stories that do not require the reader to have first-hand experience. Like with Dickens' books, there are a lot of characters doing a lot of stuff. These books are entertaining, but intricate. McEwan is more of a flyer, and a couple of his earlier books do not deserve to be read today, let alone 100 years from now. But I included him on the list for a couple of reasons. First, because books like Atonement fit in with the above description. Even though the book is set in a certain time and involves a particular battle, the story does not depend on those events. The story is about the people. Future readers can understand all they need to about the historical events from the book itself -- they do not need independent knowledge. Second, McEwan's books are particularly clever and give the reader some big ideas to chew on after the plot fades. If idea-based novels are going to survive, McEwan's will be among them. Enough. I wish I could be around to learn the real answer.

Review: The Tenderness of Wolves

In the late 1800s, the semi-frozen Canadian territory north of Sault Ste. Marie is no place to go wandering around with winter coming on.  Lakes and bogs are half frozen traps, snow storms obliterate trails and disorient travelers, and wolves are on the prowl.  But after a Scottish pioneer woman finds her trapper neighbor murdered in his cabin and her teen age son goes missing, she and a hodgepodge of others set of in various groups to solve – or cover up – the mystery.

There are several possible motives for the murder, everyone is a suspect, and side stories interweave themselves into the main tale.   But there are deeper levels to the book than simply solving a mystery.   As the characters track each other through the cold, bleak landscape, they ultimately find their own life paths.

 Stef Penney won the 2006 Costa Book of the Year Award for The Tenderness of Wolves. Part mystery, part adventure this is a smoothly written, complicated story that is sure to please readers looking for lots of plot but who want meat on the bones.

OTHER REVIEWS

Caribousmom

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Opening Sentence of the Day: Massacred for Gold

"I listened on a hot July morning in 2003 as a Snake River jetboat captain, idling his boat in front of a cove known as Deep Creek, told two dozen tourists the story, or at least a story, of what happened there in 1887." -- Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon by R. Gregory Nokes This is going to be a good one! It is a historical expose of the murder of over 30 Chinese workers in eastern Oregon, written by one of Oregon's most talented writers.

Teaser Tuesday: Sarah's Key

His eyes were such a pale shade of blue they seemed transparent under thick pink lids. As the group of officers passed them by, the tall thin man reached out with an endless, gray-swathed arm, and tweaked Sarah's ear.

-- Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay Book Club is tomorrow. I have mixed feelings about this one. Like with any first novel, I admire the heck out of the author simply for getting the story written and published. I think it is worth reading, but it is a little clumsy. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

While running errands this weekend, I made a quick stop at one of my favorite hidey-hole library book shops. This one is tucked away in the corner of a strip mall branch library and they sell everything for 50 cents -- hardback, paperback, pristine, or trashed, it is 50 cents. Worth a stop when I find myself out on the urban edges. So for my whopping $2, here is my Mailbox Monday list: The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth (as I continue gathering the Roth bibliography) The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (on the MLA's list of 30 Books Every Adult Should Read, among others, I'm sure) Sacred by Dennis Lehane (from his early Patrick Kenzie/Angela Gennaro mystery series) The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (which I have always meant to read but never got around to it)

Review of the Day: The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

How can I review a book that took me 30 years to read? This is not just a book, it is part of my life. I have been working on The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway longer than all my formal education, two marriages, and my law practice.

I read my first Hemingway short story -- "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" -- when I was a Freshman in high school. In fits and starts since then I have been working my way through the rest. There are some, such as “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” that I have read several times. Others, like all the bull fighting stories, maybe only feel like I read them over and over.

I know that I had to start this “Finca Vigia” edition several times, including reading the first half dozen or so stories out loud on road trips -- first with my practice husband and later with my keeper hubby. I made a concerted effort this year to finish this book and this project. Hemingway wrote all his short stories in a 38-year span – I did not want it to take me as long to read them. So I started again at the beginning and read the book all the way through. The Nick Adams stories were new to me, as were the boxing stories and the previously unpublished stories at the end of the book.

But I can’t review Hemingway, especially when my attitudes about his writing have changed over the decades. I was unquestionably awed as a teenager, snide as a college English major, a genuine fan as an adult, and now just a little weary. His writing is masterful. He was a genius with spare dialog and creating reality with only a few brush strokes. (Of course, because he taught Americans a new way of writing, reading the original does not pack the wallop it must have before everyone copied him.) What wore me out was the subject matter – the bull fights and the Spanish Civil War in particular. It just got to be a chore for me to get to the end.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll dip into the collection again in the future and have a completely new attitude about Hemingway. But for now, the book is going back on the shelf.


OTHER REVIEWS AND RELATED POSTS

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List: James Tait Black Memorial Prize

First awarded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction is one of the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. The award is based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the winner is chosen by the Professor of English Literature at the University with the assistance of PhD students.

Those I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue. If you are also working on this list, and would like your related posts linked here, please leave a comment with links and I will list them below.

2018 Crudo by Olivia Lang

2017 Attrib. and Other Stories by Eley Williams

2016 The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride

2015 You Don’t Have to Live Like This by Benjamin Markovits

2014 In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman

2013 Harvest by Jim Crace

2012 The Deadman's Pedal by Alan Warner

2011 You and Me by Padgett Powell

2010 The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

2009 The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt

2008 The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (reviewed here)

2007 Our Horses in Egypt by Rosalind Belben

2006 The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2005 Saturday by Ian McEwan

2004 GB84 by David Peace

2003 Personality by Andrew O'Hagan

2002 The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen

2001 Something Like a House by Sid Smith

2000 White Teeth by Zadie Smith

1999 Renegade or Halo2 by Timothy Mo

1998 Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge

1997 Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller

1996 Last Orders by Graham Swift and Justine by Alice Thompson

1995 The Prestige by Christopher Priest (reviewed here)

1994 The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst

1993 Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips

1992 Sacred Country by Rose Tremain

1991 Downriver by Iain Sinclair

1990 Brazzeville Beach by William Boyd (reviewed here)

1989 A Disaffection by James Kelman

1988 A Season in the West by Piers Paul Read

1987 The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories by George Mackay Brown

1986 Persephone by Jenny Joseph

1985 Winter Garden by Robert Edric

1984 Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard and Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

1983 Allegro Postillions by Jonathan Keates

1982 On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin

1981 Midnight's Children (reviewed here) and The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux

1980 Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee

1979 Darkness Visible by William Golding

1978 Plumb by Maurice Gee

1977 The Honorable Schoolboy by John le Carre

1976 Doctor Copernicus by John Banville

1975 The Great Victorian Collection by Brian Moore

1974 Monsieur, or The Prince Of Darkness by Lawrence Durrell

1973 The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

1972 G by John Berger (reviewed here)

1971 A Guest of Honour by Nadine Gordimer

1970 The Bird of Paradise by Lily Powell

1969 Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen

1968 The Gasteropod by Maggie Ross

1967 Jerusalem the Golden by Margaret Drabble

1966 Such by Christine Brooke-Rose and Langrishe, Go Down by Aidan Higgins

1965 The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark (reviewed here)

1964 The Ice Saints by Frank Tuohy

1963 A Slanting Light by Gerda Charles

1962 Act of Destruction by Ronald Hardy

1961 The Ha-Ha by Jennifer Dawson

1960 Imperial Caesar by Rex Warner

1959 The Devil's Advocate by Morris West

1958 The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot by Angus Wilson

1957 At Lady Molly's by Anthony Powell

1956 The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley

1955 Mother and Son by Ivy Compton-Burnett

1954 The New Men and The Masters (in sequence) by C. P. Snow

1953 Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy

1952 Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh

1951 Father Goose by W. C. Chapman-Mortimer

1950 Along the Valley by Robert Henriquez (out of print)

1949 The Far Cry by Emma Smith

1948 The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

1947 Eustace and Hilda by L. P. Hartley

1946 Poor Man's Tapestry by G. Oliver Onions

1945 Travellers by L. A. G. Strong

1944 Young Tom by Forrest Reid

1943 Tales From Bective Bridge by Mary Lavin

1942 Monkey by Wu Ch'eng-en (translation by Arthur Whaley)

1941 A House of Children by Joyce Cary

1940 The Voyage by Charles Morgan

1939 After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley

1938 A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours by C. S. Forester

1937 Highland River by Neil M. Gunn

1936 South Riding by Winifred Holtby

1935 The Root and the Flower by L. H. Myers

1934 I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves

1933 England, Their England by A. G. Macdonell

1932 Boomerang by Helen Simpson

1931 Without My Cloak by Kate O'Brien

1930 Miss Mole by E. H. Young

1929 The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley

1928 Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon

1927 Portrait of Clare by Francis Brett Young

1926 Adam's Breed by Radclyffe Hall

1925 The Informer by Liam O'Flaherty

1924 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

1923 Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett

1922 Lady Into Fox by David Garnett

1921 Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare

1920 The Lost Girl by D. H. Lawrence

1919 The Secret City by Hugh Walpole

NOTE

List updated on December 31, 2018.

RELATED POSTS

Please leave comments with links to related posts -- progress reports, reviews, etc. -- and I will list them here.

Review: Alice Adams

Grounded in outmoded attitudes about class and distractingly highlighted by outmoded attitudes about race, Alice Adams has not aged well.

In his 1922 Pulitzer winner, Booth Tarkington presents a heroine striving to climb the short social ladder of her Midwestern city using only her charms and well-rehearsed mannerisms. Watching Alice struggle is painful. She has self-awareness sufficient to know she is doing things wrong, but lacks the tools to do them right. And it never seems that the game is worth the candle.

Finally, after watching Alice dither for most of the book, circumstances force her to face reality and make some difficult but intelligent decisions. The book ends on a gloriously hopeful note, which is the most redeeming feature of the story.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Sarah's Key

"The girl was the first to hear the loud pounding on the door." -- Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay I'm flying through this book because I am sick to find out what happens. Of course the pounding on the door is the police, rounding up Paris Jews during the Holocaust and, as I read on the back cover, the girl locks her little brother in a cupboard to save him. There is a modern day part of the story about the family who lives in the apartment now. I am horrified that they are going to find a toddler skeleton in the cupboard, so am reading as fast as my eyeballs can take it in so I can know one way or the other and stop fretting.

Happy Anniversary! And Happy Veterans' Day!

November 11 is Veterans' Day. Or Armistice Day, for traditionalists. At our house, it is also our wedding anniversary. This year we celebrate our Pottery Anniversary. That doesn't have the most romantic ring to it, but we'll make the best of it.

Teaser Tuesday: The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

It was a strange country again but at the end he was not lonely and, later, waking, it was still strange and no one spoke at all but it was their country now, not his nor hers, but theirs, truly, and they both knew it. In the dark with the wind blowing cool through the cabin she said, "Now you're happy and you love me."

-- "The Strange Country" by Ernest Hemingway, from The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition The teaser for me is that this is the last story in the book and it is definitely tantalizing to think that I may soon, finally, finish a collection of short stories that I started almost 30 years ago! I read my first Hemingway short story -- "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" -- when I was a Freshman in high school. In fits and starts since then I have been working my way through the rest. The end is finally in sight. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

Just in time for Mailbox Monday, the mail man delivered: Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay This is my Book Club book for November. It might be horribly sad, since it is the story of the July 1942 roundup of Jews from Paris. Over 6,000 Jews, mostly children, were arrested by French policy acting on orders from the German occupying army, kept in a sports arena for several days, then shipped to camps, eventually Auschwitz where they all were killed. The book goes back and forth between the tragic events of 1942 and modern day Paris. This could be rough going.

Review: The Man Who Loved China

Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilization in China is still the definitive work on the subject, in continuous print since the Cambridge University Press published the first introductory volume* in 1954. In The Man Who Loved China, Simon Winchester turns his inquisitive eye and keen wit to Needham’s life and accomplishments, wrapping personality, history, politics, and science into the kind of irresistible story only Winchester can produce.

Needham was a biochemist, not a Sinologist. He became interested in the Middle Kingdom only after falling in love with Lu Gwei-Djen, a Chinese scientist in Cambridge to study with Needham and his biologist wife Dorothy. After learning Chinese, he obtained a pre-WWII diplomatic post that allowed him to explore China and send truckloads of books and documents about China’s scientific and technological history back to Cambridge.

As with his wonderful books about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, The Professor and the Madman and The Meaning of Everything, Winchester uses the compilation and publication of Needham’s masterpiece as the backbone of this biography. He branches off from the central story to discuss the Needham’s socialist politics, his unconventional love life, and his role as one of Red China’s most “useful idiots.”

This last item concerned Needham leading a commission to investigate allegations that America used biological warfare during the Korean War. In 1953, he issued a report substantiating the claims, although it was later determined that the Chinese government, with Soviet help, staged the whole thing. As Winchester put it, “Needham was intellectually in love with communism; and yet communist spymasters and agents, it turned out, had pitilessly duped him.” Needham was under a cloud for years as a result. America refused him a visa until the 1970s. Only the quality and stupendous success of Science and Civilization finally redeemed his reputation.

Simon Winchester could write an interesting book about garden mulch, so it is no surprise that The Man Who Loved China, based on a fascinating life, is a fascinating book. This is one of his best.

* Science and Civilization in China is now a 25-volume set, although many volumes were written by others under Needham's direction and still others after his death.

OTHER REVIEWS

Age 30+ . . . A Lifetime of Books

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Blogging Blackout

No blogging today while I am traveling for work. I put in some late posts from my hotel room the last couple of days, but I hope to finish work and drive home to Portland tonight, so no time to blog. I do hate it when my job interferes with my hobbies.

The Bio-Sphere

This week's Booking Through Thursday asks about a preference for biographies or autobiographies. My answer: both, depending on the subject. I prefer professional biographies of famous people, including historical figures, politicians, and celebrities. For instance; Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations, by Craig Nelson (reviewed here) The Age of Reagan (Vol. II): The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980 - 1989 by Steven F. Hayward (which I am just finishing now) Paul Newman: A Life by Shawn Levy (reviewed here) But I prefer autobiographies, or memoirs, of non-famous people. This is a new interest of mine, which I can trace back precisely to when Hubby gave me a copy of Oh! The Glory of it All!* by Sean Wilsey when we lived in San Francisco (Wilsey being the unsung son of San Francisco socialites). Since then, I have enjoyed several "random memoirs" -- as I think of them -- about non-famous people living interesting lives. These include: 7 Wheelchairs: A Life Beyond Polio by Gary Presley (reviewed here) Forbidden Bread by Erica Johnson Debeljak (reviewed here) * One of my favorite book titles of all times.

Timely Re-Run Review: The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care

In her accessible "citizen’s guide" to health care reform, Sally Pipes examines The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care and offers several patient-driven ideas for change. Pipes looks past the partisan rhetoric to explain, for example, what "46 million uninsured Americans" really means, why importing drugs cannot work, and how expanded Medicaid-type programs would make a bad situation worse. Pipes, a Canadian native, is her most persuasive when she scrutinizes Canada’s and other nationalized medical systems. Relying on her extensive research and personal experience, she spells out why long waits, restricted access to new medications, and doctors on government payrolls are not the solution to America's problems. In the debate over health care, Pipes has definitely chosen her side, championing free-market reforms such as allowing the interstate purchase of health insurance and revising the tax code to encourage individually-purchased, instead of employer-provided, insurance. But Pipes is no ranting demagogue. Her arguments are concise and supported by solid research as she tries deal rationally with an issue often freighted with emotion. While aimed at policy-makers, The Top Ten Myths is lively enough for general consumption. Good reading for anyone interesting in going beyond the soundbites and understanding some of the details of health care reform.

Teaser Tuesday: Incidents in the Rue Laugier

"Maud simply wanted to live in Paris, with or without a husband, preferably without. While careful not to let her thoughts show on her severe and slightly disdainful golden face, Maud had a secret desire to escape all forms of control." -- Incidents in the Rue Laugier by Anita Brookner I am now definitely a Brookner fan. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.