kidzdoc's back for more in 2013 part 2

Currently reading:

    

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
What to Feed Your Baby: Cost Conscious Nutrition for Your Infant by Stan Cohen, MD
Just Enough Liebling by A.J. Liebling

Completed books: (TBR = To Be Read book, purchased prior to 1/1/12)

January:
1. Quiet London by Siobhan Wall (review)
2. The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Shiva Naipaul (review)
3. Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif (review)
4. The Eleven by Pierre Michon (review)
5. Pediatric Advanced Life Support Provider Manual by Leon Chameides, MD (review)
6. Communion Town by Sam Thompson (review)
7. Damascus by Joshua Mohr (TBR) (review)
8. The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash (review)
9. Inspiring Quotes: The Greatest Quotes of Martin Luther King Junior by Martin Luther King, Jr. (review)
10. A Happy Death by Albert Camus (review)
11. Place of Mind by Richard Blanco

February:
12. Great House by Nicole Krauss (TBR) (review)
13. In the House of the Interpreter by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (review)
14. Bill Veeck's Crosstown Classic by Bill Veeck with Ed Linn (review)
15. Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski (TBR) (review)
16. Big Machine by Victor LaValle (TBR) (review)
17. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (review)
18. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid (review)
19. The Other City by Michal Ajvaz (TBR)
20. A History of the Present Illness by Louise Aranson
21. Domestic Work by Natasha Trethewey
22. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
23. Vertical Motion by Can Xue (TBR)

March:
24. Liquidation by Imre Kertész (TBR)
25. Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman (TBR)
26. Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (TBR)
27. Dream of Ding Village by Yan LIanke (TBR)
28. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
29. The Jokers by Albert Cossery

April:
30. All My Friends by Marie NDiaye (review)
31. Palliative Medicine in the UK c. 1970-2010 by Caroline Overy and E.M. Tansey (review)
32. Childhood Asthma and Beyond by Lois Reynolds and E.M. Tansey (review)
33. Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (review)
34. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (TBR)
35. Pow! by Mo Yan
36. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
37. There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe
38. Burmese Days by George Orwell
39. Requiem: A Hallucination by Antonio Tabucchi
40. No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe

May:
41. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis (TBR)
42. The Redundancy of Courage by Timothy Mo (TBR)
43. Never Mind by Edward St. Aubyn (TBR)
44. Bad News by Edward St. Aubyn (TBR)
45. Some Hope by Edward St Aubyn (TBR)
46. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients by Ben Goldacre
47. Why Me? : A Doctor Looks at the Book of Job by Diane M. Komp, M.D. (TBR)
48. The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
49. Skios by Michael Frayn
50. The Aftermath of War by Jean-Paul Sartre
51. Where There's Love, There's Hate by Adolfo Bioy Casares & Silvina Ocampo

June:
52. The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner
53. The Alienist by Machado de Assis
54. The Singapore Grip by J.G. Farrell (TBR)
55. The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna (review)

July:
56. Enon by Paul Harding (review)

Books acquired in 2013: (✔ = completed book, bold = purchased book)

April:
1. The Eleven by Pierre Michon (5 January; LT Early Reviewers book) ✔
2. Place of Mind by Richard Blanco (21 January; Kindle e-book) ✔
3. A History of the Present Illness by Louise Aranson (29 January; Kindle e-book) ✔

February:
4. Old Man Goriot by Honoré de Balzac (15 February; Kindle e-book)
5. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid (15 February; LT Early Reviewers book) ✔

March:
6. The Return by Dany Laferrière (1 March; Alibris)
7. Brazil Red by Jean-Christophe Rufin (7 March; Alibris)
8. Palliative Medicine in the UK c. 1970-2010 by Caroline Overy and E.M. Tansey (9 March; free e-book) ✔
9. Lamb by Bonnie Nadzam (16 March; Kindle e-book)
10. All My Friends by Marie NDiaye (16 March; ARC copy received from avaland) ✔
11. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens (17 March; Barnes & Noble) ✔
12. Burmese Days by George Orwell (17 March; Barnes & Noble) ✔
13. Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora by Emily Raboteau (17 March; Barnes & Noble)
14. Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi (17 March; Barnes & Noble)
15. Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (19 March; LT Early Reviewers book) ✔
16. The Outsider by Albert Camus (21 March; The Book Depository)
17. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (24 March; Kindle e-book)
18. The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber (24 March; Kindle e-book)

April:
19. Childhood Asthma and Beyond by Lois Reynolds and E.M. Tansey (1 April; free e-book) ✔
20. El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo (7 April; Barnes & Noble)
21. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients by Ben Goldacre (7 April; Barnes & Noble)
22. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (7 April; Barnes & Noble) ✔
23. There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe (7 April; Barnes & Noble) ✔
24. Crock-Pot Slow Cooker Bible (7 April; Barnes & Noble)
25. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks (16 April; Barnes & Noble)
26. The Crow Road by Iain Banks (16 April; Barnes & Noble)
27. Experiment Eleven: Dark Secrets Behind the Discovery of a Wonder Drug by Peter Pringle (21 April; Strand Book Store)
28. Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke (21 April; Strand Book Store)
29. Requiem: A Hallucination by Antonio Tabucchi (21 April; Strand Book Store) ✔
30. No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe (21 April; Strand Book Store) ✔
31. All Decent Animals by Oonya Kempadoo (21 April; Strand Book Store)
32. Julius Caesar (Modern Library Classics) by William Shakespeare (21 April; Greenlight Bookstore)
33. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (21 April; Greenlight Bookstore)
34. Firefly by Severo Sarduy (22 April; gift from Caroline)
35. The Gate by François Bizot (27 April; Kindle e-book)
36. In the Land of Israel by Amos Oz (28 April; Kindle e-book)

May:
37. You Were Never in Chicago by Neil Steinberg (1 May; free e-book from the University of Chicago Press)
38. Hack: Stories from a Cab by Dmitry Samarov (8 May; free e-book from the University of Chicago Press)
39. The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna (15 May; Amazon UK)
40. The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez (15 May; Amazon UK)
41. The Remarkable Story of Great Ormond Street Hospital by Kevin Telfer (15 May; Amazon UK)
42. Basti by Intizar Husain (18 May; Joseph Fox Bookshop)
43. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (18 May; Joseph Fox Bookshop)
44. What to Feed Your Baby: Cost-Conscious Nutrition for Your Infant by Stanley A. Cohen, M.D. (20 May; advance review copy)
45. Where There's Love, There's Hate by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
46. The Bottom of the Jar by Adellatif Laâbi (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
47. Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
48. And Still the Earth by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
49. Blue White Red by Alain Mabanckou (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
50. Transit by Abdourahman A. Waberi (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
51. The Girl with the Golden Parasol by Uday Prakash (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
52. Salt by Earl Lovelace (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
53. A Muslim Suicide by Bensalem Himmich (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
54. The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
55. Southern Cross the Dog by Bill Cheng (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
56. Raised from the Ground by José Saramago (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
57. From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia by Pankaj Mishra (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
58. Ten White Geese by Gerbrand Bakker (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
59. A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
60. Percival Everett by Virgil Russell: A Novel by Percival Everett (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
61. Algerian Chronicles by Albert Camus (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
62. Blacks In and Out of the Left by Michael C. Dawson (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
63. The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop by Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
64. Mingus Speaks by John F. Goodman (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)

June:
65. The Alienist by Machado de Assis (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore) ✔
66. Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
67. Satantango by László Krasznahorkai (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
68. The World Is Moving Around Me: A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake by Dany Laferrière (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
69. That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
70. City of a Hundred Fires by Richard Blanco (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
71. On the Imperial Highway: New and Selected Poems by Jayne Cortez (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
72. Engine Empire: Poems by Cathy Park Hong (1 Jun; City Lights Bookshop)
73. Disposable People by Ezekel Alan (2 Jun; Amazon Kindle e-book)
74. Sons for the Return Home by Albert Wendt (8 Jun; Amazon Kindle e-book (free))
75. The Secret River by Kate Grenville (11 Jun; gift book from Paul Cranswick)
76. Enon by Paul Harding (12 Jun; May LT Early Reviewer book)
77. The Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinshu of Taira Shigesuke by Yuzan Daidoji (19 Jun; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
78. What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine by Danielle Ofri, MD (19 Jun; Harvard Book Store)
79. The Dark Road by Ma Jian (19 Jun; Harvard Book Store)
80. Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum (19 Jun; The Harvard Coop)
81. AIDS at 30: A History by Victoria A. Harden (19 Jun; The Harvard Coop)
82. Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease by Mark Harrison (19 Jun; The Harvard Coop)
83. She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir (19 Jun; The Harvard Coop)
84. The Quiet American by Graham Greene (19 Jun; Raven Used Books)
85. Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua (19 Jun; Raven Used Books)
86. Regeneration by Pat Barker (20 Jun; gift book from Caroline)

July:
87. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (4 Jul; Amazon Kindle e-book)

2013 reading goals (✔ = completed goal):

1. Booker Prize group
     a. Finish reading the 2012 longlist
          Communion Town by Sam Thompson
          The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
          Skios by Michael Frayn
     b. Read the entire 2013 longlist by year's end, and the shortlist in advance of the award ceremony

2. 2013 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature ✔
     a. Finish the shortlist in advance of the award ceremony in late January
          Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif
          The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash

3. Orange January/July group
     a. Read selected books from the shortlist of the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction (WPF) in advance of the prize ceremony
          Bring Up the Bodies by Hilarly Mantel (read in 2012)
          NW by Zadie Smith (read in 2012)
          Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
     b. Read 8-12 or more books nominated for the Orange Prize or the WPF in any year, or novels written by women which would be eligible for the prize
          Great House by Nicole Krauss
          Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

4. Reading Globally group
     a. Read 3 or more books for each 2013 quarterly challenge
          *Central & Eastern European literature
               Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski
               The Other City by Michal Ajvaz
               Liquidation by Imre Kertész
          *Southeast Asian literature
               Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw
               Burmese Days by George Orwell
          *Francophone literature
          *South American literature
     b. Read 6 or more books for the 2012 4th quarter challenge, China & neighboring countries
          Vertical Motion by Can Xue
          Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke
          Pow! by Mo Yan

5. Author Theme Reads group
     a. Read 4-6+ books by Simone de Beauvoir

6. Literary Centennials group
     a. Read books by Albert Camus throughout the year
          A Happy Death

7. Patrick White 100th 101st Anniversary challenge
     a. Read at least 1 of the 3 books that I own and was supposed to have read last year

8. Medicine group
     a. Read 12 or more books on medicine, science and public health throughout the year
          A History of the Present Illness by Louise Aranson
          Palliative Medicine in the UK c. 1970-2010 by Caroline Overy and E.M. Tansey
          Childhood Asthma and Beyond by Lois Reynolds and E.M. Tansey
          The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner

9. African/African American Literature group
     a. Read 20 or more works of fiction from the African diaspora
          Big Machine by Victor LaValle
          Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman
          Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
          All My Friends by Marie NDiaye
          Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
          No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe

10. Read Mo Yan group
     a. Read 4-6 books written by Mo Yan
          Pow!

11. Other
     a. Read books longlisted or selected as finalists for these other literary prizes:
          * Wellcome Trust Book Prize (medicine in literature)
               Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif
          * National Book Award
          * Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards (African diaspora)
     b. Read more books spontaneously from my TBR collection:
          The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Shiva Naipaul
          Damascus by Joshua Mohr
          The Jokers by Albert Cossery
          Never Mind by Edward St. Aubyn
          Some Hope by Edward St Aubyn

Planned reads for February (as always, subject to change):

Michal Ajvaz: The Other City (1st quarter Reading Globally group read) (completed)
Stuart Altman and David Shactman: Power, Politics, and Universal Health Care (Medicine)
Kwame Anthony Appiah: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (TBR)
Louise Aranson: A History of the Present Illness (Medicine) (completed)
Noam Chomsky: Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire (November Early Reviewers book)
Mohsin Hamid: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (January Early Reviewers book) (completed)
Jerome K. Jerome: Three Men in a Boat (reading)
Rachel Joyce: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2012 Booker Prize longlist) (completed)
Nicole Krauss: Great House (Orange January February) (completed)
Victor LaValle: Big Machine (African American literature) (completed)
Wiesław Myśliwski: Stone Upon Stone (1st quarter Reading Globally group read) (completed)
Lawrence N. Powell: The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans (American History) (reading)
Bruno Schulz: The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories (1st quarter Reading Globally group read)
Wole Soyinka: Of Africa (Black History Month)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: In the House of the Interpreter (Black History Month) (completed)
Bill Veeck: Bill Veeck's Crosstown Classic (completed)
Can Xue: Vertical Motion (4th quarter Reading Globally group read) (completed)
Mo Yan: Pow! (4th quarter Reading Globally group read)

My author of the day for Black History Month is the American novelist and professor Victor LaValle, who was born in Queens, New York in 1972. He grew up in a close knit family that was active in a small Episcopalian church, and he was an avid fan of both heavy metal music and hip-hop. He received a bachelor's degree from Cornell University, but he struggled with obesity and a brush with mental illness during his years there. LaValle wrote about these experiences in his semi-autobiographical novel The Ecstatic, published in 2002. His first published work was the 1999 short story collection Slapboxing with Jesus, which is about the lives of African American and Latino men living in NYC in the 1970s and 1980s. It received critical acclaim and won the PEN Open Book Award that year. His second novel, Big Machine (2009), touches on a variety of different elements, which combines a ghost story, a mystery, commentary about African American culture and the larger American society, wicked humor and literary fiction into an entertaining, coherent and wild rollercoaster ride.

His most recent novel, The Devil in Silver, also combines a variety of genres into a beautifully written ghost story set in a mental institution in Queens, as a man is arrested by NYC police officers and dropped off there after an emotional outburst. LaValle used one of the characters in this book to create an antecedent novella, entitled Lucretia and the Kroons, which is available as a Kindle Single.

LaValle also received an MFA from Columbia University in the City of New York, and he is Assistant Professor and the Acting Fiction Director at the Columbia University School of the Arts. He lives in the city with his wife Emily Raboteau, a noted writer in her own regard, whose latest book Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora was published last month.

Ronald Dworkin, the influential legal scholar and public intellectual, died in London yesterday at the 81. He was educated at Harvard and Oxford, receiving law degrees at both institutions, and taught for nearly 50 years at Yale, University College London and NYU. According to the obituary in today's New York Times, his best known books include Law's Empire, Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom and Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality. His last book, Justice for Hedgehogs, a summary of his life's work, was published last year. He was also a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, which is how I came to appreciate his work, and other publications.

Ronald Dworkin, Scholar of the Law, Is Dead at 81

Very cute picture up top, Darryl!

>6 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca! I found it when I was searching for the cover of a book by either Shusaku Endo or Yukio Mishima late last year. I saved it to my Photobucket account, as I knew that I would find a place for it on one of my threads.

Continuing your last post on my old thread:

Darryl, I did renew my Archipelago subscription, but I'm way behind on reading the books they've sent. In a way, I'd like to cancel it, but I would feel guilty because they're based in Brooklyn.

I also felt guilty when I decided not to renew my subscription, but I internally promised to Archipelago and myself that I would buy the books that I was interested in reading this year. Most of the late 2012 and 2013 Currently available or Forthcoming titles are books that I would like to read, namely:

The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico by Antonio Tabucchi (Oct '12)
The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laabi (Feb '13)
Firefly by Severo Sarduy (Mar '13)
My Struggle Book Two by Karl Ove Knausgaard (May '13)
Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm (May '13)
The Woman of Porto Pim by Antonio Tabucchi (Jun '13)
Ripe to Burst by Frankétienne (Aug '13)

I'm especially interested in the Frankétienne, as he is a Francophone author and is said to be one of the best Haitian writers, and the Laabi, another Francophone author. I'll probably purchase all of these books directly from Archipelago, as it offers a 20% discount on online orders.

Seeing the picture of that kid flip through Yukio Mishima's The Sound of Waves cracks me up! Let's hope s/he continues his advanced interests as s/he grows up.

Today's featured author for Black History Month is the Congolese novelist, journalist and professor Alain Mabanckou, who has been one of the most prominent Francophone authors from the African continent, and is now becoming better known in the English speaking world after several of his books have been recently published in English translation.

Mabanckou was born in Congo-Brazzaville in 1966, and received a bachelor's degree from the Lycée Karl Marx in Pointe-Noire, Congo and a law degree from the Université Paris-Dauphine. He worked for a decade for a French multinational corporation, and then decided to focus on writing after the publication of his novel Bleu-Blanc-Rouge (Blue-White-Red, which will be released in English translation in March), a novel of high hopes and failed dreams set in postcolonial Africa, which won the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire (Great prize of black African literature) in France in 1999. Other novels that have been translated and are available in North America and the UK include African Psycho (English, 2007), a humorous play on Bret Easton Ellis's best selling novel American Psycho , which is narrated by a young African boy who graduates from petty crime to become a bloodthirsty killer; Broken Glass (English, 2009), a biting satire of several sad sacks who spend their lives in a rundown Congolese bar, which won three French literary awards; Memoirs of a Porcupine (English, 2011), another satirical book based on an African folk tale about a boy and his double, a porcupine that he has acquired after a coming-of-age ritual, who assists him in committing a litany of violent crimes; and Black Bazaar (English, 2012), a comic novel about the lives of several colorful African expatriates living in France.

Mabanckou previously taught Francophone Literature at the University of Michigan for several years, and he currently teaches in the Department of French at UCLA.

Books by Mabanckou that I've read: African Psycho, Broken Glass, Memoirs of a Porcupine.

Book #17: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce



My rating:

Longlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize

Harold Fry has recently retired after working as a salesman for a local brewery for many years. He was competent but quiet, nondescript and largely anonymous to his co-workers. He lives with his wife Maureen in a modest home in Kingsbridge, a small village in South West England. Their marriage has been strained for years, as Maureen harbors bitterness and a deep seated hostility toward Harold, although she does not openly express a desire to leave him.

On one ordinary day Harold receives a letter from his former colleague Queenie Hennessy, who resides in a hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed, the northernmost town in England. She informs him that she has end-stage cancer, and writes to say goodbye to him. Harold is deeply affected by this news, and he immediately writes a letter of sympathy to her. He leaves home to mail the letter, and in doing so he encounters a teenage girl who works at a garage. After Harold informs her of the purpose of his trip, she tells him about her aunt's case of cancer. He is led to believe that the girl's belief led her aunt to overcome her terminal illness. He is greatly inspired by this, and he spontaneously decides to walk from Kingsbridge to Berwick-upon-Tweed, a journey of over 500 miles, in the hope that doing so will cure Queenie.

As Harold walks, wearing only the street clothes, rain jacket and yachting shoes that he wore when he initially left the house, he reflects on his past mistakes in his relationship with his wife, their son David, and Queenie, who was fired from her job at the brewery in an incident that also involved him. He soon realizes that he has been an indifferent and reserved husband and father, unknowable to them, or to himself:

It occurred to him it was Maureen who spoke to David and told him their news. It was Maureen who had always written Harold's name ("Dad") in the letters and cards. It was even Maureen who had found the nursing home for his father. And it raised the question—as he pushed the button at the pelican crossing—that if she was, in effect, Harold, “then who am I?”

He encounters a variety of people on his journey, most of whom support and encourage him once he tells them his story, and they eagerly share their experiences with him. Maureen is initially furious at him after she learns about his decision, but later her feelings transform to jealousy, despair, concern, and longing for him.

As the journey becomes more arduous and the constant walking takes a toll on his mid-sixties body, his spirit begins to flag, and he wonders if he should have undertaken this foolhardy journey.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is meant to be an inspiring story of secular faith, self-discovery and love. However, I found it to be a banal and saccharine novel, which was largely pleasant but not one which was affecting or filled with wisdom, although the ending was easily the best part of the book. It, like Harold before his journey, was largely forgettable and mildly annoying in spots, and although it wasn't a bad book, it was the least favorite of the 2012 Booker Prize longlisted books I've read so far.

Book #18: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid



My rating:

This new novel by the Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid is set in an unnamed contemporary South Asian country, and it is meant to serve as a self-help guide for those who wish to make a lot of money there. The book uses the life of a poor country boy to illustrate the path to financial success, with chapter titles that include "Get an Education", "Avoid Idealists" and "Befriend a Bureaucrat". The boy, also unnamed, does become a wealthy producer of bottled water in a country that lacks potable drink, mainly through his own hard work, corrupt business practices, and greasing the palms of government officials and protection men when necessary. The story of a young woman he first met as a teenager, "the pretty girl", is the other key element of the guide, as she enters and departs his life at various points and finds her own degree of success independent from him.

This novel was an entertaining and pleasant read, but the main characters are thinly developed, unrecognizable and not at all memorable, unlike Changez in his earlier novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

Oh, I've been meaning to read Memoirs of a Porcupine; thanks for reminding me!

>8 lilisin: Thanks for confirming the book's title, lilisin. To me, the most enjoyable part of that photo is the toddler's attention to the book; (s)he really looks as though (s)he is reading it like an adult!

>12 rebeccanyc: You're welcome, Rebecca. Hopefully I've given you and others who are planning to participate in the 3rd quarter Reading Globally challenge some ideas of books to read, as I've highlighted three Francophone authors (with at least one more to come): Patrick Chamoiseau, Marie NDiaye and Alain Mabanckou.

I'll be very interested to see what the group decides about Edwidge Danticat, whose speaks French and Creole but writes in English, particularly in relation to her Haitian contemporaries Dany Laferrière and Frankétienne, whose books that are available in English have been translated from the French. And, Marie NDiaye may not be a straightforward choice, either; although she is half-Senegalese she was born in France, which would seem to disqualify her, but she currently lives with her family in Berlin.

Great review of The unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which certainly looks like one to avoid.

Good reviews, but both novels seem forgettable.

I'm going for Big Machine - sounds excellent.

I also am crazy about that pic at the top!

By the way the autobiography by Frederick Douglass is my personal favorite autobio of all time, speaking of Black History Month.

Today's author of the day for Black History Month is the novelist. short story writer, poet and playwright Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1977. She was educated at the University of Nigeria, where her father was a professor, Drexel University in Philadelphia, and Eastern Connecticut State University, where she was awarded a bachelor's degree in 2001. She later received a master's degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and a master's degree in African studies from Yale University.

She initially received acclaim for her short stories, as she was shortlisted for The Caine Prize for African Writing in 1997 for Decisions, won the BBC National Short Story Prize for That Harmattan Morning, and the O. Henry Prize for The American Embassy. She burst on the literary scene in 2003 with the publication of her first novel Purple Hibiscus, the story of a teenage girl and her family in a postcolonial Nigeria besieged by corruption and political strife. This book won several major literary awards, and was selected as a finalist for three major British literary awards, the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, an astonishing accomplishment for a debut novel. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, the tale of two sisters caught up in the Biafran war, won three literary awards, including the 2007 Orange Prize. Her most recent book is the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck, which concerns the struggles and successes of modern day Nigerians in Africa and the US and UK.

Ms. Adichie's next book will be Americanah, a novel about a couple who flees the military dictatorship in Nigeria and relocates to the US, which will be published in April in the UK and in May in the US.

>14 baswood: Thanks, Barry. Yes, Harold Fry is one to avoid IMO.

>15 dmsteyn: Forgettable is the right word, Dewald.

>16 mkboylan: Thanks, Merrikay. I still haven't read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; must change that.

As everyone must know, I loved Half of a Yellow Sun! I also liked Purple Hibiscus a lot, but Ihad mixed feelings about The Thing Around Your Neck. Will be interested in her new novel when it comes out.

Adichie gave a fabulous TED Talk in 2009 about the dangers of one story - that is, the dangers of only reading books from one perspective, and ignoring the rest of the world. It is worth a watch:

http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

I was disappointed to hear that Harold Fry and the latest Hamid book are not that great; both were on my radar. I have Half a Yellow Sun on my table and hope to get to it soon. I added Purple Hibiscus to my wishlist.

My author for the day for Black History Month is the novelist, short story writer and memoirist John Edgar Wideman, who was born in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh in 1941. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a solid student and an even better basketball player, as he was an all-Ivy League and an all-Big Five selection during his career. After he graduated from Penn he attended New College, Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship.

Wideman is best known for the books that make up the Homewood Trilogy, which features African American characters similar to those he grew up with, and consists of the novels Hiding Place (1981) and Sent for You Yesterday (1983), and the short story collection Damballah (1981). Other notable works include Brothers and Keepers (1984), a work of nonfiction about his brother, who is serving a life sentence for murder; Philadelphia Fire (1990), a look at the radical Philadelphia group MOVE; and Fatheralong (1994), which concerns the often troubled relationship between black fathers and their sons and includes his relationship with his father. His latest novel is Fanon (2008), which is a fictionalized retelling of the life of Frantz Fanon, the noted intellectual and African nationalist.

>19 rebeccanyc: Same here, Rebecca; I'll buy Americanah soon after it comes out.

>20 Cait86: Thanks for that link, Cait! I'll watch that TED talk later this week.

>21 labfs39: Lisa, I thought that I would have a lukewarm impression about Harold Fry, but I expected that I would like How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.

Catching up...and that's understating. I was 96 posts behind in your previous thread and it took me several sessions to actually catch up...as those weren't 96 mindless posts.

Love your author-a-day posts for Black History Month...and I'm very impressed them. There is a ton of information in these posts, and so much of it is personal to what you have read. I've learned quite a bit reading through these and look forward to the rest.

But there is so much here that I've forgotten most of the individual responses that I might have posted. Briefly: I also recommend Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which I read so long ago (1994) that I barely recall anything about it...except my impression. Douglass was a beautiful writer. ; I'm curious if you have read Toni Morrison, and it she will show up here. ; And interesting to stumble across John Edgar Wideman here. For no reason I can figure out, I got intrigued enough by the NYTimes review of Fanon* that the book title stayed with me, and I finally got a copy in a Borders clearance section...but haven't read it yet.

*one correction, Fanon was published in 2008.

Checking your thread each day for your "author of the day". Some wonderful writers here.

I will have to look for Fanon to see how fiction treats this remarkable man.

I read Philadelphia Fire shortly after it came out -- it was fascinating. Thanks again for the Black History Month author-a-day posts.

>19 rebeccanyc:, Rebecca I'm similar except rate Purple Hibiscus over H of a Y S. the short stories just didn't do it for me. I'm going to see her speak in the next couple of months and can't wait!

My featured author of the day for Black History Month is the Haitian-Canadian novelist and journalist Dany Laferrière, who was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1953. His father, the mayor of the Haitian capital and a government trade minister, was forced into exile when he ran afoul of the dictator François ("Papa Doc") Duvalier when Dany was a young boy. Dany became a journalist who wrote critical articles about the government of Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier, and he fled to Montreal in 1978 after a colleague was murdered by the notorious Tonton Macoute.

Laferrière worked as an office cleaner while attending classes at the University of Quebec-Montreal. His first break came in 1985 after the publication of his debut novel Comment faire l'amour avec un Nègre sans se fatiguer (How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired), a controversial and wicked satire about a black immigrant to Montreal who writes an instructional book about dating white women, which became an instant best seller.

Laferrière's subsequent and much more substantial novels, which he refers to as his "American autobiography", are largely based on his personal experiences growing up in Haiti and Canada. His most acclaimed book is L'Énigme du retour (The Enigma of the Return), a novel about a man who returns to Haiti after many years of exile in North America following his father's death, which touches upon his relationship with his father, the immigrant experience, and the difficulty he faced in returning to a country that he loves and fears intensely. This book won the prestigious Prix Médicis in France in 2009.

Laferrière's latest book to be translated into English is Tout bouge autour de moi (The World Is Moving Around Me), a chronicle of the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti that claimed over 300,000 lives in and around Port-au-Prince which he witnessed in the capital from the moment it struck.

Maya Jaggi profiled Dany Laferrière in The Guardian earlier this month:

Dany Laferrière: a life in books

>24 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. I fell behind on my daily author bios, due to an exceptionally busy week in the hospital. I'm off this weekend, so I'll post at least one more bio tomorrow, but I don't know if I'll post any others after that.

Thanks for the recommendation of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; I've just downloaded the free e-book onto my Kindle, and I'll read it soon.

No, I won't write a bio of Toni Morrison this month, for two reasons: she is a well known author, and my focus this month is on little known authors; and, I'm not a fan of her writing.

Thanks for mentioning the correct date of the publication of Fanon by John Edgar Wideman. I'll correct it as soon as I finish this message.

>25 SassyLassy: Thanks, Sassy!

>26 janeajones: Thanks, Jane; oddly enough, I don't think I've read Philadelphia Fire, although I've owned a copy of it for several years. I'll have to make it a point to read it this year.

>27 charbutton: When and where will Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie be speaking, Char? I would like to make a springtime visit to London this year, although it's looking progressively less likely at this point. I'll definitely come in late summer or early fall even if I can't make it there in the next couple of months.

Darryl -- after your mention of Wideman, I was inspired to go and hunt up a review of Philadelphia Fire I wrote when the book came out. I cleaned it up and posted it on the book's front page if you're interested.

Today's featured author for Black History Month is the novelist, poet and professor Percival Everett, who was born in 1956 and raised in Columbia, South Carolina. His father, a dentist, and his mother stressed the value of education and a love of literature, as he grew up in a house filled with books and was an outstanding student. He graduated with a BA in Philosophy from the University of Miami, with a focus on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He continued his study of philosophy as a graduate student at the University of Oregon, but once he decided to become a writer he transferred to and received an MA in creative writing from Brown University.

Everett has published several poetry collections and well over a dozen novels. His books are generally witty and fierce comic novels about modern American life and the Black experience in the larger culture, and any sacred cows are fair game for skewering. His most notable books include I Am Not Sidney Poitier, his award winning 2010 novel about a young man named Not Sidney Poitier by his mother, who undergoes a wacky ride as a protégé of Ted Turner, a student at Morehouse College (where he encounters an eccentric professor named Percival Everett), and a witness to a murder in rural Smut Eye, Alabama; A History of the African-American People (proposed) by Strom Thurmond, a novel cum revisionist history narrated by the segregationist U.S. Senator; and Erasure, in which an African American writer who publishes literary fiction to critical acclaim but almost zero public recognition finds commerical success when he writes an urban lit novel entitled "We’s Lives in Da Ghetto". His latest novel, published earlier this month, is Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, which is "a powerful, compassionate meditation on old age and its humiliations", and "an ingenious culmination of Everett’s recurring preoccupations."

Everett currently serves as a Distinguished Professor of English at USC and lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

>30 janeajones: Thanks for posting your great review of Philadelphia Fire, Jane! My parents' home is just outside of Philadelphia, and I was living with them, working and attending night classes at Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1985, when the bombing of the MOVE headquarters on Osage Avenue took place. For some reason I didn't realize that this novel was about that tragedy; otherwise I would have read this book much sooner. I'll plan to read it next month.

Hi Darryl! Looks like we felt pretty much the same way about The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. I understand why people like the book, but it simply wasn't for me and seemed rather forgettable and a bit cheesy at times.

Have enjoyed your featured author series. So many new writers, new to me anyway.

I'm sorry to see your author bios come to a close, Darryl. Thank you so much for taking the time to share those with us. I will be attending a 5-session seminar on African-American Literature this Spring and am very much looking forward to that, although still waiting for information on what authors will be discussed.

You're continuing to introduce me to lots of interesting sounding authors -- thanks! Laferrière' sounds particularly interesting.

>33 The_Hibernator: "Forgettable" and "cheesy" are two good descriptors for The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel. It's the only book from last year's Booker Prize longlist that didn't deserve its place there, IMO.

>34 baswood: Thanks, Barry. I probably won't write any more profiles this month, due to my busy work schedule. I'll almost certainly do the same thing again next year for Black History Month (e.g., profiles of lesser known authors who are deceased, such as Sam Selvon and E.A. Markham).

>35 Linda92007: You're welcome, Linda; I'll glad that you enjoyed those bios. I'll be interested to find out which books you'll be reading for the African-American Literature seminar.

>36 rebeccanyc: I'm glad to hear that, Rebecca. Laferrière's books should be easy for you to find in NYC. I'll plan to read at least one or two of his novels for the Reading Globally theme on Francophone literature later this year.

Planned reads for March (as always, subject to change):

Stuart Altman and David Shactman: Power, Politics, and Universal Health Care: The Inside Story of a Century-Long Battle
Tash Aw, Five Star Billionaire
Honoré de Balzac, Old Man Goriot
Albert Camus, Exile and the Kingdom
Noam Chomsky, Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire
Michael Frayn, Skios
Witold Gombrowicz, Bacacay
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Paradise
Beatrix Hoffman, Health Care for Some: Rights and Rationing in the United States since 1930
Yan Lianke, Dream of Ding Village
Lawrence N. Powell, The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans
Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories
Wole Soyinka, Of Africa
John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire
Mo Yan, Pow!

Interesting and ambitious list, as always, Darryl!

>39 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca! Hopefully March won't be as brutal a work month as February has been, so that I can read most of these books.

Will be interested to hear your take on the Tash Aw book. I have read two others, but not that one.

>41 SassyLassy: I won Five Star Billionaire from the LT Early Reviewer list of books for February. I enjoyed his novel Map of the Invisible World, and I had already planned to buy his latest novel once I read about it in January. I own The Harmony Silk Factory, but I haven't read it yet.

Hm. I see you are hoping to read Gurnah's Paradise this month. Perhaps I will join you. I think it is the last of his I have to read (only because I couldn't find my copy for a quite a while). It is supposed to be one of his best.

Another appreciator here of Chimamanda Adichie and looking forward to viewing the TED Talk. I read Purple Hibiscus first and loved it. Thought Half of a Yellow Sun was a more important and complex book but a less-enjoyable novel, I kept popping out of the story into history. Not sure what kept me from her collection of stories but now I don't regret that.

Darryl thank you again for the wonderful writer bios. So glad that Percival Everett fit in under the wire -- I thought more and more of reading him with every sentence further into your bio, until I recognized I Am Not Sidney Poitier from my TBRs! Look forward to getting to it.

Also look forward to your reviews of the healthcare-policy books in >38 kidzdoc:.

>43 avaland: Great, Lois. Paradise is one of the few novels by Gurnah that I haven't read yet, and I also understood that it was one of his best novels. I'll be off from work for most of the next two weeks after a busy work stretch, so I'll probably read it soon.

>44 detailmuse: You're welcome, MJ. I look forward to your comments about I Am Not Sidney Poitier. I'll probably buy his new novel next month, as I'm thinking of making a short trip to San Francisco in a couple of weeks to celebrate my birthday.

I'll probably read one of the health care policy books this week, and read the other one later this month.

The longlist for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced last week:

Gerbrand Bakker, The Detour (translated by David Colmer from the Dutch)
Chris Barnard, Bundu (Michiel Heyns; Afrikaans)
Laurent Binet, HHhH (Sam Taylor; French)
Dasa Drndic, Trieste (Ellen Elias-Bursac; Croatian)
Pawel Huelle, Cold Sea Stories (Antonia Lloyd-Jones; Polish)
Pia Juul, The Murder of Halland (Martin Aitken; Danish)
Ismail Kadare, The Fall of the Stone City (John Hodgson; Albanian)
Khaled Khalifa, In Praise of Hatred (Leri Price; Arabic)
Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family (published in the US as My Struggle, Book One (Don Bartlett; Norwegian)
Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Satantango (George Szirtes; Hungarian)
Alain Mabanckou, Black Bazaar (Sarah Ardizzone; French)
Diego Marani, The Last of the Vostyachs (Judith Landry; Italian)
Andrés Neuman, Traveller of the Century (Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia; Spanish)
Orhan Pamuk, Silent House (Robert Finn; Turkish)
Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The Sound of Things Falling (Anne McLean; Spanish)
Enrique Vila-Matas, Dublinesque (Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean; Spanish), Harvill Secker

The shortlist will be announced on April 11, and the winner will be announced in May in London.

More info: http://www.booktrust.org.uk/prizes-and-awards/7

Well, I haven't read any of these, although I do have My Struggle (terrible title!) from my Archipelago subscription, and i've looked at Traveller of the Century in the bookstore several times without buying it; I also have a different books by Krasznahorkai on my TBR that I hope to read this month and another book by Mabanckou. I'll have ot explore some of these other books!

>47 rebeccanyc: From this list I own HHhH and My Struggle, Book One. The Detour, Black Bazaar and The Sound of Things Falling are all high on my wish list, as I've read and enjoyed at least one book by each of these authors.

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize is a UK award, so not all of these books are available in the US yet. However, the longlist for this year's Best Translated Book Award will be released later today, and Chad Post of Open Letter Books reported yesterday that three books made both lists.

Post, in the same blog, also mentioned a literary award that I was unfamiliar with, the French-American Foundation Translation Prize, which recently released its Fiction and Non-Fiction finalists:

Fiction:

No One by Gwenaëlle Aubry, translated by Trista Selous, Tin House Books
No One is a fictional memoir in dictionary form that investigates the unstable identity of the author’s father, a lawyer affected by a disabling bipolar disorder. Letter by letter, Aubry gives shape and meaning to the father who had long disappeared from her view.

We Monks and Soldiers, Lutz Bassmann, translated by Jordan Stump, University of Nebraska Press
While humanity seems to be fading around them, the members of a shadowy organization are doing their inadequate best to assist those experiencing their last moments. This remarkable work offers readers a thrilling entry into Bassmann’s numinous world.

HHhH, Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
A seemingly effortlessly blend of historical truth, personal memory, and Laurent Binet’s remarkable imagination, HHhH—a winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman—is a work at once thrilling and intellectually engrossing, a fast-paced novel of the Second World War.

Prehistoric Times, Eric Chevillard, translated by Alyson Waters, Archipelago Books
The characters in Prehistoric Times remind us of the inhabitants of Samuel Beckett's world: dreamers who in their savage and deductive folly try to modify reality.

With the Animals, Noëlle Revaz, translated by Donald Wilson, Dalkey Archive Press
With the Animals, Noëlle Revaz’s shocking debut, is a novel of mud and blood whose linguistic audacity is matched only by its brutality, misanthropy, and gallows humor.

Non-Fiction:

In Defense of the Terror: Liberty or Death in the French Revolution, Sophie Wahnich, translated by David Fernbach, Verso Books
Sophie Wahnich offers us with this succinct essay a provocative reassessment of the Great Terror. She explains how, contrary to prevailing interpretations, the institution of Terror sought to put a brake on legitimate popular violence and was subsequently subsumed in a logic of war.

The Color of Power: Racial Coalitions and Political Power in Oakland, Frédérick Douzet, translated by George Holoch, University of Virginia Press
The Color of Power is a fascinating examination of the changing politics of race in Oakland, California. The city, once governed by a succession of black mayors and majority black city councils, must now accommodate rapidly growing Asian and Latino communities.

Manhunts: A Philosophical History, Gregoire Chamayou, translated by Steven Rendall, Princeton University Press
Touching on issues of power, authority, and domination, Manhunts takes an in-depth look at the hunting of humans in the West, from ancient Sparta, through the Middle Ages, to the modern practices of chasing undocumented migrants.

The Metamorphoses of Kinship, Maurice Godelier, translated by Nora Scott, Verso Books
A masterwork of the anthropology of kinship by the heir to Levi-Strauss. Godelier argues that the changes of the last thirty years do not herald the disappearance or death agony of kinship, but rather its remarkable metamorphosis—one that, ironically, is bringing us closer to the “traditional” societies studied by ethnologists.

The Patagonian Hare, Claude Lanzmann, translated by Frank Wynne, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
These memoirs capture the intensity of the experiences of Claude Lanzmann, a man whose acts have always been a negation of resignation: a member of the Resistance at sixteen, a friend to Jean-Paul Sartre and a lover to Simone de Beauvoir, and the director of one of the most important films in the history of cinema, Shoah.

Chad Post mentioned that two of the five Fiction finalists were also selected for the 2013 Best Translated Book Awards longlist, so I'm guessing that HHhH is one of the books.

These prizes are given to the translators, and not the authors. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in NYC on June 5.

The Metamorphosis of Kinship sounds interesting to me. Most of my newer family texts say the definition of family is moving away from a structural one to a functional one.

Here is the Fiction longlist for this year's Best Translated Book Awards:

The Planets by Sergio Chejfec, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary (Open Letter Books; Argentina)
Prehistoric Times by Eric Chevillard, translated from the French by Alyson Waters (Archipelago Books; France)
The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, translated from the Persian by Tom Patterdale (Melville House; Iran)
Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City by Dung Kai-Cheung, translated from the Chinese by Anders Hansson and Bonnie S. McDougall (Columbia University Press; China)
Kite by Dominique Eddé, translated from the French by Ros Schwartz (Seagull Books; Lebanon)
We, The Children of Cats by Tomoyuki Hoshino, translated from the Japanese by Brian Bergstom and Lucy Fraser (PM Press; Japan)
The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq, translated from the French by Gavin Bowd (Knopf; France)
Basti by Intizar Husain, translated from the Urdu by Frances W. Pritchett (New York Review Books; Pakistan)
Mama Leone by Miljenko Jergović, translated from the Croatian by David Williams (Archipelago Books; Croatia)
Awakening to the Great Sleep War by Gert Jonke, translated from the German by Jean M. Snook (Dalkey Archive Press; Austria)
My Struggle: Book One by Karl Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Archipelago Books; Norway)
Satantango by László Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes (New Directions; Hungary)
Autoportrait by Edouard Levé, translated from the French by Lorin Stein (Dalkey Archive Press; France)
A Breath of Life: Pulsations by Clarice Lispector, translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz (New Directions; Brazil)
The Lair by Norman Manea, translated from the Romanian by Oana Sanziana Marian (Yale University Press; Romania)
The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller, translated from the German by Philip Boehm (Metropolitan Books; Romania)
Traveler of the Century by Andrés Neuman, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; Argentina)
Happy Moscow by Andrey Platonov, translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler (New York Review Books; Russia)
With the Animals by Noëlle Revaz, translated from the French by Donald W. Wilson (Dalkey Archive Press; Switzerland)
Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin, translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz (Open Letter Books; Russia)
Joseph Walser’s Machine by Gonçalo M. Tavares, translated from the Portuguese by Rhett McNeil (Dalkey Archive Press; Portugal)
Island of Second Sight by Albert Vigoleis Thelen, translated from the German by Donald O. White (Overlook; Germany)
Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas, translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey and Anne McLean (New Directions; Spain)
Transit by Abdourahman A. Waberi, translated from the French by David Ball and Nicole Ball (Indiana University Press; Djibouti)
My Father’s Book by Urs Widmer, translated from the German by Donal McLaughlin (Seagull Books; Switzerland)

The shortlist will be released on April 10th, and the winner will be announced on May 4th.

More book prize news: the Women's Prize for Fiction has a new web site, separate from the old Orange Prize one:

http://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/

The site mentions that the longlist for the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction will be announced on March 14th.

Darryl, really sorry not to respond to your question - I've been off LT for a while. In case you haven't already found it, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is speaking at the Royal Festival Hall on 9 April. The website is being a bit weird. Either it's sold out or their booking system is screwed - not sure which!

>52 charbutton: Thanks, Char. I'm working that week, so I won't be able to make it. I did see that Taiye Selasi is giving a talk at Soutbank Centre on April 7; her debut novel Ghana Must Go was just published in the US yesterday, and I'll purchase it when I travel to San Francisco later this month.

Thanks for all the lists, Darryl. Will come back to them when I have more time.

>46 kidzdoc: Is there just one woman on that list? Cripes, what century are we in. Andy reviewed The Murder of Halland for Belletrista.

>50 kidzdoc: Disappointed not to see Children In Reindeer Woods on this list, but then again, I suppose Open Letter/Univ. of Rochester can't nominate their own books.

>55 avaland: I couldn't tell the gender of several of the authors' given names, particularly Dasa, Pawel and Pia, so I didn't notice that.

It seems as though only one of the BTBA Fiction judges is from Open Letter, namely Chad Post, so I don't see why one or more of the other judges couldn't have nominated its books for the longlist.

I just realized that I left two titles off of the BTBA Fiction longlist:

Autoportrait by Edouard Levé, translated from the French by Lorin Stein (Dalkey Archive Press; France)
A Breath of Life: Pulsations by Clarice Lispector, translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz (New Directions; Brazil)

I'll add these to the longlist I posted in message #50 now.

Specific plans for the LibraryThing spring Philadelphia mega meetup on May 18-19 are now underway. It promises to be the largest meetup ever, as 20 or more LTers and their spouses are planning to come that weekend. If anyone else is interested in coming, now is the time to chime in!

http://www.librarything.com/topic/145077

As always, a very interesting thread. Enjoyed your authors for Black History month.

Wonderful lists, darryl. They all seem to be must-haves for me. Dangerous!

>53 kidzdoc:, the 7th is my birthday, maybe I can persuade my other half to get me a ticket as a present!

Thank you for so dependably posting these lists, Darryl, although my wishlist is now groaning in pain. Out of all three longlists/finalists, I have only read one book and I do not own any of the others - yet!

>58 amandameale: Thanks, Amanda!

>59 deebee1: Thanks, deebee; those are some very enticing books, some of which will certainly find their way into my tote bag later this month.

>60 charbutton: Good idea! Let us know if you make it to Taiye Selasi's talk. One of my colleagues at work will read Ghana Must Go this weekend, and I'll probably buy it this weekend or early next week.

>61 Linda92007: You're welcome, Linda. I own a couple of books from each of those longlists, and I'll add more of them later this month.

The longlist for the inaugural Women's Prize for Fiction will be announced this coming Wednesday, March 13th. Twenty books will be chosen for the longlist, which will be narrowed to a six book shortlist on April 16th, at the London Book Fair. The winning book will be announced at the award ceremony in London on June 5th.

The prize has a new web site, http://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk.

Is it an inaugural prize or simply a renamed prize? While I like that it's been decoupled from commercialism, the Orange Prize was much easier to remember!

Thanks for posting this. I now have to wander through the list, adding to my list of books to buy. Because that list is so woefully short.

>64 RidgewayGirl: The Orange Prize for Fiction has been renamed the Women's Prize for Fiction, after Orange decided that it would no longer sponsor the award last May. According to the prize's web site, administrators are in discussion with a new long term sponsor, and this sponsor will be announced this spring, in advance of the award ceremony. I'll be interested to see if the prize's name changes again, once the new sponsor is announced, or if it will remain the Women's Prize for Fiction.

I now have to wander through the list, adding to my list of books to buy. Because that list is so woefully short.

LOL; same here! Fortunately the WPF, BTBA and IFFP longlists will precede my trip to San Francisco in two weeks, so that I can load up on new books that I (don't) need.

Here's the longlist for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction:

Kitty Aldridge - A Trick I Learned From Dead Men (Jonathan Cape)
Kate Atkinson - Life After Life (Doubleday)
Ros Barber - The Marlowe Papers (Sceptre)
Shani Boianjiu - The People of Forever are Not Afraid (Hogarth)
Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Sheila Heti - How Should a Person Be? (Harvill Secker)
A M Homes - May We Be Forgiven (Granta)
Barbara Kingsolver - Flight Behaviour (Faber & Faber)
Deborah Copaken Kogen - The Red Book (Virago)
Hilary Mantel - Bring Up the Bodies (Fourth Estate)
Bonnie Nadzam - Lamb (Hutchinson)
Emily Perkins - The Forrests (Bloomsbury Circus)
Michèle Roberts - Ignorance (Bloomsbury)
Francesca Segal - The Innocents (Chatto & Windus)
Maria Semple - Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Elif Shafak - Honour (Viking)
Zadie Smith - NW (Hamish Hamilton)
M L Stedman - The Light Between Oceans (Doubleday)
Carrie Tiffany - Mateship with Birds (Picador)
G Willow Wilson - Alif the Unseen (Corvus Books)

More info: http://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/2013-prize/longlist

I've already amended my wish list as appropriate. While I've read a few of these, there were others I'd never even heard of.

I only know 4 authors -- Kingsolver, Mantel, Roberts and Smith -- much less the novels. Looking forward to your reviews to see which are worth pursuing.

Interesting list, like RG and Jane, there are many writers who are completely unfamiliar to me.

It's always nice to see the posted lists of award nominees - a lot of unfamiliar authors for me as well.

Also, a very interesting sounding list of March reads back at #38.

The longlists for this year's Orwell Prize were announced on Wednesday:

Carmen Bugan, Burying the Typewriter (Picador): One quiet day when her mother was away from home, Carmen Bugan’s father put on his best suit and drove into Bucharest to stage a one-man protest against Ceauşescu. He had been typing pamphlets on an illegal typewriter and burying it in the garden each morning under his daughter’s bedroom window. This is the story of what happened to Carmen and her family, isolated and under surveillance in their beloved village home. It is an intimate piece of our recent history, the testimony of an extraordinary childhood left abruptly behind. Above all, it is a luminous, compassionate, and unflinchingly honest book about the price of courage, the pain of exile, and the power of memory.

Marie Colvin, On the Front Line (HarperPress): A fearless, passionate veteran reporter of conflicts from around the world, Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin was killed in February 2012, covering the uprising in Syria from the besieged city of Homs. On the Front Line is a collection of her finest work, a portion of the proceeds from which will go to the Marie Colvin Memorial Fund.

Marie Colvin held a profound belief in the pursuit of truth, and the courage and humanity of her work was deeply admired. On the Front Line includes her various interviews with Yasser Arafat and Colonel Gadaffi; reports from East Timor in 1999 where she shamed the UN into protecting its refugees; accounts of her terrifying escape from the Russian army in Chechnya; and reports from the strongholds of the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers where she was hit by shrapnel, leaving her blind in one eye.

Typically, however, her new eye-patch only reinforced Colvin’s sense of humour and selfless conviction. She returned quickly to the front line, reporting on 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and, lately, the Arab Spring.

Immediate and compelling, On the Front Line is a street-view of the historic events that have shaped the last 25 years, from an award-winning foreign correspondent and the outstanding journalist of her generation.

Chrystia Freeland, Plutocrats (Penguin): The rich really are different …

There has always been some gap between rich and poor, but it has never been wider – and now the rich are getting wealthier at such breakneck speed that the middle classes are being squeezed out. While the wealthiest 10% of Americans, for example, receive half the nation’s income, the real money flows even higher up, in the top 0.1%. As a transglobal class of highly successful professionals, these self-made oligarchs often have more in common with one another than with their own countrymen. But how is this happening, and who are the people making it happen?

Chrystia Freeland, acclaimed business journalist and Global Editor-at-Large of Reuters, has unprecedented access to the richest and most successful people on the planet, from Davos to Dubai, and dissects their lives with intelligence, empathy and objectivity. Pacily written and powerfully researched, Plutocrats could not provide a more timely insight into the current state of Capitalism and its most wealthy players.

Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma (4th Estate): WARNING: THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY HAS SERIOUS SIDE EFFECTS. These include: flawed clinical trials followed by the suppression of unfavourable results, poor regulation, diseases invented purely for profit, swollen marketing budgets, doctors and academics in the pay of pill manufacturers.

If you find this hard to swallow, please seek the urgent medical advise of Dr Ben Goldacre as he dissects the drug industry, offering a simple and effective remedy for the sick business of Big Pharma.

Ioan Grillo, El Narco (Bloomsbury): The world has watched, stunned, the bloodshed in Mexico. Forty thousand murdered since 2006; police chiefs shot within hours of taking office; mass graves comparable to those of civil wars; car bombs shattering storefronts; headless corpses heaped in town squares. And it is all because a few Americans are getting high. Or is it part of a worldwide shadow economy that threatens Mexico’s democracy? The United States throws Black Hawk helicopters, DEA assistance, and lots of money at the problem. But in secret, Washington is at a loss. Who are these mysterious figures who threaten Mexico’s democracy? What is El Narco?



El Narco is not a gang; it is a movement and an industry drawing in hundreds of thousands, from bullet-riddled barrios to marijuana-covered mountains. The conflict spawned by El Narco has given rise to paramilitary death squads battling from Guatemala to the Texas border (and sometimes beyond). In this “propulsive … high-octane” book (Publishers Weekly), Ioan Grillo draws the first definitive portrait of Mexico’s cartels and how they have radically transformed in the past decade.

Richard Holloway, Leaving Alexandria (Canongate Books): At fourteen, Richard Holloway left his home in the Vale of Leven, north of Glasgow, and travelled hundreds of miles to be educated and trained for the priesthood by a religious order in an English monastery. By twenty-five he had been ordained and was working in the slums of Glasgow. Throughout the following forty years, Richard touched the lives of many people in the Church and in the wider community. But behind his confident public face lay a restless, unquiet heart and a constantly searching mind.

Why is the Church, which claims to be the instrument of God’s love, so prone to cruelty and condemnation? And how can a man live with the tension between public faith and private doubt?

In his long-awaited memoir, Richard seeks to answer these questions and to explain how, after many crises of faith, he finally and painfully left the Church. It is a wise, poetic and fiercely honest book.

Pankaj Mishra, From the Ruins of the Empire (Allen Lane): Viewed in the West as a time of self-confident progress, the Victorian period was experienced by Asians as a catastrophe.

As the British gunned down the last heirs to the Mughal Empire or burned down the Summer Palace in Beijing, it was clear that for Asia to recover, a new way of thinking was needed.

Pankaj Mishra re-tells the history of the past two centuries, showing how a remarkable, disparate group of thinkers, journalists, radicals and charismatics emerged from the ruins of empire to create an unstoppable Asian renaissance, one whose ideas lie behind everything from the Chinese Communist Party to the Muslim Brotherhood, and have made our world what it is today.

Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust (HarperPress)
: The culmination of more than a decade of research, The Spanish Holocaust seeks to reflect the intense horrors visited upon Spain during its ferocious civil war, the consequences of which still reverberate bitterly today.

The brutal, murderous persecution of Spaniards between 1936 and 1945 is a truth that should have been told long ago. Paul Preston here offers the first comprehensive picture of what he terms “the Spanish Holocaust”: mass extra-judicial murder of some 200,000 victims, cursory military trials, torture, the systematic abuse of women and children, sweeping imprisonment, the horrors of exile. Those culpable for crimes committed on both sides of the Civil War are named; their victims identified.

The Spanish Holocaust illuminates one of the darkest, least-known eras of modern European history.

Raja Shehadeh, Occupation Diaries (Profile Books): It is often the smallest details of daily life that tell us the most. And so it is under occupation in Palestine. What most of us take for granted has to be carefully thought about and planned for: When will the post be allowed to get through? Will there be enough water for the bath tonight? How shall I get rid of the rubbish collecting outside? How much time should I allow for the journey to visit my cousin, going through checkpoints? And big questions too: Is working with left-wing Israelis collaborating or not? What affect will the Arab Spring have on the future of Palestine? What can anyone do to bring about change? Are any of life’s pleasures untouched by politics?

Clive Stafford Smith, Injustice (Harvill Secker): In 1986, Kris Maharaj, a British businessman living in Miami, was arrested for the brutal murder of two ex-business associates. His lawyer did not present a strong alibi; Kris was found guilty and sentenced to death in the electric chair. 



It wasn’t until a young lawyer working for nothing, Clive Stafford Smith, took on his case that strong evidence began to emerge that the state of Florida had got the wrong man on Death Row. So far, so good – except that, as Stafford Smith argues here so compellingly, the American justice system is actually designed to ignore innocence. Twenty-six years later, Maharaj is still in jail. 



Step by step, Stafford Smith untangles the Maharaj case and the system that makes disasters like this inevitable. His conclusions will act as a wake-up call for those who condone legislation which threatens basic human rights and, at the same time, the personal story he tells demonstrates that determination can challenge the institutions that surreptitiously threaten our freedom.

Daniel Trilling, Bloody Nasty People (Verso Books)
: The past decade saw the rise of the British National Party, the country’s most successful ever far-right political movement, and the emergence of the anti-Islamic English Defence League. Taking aim at asylum seekers, Muslims, “enforced multiculturalism” and benefit “scroungers”, these groups have been working overtime to shift the blame for the nation’s ills onto the shoulders of the vulnerable. What does this extremist resurgence say about the state of modern Britain?

Drawing on archival research and extensive interviews with key figures, such as BNP leader Nick Griffin, Daniel Trilling shows how previously marginal characters from a tiny neo-Nazi subculture successfully exploited tensions exacerbated by the fear of immigration, the War on Terror and steepening economic inequality.

Mainstream politicians have consistently underestimated the far right in Britain while pursuing policies that give it the space to grow. Bloody Nasty People calls time on this complacency in an account that provides us with fresh insights into the dynamics of political extremism.

A.T. Williams, A Very British Killing (Jonathan Cape): On 15 September 2003 Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist, was killed by British Army troops in Iraq. He had been arrested the previous day in Basra and was taken to a military base for questioning. For forty-eight hours he and nine other innocent civilians had their heads encased in sandbags and their wrists bound by plastic handcuffs and had been kicked and punched with sustained cruelty.



A succession of guards and casual army visitors took pleasure in beating the Iraqis, humiliating them, forcing them into stress positions in temperatures up to 50 degrees Centigrade, and watching them suffer in the dirty concrete building where they were held. Other soldiers, officers, medics, the padre, did not take part in the violence but they saw what was happening and did nothing to stop it. Some knew it was wrong. Some weren’t sure. Some were too scared to intervene. But none said anything or enough until it was far too late and Baha Mousa had been beaten to death.



This book tells the inside story of these crimes and their aftermath. It examines the institutional brutality, the bureaucratic apathy, the flawed military police inquiry and the farcical court martial that attempted to hold people criminally responsible. Even though a full public inquiry reported its findings into the crimes in September 2011, its mandate restricted what it could say. The full story, told with the power of a true-crime expose or court-room drama, shows how this was not simply about a few bad men or ‘rotten apples’. It shines a light on all those involved in the crime and its investigation, from the lowest squaddie to the elite of the army and politicians in Cabinet. What it reveals is devastating.

The shortlist will be announced on April 17th, and the winner will be announced on May 15th.

More info: http://theorwellprize.co.uk/longlists/

Sad news: The Nigerian author Chinua Achebe died in Boston this morning, at the age of 82.

The Guardian: Novelist Chinua Achebe dies, aged 82

The New York Times: Chinua Achebe, African Literary Titan, Dies at 82

Great list of books for the Orwell prize. Are you going to read Bad Pharma?

I'm in the midst of a moderate asthma attack triggered by pollen and possibly bronchitis, so I cancelled my plans to travel to San Francisco. I'll recuperate at home instead, and celebrate my birthday by buying books from my local Barnes & Noble on Sunday or Monday.

>67 RidgewayGirl: I've only read Bring Up the Bodies and NW from the Orange Women's Prize for Fiction longlist, and I don't yet own any of the others. The ones that interest me the most are Life After Life, The Marlowe Papers, Flight Behavior, Lamb (which I downloaded onto my Kindle after I learned that it was on sale for less than $4), and Honour. The general opinion of the longlist has not been favorable by those who have read some of these books in the Orange January/July group, with Gone Girl, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and The Red Book coming under the most criticism. I participated in the Orange Prize Shadow Jury within this group last year, but I'm not yet sure if I'll do it again this year.

>68 janeajones: Jane, you may also want to look at the Orange January/July group on LT for others' opinions of the longlisted books.

>69 rebeccanyc: Right, Rebecca; the majority of these books and authors were also unfamiliar to me, although many of these books are currently available in the US, or soon will be.

>70 DieFledermaus: Thanks, DieF. I've done very little reading this month, due to a busy month on the hospital service and my nonclinical work responsibilities. I'll be off from work for the next four days, so hopefully I can finish at least two or three books by the end of Tuesday.

>73 baswood: I'll definitely read Bad Pharma Barry, and several other books on the Orwell Book Prize longlist also look interesting. Oh, good; the Kindle version Bad Pharma is available in the US, so I'll probably read it in the next month or two.

Sorry to hear about Achebe; I've had Things Fall Apart on the TBR for much too long and now feel even guiltier about not having read it. He was such an influential author for many of the other African writers I've read.

Thanks for the Orwell list. I've heard of Marie Colvin but am unfamiliar with the other titles and authors.

>74 kidzdoc: Gone Girl was a really good mystery/suspense book, but I would not call it prize worthy, unless maybe it was in a mystery/suspense category. To put that book in the same category as Bring Up The Bodies is shameful.

The Orwell list looks bad for my wallet! Ben Goldacre's Bad Science was terrific. I want to read Bad Pharma as well, but the Kindle price is awfully steep.

So many of those Orwell book appeal to me...esp. Leaving Alexandria, From the Ruins of Empire, Occupation Diaries because I like Raja Shehedah.

I was not familiar with the Orwell Prize prior to your posting, Darryl, but now have practically the entire shortlist on my wishlist. Thanks!

>75 rebeccanyc: I found my copy of Things Fall Apart yesterday, Rebecca; I'll plan to read it next month.

The Orwell Prize longlist is especially enticing this year. I had only heard of Marie Colvin after her death last year. I own Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, a British physician and scientist at the Wellcome Institute who writes articles about science and medicine for The Guardian; I haven't read it yet, though. I own Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond by Pankaj Mishra, which I haven't read, but I think I also have another of his books which I did read several years ago and enjoy. He's also a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. I had heard of The Spanish Holocaust, and it's already on my wish list.

>76 NanaCC: There is no way that I'll read Gone Girl, Colleen, even if it does make the WPF shortlist. I did read Bring Up the Bodies, and I would agree with your comment based on what little I know about Gillian Flynn's novel.

>77 cabegley: I agree, Chris! That longlist is one of the most dangerous ones I've seen recently. I'll probably buy at least five or six of those books, starting with Bad Pharma and El Narco, which I'll buy from my local Barnes & Noble later today or tomorrow.

>78 dchaikin: Those books sound appealing to me as well, Dan. I could just get all of them...

>79 Linda92007: You're welcome, Linda. I'll start following the Orwell Prize more closely from now on, as the books on the longlists for the past few years have been particularly interesting.

>77 cabegley: I'll buy Bad Pharma, Chris. It's my turn.

I've read Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, and it seems I have another title of his yet unread. I thought of his work while I was reading Paradise by Gurnah, mostly because they share a gift in storytelling and I think Paradise is set in the same era as some of Achebe's work. Achebe, of course, is writing from the indigenous, black African perspective and Gurnah from the African-born Arab perspective.

Hope you are feeling better, Darryl. And a belated Happy Birthday!

Uh oh.........the Orwell Prize list is definitely trouble! I want every one of then!

>81 NanaCC: I haven't picked up Bad Pharma yet, but I'll almost certainly buy it this weekend or early next week.

>82 avaland: Thanks, Lois; I'm feeling much better today than I was at this time yesterday, after I started taking the antibiotic azithromycin last night. I think the most likely explanation for my prolonged illness (which started on Monday of last week) is that I have atypical (walking) pneumonia, probably due to the bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae, which can cause persistent wheezing and respiratory distress sometimes in the absence of fever, although I have had some elevated temperatures (99-100 degrees) this past week. I still have some wheezes at the end of expiration and intermittent cough, but I've been able to breathe comfortably at rest all day and I've only needed to take my albuterol inhaler every 4 hours or so. I'll go back to work tomorrow, after I stayed home sick today and yesterday, and although I'll have to work this weekend I'll be off nearly all of next week. I'm glad that I had just enough sense to go to my local ED on Tuesday morning, as I might have needed to be admitted to the hospital if I had waited much longer.

I'm planning to re-read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe next month, along with There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra and Anthills of the Savannah.

>83 mkboylan: Same here, Merrikay!

I'm so glad to hear you're feeling better, Darryl. It was starting to sound quite worrisome.

I am looking forward to your Achebe reviews, as I would like to read some of his work, but haven't yet decided which. I have Things Fall Apart but need to find it in order to remember if I have already read it (pre-LT). LT has helped tremendously with my aging memory, at least related to books!

Planned reads for April:

Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients by Ben Goldacre
Burmese Days by George Orwell
Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Marlowe Papers by Ros March
Pow! by Mo Yan
Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire by Noam Chomsky
The Redundancy of Courage by Timothy Mo
Skios by Michael Frayn
There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

I don't see any 19th century novelists in that list Darryl.

>85 Linda92007: Thanks, Linda. It took nearly three hours of emergency care before I could breathe without distress on Tuesday, but I wasn't anywhere near as sick as many of the kids I take care of in the hospital.

It's been many years since I read Things Fall Apart, and I can't remember much about it, so I'm looking forward to experiencing it nearly anew.

>87 baswood: Right, Barry. March has been a subpar reading month for me, and April may not be much better, due to my work schedule and administrative responsibilities. I'd like to read Old Man Goriot soon, but I'm not sure that I'll be able to get to it next month.

Sorry you have to deal with asthma and bronchitis. Hope things get and stay better.

Book #30: All My Friends by Marie NDiaye

     

My rating:

In this collection of five unrelated short stories, which was originally published as Tous mes amis in 2004 and will be released in English translation by Two Lines Press in May, Marie NDiaye portrays the lives of several ordinary but deeply flawed and emotionally distant individuals who are at crises in their relationships with those closest to them. In the opening story, "All My Friends", a divorced schoolteacher employs one of his former students as his housemaid and becomes infatuated with her, her Arab husband, and another former student who vows to reclaim the woman by any means necessary. "The Death of Claude François" concerns a woman who leaves her privileged existence in Paris to return to her impoverished childhood banlieu, where she confronts an old friend over a man that they both loved intensely. "The Boys" is set in a rural village, in which an abandoned boy seeks to escape his hopeless plight by following in the footsteps of a neighbor's handsome son, who was sold for profit to a mysterious woman by his mother. In "Brulard's Day", a former bit actress returns to the setting of one of her most famous movies, but she is treated with indifference and scorn, as she loses grip with reality. Finally, "Revelation" describes a woman and her "appallingly stupid" son as they prepare to take a bus trip, for which she buys a round trip ticket for herself and a one way pass for him.

The characters in these stories are generally unsympathetic figures, due to their emotional frigidity and, in some cases, mean-spirited behavior toward those closest to them. Each story lacks a definitive denouement, similar to the stories in her 2009 Prix Goncourt winning novel Three Strong Women, which often leaves the reader suspended in mid-air and filled with a sense of foreboding. All My Friends isn't as accomplished a work as her later novel, but it effectively features NDiaye's compelling and unique writing style and is definitely a worthwhile read.

>89 mkboylan: Thanks, Merrikay. I've almost completely recovered from this pneumonia induced asthma attack, as I haven't needed to use albuterol since Sunday night and I'm only taking preventive medications for asthma (Symbicort, Singulair) along with medications for allergic rhinitis (Zyrtec, Nasonex).

Thanks for the Orwell Prize long list, but not for the enticing descriptions of the books. Several look like I need to read them soon.

And hasn't the prize formerly known as Orange always produced long and shortlists that were a hodgepodge of popular, genre and literary fiction? This list doesn't look substantially different than usual. I don't think I'd want to commit to reading the shortlist for any year (unlike the Booker, for example), but I've always been able to find a few great books off of each one.

I'm very glad you didn't decide you could just deal with the asthma yourself. Get well, Darryl.

Book #31: Palliative Medicine in the UK c. 1970-2010, edited by Caroline Overy & E.M. Tansey



My rating:

This book is part of the Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine series, a collection of transcripts of Witness Seminars in which "significant figures in twentieth-century medicine are invited to discuss specific discoveries or events in recent medical history." All of the books in the series are available for purchase or as free PDF downloads from the Wellcome Witnesses web site from Queen Mary College, University of London at http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/.

The focus of palliative medicine is the relief of pain and suffering of patients with serious illness. It can be applied to any stage of an illness and for illnesses which are curable as well as terminal. The modern palliative care movement originated in post-World War II England, in response to the lack of attention paid to seriously ill and dying patients by physicians, who often neglected those whom they could not cure. Many of those who chose to enter the field personally witnessed inadequate or inhumane treatment of these patients, and they were inspired to find better ways to treat them as human beings and members of families, rather than a diseased organ system and in isolation from loved ones.

Palliative care began as a grass roots movement within hospice care, which deals with incurably ill or dying patients, and it included a variety of clinical and non-clinical professionals, who provided a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach that was individualized to the patient and family. The initial efforts to provide compassionate care took place in established hospices in the 1950s and 1960s, and in 1967 St. Christopher's Hospice was founded by Dame Cicely Saunders, a nurse, social worker and physician who is considered to be the most important figure in the modern hospice and palliative care movement. Through the diligent work of Dame Saunders and others standardization of the management of pain and suffering of patients was accomplished, and palliative medicine became a recognized and respected medical specialty, which was adopted in the hospital setting, hospice and long term care centers, and within communities for patients who wished to spend their last days at home surrounded by their families.

Palliative Medicine in the UK c. 1970-2010 provides an interesting oral history of the palliative care movement from those who helped to found it and others who were essential in its development over the past half century, particularly the late Dame Saunders, along with the challenges that lie ahead to provide comprehensive care in the face of National Health Service cutbacks and the fragmentation and specialization that has become increasingly prevalent in 21st century Western medicine. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in palliative care or the history of medicine.

Excellent review of Palliative medicine in the UK c. 1970-2010. I never realised how relatively short lived this branch of medicine was.

It sounds like you admired the Marie NDiaye short stories rather than enjoying reading them.

Enjoying following and glad you are feeling better. Interesting about NDiaye.

>92 RidgewayGirl: Right, Kay. I suspect that I'll read half of the Orwell Prize longlisted books this year or next, starting with Bad Pharma this month.

I think you're right in your assessment of this year's Orange Prize longlist compared to previous years, which also featured a variety of types of fiction. There seems to be a bit less enthusiasm about this year's longlist in the Orange January/July group, though, and several members have been lukewarm or negative about some of the longlisted books. I've only read two of the longlisted books so far, Bring Up the Bodies and NW, but I plan to read Flight Behavior, Life After Life and The Marlowe Papers this month.

>94 baswood: Thanks, Barry. The palliative care movement in the UK preceded the one in the US, and pediatric palliative care medicine is still in its infancy here. One of my partners was hired to become the first head of palliative care at Children's, but he's only been with us for 4-5 years at the most.

Your comment about All My Friends is spot on.

>95 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. I'm 98% back to normal now.

Interesting reviews, Darryl. I'm particularly interested in the one on palliative care, as it is at least tangentially related to the topic of my master's dissertation. I'll definitely try to get the book.

Thanks, Dewald. The direct link for the PDF file of Palliative Medicine in the UK is http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/Publications/wit_vols/92239.pdf.

Book #33: Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw

          

My rating:

Shanghai is a beautiful place, but it is also a harsh place. Life here is not really life, it is a competition.

Shanghai is the world's largest city, with a total population of over 23 million. It can arguably claim to be the city of the 21st century, similar to 19th century London and 20th century New York, as it is a booming financial, commercial and entertainment center that attracts emigrants and visitors from every continent, and it is the leading symbol of the new China and its growing influence on Asia and the rest of the world.

Tash Aw was born in Taipei to Malaysian parents, grew up in Kuala Lumpur, was educated in the UK, and lived in London before he moved to Shanghai after he was chosen to be the first M Literary Writer in Residence in 2010. In this superb novel, he portrays five Malaysian Chinese who have moved to Shanghai to seek the wealth and prestige that the city seems to offer to each of its newcomers.

Phoebe is a naïve and uneducated young woman from the Malaysian countryside, who emigrates illegally to China on the suggestion of a friend, but soon after she arrives she finds that the dream job she was promised has suddenly vanished. Justin is the eldest son of a wealthy real estate tycoon, charged with purchasing a property in Shanghai that will save his family from ruin in the face of the Asian financial crisis. Gary is a pop mega-star who performs in front of thousands of adoring fans, while battling internal demons that threaten to destroy his career. Yinghui is the daughter of a prominent family in Kuala Lumpur who transforms herself from a left wing political activist into a hard nosed and successful businesswoman. Finally, Walter is a secretive and shadowy figure who has risen up from the ashes of his father's ruin to become a prominent developer and the anonymous author of the best selling book "How to Become a Five Star Billionaire". The first four characters are all interlinked with Walter, the only person given a voice in the first person in the book, in an intricately woven web that slowly tightens around each of them.

Through these characters, Tash Aw provides a fascinating internal glimpse into modern Shanghai, a city filled with ambitious but often lonely and desperate people from all over Asia whose singular focus on material goods and wealth outweighs the attainment of love and personal happiness. Anything and anyone is fair game for exploitation and deceit, and the widespread availability of counterfeit watches, purses and clothing mimics the superficiality of the city's high stakes capitalist culture. Self help books such as the one written by Walter are the bibles of the young up-and-comers, and traditional Chinese culture is viewed as outdated and stifling to young people like Phoebe.

Each one attains some degree of success, but several meet with sudden and spectacular failure, in the matter of a climber that reaches the summit of a mountain only to be blown off of it entirely by a sudden gust of wind.

The city held its promises just out of your reach, waiting to see how far you were willing to go to get what you wanted, how long you were prepared to wait. And until you determined the parameters of your pursuit, you would be on edge, for despite the restaurants and shops and art galleries and sense of unbridled potential, you would always feel that Shanghai was accelerating a couple of steps ahead of you, no matter how hard you worked or played. The crowds, the traffic, the impenetrable dialect, the muddy rains that carried the remnants of the Gobi Desert sandstorms and stained your clothes every March: The city was teasing you, testing your limits, using you. You arrived thinking you were going to use Shanghai to get what you wanted, and it would be some time before you realized that it was using you, that it had already moved on and you were playing catch up.

Five Star Billionaire is a captivating work about Shanghai and the new China, and the lives of five talented and determined people who seek wealth and fulfillment but find loneliness and misery instead. I read nearly all of this novel in a single sitting, and I was quite sorry to see it end. I also loved Tash Aw's previous novel Map of the Invisible World, and I look forward to reading The Harmony Silk Factory later this year.

Wow what a great variety of characters to give a broad picture of Shanghai! Going on my list.

Great review Darryl, but I don't think I would like Shanghai very much

>100 mkboylan: Thanks, Merrikay. Five Star Billionaire is currently available in the UK, but it won't be published in the US until July 2nd.

>101 baswood: Thanks, Barry. One of my closest friends from medical school is from Shanghai, and she, another mutual friend and myself have talked about meeting up for vacation there sometime in the future. That's probably the only reason I would consider going there.

I rather doubt whether Chinese cities such as Shanghai can be described as a "booming (..) cultural center", in fact, most Chinese cities are cultural deserts, and most Chinese people read less than 1 book per year; they are, indeed, more likely to read a self-help book, which they find useful, as opposed to fiction, which they typically regard as nonsense.

It isn't surprising that in such a society, people become unhappy, although I haven't seen many unhappy people around, so far. Then again, this unbridled capitalism has only really taken hold and affected the masses over the past decade. Its real social impact is probably delayed.

Based on your previous comments and reviews, I bought two novels by Tash Aw in December, and, though I haven't read them yet, based on this review I will definitely buy Five Star Billionaire.

Good point, Edwin. From what little I know of Shanghai, it is not a "cultural center" in the way that New York, London or Paris are. I've changed my phrase to "financial, commercial and entertainment center" for now, although that sentence is still a bit awkward.

Interesting comment about the new China. This was one of the major themes of Five Star Billionaire, and, to a lesser extent of the somewhat similar novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid, whose main protagonist rises from humble beginnings, becomes financially successful, then loses everything. He is also a very lonely and unfulfilled man despite his prosperity.

A good friend of mine from medical school is originally from Shanghai, so I plan to pass my copy of this book to her when I see her this summer. I'd love to know what she and her husband, whose business ventures take him to Shanghai on a regular basis, think of it.

Five Star Billionaire is, to my knowledge, Tash Aw's third book, so I assume that you also own The Harmony Silk Factory, which I'll read this quarter, and Map of the Invisible World.

Thanks for the link in 98, Darryl. Very good review of Five Star Billionaire, and interesting discussion with Edwin.

Very interesting review and discussion.

Book #32: Childhood Asthma and Beyond (Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine) by Lois A. Reynolds and E.M. Tansey



My rating:

Similar to Palliative Medicine in the UK, this book is an oral history of asthma in the UK during the 20th century, through the words of the clinicians and researchers who studied its pathophysiology and developed the medications and delivery systems that allowed asthma sufferers to manage their illness at home, rather than in the hospital or mountainside resorts.

The name asthma, the Greek word for "panting", was originally coined by Homer. Although it was originally described over 3000 years ago, it was poorly understood until the twelfth century, when the rabbi, philosopher and physician Moses Maimonides wrote his Treatise on Asthma, which emphasized clean air, a healthy diet (including chicken soup), and the avoidance of emotional turmoil and sexual activity to combat the disease's symptoms. The pathology of asthma was initially elucidated during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the first successful treatment came in 1900, when Solomon Solis-Cohen injected extracts from adrenal glands (which contain corticosteroids, one of the mainstays of asthma treatment) into patients with asthma or allergic rhinitis ("hay fever"). In the 1920s, injected and aerosolized adrenaline (epinephrine) was found to be beneficial, as it relaxed the smooth muscle in the bronchi that is constricted during asthma exacerbations. Later researchers found that medications such as aminophylline, potassium, stramonium, prednisone and even morphine provided some benefit, but asthmatics required hospitalization to receive these medications and there was no standard method to treat their symptoms. Interestingly, most of these early and mid-20th century researchers were asthmatics themselves, several of whom died from severe attacks of the disease.



The Medihaler, the first metered dose inhaler (MDI), a delivery device for the home treatment of asthma, was created in 1956 by Riker, using the drugs isoprenaline (known as isoproterenol in the US), which affects the smooth muscle of the bronchi and the skeletal muscle of the heart, and epinephrine. Tragically, the overuse of isoprenaline led to the deaths of over 3000 asthmatics in the UK, which remains a controversial and not completely understood phenomenon that was heatedly discussed in this gathering. Isoprenaline was subsequently replaced by salbutamol, known as albuterol in the US, which remains the primary bronchodilator used throughout the world. Sodium cromoglycate (known as cromolyn sodium in the US), an inhibitor of the activity of mast cells, a cell type that is important in the inflammatory response, was subsequently found to have modest benefit as an adjunct to salbutamol. In later years, inhaled corticosteroids, long acting bronchodilators, and leukotriene inhibitors were developed as preventive medications for use by patients with chronic asthma symptoms.

This gathering, led by Professor Simon Godfrey, was spirited and humorous, although its occasional abrasiveness and ready dismissal of the knowledge and contributions of clinical scientists outside of the UK was a bit off-putting to this reader. The discussion was rather disjointed at times, which made it a less than satisfying read. However, this does serve as a valuable historical document on the knowledge and treatment of asthma in the post-war years in the UK, and would be of interest to readers interested in the history of medicine as well as those who have asthma themselves.

Great review of Five Star Billionaire, Darryl. I hadn't heard of Tash Aw before, so he's definitely on my radar now.

Sorry for the size, but maybe this would help? Note that it's not intended for children under six.

>108 janeajones: Thanks, Jane. After reading this book and Map of the Invisible World I'd put Tash Aw in my list of favorite living Asian authors, along with his countryman Tan Twan Eng.

>109 RidgewayGirl: Great poster, Kay! Asthma cigarettes actually were beneficial, as many of them contained herbs that relaxed the smooth muscle of the bronchi, including atropine (which is similar to ipratropium, or Atrovent, a bronchodilator that is frequently used along with albuterol in the acute management of asthma exacerbations), stramonium and belladonna. The following blog post describes the history of asthma cigarettes:

1800-1985: Asthma Cigarettes

Great review of Five Star Billionaire, Darryl. I'll add it to my list, but in the meantime will look for Map of the Invisible World.

I have The Harmony Silk Factory on my shelf, and now it's moving to the top of the pile. You've put his other two books on my wish list, as well.

>111 Linda92007: Thanks, Linda. I bought Map of the Invisible World when I was in London a couple of years ago. Checking...yes, it is available in the US, in print and electronic formats.

>112 cabegley: Thanks, Chris. I'll probably read The Harmony Silk Factory next month, for the second quarter Reading Globally theme on Southeast Asian literature.

Didn't realize Tash Aw had moved to Shanghai from London. Nice review of his latest and good discussion with edwin. I have read Aw's two previous books, so I'm looking forward to this one too. I'm not sure Aw would rank as a great writer though. I think he may be more like Timothy Mo, who had a very promising start and then seemed to disappear for a long time before resurfacing this past summer.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-a...

I'll also read the new Hamid novel.

Great Link to the blog on asthma cigarettes

Haven't been by for a while and was so overwhelmed with books for the wishlist that I bookmarked the relevant posts and will have to return when I have more stamina. I enjoyed your reviews of the Wellness books as well as the Aw. Always great reading and writing to be found on your threads!

>114 SassyLassy: Thanks, Sassy. You're right; I wouldn't call him a great writer, either, although he is one of my favorite Asian authors. Thanks for posting that article about Timothy Mo. I read and reviewed Pure last year, but I was disappointed by it. I'll read The Redundancy of Courage this quarter, for the Southeast Asian literature Reading Globally theme, and I still haven't read The Monkey King.

>115 baswood: Thanks, Barry.

>116 labfs39: Hi, Lisa! It's good to see you here. Thanks for your kind compliments!

Planned reads for May (as always, subject to change):

The Aftermath of War by Jean-Paul Sartre
Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients by Ben Goldacre
Firefly by Severo Sarduy
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi
In the Land of Israel by Amos Oz
Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal
A Pediatrician's Journal: Caring for Children in a Broken Medical System by Brian G. Orr, M.D.
Power, Politics, and Universal Health Care: The Inside Story of a Century-Long Battle by Stuart Altman and David Shactman
The Redundancy of Courage by Timothy Mo
The Singapore Grip by J.G. Farrell
Skios by Michael Frayn

The University of Chicago Press's free e-book for the month is You Were Never in Chicago by Neil Steinberg, a recently published book of stories about the city which has received several glowing reviews, including two 5 star reviews on LT and a very positive one in The New York Times. The e-book is free for the first five days of May; you can get a copy via this link:

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html

If you are interested in the Far East, and history of Hong Kong in particular, I would say Mo's historical novel An insular possession is a must-read, and wonderful at that.

I have several of his other novels, unread, and will look for "Pure" (no touchstone), despite your disappointment.

Thanks, Edwin. I own The Redundancy of Courage, which I started today, and The Monkey King, which I haven't read yet, but I don't have An Insular Possession. I've added it to my wish list.

Books #43-45: Some Hope: A Trilogy by Edward St. Aubyn

  

    

My rating:

The novels in Edward St. Aubyn's five part Patrick Melrose series are heavily based on St. Aubyn's life, growing up in a highly dysfunctional British upper middle class family with a cruel abusive father and an unprotective substance abusing mother. As he said in a recent article in The Guardian, "The whole Melrose series is an attempt to tell the truth, and is based on the idea that there is some salutary or liberating power in telling the truth. So it would have been quite tiresome to lie about it after having done it. But I can still say what I think is true – that I have spent 22 years trying to transform painful lived experience into what I hope is pleasurable reading experience. The intention was to make a work of art rather than a confession."

Some Hope includes the first three Patrick Melrose novels, which were initally published as The Patrick Melrose Trilogy in a single volume by Vintage in 1998. This version of the trilogy was released by Picador in 2006. The fourth novel, Mother's Milk, was shortlisted for the 2006 Booker Prize, and At Last, the final book in the series, was published in 2011.

St. Aubyn was born in 1960, and he was repeatedly sodomized by his father between the ages of five and eight, as Patrick Melrose was in the first novel of the series, Never Mind. In it, St. Aubyn portrays Patrick's parents, David and Eleanor. David is a jack of several trades but a master of none, as he briefly practiced as a physician and as a pianist, both under the withering opposition of his own father, who all but disinherited him upon his death. David's upper middle class upbringing leads him to look at nearly everyone with extreme disdain, including his "friends" and those who share his values, and his frustration with his failed life is expressed toward them and especially Eleanor, his well to do American wife, and Patrick, his only son. Eleanor is able to escape David by sleeping in a separate room, driving away in her car, which no one else is allowed to command, and her frequent use of drugs and alcohol. Patrick, however, suffers the full brunt of his father's anger, as he tortures and verbally belittles him in order to make him a tough and independent young man. Other characters are introduced in the novel, who will appear in the subsequent two novels, most notably Nicholas Pratt, who is as close to David as anyone and finds him both admirable for his firmly held opinions and loyalty to British tradition, and misanthropic, for his virulent hatred of everyone, including himself. These characters meet for dinner at the Melrose house in a French country town populated by like minded Britons, as Nicholas and his latest girlfriend come there for a brief visit. The conversation is witty and acerbic, with wicked humor interspersed between the sharp barbs fired by these supposed friends.

The trauma of his childhood led St. Aubyn to become addicted to heroin between the ages of 16 and 28. In Bad News, the second novel, Patrick Melrose, now aged 22, travels to New York City for a brief visit to claim his father's body, after he died suddenly there. Patrick's crippling and all encompassing addiction to heroin, cocaine and a bevy of other medications is the main theme of the novel, and this reader was amazed by the massive amount of drugs that Patrick consumed, the use of one drug to counteract the effects of another, and the utter depravity that he had fallen into. The account comes across as authentic, and it was obvious to me that St. Aubyn had lived through or witnessed events such as these as a young adult. Included in this novel are tedious dialogues with several Britons who mourn David's death, while they engage in maudlin admiration for him, their dying breed, and their own trivial accomplishments and acquisitions.

In the final novel, Some Hope, Patrick is now 30 years old and he has recently stopped using drugs, replacing them with frequent meaningless sexual encounters and alcohol, while he wallows in self pity and ennui. He is financially independent and abhors the thought of work. He receives an invitation from Nicholas Pratt to attend a lavish party in honor of Princess Margaret in the English countryside, which is meant to ensure his connection with the right people. Characters from both previous novels appear in this one, and the dinner is highlighted by a delightfully amusing encounter between Princess Margaret and the French ambassador.

The strength of these three novels is St. Aubyn's gifted writing and dialogue, as he repeatedly skewers the British upper middle class, portraying them as vacuous, utterly useless and despicable excuses for human beings. His description of a drug fueled weekend in Bad News is powerful and disturbing, and that novel should be required reading for all teenagers or any adult who is thinking of using illegal drugs. Many of the characters are so unlikable that I could barely stand to spend any time with them, which is the main reason I only gave the trilogy four stars overall. However, this trilogy was an excellent read, which I would highly recommend.

I own the final two novels in the series, Mother's Milk and At Last, and I'll read them later this year.

Great review, Darryl, and I'm glad you read this trilogy so I don't have to!

Ha ha! Thanks, Rebecca. St. Aubyn is a very talented writer, and he did a fabulous job in effectively portraying several very unlikable characters, including his alter ego Patrick Melrose. My rating is definitely influenced by my dislike for the characters; I've already bumped up my rating by 1/2 star, and I may do so again in the next day or two.

Great review and one with an immediate impact. I own Mother's Milk but did not realize that it was part of a series. I'm a stickler for reading things in their complete and proper order, and since the first four novels of the series are available as an ebook at an attractive price, I just ordered it.

Thanks, Steven. The Patrick Melrose series is one that must be read in proper order to be fully appreciated, and I think it's fair to say that St. Aubyn expects his readers to do just that. I purchased At Last in London in 2011, after it was touted as a book that should have been longlisted for the Booker Prize that year. After I realized that it was part of a series and that the books should be read in order I bought the first four novels, the three in Some Hope: A Trilogy, and Mother's Milk, while I was there.

Great review of Some Hope: A trilogy. Probably not for me, but it is great to know what the books are about.

Very good description of books which are at the same time very bleak, blackly funny and enjoyable but difficult to read. I read Mother's Milk earlier this year; must get hold of At Last.

Fabulous review of Some Hope: A Trilogy, Darryl. It does sound like it would make for some tough reading, but I tend to prefer bleak in my reading and like Steven, I cannot resist the ebook price for the first four novels.

>127 baswood:, 128, 129 Thanks Barry, Margaret and Linda.

>96 kidzdoc: Darryl pediatric palliative care medicine is still in its infancy
LOL!!

Sympathizing with you on subpar reading months; I did not read a book (or hardly an LT thread) in April. Glad your health is back! Enjoying your history-of-medicine book reviews.

Hi, just stopping by ... is it just me, or is it curiously quiet in this neck of the woods? :)

>131 detailmuse: Thanks, MJ. It seems as though a lot of us have been absent from our threads and are reading less this year. Fortunately my work group is now on its summer schedule; we need two less doctors to work every day, which means more days off on a monthly basis. So, I'll be able to read and participate more on LT...

>132 akeela: ...unless I'm attending a LibraryThing meet up. This weekend at least 15-20 LTers are getting together in Philadelphia. Last night 10 of us met for dinner and many went to the one year anniversary party of the Barnes Foundation, which has a world class collection of Impressionist and Modernist Art. We have a full schedule planned for today and Sunday as well. I'll post photos and descriptions on this thread sometime next week.

Aha! That Explains Everything! :D

Sounds wonderful, Darryl and company, enjoy!!

Hi Darryl, just catching up on your club read finally... so many good books in here!

I notice that you had Oz's In the Land of Israel on your list of possible reads during May. I'll be interested to read your thoughts on it as it was one that I read well over twenty-odd years ago now. From what I can remember, it was quite a prescient read, as he spent a fair bit of time with the settlers in the occupied territory, and expressed how that group would impact massively on the national psyche...

Day two of the LT Philadelphia meet up is now over, and I think it's fair to say that all 18 of us had a blast. We started the day with breakfast at Reading Terminal Market, one of the country's oldest indoor markets with dozens of delightful shops and restaurants. Most of us ordered from The Grill at Smucker's, an Amish restaurant that makes great breakfast sandwiches and omelets. We sat and chatted for two hours there.



Visible in this photo taken at Reading Terminal Market from left front to rear are Zoë (_Zoe_), Brenda (brenpike), Tad (TadAD), Bill (bertilak) and Flori (tophats, in the teal shirt). From right front to rear are Laura (lauralkeet), Terri (tloeffler, partially hidden), Linda (Whisper1) and Julie (Tad's wife). Not visible (other than yours truly): Jim (magicians_nephew), Judy (ffortsa), Monica (crazy4reading), Mike (CurrerBell), Katherine (qebo).

After breakfast we took the Phlash bus to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which had free admission for International Museum Day. Most of us split up into small groups, to see the rooms and exhibits that interested us the most. We reassembled, and then headed to the Rittenhouse Square area for the Rittenhouse Row Spring Festival, meeting at the nearby Barnes & Noble on Walnut Street. From there we walked over to The Elephant and Castle, a nearby English pub, for a late lunch:



From left to right: Monica (crazy4reading), Mike (CurrerBell), Linda (Whisper1), Jim (magicians_nephew), Tad (TadAD, hidden behind Jim), Julie (Tad's wife), Katherine (qebo), Judy (ffortsa), Brenda (brenpike), Brenda (brenpike), Terri (tloeffler), Sharon (snash) and Zoë (_Zoe_).

After lunch we visited the Joseph Fox Bookshop, an independent bookstore whose small size belied the quality of its stock. Most of us bought at least one book there, which will be shown in other photos.

Our last trip of the day was a visit to Capogiro, to get gelato and, for me, coffee granita (water ice).

I only took a couple of photos, but Zoë and nearly everyone else took dozens of photos, which should appear here soon.

Tomorrow a smaller group is planning to meet up at the 9th Street Italian Festival, weather permitting (it's raining now, and we're supposed to get more rain tomorrow).

>133 kidzdoc: what a great way to spend a weekend! Enjoy...

Darryl, as you know I haven't been on LT in the last couple of months, so it was with real trepidation that I sat down with a cup of tea to catch up with your thread this morning. I'm sorry to have missed so much, but as usual you've given me plenty of ideas. For starters I'm going to order the Tash Ew for my forthcoming holiday.

>137 rachbxl: Thanks, Rachel; I hope that you enjoy Five Star Billionaire.

I'm spending the week in San Francisco. I visited City Lights Bookstore yesterday, and bought these books:

Where There's Love, There's Hate by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo: I've read Casares's best known novel The Invention of Morel and I've heard of Silvina Ocampo, but I didn't know that these highly regarded Argentinian writers were married to each other. They co-wrote this novella in 1946, which is a witty suspense novel set in a seaside Argentinian town.

The Bottom of the Jar by Abdellatif Laâbi (wish list): This autobiographical novel, which was recently published by Archipelago Books, is set in colonial Morocco in the 1950s, as the country begins to demand independence from France during the author's young adulthood.

Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe (wish list): This is the final novel in Achebe's "African trilogy", which is centered around an Igbo chief priest who is jailed due to his refusal to participate in the British colonial administration, and sees his influence wane as Christian missionaries infiltrate his local villages.

And Still the Earth by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão: A dystopic novel set in São Paulo Brazil, which was originally published in 1981 and released by Dalkey Archive earlier this year.

Blue White Red by Alain Mabanckou (wish list): An adventure novel involving Africans torn between the allure of France and the poverty and limited opportunities in postcolonial Africa.

Transit by Abdourahman A. Waberi (wish list): A reflective history of Djibouti told through the stories of two immigrants who escape their war torn country and struggle to establish new lives in France.

The Girl with the Golden Parasol by Uday Prakash (wish list): A bittersweet love story set in contemporary India, in which a non-Brahmin boy falls for a Brahmin girl despite the caste system that is meant to keep them apart. I read and greatly enjoyed The Walls of Delhi by Prakash earlier this year.

Salt: A Novel by Earl Lovelace (wish list): The 1997 winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, which is a magical novel about the diverse people of Trinidad who strive to make sense of their lives in a country that is trying to make sense of itself.

A Muslim Suicide by Bensalem Himmich (wish list): This novel, which won the 2012 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, explores the life of the 13th century Sufi philosopher Ibn Sab'in, who was forced to journey from Spain to Egypt to Mecca due to his radical Islamic views, and grapples with the ethical questions "Who am I?" and "What are my obligations to others?"

The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner: This book tells the story of the discovery of the Philadelphia chromosome in 1959 by David Hungerford, a mutated piece of DNA found to be the cause of chronic myeloid leukemia, or CML, along with the subsequent efforts to understand cancer on a molecular level. I learned about the Philadelphia chromosome as an undergraduate student and in medical school, but I hadn't heard of this book before (thank you once again, City Lights!).

Southern Cross the Dog by Bill Cheng (wish list): I missed seeing the author speak in Decatur, a nearby suburb of Atlanta, on Thursday, but City Lights had a signed first edition of his debut novel, which is set during the Great Flood of 1927 that decimated several Mississippi towns and has received critical acclaim in the past few weeks.

Raised from the Ground by José Saramago (wish list): First published in 1980, this is family saga set over several generations in 20th century Portugal.

From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia by Pankaj Mishra (wish list): Shortlisted for this year's Orwell Prize, Mishra's latest book examines the lives of several of the most influential thinkers in postcolonial Asia, including Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore in India, Liang Qichao and Sun Yat-sen in China, and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Abdurreshi al Ibrahim in the fading Ottoman Empire, as he shatters numerous stereotypes about them.

Great list of books, many of which I've never heard of, although I've had another novel by Mabanckou on the TBR for a few years. It would be especially interesting to read Waberi's Transit after just reading Anna Seghers' s Transit (apparently, I can't set different touchstones in the same post for two books with the same title!). And I really have to get to Achebe, and also have several Saramago books (but not that one -- I do love family sagas) on the TBR. I looked at From the Ruins of Empire in the bookstore when it first came out, and it looked intriguing, but in an unnatural fit of restraint I realized I had no idea when I would read it and didn't buy it!

I read a great nonfiction book about the great flood of 1927 about 15 years ago called Rising Tide: The Great Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. As I'm sure you know, the flood and its aftermath were a great influence of the migration of African-Americans from the south to the north, and it also led to the rise of Herbert Hoover.

Looks like a great trip already!

And so few of those books have reviews on their LT pages! - look forward to seeing yours.

>138 kidzdoc: Darryl, nice start! :) Have a great week in SF.

>139 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, Rising Tide sounds interesting! I don't know about the flood, and I'm shocked that I don't recall any mention of it in Isabel Wilkerson's wonderful The Warmth of Other Suns, about the Great Migration.

MJ, I've had The Warmth of Other Suns on the TBR for a long time. Perhaps the individuals she focused on weren't influenced by the flood????? Rising Tide was very readable, as well as being fascinating.

Rebecca that must be the case. Yet two of the three people profiled were from Louisiana and Mississippi.

I'm encouraged that Rising Tide is by John Barry. So many have encouraged me to pull his The Great Influenza from my TBRs, and Rising Tide has even higher ratings.

Nice to see your list of books with a concise description of what they have to offer.

Enjoy San Francisco, are you planning to catch any music while you are there?

Rising Tide was recommended to me by one of my doc's because he knew I am from Memphis. What I couldn't believe was that I had never heard about that flood and was from around there. What the heck? I picked it up but haven't read it yet because my husband beat me to it and loved it and now my mom is reading it AND my next door neighbor wants it next!

Great list of purchases Darryl. I would gladly add almost every one to my library. I do already have Raised from the Ground on my Kindle, but haven't gotten to it yet. And I won The Bottom of the Jar as an ER book, but it was never delivered, nor were several other Archipelago ER books that I won. I guess I will just have to buy them.

>139 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca. I read Waberi's novel In the United States of Africa several years ago, but I strongly disliked it. At 140 pages, Waberi's Transit: A Novel is roughly half the length of Seghers's Transit, seemed to be a more interesting book, and was shortlisted for this year's Best Translated Book Award. (I'm intentionally showing off a bit, to demonstrate that you can list two books with the same title if one of them has a subtitle, such as "A Novel".)

Several of the books I bought fit into upcoming Reading Globally themes: Transit: A Novel, Bleu, blanc, rouge and The Bottom of the Jar under Francophone literature, and Where There's Love, There's Hate and And Still the Earth for South American literature.

I felt the way about The Black Count that you did about From the Ruins of Empire, so I didn't buy it. I may buy it tomorrow, when I make my next trip to City Lights, or sometime later in the year.

Rising Tide sounds very interesting; I've added it to my Amazon wish list.

Wait a minute; that was an unnatural fit of restraint on your part. Feeling okay?

>140 NanaCC: Right, Colleen. I didn't do much yesterday, as it was lightly raining and very muggy in the city, but after this morning's drizzle the rest of the week will be nice. There aren't many cultural events that I'm eager to see, unfortunately, but it's always nice to just hang out (and book shop!) in SF.

>141 wandering_star: I need to do a better job in reviewing books, Margaret, especially ones like these which are largely unknown (promises, promises...). Several of them are short books of less than 200 pages, so I'll probably read two or three of them this week.

>142 detailmuse: Thanks, MJ. I agree with you; I don't remember any mention of The Great Flood in The Warmth of Other Suns.

>143 rebeccanyc: That makes sense, Rebecca. Wilkerson, as you know, focused mainly on the lives of three (or four?) people, none of whom seemed to be impacted by The Great Mississippi Flood.

>144 detailmuse: I would also highly recommend The Great Influenza to you, MJ.

>145 baswood: Thanks, Barry. I'll see the San Francisco Symphony perform tomorrow night; cellist Gautier Capuçon will be the featured artist, and the symphony will perform Dvořák's Cello Concerto, Kodály's Dances of Galánta and Bartók's Suite from The Wooden Prince. On Thursday I'll see Miguel Zenón's Rhythm Collective perform at the new SFJAZZ Center, which opened earlier this year.

>146 mkboylan: Hopefully you'll get to read Rising Tide soon, Merrikay!

>147 Linda92007: Thanks, Linda. That's a shame about the undelivered Archipelago titles; I know that others who participate in the LTER program have had the same problem as you.

I've made flight and hotel reservations for a mid July trip to London. I'll arrive there on the 14th, and leave on the 26th. I'm in the process of sending invitations to LTers I know who live in or near the capital, to see if anyone is interested in individual or group meet ups during that time, but if anyone else will be there then please let me know.

#148 Now that you remind me, Darryl, I was frustrated with In the United States of Africa too; I can't say I strongly disliked it as you did, but I felt its conceit ran a little thin by the time the book was over, short as it was.

I think you'll like The Black Count; it's a good read, and illuminating too. I think you would like Rising Tide too -- it illuminated a part of US history I knew nothing about.

Yes, I feel OK. I bought (and continue to buy) plenty of other books, but thanks for asking!

>151 rebeccanyc: I agree, Rebecca; In the United States of Africa became tiresome and repetitive very quickly, despite its short length.

I'll definitely pick up The Black Count, although I'll probably wait to buy it until later in the year.

Good to hear that you're still buying books. I was worried there for a minute.

I made my second trip to City Lights this morning and bought seven books, four from my wish list, two which my friend Scott, who works there, recommended, and one which I hadn't heard of:

Ten White Geese by Gerbrand Bakker (UK title: The Detour): The winner of this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, which is a "seductive blend of solace and menace" set in rural Wales, as a mysterious woman rents a remote farm upon leaving Amsterdam, after leaving her husband due to an affair. She takes in a young man and appears to be living peacefully, until she learns that her wronged husband is looking for her. I enjoyed Bakker's earlier novel The Twin, which won the 2010 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, so this was on my wish list even before it won the IFFP.

A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam: The first novel in Anam's Bangladesh Trilogy, which centers around Rehana Haque, a young recently widowed woman in East Pakistan who plans a celebration for her two children as they are about to leave for university, but the onset of the 1971 Bangladeshi War for Independence rips the three apart from each other. I read The Good Muslim, the second novel in this trilogy, which focuses on Rehana's children, which was one of my favorite books of 2011.

Percival Everett by Virgil Russell: A Novel by Percival Everett: Everett is probably my favorite living African American novelist and my favorite living comic novelist, who writes brilliantly about American culture and spares no one from his sharp pen. His latest novel is set in a nursing home, as the father of a writer shares stories with his son, while he writes the novel he imagines his son would write -- or is it vice versa? Several narratives intersect amongst the characters of the nursing home, and as the plot threads twist around each other, chaos ensues. This sounds like typical Everett wackiness.

Algerian Chronicles by Albert Camus: This recently released book was originally published in 1958 as Actuelles III during the midst of the Algerian War, and it consists of Camus's shifting thoughts about his country of birth from 1939-1958, as Algeria shifts from a largely docile French colony to a fierce foe of her colonizer during its struggle for independence.

Blacks In and Out of the Left by Michael C. Dawson: This book consists of the W.E.B. Du Bois Lectures at Harvard that Dawson, a distinguished professor of political science at the University of Chicago, delivered in 2009. He examines the causes and consequences of the decline of the radical left of the 1920s and 1930s and the Black Power movement in the 1970s, and argues that the current generation of left wing African American politicians and leaders have failed the black community as a whole, and must return to the roots of their forbearers to ensure its prosperity. I wasn't aware of this book before today, and it's a typical example of a book of interest that I would find at City Lights that wouldn't be prominently displayed in any of my other favorite bookstores.

The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop by Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr.: Scott is a bigger jazzhead than I am, and he recommended this book, which he is reading it now, along with the following one. This book looks at the life and influence of one of the greatest bebop pianists of the 1940s and 1950s, known for his breakneck and complex solos, before his career was derailed by several brutal beatings by racist police officers that caused traumatic brain injury and subsequent mental illness, alcohol abuse, and his early death.

Mingus Speaks by John F. Goodman: This is a collection of in depth interviews that took place during Mingus's comeback tour in 1972, some of which were published in Playboy by Goodman, along with commentary by and about the great jazz bassist.

Planned reads for June:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (2013 Booker Prize longlist?)
Ned Bauman, The Teleportation Accident (2012 Booker Prize longlist)
Albert Camus, Algerian Chronicles (Literary Centennials)
Percival Everett, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell: A Novel
J.G. Farrell, The Singapore Grip (Reading Globally - Southeast Asian literature)
Aminatta Forna, The Hired Man (2013 Booker Prize longlist?)
Paul Harding, Enon (LT Early Reviewer book for May)
Paul Harding, Tinkers (a bit of a prequel to Enon)
Colum McCann, TransAtlantic (2013 Booker Prize longlist?)
José Rizal, Noli Me Tangere (Reading Globally - Southeast Asian literature)
Preeta Samarasan, Evening Is the Whole Day (Reading Globally - Southeast Asian literature)
Jessica Wapner, The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level (Medicine)

The novels by Adichie, Forna and McCann are among several that have been touted on The Mookse and the Gripes Forum's 2013 Speculation thread as strong contenders for the upcoming Booker Prize longlist, which will be announced on July 23. I've read three other books that have received positive reviews in this forum: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid, and Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw. I'll be in London on the date of the longlist announcement and will buy whichever books I don't already own, but I want to get as much as a head start as I can, as I plan to read a dozen or more books in the third quarter for the Reading Globally Francophone literature quarterly theme. Most of you probably know that I host the Booker Prize group on LT, and I'll start discussing this year's prize later this week.

Another nice shopping day and I'm impressed as always that you have planned reading for June. I have enough trouble figuring out what I'm going to read next!

>155 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca! In general the books I plan to read in any given month is based, for better or worse, on the LT groups and challenges I participate in. My top priority is the Booker Prize group, and this year I vowed to complete the shortlist by the date of the prize ceremony, which I didn't do last year, and finish the Booker Dozen (the 12-13 longlisted novels) by no later than the end of the year, and preferably also by the date of the award announcement. So, the more books that seem to be strong longlist candidates I can read ahead of the Booker Dozen announcement next month the more likely it is that I'll achieve my goal.

BTW, here are the key announcement dates for this year's Booker Prize:

     23 July 2013 – Longlist announcement
     10 September 2013 – Shortlist announcement
     15 October 2013 – Winner announcement

Reading Globally will be a high priority as well, with the current Southeast Asian literature theme and the upcoming Francophone literature and South American literature themes in the third and fourth quarter. I'll continue to read books about medicine and public health for the Medicine group, and books from the African diaspora for the African/African American literature group. Author Theme Reads has taken a back seat so far this year, but I'll join in during the fourth quarter, when we focus on Simone de Beauvoir. And, although I've fallen behind a bit, I'll continue to read books by Albert Camus (born in 1913) for the Literary Centennials group.

I am always inspired by your purchases and reading plans, Darryl. And thanks for the reminder of the current and upcoming theme reads. I always have the best of intentions to participate, but somehow manage to get side-tracked!

Darryl I haven't even read the Percival Everett I already have, and am excited about the new one you mention. Looking forward to your review.

I too snagged Enon. I'm interested because of Harding's writing and having been quite touched by the grandsons in Tinkers, one of which is the protagonist in Enon.

>153 kidzdoc:
Mingus Speaks - ah hum! Thanks too for bringing The Amazing Bud Powell book to my attention. The Teleportation Accident looks interesting and original as well.

I'm now back in Atlanta, after a full and enjoyable last day in San Francisco yesterday. Included was one last visit to City Lights. I thought I might find one or two books, after two previous visits in less than a week; instead, I came away with eight books, most of which were from my wish list:

The Alienist by Machado de Assis: This is one of Melville House's Art of the Novella series, published in 1882, which is about a Brazilian scientist who achieves fame in Europe and returns to South America, where he opens the first insane asylum in a small town. Using his new found knowledge he recruits a small number of patients, but soon the asylum is overflowing with the supposedly insane. ("Till now, madness has been thought to be a small island in an ocean of sanity. I am beginning to suspect that it is not an island at all but a continent.")

Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra (wish list): A novel set in Santiago, the Chilean capital, which consists of two parts linked by a protagonist, who is a 9 year old boy caught in a large earthquake outside of the city in the first part, and who narrates the second part, who writes a novel while he simultaneously reflects on his life and his relationship with his father, who apparently is a supporter of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. I enjoyed his novellas Bonsai and The Private Lives of Trees, which I read several years ago.

Satantango by László Krasznahorkai (wish list): The winner of this year's Best Translated Book Award, set in a deserted and decrepit Hungarian village, whose dozen inhabitants are paid a visit by the "Messiah"—or so they think.

The World Is Moving Around Me: A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake by Dany Laferrière (wish list): An first hand account of the author's experience during the devastating 2010 earthquake, which hit as he was ordering dinner in a restaurant in the capital of Port-au-Prince.

That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (wish list): This novel, which has won several literary awards including the 2011 Miles Franklin Award and is another strong candidate for the upcoming Booker Prize longlist, is set on the coast of Western Australia during the initial colonization of the region by Europeans, who are first welcomed by the aborigines but find themselves at odds with them after they attempt to assert their dominance over them.

City of a Hundred Fires by Richard Blanco (wish list): An award winning debut poetry collection by the author of this year's presidential inaugural poem, which was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1998.

On the Imperial Highway: New and Selected Poems by Jayne Cortez (wish list): A selection of poems from the recently deceased author, taken from several of her previous works.

Engine Empire: Poems by Cathy Park Hong: This is a trilogy of lyrical and narrative poems, which are set in the 19th century Western US, industrialized China, and the far future. I own her previous collection Translating Mo'um, which I haven't read yet.

Another great list of book, Darryl! I've read another book by Machado de Assis (Dom Casmurro), and have two more on the TBR, and I loved the Krasnahorkai I read (War and War) and have both Satantango (his first novel, although the most recently translated) and The Melancholy of Resistance on the TBR. Most of the other books are unfamilar to me, although I'll certainly explore some of them,

>157 Linda92007: Thanks, Linda. I enjoy reading books chosen as finalists for selected literary awards, as they have introduced me to several favorite books and authors that I probably wouldn't have read otherwise, particularly Hilary Mantel.

>158 detailmuse: Thanks, MJ. I only read a couple of pages of the new Percival Everett novel, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, on the flight from San Francisco to Atlanta yesterday, as I spent most of the flight reading The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner. Hopefully I'll finish this book today, and make some progress on the Everett novel.

Hopefully we'll receive Enon this month. I haven't read Tinkers yet, but after I read that one of the main characters is in both books I thought I should read it first.

>159 Polaris-: Mingus Speaks - ah hum!

Good one, Paul! (He is referring to one of Charles Mingus's most famous albums, Mingus Ah Um:



Scott, my friend who works at City Lights during the day, deserves credit for pointing out the Bud Powell biography to me. There was only one copy left, which was located in a window display shelf (see below) rather than the music section in the front of the store. I usually go there as soon as the store opens, to beat the crowds, and usually the staff hasn't raised the window shades that cover the book displays. So, if Scott hadn't mentioned it, I never would have seen it.



I'll probably read the books about Powell and Mingus in July, so that I can talk with Scott about them when I return to San Francisco, probably in August. He asked me about another jazz book that he had recommended to me last year, and was a bit disappointed that I hadn't read it yet!

If I don't get to The Teleportation Accident this month I'll definitely read it in July.

>161 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca! I've read one book by Machado de Assis, namely Quincas Borba, which was very good, so I picked up this book when I saw it in the Literature in Translation section at City Lights. BTW, I corrected my posting to indicate that the two novellas I read and liked were by Alejandro Zambra, not Machado de Assis.

I remembered your glowing comments about War and War by Krasznahorkai, and I'll plan to read it if I like Satantango, as I expect I will.

I usually go there as soon as the store opens, to beat the crowds That's encouraging to hear there are crowds at a book store.

Machado de Assis: "Till now, madness has been thought to be a small island in an ocean of sanity. I am beginning to suspect that it is not an island at all but a continent."

At least he didn't say the world! hehe.

>162 kidzdoc: I haven't always had good results reading an author’s books back to back, so Darryl -- if it helps -- I don’t think the character(s) from Tinkers that feature in Enon were developed to any degree in Tinkers that you’d need to read it first.

Book #52: The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner



My rating:

In 1959 two Philadelphia researchers, David Hungerford, a scientist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, and Peter Newell, a physician studying cancer at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, made a momentous discovery that revolutionized the understanding of cancer. Hungerford, who specialized in studying and photographing chromosomes from a variety of species, looked at a slide of the cancerous cells from a patient with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), using a technique of halting chromosomes during division that was designed by Newell. To his great surprise, Hungerford noticed that one of the chromosomes was significantly shorter than it should have been. He took a photograph of the shortened chromosome and showed it to Newell, who subsequently prepared slides of cancerous cells from several other people with CML. Each of these patients had the same abnormal chromosome. The two published their findings in a three paragraph article in Science the following year. The study was largely ignored, as the study of genetics was in its infancy, and essentially no one suspected that cancer could be caused by chromosomal abnormalities.

Over a decade later Janet Rowley, a geneticist at the University of Chicago, studied these same cells from CML patients, using staining and visualization techniques that weren't available to Hungerford and Newell. She found the same shortened chromosome, which was by then determined to be chromosome 22, but she also found that chromosome 9 was also abnormal, being longer than it should have been. Through meticulous study of these chromosomes she correctly determined that a portion of chromosome 22 had migrated to chromosome 9, while a similar portion of chromosome 9 appeared on chromosome 22, in a process that is known as chromosomal translocation:



This translocation led to the creation of a fusion gene, made up of a portion of the abl gene of chromosome 9 and the bcr gene of chromosome 22. The bcr-abl gene, known as an oncogene, led to the production of a protein that allowed the affected cell to rapidly multiply without the normal controls exhibited by other cell types. Similar to the famous Trouble with Tribbles episode of Star Trek, the cancerous cells, which are derived from immature white blood cells, overtake the bone marrow, leading to decreased production of the normal bone marrow cells: red blood cells, normal white blood cells and platelets.



Initially this causes anemia, leukopenia and thrombocytopenia, or decreased red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets in the circulatory system, respectively. As the cancerous cells continue to multiply they escape from the bone marrow and make their way into the bloodstream in large numbers, which causes profound leukocytosis, or an excessive number of white blood cells in the circulatory system. Leukemia is often diagnosed at this stage, when the blood is filled with abnormally large white blood cells.


Photo Credits: Eric V. Grave / Photo Researchers, Inc., ISM/Phototake

Without any treatment to block the uncontrolled multiplication of these leukemic cells they migrate to other organs, which leads to organ dysfunction and ultimately death.

(Got it? Quiz on Friday.)

In The Philadelphia Chromosome, Jessica Wapner brilliantly describes the painstaking research by scientists and clinicians to elucidate the mechanisms on a genetic and molecular level that lead to cancer, including the study of cancer causing viruses such as Rous sarcoma virus and Moloney virus, and the discovery of tyrosine kinase and other protein kinases, which are essential to normal function and growth in healthy cells but can cause unregulated division in cancerous cells. The bcr-abl in CML cells was discovered to code for an abnormal tyrosine kinase, and a collaboration between academia and the pharmaceutical industry led to the eventual development of the first tyrosine kinase inhibitor, imatinib mesylate, which is also known as Gleevec in the US and Glivec in most of the rest of the world. The use of this and subsequent tyrosine kinase inhibitors has allowed people with CML to live near normal lives by taking one pill a day, with minimal side effects; until the 1980s CML was a universally fatal disease. Other kinase inhibitors and similar compounds are under development, which have not yet been as successful in treating other malignancies but hold promise that cancer can be successfully controlled, if not cured, in our lifetimes.

The Philadelphia Chromosome is a carefully researched and very well written book, given the complexity of the techniques used in molecular biology and genetics, which also reads like a suspense novel as Wapner describes the hurdles that the discoverers of the first tyrosine kinase inhibitor faced in getting Novartis, its manufacturer, to approve the drug for clinical trials and make it available to the general public. It is a very important and timely book, which I would recommend to all readers, although it may prove to be a bit of a challenge for those readers without a basic science background. It is nearly as good as Siddharta Mukherjee's Pulitzer Prize winning book The Emperor of All Maladies: The Biography of Cancer, and it would be a perfect next step for those wishing to learn more detail about cancer research after reading that book.

Being a lifelong Star Trek fan, I loved the cancer = tribbles analogy! The book sounds really interesting, too, although mostly you've just served to remind me that I really need to get around to reading my copy of The Emperor of all Maladies sometime soon.

Excellent and fascinating review, Darryl!

Excellent review of The Philadelphia Chromosome so much to learn.

>164 baswood: That's encouraging to hear there are crowds at a book store.

Right, Barry. City Lights is more than a bookstore; it's a designated landmark of the city of San Francisco, and it's a common place for tourists, especially ones from Europe and Japan, to visit even if they aren't planning to buy books. Tour buses regularly stop in front of the store, as guides describe the bookstore and the famous obscenity trial that resulted from its decision to publish Howl by Allen Ginsberg in 1956. It's also not unusual for foreign journalists and bloggers to interview the people who work at the front of the store. Last year Scott, my friend who has worked there for over 30 years, was talking to one such writer, and he pointed me out to her, mentioning that I was one of the store's best customers even though I lived over 2000 miles away!

BTW, City Lights celebrates its 60th anniversary throughout the year, and there will be a birthday fête at the store on June 23rd. Unfortunately I'm working that weekend.



>165 Rise: Ha! Right, Rise. However, The Alienist did, for a time, think that nearly everyone was mad and deserved to be admitted to his insane asylum. If I have time I'll review that book this afternoon.

>166 detailmuse: Thanks, MJ; that's good to know. In that case I'll read Enon if it comes this month, and put off Tinkers to another time.

>168 bragan: Thanks, Betty; The Philadelphia Chromosome and The Emperor of All Maladies are two of my most favorite books about science and medicine written this century.

>169 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca. Given your background I suspect that you would like this book.

>170 baswood: Thanks, Barry. There is a lot more to be learned about cancer, but this book provides hope that many cancers can be controlled, if not cured, in the next decade or two.

Sad news: The Scottish writer Iain Banks, who announced two months ago that he was terminally ill with gall bladder cancer, died early this morning.

Iain Banks dies aged 59

I sense the suspense in your review of The Philadelphia Chromosome, Darryl. I hope to see a copy of it, and the other one you mentioned, and prepare for a quiz.

>174 Rise: (Sorry for the late reply.) I hope you do find The Philadelphia Chromosome and The Emperor of All Maladies, as both books are outstanding.

Darryl -- Toni Morrison is incredible. I strongly suggest listening her read Jazz -- it gave me a whole new perspective on the book after having read it twice -- I actually heard the jazz riffs in the words. Nobody quite achieves what Morrison does. And I'm so passionate about her, I'm going to repeat this post on your thread! -- I posted it first on Dan Chaikin's thread in reply to your post. Beloved may be the best novel of the last half of the 20th century.

That is such a great review of The Philadelphia Chromosome, and the graphic is awesome. Too bad it can't be posted on the review.

I'm catching up from way way back. Glad the Philly meet up was a hit. And you have left me wanting to visit City Lights in SF...enjoy your insane reading schedule. Hoping you find room to try Morrison.

Thanks, Dan. Definitely visit City Lights, but be prepared to drop a couple of hundred dollars when you go there! I spent yesterday in Boston and Cambridge with Caroline (cameling from the 75 Books group; see below), who recommended the bookshop to a friend of hers. He later chastised her for that recommendation, as he spent over $300 on his visit there (as I did on my first stop there last month)!

I'm in Boston for a couple of days to visit friends, and yesterday I met up with an LT friend, Caroline (cameling). She and her husband Edd met me at my hotel, the Omni Parker House near Boston Common, and we ate lunch nearby at Marliave, one of the oldest restaurants in Boston. I started with a Blind Pig cocktail (Hendrick's Gin, lemon, mint and seltzer) and three raw oysters on the half shell, and my main meal was tenderloin rabbit wrapped in prosciutto, with roasted sausage and gorgonzola & caramelized onion polenta. Upon Caroline's recommendation I had the butterscotch pudding, with candied ginger and whipped cream, and a single espresso. I normally don't like butterscotch very much, but this pudding was outstanding!

After lunch Edd dropped us off at the Museum of Fine Arts, as he had to leave to go to Long Island. We saw two exhibitions: Samurai! Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection, a superb display of clothing, battle armor and accoutrements worn by the samurai and their horses; and Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane, Master Drawings from the Casa Buonarroti. We stopped in the small museum shop dedicated to the Samurai! exhibition, and I came away with my first book purchase of the day, Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinsu, which was originally written by Taira Shigesuke (1639-1730) and translated into English by Thomas Cleary.

From there we took the T to Harvard Square, and had drinks at a local restaurant, Daedalus. Then it was off to buy books! Our first stop was the Harvard Book Store, where I came away with only two books: What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine by Danielle Ofri, MD; and The Dark Road, a new novel by Ma Jian.

Next we went to The Harvard Coop, where I had much better luck finding books from my wish list, due to its excellent selection of books on Medicine. I came away with four books:

Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum
AIDS at 30: A History by Victoria A. Harden
Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease by Mark Harrison
She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir

Our last stop before dinner was Raven Used Books, a tiny but well stocked shop. I bought two books, but I could have come away with many more: The Quiet American by Graham Greene, and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua.

We ended the evening by having Korean BBQ at BonChon. We shared an appetizer of spicy fried chicken wings and dumplings; Caroline had Mul Naengmyeon, a cold buckwheat noodle bowl with beef, vegetables and egg, and i had Nakji Bokkeum, spicy stir fried baby octopus. We chatted merrily throughout the day, from 11 am to nearly 10:30 pm, before we left to go our separate ways on the T.

Unfortunately we were too busy talking to take photos of the meet up, although we each took numerous shots of the samurai in the Museum of Fine Arts. I'll meet my friend Yvonne from medical school for lunch today, and then we'll meet up with Caroline later this afternoon. I'll do a better job of taking photos, and I'll post some of the photos I took of the Samurai! exhibition (as my Internet connection on my iPad in the hotel is a bit wonky).

Sounds like a great day. I'm a big fan of both the Harvard Bookstore and the Harvard Coop, and have done much damage to greatly improved my TBR at both over the years.

Definitely a yummy trip, Darryl. Loved the Samurai pics on FB.

>179 rebeccanyc: It definitely was, Rebecca. I was disappointed by the selection at Harvard Book Store, and I found the staff in the bookshop to be juvenile and annoying, but I had much better luck at the Harvard Coop, and the staff there was friendly and mature. I had a great time with Caroline and her husband Edd, and we'll definitely get together on a regular basis from now on.

>180 janeajones: Thanks, Jane. Here are some of the photos of the Samurai! exhibition I took on Wednesday:

And, here are several photos from the Samurai! exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts:

I especially like the last one for some reason.

I love the Museum of Fine Arts. Boston has some great places to visit.

>182 mkboylan: Merrikay, that one shows a portion of the only known complete samurai outfit in existence. It was difficult to capture all of the pieces in one photo without losing even more detail (I'm still learning how to take good photos with my new smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S3).

>183 NanaCC: I agree, Colleen. I've only been to Boston twice, so I don't know the city well at all. I'll certainly go there a lot more often from now on, though.

Book #56: Enon by Paul Harding

   

My rating:

Charlie Crosby lives in a ramshackle house in the small New England town of Enon, along with his wife, Susan, and his strong-willed 13 year old daughter, Kate, who he respects and adores immensely even though he shares none of her positive traits. He dropped out of college soon after Susan became pregnant while they were students, and his meager income as a house painter supplements the money she earns as a teacher. His relationship with Kate is far stronger than the one he shares with his wife, who tolerates his idiosyncrasies and failures for the sake of their daughter.

Charlie's world comes crashing down on an August evening, when Kate is killed by a motorist while riding her bicycle. While Susan tries to cope with her grief and look ahead, Charlie is caught in a web of morbid anguish and self pity. Unable to deal with her emotional and physical invalid of a husband, Susan returns to her family in Minnesota, leaving Charlie alone with his ennui and angst.

The novel jumps back and forth to events of Charlie's childhood and adult life, interspersed with his memories of Kate. His life slowly unravels, as he stops working and succumbs to a deep psychological torpor while he isolates himself from his neighbors and wallows in self pity.

Enon was a disjointed patchwork of a book, with unrelated fragments set next to one another like the pieces of a puzzle that have just been dumped onto a table. The snapshots were occasionally interesting in themselves, but the lack of a unified plot and Charlie's unlikable, navel-gazing character made this a tedious and largely unenjoyable read.

Too bad. Tinkers was quite good. The jigsaw puzzle idea actually sounds promising for this author.

>186 dchaikin: Dan, I requested Enon as a LT Early Reviewer book for May, based on the positive comments I read about Tinkers, which I own but haven't read yet. A good number of people were less than enamored with that book, and I suspect that I'll have the same opinion about it. If you liked Tinkers you'll probably like Enon as well.

I'm happy to mail you my copy of Enon if you'd like. According to the cover it won't be published until September 10th.

Thanks for the offer Darryl! It would only collect dust here, unfortunately. I'm not really reading anything new.

You're welcome, Dan. If anyone else would like it, please let me know.

Too bad about Enon Darryl. It's good to have an opposing view because it is generally well liked by other readers.

Thanks, Barry. I think Enon would have resonated much more deeply with me if it wasn't such a disjointed, plotless and emotionally distant book, and if Charlie wasn't such a weak and self-absorbed character.

think Enon would have resonated much more deeply with me if it wasn't such a disjointed, plotless and emotionally distant book, and if Charlie wasn't such a weak and self-absorbed character.

That seems to cover just about the whole book, Darryl! I can't see what would be left to resonate with you!

Ha! Right you are, Rebecca. I had high hopes for Enon, given Harding's Pulitzer Prize win for Tinkers and the topic of parental grief after the loss of a child, but I was very disappointed with it. BTW the reader learns about Kate's death and Susan's separation from Charlie in the first paragraph, so I don't think I've spoiled the book for anyone by mentioning these events.

Besides all of that it just sounds horrible depressing!

>194 mkboylan: I don't mind a depressing story as long as it is well told and neither emotionally distant nor overly maudlin, Merrikay. Somehow Enon managed to be both of those things.

Book #55: The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna



My rating:

Gost is a small Croatian town in the year 2007, whose apparent peacefulness belies deep seated animosities between its citizens that resulted from the Croatian War for Independence and its aftermath. Its people generally prefer to remain in the town in which their ancestors have resided for hundreds of years than move elsewhere, so they have little choice but to co-exist with each other and keep their feelings hidden, in the manner of a simmering pot of stew that is kept from boiling over by its cover.

The newly liberated country, with its temperate climate, well built homes in quaint towns, and low cost of living, proves attractive to well to do western Europeans, who visit Croatia in increasing numbers to take vacations and purchase houses for summer resorts.

Duro Kolak is a middle aged resident of Gost, a handyman who lives alone with his two hunting dogs on the edge of town. As he sits on a hillside one morning he is surprised to see a foreign make car drive on the road beneath him, which stops at a long abandoned but very familiar house. He watches closely as an attractive British woman emerges from the car, accompanied by her two teenage children. Intrigued, Duro introduces himself to the woman, named Laura, her taciturn son Matthew, and her shy but precocious daughter Grace. The "blue house" is sorely in need of repairs, and Duro offers his services to help Laura fix the house and to serve as a personal guide to Gost and the surrounding area. Laura's husband appears only briefly, so she comes to rely on Duro, as he becomes a friend to her and a father figure to Matthew and Grace.

The townspeople soon learn about their new visitors, who they view with a mixture of curiosity, disdain and hostility. Among those who are most critical of the newcomers are Duro's closest companions, Fabjan, a who runs a café in town, and Krešimir, who was Duro's closest childhood friend. Laura and Grace uncover and restore a glass mural, which corresponds to the opening of old wounds between the three men, as the reader learns about the past events that led to misunderstanding, animosity and tragedy. The past and present stories slowly unfold alongside each other, while merging into a rich tapestry and an increasingly compelling drama that kept this reader on edge until the final page.

The Hired Man is a brilliant tale about the effects of civil war on the psyches of its survivors, the ghosts that haunt them, and the difficulty they face in reestablishing a sense of normalcy towards each other and those who did not share their experience. The relationship between Duro and Laura and her children was equally well done, and these characters were lovingly portrayed by Forna. What is even more impressive is that Forna, whose mother is Scottish and father is from Sierra Leone, effectively and convincingly portrays a country that she has little familiarity with. The Hired Man is an excellent follow up to her outstanding novel Memory of Love, and it would be an excellent choice for this year's Booker Prize longlist.

This sounds very interesting. The Hired Man is now on my watch list.

>197 NanaCC: Thanks, Colleen. Unfortunately it won't be published in the US until October 1st; I ordered my copy from Amazon UK.

Interesting review: I'm always skeptical when an author writes about a country he or she knows only or mostly from the news, but it sounds like Forna carried it off.

Thanks, Rebecca. I was also a bit skeptical when I learned that this novel was set in Croatia, but I was eager to read it after I read numerous glowing reviews of it in the London newspapers and comments about it in The Mookse and the Gripes Forum, and especially after I read her most recent novel The Memory of Love. The Hired Man was a fabulous book, and I came very close to giving it 5 stars.

The Telegraph recently published an extended interview of Aminatta Forna, in which she talks about The Hired Man, her previous books, the lives of her parents, and her experiences as a mixed race person in Europe and Africa:

Aminatta Forna: unsilent witness

The Hired Man sounds like a great book. Enjoyed your review, which left me curious about.

>202 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan.

All done with your first half reads of the year? Good, because now it's time to get started on the Most Anticipated Books of the Second Half of 2013, courtesy of The Millions. These are the books I'm looking forward to the most, with their US publication dates:

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Jul 2): I read this book earlier this year, which I received from the LT Early Reviewers program, and I'm surprised that it was only published last week. It's about the lives of five striving Malaysian immigrants to contemporary Shanghai to seek wealth and fame, but find loneliness and failure instead. I've downgraded my initial rating from 4½ to 4 stars, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it included in the upcoming Booker Prize longlist.

The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Aug 1): Another novel that I've already read, although I haven't reviewed it yet. "In the city of Bogotá, Antonio Yammara reads an article about a hippo that had escaped from a derelict zoo once owned by legendary Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The article transports Antonio back to when the war between Escobar’s Medellín cartel and government forces played out violently in Colombia’s streets and in the skies above. Back then, Antonio witnessed a friend’s murder, an event that haunts him still. As he investigates, he discovers the many ways in which his own life and his friend’s family have been shaped by his country’s recent violent past. His journey leads him all the way back to the 1960s and a world on the brink of change: a time before narco-trafficking trapped a whole generation in a living nightmare."

The Infatuations by Javier Marías (Aug 13): "At the Madrid café where she stops for breakfast each day before work, María Dolz finds herself drawn to a couple who is also there every morning. Though she can hardly explain it, observing what she imagines to be their “unblemished” life lifts her out of the doldrums of her own existence. But what begins as mere observation turns into an increasingly complicated entanglement when the man is fatally stabbed in the street. María approaches the widow to offer her condolences, and at the couple’s home she meets—and falls in love with—another man who sheds disturbing new light on the crime. As María recounts this story, we are given a murder mystery brilliantly reimagined as metaphysical enquiry, a novel that grapples with questions of love and death, guilt and obsession, chance and coincidence, how we are haunted by our losses, and above all, the slippery essence of the truth and how it is told."

Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat (Aug 27): "The author of a string of heartbreaking novels about the strife-torn Caribbean nation of Haiti, including The Farming of Bones and The Dew Breaker, Danticat here tells the story of a young motherless girl whose poverty-stricken father considers giving her away a wealthier family. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as “magical as a folk tale and as effective and devastating as a newsreel,” the novel paints a stark portrait of village life in Haiti."

The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee (Sep 3): "When it came out in the UK and Ireland this Spring, Coetzee’s new novel was received with an even more potent combination of admiration and confusion than his work is normally met with. Reviewing the book in the Telegraph, Michael Preston asked whether it was “possible to be deeply affected by a book without really knowing what it’s about?” (The fairly obvious answer: yes.) A man and a five year old boy arrive in a sort of refugee camp, where they are assigned new names and ages. The boy speaks in riddles and claims to be able to perform miracles. Together, they search for the boy’s mother, and endure a series of odd bureaucratic encounters. The inscrutable spirit of Kafka has often flickered across Coetzee’s pages, and that spirit seems to loom large here." (I'll buy this when I travel to London this weekend.)

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood (Sep 3): "MaddAddam concludes the dystopian trilogy that Atwood began ten years ago with Oryx and Crake and continued in 2009 with The Year of the Flood. Booklist calls MaddAddam a “coruscating finale in an ingenious, cautionary trilogy of hubris, fortitude, wisdom, love, and life’s grand obstinacy.”"

Hawthorn & Child by Keith Ridgway (Sep 23): "This isn’t the story of a family business, à la Dombey & Son, but rather a buddy-cop detective vehicle—except the cops aren’t exactly buddies, and most of what gets detected is random violence and existential unease. Ridgway is a brilliant stylist from Ireland, and the early word from the U.K. is that he’s hit his stride here, in a kind of deadpan avant-pop tour of contemporary London." (I bought this in London last summer, but I haven't read it yet.)

Between Friends by Amos Oz (Sep 24): "These eight stories, set in the imaginary Kibbutz Yikhat during the 1950s of Oz’s youth, spin around the shortcomings of idealism and the fragility of all utopias. In the end, the stories affirm Oz’s long-held belief that both on the kibbutz and throughout the larger Middle East, the only hope lies not in conflict, but in compromise."

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes (Sep 24): "Julian Barnes’s new book is not a novel, and not a memoir, and not a collection of essays, although it appears to contain elements of all three. The collection begins with a brief history of hot air ballooning and the characters involved in its development and lured by its attractions. Part two is an imagined romance between Sarah Bernhardt, who was in life one of the people from the latter category, and Colonel Frederick Burnaby, intrepid ballooner (who is, incidentally, documented on the delightful website “Great British Nutters”). In the third part of his new book, Barnes ties these curious introductory portions into a memoir of his profound grief following the loss of Pat Kavanagh, his wife of 30 years."

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (Sep 24): "Lahiri’s second novel (and fourth book) comes heaped with expectations and describes the relationship between two formerly inseparable brothers born in mid-century Calcutta. The first, Udayan, is drawn into revolutionary politics; the second, Subash, leaves his native country to make a better life for himself as a scientist in the United States. But tragedy strikes Udayan and Subash returns home where he gets to know Udayan’s former wife and reconnects with childhood memories."

Seiobo There Below by László Krasznahorkai (Sep 24): "In the last few years, American readers have rapidly awakened to Krasznahorkai’s important place in the republic of world letters. He is one of few working novelists who still aspires to mastery, in the Modernist sense, and each of the three previous novels translated into English has been a masterpiece. Those books were set in Europe and New York. Seiobo, published in Hungarian in 2009, reveals a different side of the Krasznahorkai oeuvre: his decades-long engagement with East Asia. It’s a major feat of editing and translating, and the publication date been pushed back. Those who can’t wait should check out the excerpt in Music & Literature."

The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna (Oct 1): "Aminatta Forna made her name with The Devil That Danced on the Water, her memoir about her father’s execution for treason in Sierra Leone. In her new novel, The Hired Man, a naive middle-class Englishwoman named Laura arrives with her two teenage children in the Croatian town of Gost, planning to renovate an old house. She enlists the help of an introspective handyman named Duro, and before long the haunted memories of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s come bubbling up from the past. Ill-equipped to understand the dark local history, Laura will come to see that there is great power in overcoming the thirst for revenge."

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Oct 15): "The author of the critically acclaimed debut novel The Rehearsal returns with a literary mystery set in 19th century New Zealand. When Walter Moody arrives on the coast of New Zealand, hoping to strike it rich in the gold fields, he stumbles upon a gathering of men who have met in secret to discuss a number of apparently coincidental recent events: on the day when a prostitute was arrested, a rich man disappeared, a down-on-his-luck alcoholic died, and a ship’s captain canceled all of his appointments and fled. The prostitute is connected to all three men, and Moody finds himself drawn into their interlinked lives and fates."

A Prayer Journal by Flannery O’Connor (Nov 12): "When Flannery O’Connor was in her early 20s and a student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she kept a journal which focused on her relationship with her faith. Recently discovered, this journal should be a fascinating prospect for anyone with an interest in O’Connor’s writing, inseparable as it is from her Catholic belief in sin and redemption. It dates from 1946-47, around the time she was writing the stories that would converge into her debut novel Wise Blood. It looks to have been an exercise in bringing herself closer to her God through the act of writing: “I do not mean to deny the traditional prayers I have said all my life; but I have been saying them and not feeling them. My attention is always fugitive. This way I have it every instant.”"

There are many more books listed in this article, so I'd encourage you to look at the entire list.

Great review of The Hired Man. At first I was thinking oh dear, sounds like Frances Mayes and Tuscany, but you soon convinced me.

Wonderful list you have for the second half of the year. The first five look to me like the top five for me at least.

I've just created a speculation thread for this year's upcoming Booker Prize longlist in the Booker Prize group:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/156294

>204 SassyLassy: Thanks, Sassy!

Archipelago Books (http://archipelagobooks.org/), an independent publisher of literature in translation based in Brooklyn, launched its new website today. In celebration of this event it is giving away a small number of copies of My Struggle: Book One by Karl Ove Knausgaard and Archipelago tote bags. Better yet (especially for me, since I already own this book), for today only all books, print and electronic, are discounted 50% off the online price using the checkout code "LAUNCH2013". The online print books are already discounted by 20% from list price, so these books are 60% off, with free shipping to US customers.

I just bought three books that I had already planned to buy from Archipelago, My Struggle: Book Two by Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico by Antonio Tabucchi, and The Woman of Porto Pim, also by Antonio Tabucchi, for $22.40 (full list price for all three books: $56.00).

http://archipelagobooks.org/special-offers/

Great review of The Hired man. I would also be sceptical about an author who writes in detail about a place she has never visited, but your review dispels those thoughts.

Thanks, Barry. The article in the Telegraph that I posted in message #201 mentions that Forna "went to the former Yugoslavia to travel the roads she was writing about, as well as to meet the people", and learned to shoot a rifle, in order to accurately describe how Duro hunted animals and taught Matthew and his former lover how to shoot in the book. Another article I read about the book suggested that she spent a good deal of time in Croatia in order to research the book thoroughly before she wrote it.

Thanks for that link to most anticipated books, Darryl. I'll have to get back to it when I have more time. I got the Archipelago e-mail too, and much as I would love to get 50% off, I already own so many Archipelago titles that I haven't read that I don't think I'd find much on their list!

Darryl I largely agree about Enon; it took me three weeks to read the short novel. But late in the book, my impression of Charlie changed, and for a specific reason. fyi I did find Tinkers more subtle/complex and quite a bit better. I'll write a review this week.

Thanks!: *Off to browse the Archipelago site*

Darryl and detail, is there significance to the title Enon, none backwards? It sounds as if there could be.

>209 rebeccanyc: I also have a stack of unread Archipelago titles, Rebecca, but I had had my eye on the three books I purchased for several months, especially the two novels by Tabucchi.

>210 detailmuse: I look forward to your review of Enon, MJ.

>211 SassyLassy: Good question, Sassy; I didn't notice that Enon is none spelled backwards! It's the name of a ?fictional New England town and the river that runs alongside it, but I don't know any more than that.

New thread here!

198 - Looks like Amazon has it now in U.S. On my list! Excellent review, as usual. Sounds intriguing. Also thanks for the link to the author interview. Wow! Also nice to know others also walk away from ATM's without their cash! I actually think I almost bought about $300 worth of stamps at an ATM in Holland thinking I was getting cash. Close one.

Also thanks for the most anticipated books link. That is always fun. I also already have Five Star Billionaire on my WL

Oh Lord and now a speculation thread! I love that!

Too bad for me I have horrible internet while traveling in the desert so I missed the Archipelago sale. 50% off - dang!

Off to read the speculations!