What Are You Reading Now? -- December 2010

Goodness, its 5 December already!

I am wading through Thackery's Vanity Fair - a satire/social commentary on early 19th century society life in England centered around two school chums - sweet but bland Amelia and the notorious orphan Rebecca Sharpe. I had been under the impression, perhaps simplistically, that this was a story about a villain (Becky) who gets her comeuppance, but so far it doesn't seem like its trending that way. Or if it is, this is one of those stories where the villain is far more attractive and interesting than any other character. Becky's story so far is a bizzare combination of Jane Eyre and Lydia Bennet & she reminds me very much of Mary Crawford, but bitter.

What is everyone else reading this month? And who has snow where they live? :D

Yes, how did it get to be December 5th, anyway? I'm running out of time on everything I really need to do before Christmas. Ulp! Time to retreat from the stress with some good books, I think.

And no snow here in New Mexico, but it's getting pretty darned cold at night now.

Anyway, I am now reading Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a series of linked stories about Spokane Indians. Talk about bitter... This is not a happy book, but it's certainly worth reading

No snow in Southern Ontario yet either, but forecasts say that it is coming tonight!

I'm enthralled with Sarah Waters' The Night Watch - I just cannot put this book down. It starts in 1947 London, and then moves backward to 1944, and eventually 1941. I'm only halfway through, but I know this is going to be one of my favourite reads for the year.

I'm reading Turncoat by Jim Butcher which is book 11 (I think) of the Dresden files series. It's a pretty good fantasy book about a wizard.

Here in Holland we've had snow for a week and it's been mostly around minus 2-5 (degrees Celcius).

I've finally finished the first of Edmund Morris' now biographical trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt. Only took me a year to boot. Although I loved it and have found a new admiration for TR I didn't have before; I find biographies and the like difficult to get through if not read in chunks.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris is the first installment of the biography of Theodore Roosevelt from is early childhood to the assination that led him to become President. Using primary sources Morris is able to produce a complete and fascinating tale of a fascinating man.

I've been working on The Brothers Karamazov for a while now and enjoying it very much. I finished The Mom and Pop Store: True Stories from the Heart of America by Robert Spector which had some interesting anecdotes but was otherwise underwhelming. Where We Know: New Orleans As Home edited by David Rutledge, however, was fantastic - beautifully crafted as an object to match the wonderful stories and essays within. Now I've picked up Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle by Matthew Klingle as part of my color challenge.

Like Jane, I've also been working through The Brothers Karamazov slowly, since Nov 1, and have enjoyed discussing it over at le Salon. For lighter reading, I'm also reading Book Lust To Go by Nancy Pearl, an Early Reviewer. The theme is a list of books to armchair travel with. On one hand I've written down several suggestions, on the other hand it seems so painfully incomplete.

I finished an issue of the Southwest Review (Southwest Review : Volume 84, Number 4 1999, published out of Southern Methodist University), which was maybe a little too academia for me. The poetry was sometimes wonderful. But the essays could be very difficult to read (although they were interesting). The short stories mostly didn't stick.

I've started an issue of The Texas Review (vol. XV, No. 1&2, 1994, published out of Sam Houston State University), and loved the first short story...but, I've forgotten the author/title...

I'm still working on Kingdom Under Glass, an ER book I'm really just not enjoying. I've finished and am now contemplating how to review Palace of Justice, set in the time of the Terror. It was very enjoyable.

I just finished and reviewed the chilling but important Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, by Timothy Snyder, which explores the details and importance of the conservatively (conservatively!) estimated 14 million people who were deliberately murdered in the 1933-1945+ period in the region between eastern Poland and western Russia.

>8 richardderus:: It's actually kind of nice to know I'm not the only one who was underwhelmed by Kingdom Under Glass. I thought the subject matter was interesting, but the writing irritated me. It's like the author didn't trust the subject matter to be interesting without resorting to gimmicks.

Speaking of ER books, I've now started on my latest one, The Rough Guide to the Future, although I'm not really far enough into it to have formed an opinion of it yet.

Felt meh about Steve Martin's An Object of Beauty -- 2 stars for the story, 4 stars for the look at Manhattan's fine-art world.

Liked Truman Capote's autobiographical holiday short story set in the 1930s, A Christmas Memory.

And am still loving Rowan Jacobsen's American Terroir, about food and place, how geography and climate create optimum growing conditions for specific foods. He provides recipes and sources, too, and I have to prioritize to just one item that I will order after finishing the book. So far, the dry Champagne-style orange-blossom mead (honey wine) is leading (because I can visit my local Whole Foods for the Yukon river salmon). But I have the chapters on cheese and chocolate ahead yet.

>10 bragan: Precisely! I think Dr. Kirk wanted to write a novel and was talked into writing a narrative non-fiction. He should've written the novel.

Yes, if he'd gone all the way and just turned it into a novel, it might have been pretty good. As it is, it's this weird hybrid thing that doesn't work entirely as non-fiction or novel.

Tremendously interesting reading going on this month--does everyone save the exciting books for December?

I'm also working my way through The Brothers Karamazov, which should be a breeze as I read it just last year, but it is proving more difficult than last year. Learning loads, however, over at the Salon.

I just finished The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. I've long said that this is my favorite of the Bronte books and now I remember why. The author sets things up cleverly and there's not an emotionally calm moment. Huntingdon is an amazing creation; charming and venial and then something worse.

And for sheer entertainment, I've just read Gunn's Golden Rules by Tim Gunn.

Hi all,

A notice/reminder - We are holding an author chat tomorrow (or today depending where you're located) with poet Jeffrey C. Alfier over in Le Salon. The thread is: "Jeffrey C. Alfier, Dec. '10s real life, underappreciated poet thread", link: http://www.librarything.com/topic/102407

Cheers,
d

December is, as usual for me, turning into a vortex of busy-ness into which everything, including the time and energy to read anything longer than a web page or a newspaper article, is sucked - so the only book I've finished recently is After Dark by Haruki Murakami, which the book group I'm in discussed last Monday night. We had mixed feelings, but I was more positive than most: the book has two strands, one more realist, one less so, and I had a higher level of tolerance for the experimental strand. Minor Murakami, I gather, but I liked it.

There is a large and tantalising pile of books waiting for when the holidays begin and my concentration levels up. Katherine Mansfield: The Storyteller, the new biography by Kathleen Jones, has been getting excellent reviews in the New Zealand press, and is one I'm very much looking forward to reading.

>16 timjones: yes, I know the meaning of vortex also, what with an impending major kitchen renovation on top of everything else. When I do get a chance to read, I've been reading from two books:

Sourland: Stories by JCO. I'm very much enjoying these stories, and have a few long ones left. In the meanwhile I have picked up Silvina Ocampo's The Topless Tower which is magical realism a la surrealism. More when I have finished.

I've finished and reviewed A Novel Bookstore which I really wanted to like more than I did. Parts of it were wonderful and parts of it just didn't do much for me.

I'm wrapping up Connie Willis's All Clear. It's very good and hard to put down, but I really wish she'd gone the Anathem route and just put Blackout and All Clear into one book.

>19 RidgewayGirl:: I plan on reading them together and pretending they are one book.

(Me, I'm still working on The Rough Guide to the Future, but I'm thinking of starting The Angel's Game when I'm finally done with that.)

I've posted my highly laudatory review of LT author Susanne Alleyn's Palace of Justice in my thread ...post #106.

>17 avaland: looking forward to what you think of The Topless Tower. I read Ocampo's Leopoldina's Dream earlier this year and although her themes of children and death creeped me out, she does write in a way that makes the morbid almost fascinating. Thebook cover, in any case, I found lovely...

Have just finished reading Herta Muller's The Land of Green Plums...it took time and some effort, but i'm glad to have read it. Also finished Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, an enjoyable easy read whose closing line is probably one of the best there is.

Now more than halfway through Alejo Carpentier's The Lost Steps which is considered his best work. The story seems simple but the theme is not -- man's quest for his beginnings. His style is dense and intricate, and like a baroque sculpture whose beauty and brilliance I can only fully appreciate if taken in small doses, I'm going through the book slowly. Also reading another heavy going book Christopher Unborn by Carlos Fuentes, written from the point of view of one Christopher, who is yet to be born and who will be named after the explorer, in commemoration of 500 years of his arrival in America. A wacky, delirious book difficult to fit into any categorization, it is an impressive satire of Mexican (and a bit of US) politics and popular culture.

Also, I'm a few chapters into Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands and very much fascinated by his adventure and experience with peoples and a way of life that no longer exists since oil exploration in this region began.

>22 deebee1: That Ocampo also sounds interesting. Just finished her The Topless Tower, an Alice-in-Wonderland-like, magical realism story about a young boy who finds himself 'imprisoned' in a windowless tower but who can paint or draw things which come to life (but they don't always come out like he intended). I found it both fascinating and a little tedious at times. This novella was written in her later years, 1968, I think.

What did you think of the Herta Müller? I loved it, but it did take me a bit to get into it (fall under its spell, is perhaps a better phrase).

Still reading Oates's Sourland, just a few long stories left, too long to read in one reading before sleep....

>19 RidgewayGirl: I suspect that wasn't her choice. I gave my arc of Blackout away in a snit after I learned it was one half of a whole.

I just finished and reviewed the really fun Captain Pantoja and the Special Service by Mario Vargas Llosa, a satire of the military and religion.

Now that the second half of the book is out, avaland, can you go and retrieve your copy of Blackout? This is Willis at her best.

So, I am now reading The Angel's Game, and it's very frustrating, because it's the sort of book where I really, really just want to make myself a mug of cocoa, hole up somewhere, and shut the world out while I read it, but the world keeps on interrupting. Sigh.

I'm reading Siddharta Mukherjee's so far excellent book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, which is fascinating and very well-written. It was selected as one of The New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2010.

I just finished Sarah Waters' The Night Watch - a highlight for the year - and have moved on to Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, which I will review for Belletrista.

>26 RidgewayGirl: I don't know, I think there has been too much time elapsed - the Willis spell is broken for me. And I will very soon be behind two Sheri Teppers.

Reading and savoring Island of Demons, a novel about the emergence into Western consciousness of Bali as the "exotic erotic East" of our desirings, by Nigel Barley. Wicked fun.

ETA balky touchstone

I'm currently reading Papa Hemingway by A.E. Hotchner. It's about the times that Hotchner spent with Hemingway and starts in the 1940s. Hemingway is one of my all-time favorite authors, and I find his life fascinating. This book has opened up a more intimate look at Hemingway than I new existed.

I might be giving up on Vanity Fair and opting for The House of Mirth instead.

I'm starting on the The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, while still making my way slowly through The Icon and the Axe, or vice versa about Russian culture.

I spent a few hours this morning in a waiting room as my car had various mysterious things done to it and, having successfully hidden the remote after first pressing "mute", I managed to read much of Miss Lizzie by Walter Satterthwait. (There were two other waiting rooms, with three other televisions going full blast (two on Fox), lest anyone worry that I was usurping people's right to waste their time).

I am reading A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book. Slowgoing so far, but I am really starting to get into it.

Not much going on in my thread these days, as I'm currently plugging through two different fantasy and/or fairy tale anthologies and trying to catch up with my reviews. Just posted one for one of my November reads, Daphne Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel.

(note: link leads to review)

Finished the terrific American Terroir, about why certain locales grow certain foods so well. Now I'm early in three others, all very good: Under Fishbone Clouds, Sam Meekings' love story set in 20th-century China; You Know When the Men Are Gone, Siobhan Fallon's linked short stories about military wives; and (still) Keith Richards' autobiography, Life.

Finished Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, discussed on my thread. Perhaps the most controversial book published by the sisters, apparently controversial within the family. Charlotte had issues with it. It was considered inappropriate reading material, especially for ladies, and it appears that Anne uses Branwell's problems with addiction, etc., for realism.

Started Hamlet cuz I've never read it. I like it lots.

Still reading Where We Know: New Orleans As Home, and still being blown away (absolutely no pun intended), and The Next Queen of Heaven, which alternates, more or less, between two characters, one of whom I find intriguing and entertaining and the other not so much. Note to fiction writers: if you try this trick, make sure both are equally engaging.

#35, How nice that there are multiple waiting rooms in your car repair place. At mine, there is only and they always have some inane show on the TV. I try to block it out as best I can. The last time I got one of their "how did we do" e-mails, I made the suggestion that they have a "quiet" room for people who want to read or work. But I'm not holding out much hope.

Very much want to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. RidgewayGirl's (?) recent review of it was exemplary.

I think I might be in love....with Edith Wharton. House of Mirth is brilliant! I am enthralled with her short, sharp, painfully incisive commentaries on the various characters that we've met so far. This is such a wondrous contrast from Vanity Fair, which is just choking in verbosity. It's like Wharton knows exactly what needs to be said and says it perfectly and then says no more.

>42 fannyprice: That was almost exactly my response to Mrs. Wharton when I read Ethan Frome lo these many books ago! I'd recommend it rise to the top of your list one day quite soon...oh, and also The Buccaneers.

I have started "Doc", a forthcoming book by Mary Doria Russell. I have enjoyed her previous work but this one gave me pause as it seems to be a western of some kind, with Doc Holliday (and family), and the Earps (and family) on a rather daunting list of characters that may outnumber her character list in A Thread of Grace. But, I was intrigued and started it last night. She's a great storyteller and had me after the first page...

(also hoping to finish up the JCO collection before the end of the year).

I've just finished and reviewed the beautifully written and deeply insightful School for Love by Olivia Manning, a gem of a coming-of-age story.

I finished two books this week: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, which is my favorite nonfiction book of the year, and Job by Joseph Roth, a modernized retelling of the Biblical story set in early 20th century Russia and America. My next reads will be A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar.

I'm about 50 pages into Cordelia Strube's Lemon, which was Longlisted for the Giller Prize this year. It's hilarious! I'm really enjoying it, despite the fact that is has been called a female Catcher in the Rye, a book that I hate.

I have finished and reviewed Pereira Declares by Antonio Tabucchi which provides intriguing insight into the Portugal as it became a police state in 1938 and into the psyche of a journalist who has been living in the past.

At last Arthur & George by Julian Barnes has risen to the top of my To Read pile and is being thoroughly enjoyed. Both Arthur and George are utterly believable characters to me; Arthur sometimes verging on caricature with his Victorian/Edwardian pomposity, George apparently meek but facing his vicissitudes with stoicism, and both acutely aware of the face they must show to the world. There's quite a lot of gentle humour to be enjoyed as well, and plenty to make one think. I'm looking forward to the remainder of this book.

I have finished and review Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir by A. E. Hotchner, which I enjoyed very much. I am now reading Uncle Tom's Cabin.

I'm currently reading The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness by Jack El-Hai. I'm not very far into it yet, but it's promising to be a decent biography, and a very interesting look into a disturbing corner of medical history.

I think when I finish that, next up is going to be Lois McMaster Bujold's Cryoburn, since she conveniently released it just as I was finally catching up with the series, and some fun, well-written, character-based SF action may be just what I need about now.

I read The Lobotomist several years ago, and thought that it was very good.

I just wish I were awake enough to concentrate on it... Night shift induced sleep deprivation is keeping me from making much progress, as the words have a tendency to go all blurry on the page. Or I'd be much further into it by now.

>51 bragan:-53, I've been interested in The Lobotomist ever since reading the heart-wrenching My Lobotomy, a memoir by Howard Dully, the youngest person to ever undergo a trans-orbital lobotomy at the hands of the illustrious Dr. Walter Freeman. I highly recommend that book as well, if you can stand to read more about the topic.

By an odd coincidence, I already do have My Lobotomy. I saw it at a library sale a little while back and found myself thinking, "I know I have a book about lobotomies on my wishlist. Is this it?" I didn't think so, but it looked interesting, so I picked it up, anyway. A couple of weeks later, the program I wrote and use semi-regularly to pick random books off my wishlist for me came up with The Lobotimist, which was the one I actually had on the list. (The fact that I put interesting books on that list and then forget they're there is a large part of the reason that program exists. It's a fun way of surprising myself with things I forgot I wanted.) So apparently lobotomies are something of a theme at the moment, strangely enough. Though I think I'll wait a while after this one to read the other one.

I just finished and reviewed Cordelia Strube's Lemon - another best-read for the year!

I finished A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, the 1981 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I loved it when I first read it 30 years ago, but it was only a mediocre read this time. My review is here.

I've abided (abidden? abode?) by the terms of the Early Reviewers agreement and reviewed Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami in my thread...post #35.

Finished and commented on what will probably me my last book of 2010, Maps of Time by David Christian.

Maps of Time is really a condensed, single volume argument based on his introductory lectures on the topic of “Big History”. Big History covers not only the written record, but also prehistory and even prehuman history. Using a combination of modern science and up-to-date theories of history Christian aims to construct a single coherent story of human civilization from the Big Bang to the present in about 500 pages with two Appendices. Not bad considering the time span really.

58 -

Ryu Murakami is quite the question mark, isn't he?
I'm reading Almost Transparent Blue and I can't tell if it's brilliant or just an attempt to "shock and awe" the Japanese population. Which, he definitely has as I've talked about reading this book with several Japanese. Those in their 40s count it off as rubbish and the 20-somethings are curious to read it. Interesting dynamic. I have to remind myself why I'm reading this book every time I encounter the massive sex orgy scenes. Halfway through and still seeing how it's going.

(I'm be reading this for the next two-three months as I'm reading this in the original Japanese so you should see me pop up in the next reading threads at Club 2011.)

>60 lilisin: cross-post of response in my thread

He's won a lot of prizes, and the Establishment clearly supports his outsiderness; he's a lot like Dave Eggers, maybe: You get it, or you hate it.

He made me laugh several times, so I gave him 3 stars, but I will never, ever recommend the book to anyone.

...?... You know, it just occurred to me that, had LT been around in 1851, we'd be having the same conversation about Moby-Dick. Melville was a species of Wunderkind, and not all that warmly received by the Pooh-Bahs of Kultur though well thought of by the youth of the time.

Honestly, had I known that this book dates from 1994 in Japanese, I might have felt *moored* in place and time better, and therefore better able to comprehend the surroundings. Dunno...frankly, I just think it's not a very good book.

I'll be keen to hear what you think of Almost Transparent Blue! I'll be looking for your review.

I just finished and reviewed the wonderful Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, a book I could hardly put down while I was reading it.

I am a recent newcomer to this group and I would be interested to know what others think of Beasts and Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates. Oates is so highly regarded by so many readers that I wonder why I found these two books so disappointing.

I found Beasts quite beastly, but don't have the book anymore and read it some time ago so can't refer back to it just now. Black Water I have just finished and I really didn't think it was very good: So much repetition and, I thought, a rather superficial treatment of the two main characters. Not sure either about using the tragic subject matter of the young woman who drowned at Chappaquiddick as the basis for the novella (it seemed a little meretricious to me).

There was something very harsh about the writing in both books I thought.
Is this typical of Joyce Carol Oates? Would you recommend that I try another of her novels? If so, which?

It may be that this author is just not my cup of tea.

After being inspired by wandering_star's great comments on it, I ordered and am reading Proust and the Squid: The Store and Science of the Reading Brain by Marynne Wolf, which is fascinating, while waiting for what will undoubtedly be an over-hyped and under-delivering DC snowstorm.

I'm reading After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell, after having finished Starvation Lake by Brian Gruley, a mystery featuring a disgraced journalist returned to the small town where he blew the big hockey game as a teen-ager.

Just discovered that We Need to Talk About Kevin is finally available on kindle so I've downloaded it and that's what I'm starting the Orange January read with, even though it's not quite January. I've wanted to read this for a while now.

Also getting to the end of Proust and the Squid, which is still fantastic, though reading a book about how the brain reads has made me a very self-conscious reader.

I'm 25 pages into The Finkler Question and not too impressed so far -- i mean, this won the Man Booker 2010? As I don't want to end this reading year with a disappointment, I'm inclined to drop it unless somebody can convince me otherwise...

The last two previous winners I read, The White Tiger and Vernon God Little also fell far short of expectations. Surely there many more books out there more deserving of the attention?

I'm about 300 pages into Uncle Tom's Cabin and about 120 pages into Dubliners. I've enjoyed them both so far. I'm reading Dubliners on my new ereader that I received as a Christmas gift, and I am amazed at how much I like reading on it.

I finished Justin Cronin's The Passage, am in the middle of Lucy Maud Montgomery's The Blue Castle, and am starting The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

Finished my latest Early Reviewer, Siobhan Fallon's You Know When the Men Are Gone, very good short stories linked around military family life at Fort Hood, Texas and deployment to Iraq. That was going to be my final book finished in 2010 but I decided to follow it with Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.

>67 deebee1: deebee1..... Sorry to hear that The Finkler Question doesn't seem to promise much. I'm in the queue for the book at my local library. I'll be interested to hear if it gets more interesting for you.

I'm about half way through The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, a book I approached with caution as I wasn't sure if it might be a bit 'Romancey' for me.... I think it was the cover! There's a touch of the 'She cast a sideways glance at me, blushing' (not a direct quote) in it, but for the most part it's interesting period crime fiction. The author Susanne Alleyn has obviously researched pre-revolutionary Paris in some depth but doesn't lecture about it. I'm enjoying it and shall probably read the rest of this Aristide Ravel series.

I finally got some time to just sit around and read, so over the last couple of days, I finished Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles and a collection of essays called Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It. I really enjoyed the former. Not the most original story, all in all, but the writing is terrific and the seemingly gimmicky premise really works. The latter was mostly pretty fluffy, but a fairly pleasant read for a Doctor Who geek like me.

Next up is Cities in Flight, Vol. 2 by James Blish, which I'm hoping to finish before the end of the year. I wasn't super-impressed with Vol. 1, but it was still an interesting slice of sci-fi history. We'll see what I think of Vol. 2.

>63 Thrin: Beasts is not one of my faves but I can't say much more than that because I can't remember it (I should reread it now that I have digested much more Oates).

Likewise, Black Water is not a favorite either. I liked it well enough. I might have written a review of it... Oates is amazingly varied - she can write something lyrical like I Lock My Door Upon Myself, something witty like A Bloodsmoor Romance, or some neo-19th century gothic like Mysteries of Winterthurn or she will mess with American obsessions and myths like in Black Water, Blonde, or My Sister, My Love... I could go on. I've liked everything I've read of hers, but I haven't loved it all (and I read 10 of her works this year alone, maybe 11 by the weekend:-)

>71 Thrin: I read Susan Allelyn's first book, the one that retold Tale of Two Cities from Sidney Carton's point-of-view. It was pretty good. I'm always cautious about books connected to classics but she did a great job, I thought. I think it was called A Far Better Rest (touchstone worked so I guess I'm correct!)

#67, deebee, I was emphatically NOT a fan of The Finkler Question (in fact, I actively disliked it), so my advice is to drop it. So you know where I'm coming from, I also was underwhelmed by The White Tiger. But I was very big fan of last year's Booker winner, Wolf Hall, which set me to reading as much as I could of Hilary Mantel.

I've finished After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell, which is one of the best books I've read this year, and am now reading The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, which is certainly thought provoking.

>73 avaland: Thanks for that information, avaland. I'll try a bit more Oates. Has anyone else written as many books as she? Talk about a prolific author.

>75 RidgewayGirl: I shall be interested to hear what you think of The Slap as you make your way through it, RidgewayGirl. I'm afraid I put it aside fairly early on in the story: Those dreadful people......

I read 56 books this year, 4 up on 2009 - my list is at http://www.librarything.com/topic/80528#1682891. Now to work out my favourites for the year...

I see that I gave just 2 books 5 out of 5 stars this year: Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin and There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, which I reviewed for Belletrista here: http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue8/reviews_1.php

Just behind the 5-star books was Kalpa Imperial by Angelica Gorodischer, trans by Ursula Le Guin - my best SF read of the year

Best non-fiction was a tie between This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel Levitan, 222143::This Cold Heaven by Gretel Ehrlich, and Katherine Mansfield: The Story-Teller by Kathleen Jones

Best poetry was a tie between 2976509::Barefoot by comptonjennifer::Jennifer Compton and 50989::Sappho: A Garland, translated by 107722::Jim Powell.

I also really enjoyed the Lonely Planet Guide to Greenland - strange, but true!; Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy; cricket poetry collection 10379429::A Tingling Catch, edited by piriemark::Mark Pirie; and 15477::Selected Prose and Prose-Poems by Gabriella Mistral

Finally, I re-read C. J. Cherryh's Chanur saga this year and enjoyed it was much as I did when I first read it 20 or so years ago.

I've reviewed Island of Demons by Nigel Barley in my thread......post #165.

Wonderful!

> 71, 74 i tried reading a few more pages of The Finkler Question hoping it would get better, but it did nothing for me. i'm dropping it, and luckily, i can have it exchanged for any title of my choice (the book was a Christmas gift, which came with the gift exchange ticket), so i'm off to the bookshop soon. hmm, perhaps will get a cookbook instead :-)

75: Ridgeway, hmmm, if you're reading The Slap, I might pluck it off my bookshelves in the next couple of weeks so we can discuss. This time would be an intentional synching of reading.

citygirl, I would love that. The Slap isn't a book that makes you fall in love with the charming, yet whimsical, characters. They're difficult and behave badly, but there's lots to think about and discuss. I was drawn to the book because of the way it seemed that no one who read it reacted with a "meh".

I've finished and reviewed the memoir Cleo: The Cat Who Mended A Family, in my thread...post #184.

#80 hmmm, I'm about to start reading that (Finkler Question) for the Early Reviewer program...