dchaikin part 3 - sonnets and Robert Musil maybe.

Again, stumbling along. But I've read Sonnets 1-6, so they're happening. Musil was supposed to begin July 1. Now maybe August.

Currently Reading   


Currently Listening to

Books read canvas

audioboooks finished canvas

links to all my old threads:

2009 Part 1, 2009 Part 2, 2010 Part 1, 2010 Part 2, 2011 Part 1, 2011 Part 2, 2012 Part 1, 2012 Part 2, 2013 Part 1, 2013 Part 2, 2013 Part 3, 2014 Part 1, 2014 Part 2, 2014 Part 3, 2015 Part 1, 2015 Part 2, 2015 Part 3, 2016 Part 1, 2016 Part 2, 2016 Part 3, 2017 Part 1, 2017 Part 2, 2018 part 1, 2018 part 2, 2019 part 1, 2019 part 2, 2019 part 3, 2020 part 1, 2020 part 2, 2020 part 3, 2021 part 1, 2021 part 2, 2021 part 3, 2022 part 1, 2022 part 2

Books read, but listed by the date originally published, or, roughly, by the date written.

1170 The Lais of Marie de France
1353 The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
1591 The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare
1595 King John by William Shakespeare
1608 Coriolanus by William Shakespeare
1609 The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
and: All the Sonnets of Shakespeare
1613 Henry VIII by William Shakespeare
1817 Persuasion by Jane Austen
1850 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
1855 North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
1906 Madame De Treymes by Edith Wharton
1907 The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton
1911 Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
1912 The Reef by Edith Wharton
1913 The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
1930 The Man Without Qualities, Volume 1 (A Sort of Introduction; Pseudo Reality Prevails) by Robert Musil
1959 Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
1964 Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances A. Yates
1965 Where the Jackals Howl and Other Stories by Amos Oz
1970 Anniversaries I by Uwe Johnson
1971 Anniversaries II by Uwe Johnson
1973 Anniversaries III by Uwe Johnson
1981
Boccaccio by Thomas Goddard Bergin
The File On H. by Ismail Kadare
1986 Maus I : A Survivors Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman
1991 Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman
1997 El Llano Estacado : Exploration and Imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1536-1860 by John Miller Morris
1998 The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
2000 By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño
2003 Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
2013 The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli
2014 Roadside Geology of Colorado (Third Edition) by Felicie Williams & Halka Chronic (original edition 1980)
2015 The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector
2016
The Decameron : A New Translation, Contexts, Criticism (Norton Critical Edition) translated and edited by Wayne A. Rebhorn
My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
2020
Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward
An Island by Karen Jennings
2021
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers by Ken Krimstein
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Second Place by Rachel Cusk
China Room by Sunjeev Sahota
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
2022
Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas by Jennifer Raff
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer

Books read in 2022

links go to the review post in my part 1 thread
1. ****½ The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (read Jan 6-8, theme: TBR)
2. **** Madame De Treymes by Edith Wharton (read Jan 5 – 15, theme: Wharton)
3. *** Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward (read by the author) (listened Jan 2-15, theme: Booker 2020)
4. **** The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare (read Dec 17, Jan 1 – Feb 6, theme: Shakespeare)
5. **** Memento Mori by Muriel Spark, read by Nadia May (listened Feb 1-10, theme: random audio)
6. ***** Maus I : A Survivors Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman (read Feb 2-10)
7. ***** Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman (read Feb 14-28)
8. *** Boccaccio by Thomas Goddard Bergin (read Dec 25, 2021 – Mar 10, 2022, theme: Boccaccio)
9. **** The Decameron : A New Translation, Contexts, Criticism (Norton Critical Edition) by Giovanni Boccaccio, translated and edited by Wayne A. Rebhorn (read Jan 1 - Mar 10, intro and afterward only, theme: Boccaccio)
10. ****½ The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton (read Feb 6 – Mar 17, theme: Wharton)
11. ***½ The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, read by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi (listened Feb 11 – Mar 23, theme: random audio)
12. ***** The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, translated by G. H. McWilliam (read Jan 4 – Mar 13, theme: Boccaccio)
13. *** Coriolanus by William Shakespeare (read Feb 20 – Mar 28, theme: Shakespeare)

links go to the review post in my part 2 thread
14. **** The Lais of Marie de France translated by Glyn S. Burgess & Keith Busby (read Mar 28 – Apr 2, theme: random)
15. ***** David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (read Jan 2 – Apr 13, theme: Victorian)
16. ***** Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances A. Yates (read Dec 15, 2021 – Apr 19, 2022, theme: TBR)
17. **** When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers by Ken Krimstein (read Apr 9-24)
18. ****½ Anniversaries I by Uwe Johnson (read Jan 2 – Apr 27)
19. **** Bewilderment by Richard Powers (read Apr 27 – May 1, theme: Booker 2021)
20. ***** Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (read Apr 27 – May 3, theme: Wharton)
21. ****½ Henry VIII by William Shakespeare (read Apr 10 – May 6, theme: Shakespeare)
22. ****½ An Island by Karen Jennings (read May 1-7, theme: Booker 2021)
23. ***** The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector (listened Mar 24 – May 11, theme: random audio)
24. ****½ Second Place by Rachel Cusk (read May 8-12, theme: Booker 2021)
25. **** China Room by Sunjeev Sahota (read May 12-16, theme: Booker 2021)
26. **** Where the Jackals Howl and Other Stories by Amos Oz (read May 25-29, theme: TBR)
27. **** No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (read May 29 – Jun 1, theme: TBR)
28. ****½ Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi, read by the author (listened May 11 – Jun 10, theme: random audio)

links below go to the review post in this thread
29. *** North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (read May 1 – Jun 12, theme: Victorian)
30. **** King John by William Shakespeare (read May 18 – Jun 19, theme: Shakespeare)
31. ****½ The Reef by Edith Wharton (read May 22 – Jun 21, theme: Wharton)
32. **** Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas by Jennifer Raff, read by Tanis Parenteau (listened Jun 11-23, theme: random audio)
33. *** El Llano Estacado : Exploration and Imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1536-1860 by John Miller Morris (read Jun 19 – Jul 9, theme: TBR)
34. ***** Persuasion by Jane Austen (read Jul 1-23, theme: none)
35. **** Roadside Geology of Colorado (Third Edition) by Felicie Williams & Halka Chronic (read July 15-25)
36. **** Anniversaries II by Uwe Johnson (read Jun 5 – Aug 14)
37. ***** The Sonnets (Pelican Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Orgel, with introduction by John Hollander (read Jul 3 – Aug 19, theme: Shakespeare)
38. **** The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (read Aug 6-21, theme: TBR)
39. *** Booth by Karen Joy Fowler, read by January LaVoy (listened Aug 2-22, theme: Booker 2022)
40. **** The File On H. by Ismail Kadare (read Aug 17-30, theme: none)
41. ***** The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (Aug 1-30, theme: Wharton)
42. **** All the Sonnets of Shakespeare edited by Paul Edmondson & Stanley Wells (Jul 4 – Sep 2, theme: Shakespeare)
43. ***½ Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo, read by Chipo Chung (Aug 23 – Sep 11, theme: Booker 2022)
44. **** By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño (Sep 15-17, theme: TBR)
45. **** The Man Without Qualities, Volume 1 by Robert Musil, translated by Sophie Wilkins, with Burton Pike (Jul 28 – Sep 23, theme: Musil)
46. *** Anniversaries III by Uwe Johnson (read Aug 20 – Sep 28)
47. **** Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer, read by Lydia Wilson & Tamsin Greig (listened Sep 12-29, theme: Booker 2022)
48. ****½ My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (read Oct 2-6, theme: Booker 2022)

Some stats:

2022
Books read: 48
Pages: 11,857 (time reading: 520 hours)
Audio time: 136 hours
Formats: Paperback 23; audiobook 9; ebook 9; Hardcover 7;
Subjects in brief: Novel 27; Classic 15; Nonfiction 10; History 5; Short Stories 4; Memoir 4; Drama 4; Science 4; Religion/Mythology/Philosophy 3; Graphic 3; On Literature and Books 3; Biography 2; Poetry 2; Mystery 1;
Nationalities: United States 18; England 13; Germany 3; Zimbabwe 2; Mexico 1; Scotland 1; Italy 1; France 1; South Africa 1; Brazil 1; Canada 1; Israel 1; Iran 1; Albania 1; Chile 1; Austria 1;
Books in translation: 11
Genders, m/f: 24/24
Owner: Books I own: 45; Audible-included 1; Library 1;
Re-reads: 2
Year Published: 2020’s 12; 2010's 5; 2000’s 2; 1990’s 3; 1980’s 3; 1970’s 3; 1960’s 2; 1950’s 1; 1930’s 1; 1910’s 3; 1900’s 2; 1800’s 3; 1600’s 4; 1500’s 2; 1300’s 1; 1100’s 1;
TBR numbers: acquired 37, read from tbr 40, abandoned 1 = net -4

All stats - since I started keeping track in December of 1990
Books read: 1230
Formats: Paperback 652; Hardcover 256; Audio 191; ebooks 91; Lit magazines 38
Subjects in brief: Non-fiction 483; Novels 384; Biographies/Memoirs 210; History 188; Classics 185; Religion/Mythology/Philosophy 136; Journalism 94; Poetry 94; Science 86; Ancient 76; Speculative Fiction 66; On Literature and Books 64; Nature 59; Drama 48; Graphic 46; Short Story Collections 46; Anthologies 45; Essay Collections 45; Juvenile/YA 34; Visual Arts 26; Interviews 15; Mystery/Thriller 14
Nationalities: US 690; Other English-language countries: 258; Other: 276
Books in translation: 210
Genders, m/f: 775/359
Owner: Books I owned 869; Library books 284; Books I borrowed 66; Online 10; Audible-included 1;
Re-reads: 27
Year Published: 2020’s 34; 2010's 266; 2000's 281; 1990's 177; 1980's 120; 1970's 61; 1960's 53; 1950's 29; 1900-1949 68; 19th century 19; 16th-18th centuries 38; 13th-15th centuries 9; 0-1199 21; BCE 55
TBR: 663

29. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
editor/introduction: Patricia Ingham, 1995
published: 1855 (serially from September 1854)
format: 477-page Penguin Classic Paperback
acquired: March read: May 1 – Jun 12 time reading: 23:03, 2.9 mpp
rating: 3
genre/style: Victorian Novel theme: Victorian
locations: London, fictional Helstone, Hampshire, and fictional Milton, Darkshire, a Manchester stand-in.
about the author: 1810-1865, born in Elizabeth Cleghorn in Chelsea. Grew up mainly with her aunt in Knutsford, Cheshire.

My first time reading Gaskell gave me a few surprises. The first was that the book transitions from the countryside to Marx's and Engles's Manchester - pollution, disgruntled and injured workers, strikes, riots, economies. Gaskell lived in Manchester and she writes about this stuff with some knowledge. Of course, that's what is meant by "North" in the title. The second surprise was to realize this was basically a kind of morality tale. I was entertained by the first, and annoyed by the second.

I picked up that Gaskell could write, and create moments; and that she's very precise, which makes the reading a little slow and makes her best writing is a little understated. What made her difficult for me was the paternalistic aspects of her writing. She wrote as if she knows what is right and wrong and she's going to tell you, for your own good. It makes some of her not-right stuff a little glaring. For example, in this novel, the factory-owner bias comes through the in the characterizations. She asks the philosophical questions, challenges the conventional wisdom. But she undermines all that because the factory worker and strike leader is an old simpleton, whereas the factory owner is an upright, considerate, good looking, marriageable young man.

I wrote it up in Litsy this way:

"So, this was all a morality tale? Middle class well-educated but impoverished Margaret Hale sees both sides of Marx and Engel‘s Manchester and … finds a dumb strike-leader/factory worker and respectable attractive factory owner who just needs to understand his workers better. Got that? Also she matures, and religion is good, and fortune spins, and other stuff happens. For me this represents the paternal contradictions of the 19th century."

I am glad I read this, and I found myself enjoying it. But I also find myself hesitant to read more Gaskell.

hmm. My book El Llano Estacado, a history of giant flat plain of this name along Texas/New Mexico border, had some wonderful quotations by a Boston poet and early explorer of the plain. I was moved enough by the quotes to pick up the book quoted, published in 1834. And it has arrived. All good, so far.

So, now, as I'm entering the book in LT, I google the author and actually read the Wikipedia entry. The author is Albert Pike. Well Pike was a pretty awful person. Wikipedia tells me he was Confederate general in charge of native American troops. And that he was an extreme, like ridiculous extreme, lunatic racist, like Klu Klux Klan extreme, like, as in the only reason he may not have joined the KKK was because he didn't like how it was organized. He is quoted as wanting a white-supremacist undergrown organization.

Well, what am I supposed to do with this book that now it feels rather awful to touch? Can I read this? Does it make a difference that the experiences he is writing about pre-date his southern life and identity?

The book is Prose Sketches and Poems: Written in the Western Country, published in 1834. The edition is from 1987, edited by an historian who acknowledges Pike's Confederate contributions but not his active and public racism.

What's sad is that I was excited for this book...

There is a travel writer fro Britain named A.A. Gill Saw a book of his while waiting at the airport and was completely taken by his writing his wit, and observations Actually read two more. Then like you went on Wiki bigoted, mysogonist, racist..... stopped reading him but still enjoy what I read if that makes sense

Can I review anything after that?



30. King John by William Shakespeare
published: originally performed 1595. The signet classic originally dates from 1966, with a 1989 and 2004 update.
format: 215 pages within a King John/Henry VIII combined Signet Classic paperback
acquired: November read: May 18 – Jun 19
time reading: 11:55, 3.4 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic Drama theme: Shakespeare
locations: England and France
about the author: April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616

Editors
William H. Matchett – editing and introduction, 1966, 1989
Sylvan Barnett – series editor, contributions 1966, 1989, 2004
Sources
Raphael Holinshed – from Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1587
Edward Hall – from The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548)
John Foxe – from Acts and Monuments of Martyrs, 1597
Commentaries
Donald A. Stauffer - from Shakespeare’s World of Images, 1949
Harold C. Goddard – from The Meaning of Shakespeare, 1951
Muriel St. Clare Byrne – from The Shakespeare Season at … Stratford-Upon-Avon, 1957, from Shakespeare Quarterly VIII (1957)
Alan C. Dessen – Deborah Warner’s Stratford-Upon-Avon Production (1988), from ”Shakespeare on Stage: Exciting Shakespeare in 1988”, Shakespeare Quarterly 40:2, (1989)
Sylvan Barnett – King John on Stage and Screen, 1966, 1989, 2004

Litsy post: Mad world! Mad Kings! WS‘s least popular history rewards attention. Ok, King John‘s nephew comes to an awkward end. But the play looks at political expediency, a desperate king of iffy legitimacy invaded by the French. And, in place of a wise fool we have the Bastard, the perfect king if only. And he can express himself…and he‘s got a pretty good speech writer.

King John is tough because of its convoluted plot. This is partially because the historical king, who ruled 1199-1216, had a really complicated life. He not only signed the Magna Carta, but apparently had some anger and management issues. He's remembered for losing his French territories, murdering his nephew Arthur, getting excommunicated, losing support of the English nobility and getting invaded by France. Not a good track record.

Shakespeare has to step through this carefully. He skips the Magna Carta. He handles the nephew's death in a strange not-murdered manner. But he covers the rest in a manner. He adds in prominent roles for the mothers of John and Arthur. And he gives most of the lines to a semi-fictional bastard of the king before John, his older brother Richard I (the lionhearted). The Bastard, that's his stage identitiy, is a terrific character. He provides the comic commentary with brutal honesty (like a fool usually does), and he becomes John's righthand man, saving John from his incompetence. He plays perfect leader, potentially the perfect king, if only.

But, your eyes have probably glazed over because that's a mess of information. Here's the thing, the language is terrific, even for Shakespeare. It's full of wonderful, sometimes funny, lines, with many characters momentarily mastering the stage, before receding back into the obscuring plot.

So, an enjoyable mess.

>10 cindydavid4: Interesting and it makes sense. Terrible people can create nice things.

>9 dchaikin: Really good question that's making me think. Random thoughts in no particular order:

-He's dead, so you are not supporting him financially or in any other way by reading his poetry.

-I assume the poetry is not racist, etc or you would not read it, so you are not having to read his toxic views

-If we held every author to modern standards, what would be left? (this is an endlessly complex question which in the extreme incorporates the idea of whether an author should be morally and ethically pure to deserve to be read. Does reading a book by an author who has had an affair or spanked his kid or made a racial slur, make the reader complicit? What if that author lived two hundred years ago? Can we read anything written by a Confederate officer, or are they all off the table? What if they wrote a geology book, does the topic make a difference?)

-But, can you enjoy the poetry now, knowing what you know?

>13 labfs39: it’s a lot of important questions without a good answers. It’s easy to say don’t read bad people, but it’s not actually a good answer, just an easy one. I’m not sure how unpalatable Pikes is in this book. I would have to read it to find out. But also there are other books in the house that feel less toxic. (ETA - but none of them will touch on the natural sublime of the empty high plains in the early 1800’s)

>9 dchaikin: It is a tough question, but I do think people can do well in one area (writing) and not well in another area (treatment of indigenous and black people). I guess it depends on how much you want to visit El Lano Estacado again.

>9 dchaikin: For me I think this would be a real gut thing. If I started reading and just couldn't connect with the text because of who the author is, no matter when in their timeline it was written, I'd just jettison it. But if the writing pulled me in, then I'd stay with it to see what's there. It definitely is a thorny question, though.

>15 markon: yeah. Maybe someone alone on the plains in the 1830’s isn’t likely to have the best social skills. ??

>16 lisapeet: this is good advice. I’ll consider it. Just see how I feel reading it, knowing what I now know.

31. The Reef by Edith Wharton
published: 1912 (with an introduction from 1965 by Louis Auchincloss)
format: 362-page paperback
acquired: December read:May 22 – Jun 21 time reading: 11:14, 1.9 mpp
rating: 4½
genre/style: Early 20th-century American novel theme: Wharton
locations: France
about the author: about the author: 1862-1937. Born Edith Newbold Jones on West 23rd Street, New York City. Relocated permanently to France after 1911.

I'm working through Edith Wharton's novels with a group on Litsy. This is our 8th novel/novella by her. It was written in the shadow of her impending divorce, and a failed secret affair. This was also the time she moved from the mansion she designed for herself in Lenox, MA, The Mount, to Paris. She would live in France permanently from that time. Wharton was unhappy with the novel, and called it a “poor miserable lifeless lump”.

The meaning of the title is symbolic. It's a novel about relationships, touching on the themes of her real life, looking at fidelity and infidelity and maybe protective boundaries.

In the briefest summary, George Darrow has a fling in Paris with an immature young American, Sophie Viner, while waiting for the answer to a marriage proposal to a somewhat stately Anna Leath, a widowed mother living in a French chateau. Things don't turn out well. All the characters are Americans in France.

It's a difficult novel to capture. It starts out fun, with some well setup dramatic dark humor. Things bumble along, but the writing is terrific and the book propels itself. But then the novel turns inward. Anna and Darrow are doomed, but it does something to Anna. She faces a problem she can‘t solve, and her self-confidence is undermined. The book's propulsion comes to an introspective tortured halt. Anna leaves us very unsettled. (Both possible subjects in that sentence apply)

I'm a bit lost in the sense of how ending really washes out all the impression of the fun the novel I was reading halfway through. I liked both parts, and they link fine. But they have some kind of troubling relationship, or I have trouble accepting them as parts of the same novel.

Anyway, recommended only for completists, but I don't think it will disappoint. Wharton was master of her craft at this point.

32. Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas by Jennifer Raff
reader: Tanis Parenteau
published: 2022
format: 9:12 audible audiobook (368 pages in hardcover)
acquired: June 11 listened: Jun 11-23
rating: 4
genre/style: Science theme: Random audio
locations: American hemisphere
about the author: an American geneticist and an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas, and president of the American Association of Anthropological Genetics. She was born in Carbondale, Illinois in 1979 and grew up in Missouri and Indiana.

I sampled this audiobook based a recommendation by JoeB1934, a new CR member, and also because the title interested me. And I kept going because Raff writes engagingly and its well narrated. It's a little strange in that it focuses so much on the ethics of genetic research of American heritage, and in that it gives such a generalized light touch on the actual genetic insight into the pre-history of the Americas. But it was enjoyable to listen to and it provides an overview of the history, nature and state of the science. And I learned some cool stuff.

Recommended if that interests.

(side note: I was charmed that Raff is associated with KU, where I have an MS, and also that she makes a statement up front acknowledging the native American predecessors to Lawrence, KS)

33. El Llano Estacado : Exploration and Imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1536-1860 by John Miller Morris
published: 1997
format: 2003 Texas State Historical Association paperback
acquired: 2010 from the Texas A&M Press (I visited the building on campus)
read: Jun 18 – Jul 9 time reading: 22:39, 3.4 mpp
rating: 3
genre/style: History theme: TBR
locations: Llano Estacado (west Texas and eastern New Mexico)
about the author: 1952-2017. Born in Amarillo, TX, he was a professor of historical geography at the University of Texas San Antonio.

This is a decent comprehensive history of the Llano Estacado - the curious flat high plains along the Texas-New Mexico border. By high plains, I mean a massive high flat plateau surrounded by cliffs. Before cars this plateau was a four-day trek, without reliable water, and flat as far as the eye can see. When Coronado hunted the mythical gold of Quivira, his guide took him through these plains with the intent to get the Spanish lost and thereby to wear them out and hopefully send them home. It worked to a degree, but cost the guide his life.

A little more on Coronado. His crew was exploring uncharted territory in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas in 1540. He had no idea where he was, his native guide was faulty, and there were no landmarks. Today no one knows where Coronado actually traveled, or where his major camps were. (Spanish relics have been found - crossbow arrow tips, a gauntlet, other armor - but they are hard to date.)

The name, El Llano Estacado, translates as "the staked plains". The meaning is actually unknown, but the implication is that when everything you can see is flat and monotonous, a stake in the ground is an important landmark.

Morris had fun writing about confused explorers from Cabeza de Vaca and Coronado, through the pioneer trails and initial US surveying. I never fully engaged though. His effort to honor his subtitle makes a lot of text out of some thin history. It was ok, but very very slow. A separate complaint is that this history completely neglects pre-Columbus history, and also most of the recorded native history. It's strictly a white, and later an Anglo perspective.

Recommended if you want to learn about this fascinating area in far west Texas and eastern New Mexico...well, you don‘t really have any other options, besides his sources.

Wow, Dan, you are popping out the reviews this morning. Three interesting books. I really must get back to Wharton as I have loved everything of hers I've read.

>21 labfs39: i hit a mood last night. 🙂 We’re reading The Custom of the Country in August on Litsy…if you’re interested.

>22 dchaikin: Full moon? LOL. That's one of the ones I have read and very much enjoyed.

Enjoyed reading your reviews! I was pretty amused by the King John review and you do make it sound interesting--I loved Richard II, which I also consider an enjoyable, well-written mess.

I had similar thoughts on North and South (too business-friendly, some weird stuff going on with characters identified as masculine/feminine, although I thought John came off as unlikeable and unattractive for a good portion of the book) and The Reef (the ending really dragged it down for me, although I enjoyed it up to that point) but I think I liked the former more and the latter less than you.

>24 DieFledermaus: Thanks for the comments, Maus. It's pretty cool that you have read two of my last handful of books. The Reef just dies at the end. I still liked it quite a bit, but it really comes to a halt, then ends with a "screw you, dear reader, I'm done" kind of unsatisfactory way. As for North and South, I'm intrigued you had that impression of John Thornton, since he always came across positive to me. He seemed much older than Margaret in that first scene. But he always seemed more thoughtful and considerate and more open-minded than the trope evil factory owner. (*shrug*)

So, I missed Richard II. I joined my Shakespeare group over a year into their reading. I need to back-fill all I missed. (I'm stumbling through the sonnets now. They're work.)

My week included a summer trip to Breckenridge. An exhausting for me, mildly wearing for anyone in ok shape, hike, took me here:

(I spent the trip reading Persuasion (a chapter a day), Shakespeare's Sonnets (~3 a day), and, more appropriately, Roadside Geology of Colorado. I was hoping to have a moment with Shakespeare's sonnets while hiking, but, first, they aren't really nature poems, and second, they're really difficult. The last thing I wanted to do, huffing exhausted during a hike, was work through a sonnet, even one I had already read and enjoyed. So, a no go.)

>26 dchaikin: Beautiful! I enjoyed that area when I visited a few years ago, but the elevation did make even easy hikes a huff-a-thon. What were the temps like? It's as hot as hades here.

>26 dchaikin: Great picture!

Patrick Stewart read a sonnet a day during pandemic - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLLiEya-Q4RQdTJb97i8gU6MXHZs_HUlB

>30 dianeham: thanks! I have known about this and listened to a couple when they were newly released. I haven't felt ready to revisit him reading these yet, though. I feel some need to be more in touch with them. Maybe Probably that's weird.

>28 labfs39: thanks. Elevation and the walking up were both very difficult for me to manage. :) Temperatures were ok. Under 50 in the morning and 80's in the afternoon. I was never cold in the morning, as I normally am in the 50's, in shorts. The afternoon's were hot, but never actually uncomfortably so.

>29 LibraryLover23: thanks!

>19 dchaikin: I read a review recently, useful to have another take.

>32 qebo: paywall. :(

>33 dchaikin: Sorry. I caved to teaser articles a long time ago.

Just caught up with your threads - read the reviews of books i have read, Two Gentlemen of Verona (I think i read it all, not sure how much I had realised that ending was what it was, this is where reading plays, i sometimes wonder, if i have really got them); Memento Mori; Copperfield (never saw him as blond!) (still unfinished here too) and oh yes also your Bruno review which I have not read but I have been reading a bit about him since reading the famous poem by Milosz. I enjoyed your review.

>33 dchaikin: You can read the article via the Internet Archives: A Genetic History of the Americas.

>26 dchaikin: Looks like a picturesque hike. i do miss the high plaves.

>19 dchaikin: I thinkan article of hers came up around discussions land bidrges and current theories. Lost track of the book. Might have to see if i can track down an audio copy.

>35 tonikat: if you read on Two Gentlemen of Verona you will find there are different interpretations. It sounds like Valentine is offering Sylvia to Proteus, but there are ways to back out of that meaning, and it may not have been the intended one. The line, in Act V, is: "All that was mine in Silvia I give thee." Thanks for stopping by K.

On Origins and Raff and the bad NY Times article:

>36 labfs39: huh, I had never heard Internet Archives. Noting! (But how does one search there? Your link works, but I lost trying a search.)

>34 qebo: & >37 stretch: The way Raff presents that theory is as if it's the accepted theory of North American origins. That the NYTimes article is suggesting her conclusions are (a) hers and (b) radical is probably bad or sloppy journalism. I think it is intentionally tricky wording to gain readership.* As most readers, like 99.99%, don't know the state of the science and it probably seems radically new to us. But, seriously, I'm pretty sure Raff is reporting the state of science, and not anything exactly shocking new. (The White Sands footprints, dated 22,000 yrs ago, are new. They were dated while she was writing and she was able to review the key papers from the authors before they were published. Those dates are very well controlled and as accurate as any carbonate date ever, I think. Raff was hesitant to say much about them other than that they show the current theories are only part of the story of the Americas.)

*some examples of the tricky wording the article:

"But, according to the University of Kansas anthropological geneticist Jennifer Raff, that’s not quite how it happened." - true, but also according to everyone else in the science.

"Raff beautifully integrates new data from different sciences (archaeology, genetics, linguistics) and different ways of knowing, including Indigenous oral traditions, in a masterly retelling of the story of how, and when, people reached the Americas." - not really true. She reports an existing integration. But she does it well, and with true expertise.

"While admittedly not an archaeologist herself, Raff skillfully reveals how well-dated archaeological sites, including recently announced 22,000-year-old human footprints from White Sands, N.M., are at odds with the Clovis first hypothesis" - the word "reveals" is badly misleading. She illustrates this. It's not revealing to anyone in the science. I didn't know Pre-Clovis was the state of the science, but everyone informed of the science did.

etc.

>39 dchaikin: The Internet Archive is a nonprofit that is attempting to archive, well, the Internet, by taking snapshots of sites, sometimes once, sometimes multiple times. To provide researchers a way to access these snapshots, they created the Wayback Machine. To use it, you enter a URL in the search bar. It brings up a timeline with all the times that URL has been saved. You pick the day and time you wish to view, and voila! It's not perfect, sometimes the page you want wasn't saved or it wasn't saved on the day you want, but it's how I avoid the paywall for articles I really want to read. I also use it to view websites that I created for work in the past that I want to see again.

>39 dchaikin: That's good to know. That article was a head scratcher I'm not super wll versed on the topic but what I do know didn't jive with the articles assertions. I couldn't tell if the article was hyping Raff up or if her work was something completely at odds with the current thinking. Happy to hear it is the former actually and not something pretending to be more significant thanit actually is. I would like a more in depth state of the science on this for sure. And it sounds far more interesting from your review than that article makes it out to be. I've got a hold on the audiobook.

>40 labfs39: thanks Lisa!

>41 stretch: enjoy, assuming it frees up at the right time. It works well on audio (although my audible copy did not have figures 🙁)

So covid has found me. I had a miserable night and miserable day. I’m momentarily feeling clear headed. Yuck. Fortunately I’m home, after traveling last week through Saturday. Not sure where I picked it up, but traveling certainly has its risks.

Oh no! hope you recover soon. People are just not being safe anymore. Not surprised so many people I know have it.

best wishes Dan

>44 cindydavid4: right, it’s easy to catch this lately. Hopefully my feeling more human today is a good sign. And hopefully Paxlovid, which I’ll start soon, will do me good.

>45 tonikat: thanks!

Hope you feel better soon, Dan

>42 dchaikin: That's kind of interesting about audible. I don't listen to many audiobooks, so I've never gone that route. My library has a thing if I check out a non-fiction audiobook they typically send a link to an browser ebook for figures and maps and things (nothing I can download and not a great option, but it's there). Never thought about how audible would tackle things like that. That is a shame they don't do something simliar since its all linked through Amazon.

Hope, you feel better soon. It's really not a fun bug to have.

Sorry to read of your Covid dose. My wife and I went through it during May, first me and then her. No fun. Hope you have a relatively short lived case.

Ugh, feel better, Dan. I hear Paxlovid does the trick, though it can give you ashtray mouth.

>43 dchaikin: Ugh. At least you got home before it hit.

>47 labfs39: thanks!

>48 stretch: usually I get a pdf with Audible books. I kept looking for it. Maybe i did something wrong or looked in the wrong place. (I sent audible a message but didn’t get a response.)

>49 rocketjk: thanks. Before I started the Paxlovid I started to feel at least human. Sick but human. I could concentrate finally yesterday later afternoon and I haven’t gotten so bad as that again since. Before that it was truly miserable. Prolonged feverish ick.

>50 lisapeet: huh, ashtray mouth. I think I have that. Anyway, I’ll take it! 🙂

>51 qebo: oh, I know. The hell if we were still on vacation when this happened.

Sorry to hear the 'Rona has got you, Dan. Interesting the mentions of Paxlovid on this thread; in the UK it's only available to those most physically at risk from Covid.

We went through airports a couple of times recently on our travels. We all wore masks throughout, and I estimate we were in around 1% who did. I was very surprised.

Around 1 in 15 in N. Ireland now have Covid. This latest variant seems to be pretty miserable. Hope you feel better soon.

Sorry to hear that you've gotten covid and thank goodness you're on the mend.

I'm sorry that you've contracted COVID-19, Dan. I hope that your recovery is swift and uncomplicated. Three other friends of mine, all colleagues at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, have contracted COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated and double boostered, so I've gone back to wearing masks in public settings.

Did you primary care physician prescribe Paxlovid, or did a pharmacist do so?

>55 kidzdoc: hi. My gp did. He was terrific. I called him Sunday afternoon and left message not knowing what to expect. He called within an hour and talked me through things. Monday morning he reviewed my blood tests (kidney concerns) and by 8am prescribed paxlovid and 3 other medicines, including prednisone.

>53 AlisonY: my gp said the latest variant is very flu like in symptoms. Of course it’s also very contagious. Interesting about how your part of the world is.

>54 ELiz_M: thanks! I’m fever free this morning. Coughing, weak, but feeling the best since this started.

Glad to hear you're on the mend.

>53 AlisonY: "Interesting the mentions of Paxlovid on this thread; in the UK it's only available to those most physically at risk from Covid."

Here in the U.S., anyone over age 65 is considered significantly at risk from the harms of the current Covid strains. An article I saw in The NY Times said that folks in my age group who had not been double-boosted were at particularly significant risk for severe results from the recent iterations of the virus. I have had both boosters, but my doctor still made sure I got a course of Paxlovid. My wife, also vaccinated and double-boosted, caught the disease from me just as we thought I was coming out of it, but since she is still under 65 she did not take Paxlovid. She actually healed up more quickly than I did. We suspect I got a bit of the "Paxlovid rebound."

>58 rocketjk: I’m not over 65. My dr didn’t mention anything about age when he prescribed it. Maybe it was his judgment

In my province, (PEI) public health say paxlovid for people over 50. Now my parents just got COVID (75 and 81) and they don’t start it for a few days, according to my mom’s text. Now we are ‘watching for symptoms’.
Hope you are feeling better soon, Dan.

>60 raidergirl3: I’m really sorry to hear that. My mother, 79, got it in May. It was hard on her, but she’s fine now. (She has advanced dementia and no memory of having covid.)

Hopefully it will be a minor case, Dan. Get better soon!

Just catching up. Sorry to hear that COVID got you. Get well soon! :)

>59 dchaikin: I didn't mean to suggest that there was some sort of hard line about only folks over 65 being prescribed Paxlovid, although I can see how my post might have given that impression. I do think, though, that being over 65 is thought to put folks at greater risk to the most recent variants.

My understanding is that us over-65ers are more strongly encouraged to take the treatment, while in the case of younger folks it's more, as you say, a judgement call, either by the individual or of his/her/their medical professional.

I hope you're continuing to feel better.

The Booker prize 2022 longlist (longest to shortest)

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout- trilogy, 687p, ~19:00
- — (My Name is Lucy Barton, 193p, 4:11 - not on the list, but first of trilogy)
- — (Anything is Possible, 254p, 8:29 - not on the list, but 2nd of trilogy)
- Oh William!, 240p, 5:42 or 7:00
- Booth by Karen Joy Fowler, 480p, 13:44
- Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer, 448p, 12:20
- Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo, 416p, no audio
- Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley, 288p, 10:48
- Trust by Hernan Diaz, 416p, 10:21
- The Colony by Audrey Magee, 376p, 8:10
- The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, 368p, no audio
- The Trees by Percival Everett, 309p, 7:43
- After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz, 288p, no audio
- Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet, 288p, no audio
- Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, 128p, 1:57
- Treacle Walker by Alan Garner, 152p, no audio

ETA - looks a lot shorter in reading time than the 2021 list (although maybe not in # of pages)

>62 AnnieMod: Thanks. One very difficult day. One sicky one. And now recovery.

>63 OscarWilde87: thank you!

>64 rocketjk: no worries. I would not want to take medicine from someone who needs it more. Hopefully my doctor did the right thing.

>65 dchaikin: So, is the narrator for Night Crawling really slooooow or is Trust really fast? The audio time is almost the same, even though one has nearly twice the pages as the other (supposedly).

Glad you are recovering from covid. I was in Texas last week in Austin seeing my mother, and went to Houston Friday night to visit my daughter and family for the weekend. We visited Friday night maskless of course and Saturday morning she's and her husband tested positive for covid. So far they have mild to no symptoms. I've been testing negative and returned home, but my husband is staying with my son and I'm in our condo for a few days to make sure I don't pass anything along to him.

>67 ELiz_M: I know. Weird. My guess is Trust has a lot of white space.

>68 arubabookwoman: that stinks! I hope you dodged it. And I’m glad your husband took that precaution. I think Houston is particularly careless, in general. So many people coming and going and no one where’s a mask. I flew through Houston to Denver on my trip. Maybe 1/10 wore masks in either airport. (I actually mostly did too, but forgot a few times! And then…i took it off on the plane. So really I was as careless as anyone.)

A couple quick reviews for books finished just before and one just after covid. (update today: I feel exhausted. No fever, no symptoms except that I have no strength.)



34. Persuasion by Jane Austen
published: 1817
format: 217 pages within a free Kindle edition of the collected works of Austen
acquired: June 30 read: Jul 1-23 time reading: 10:05, 2.8 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: Classic fiction theme: none
locations: The Somerset countryside, Lyme Regis (Dorset) and Bath (Somerset)
about the author:1775-1817, born in Stevenson, Hampshire

I was invited to a group read of this on Goodreads, a chapter a day, with discussion on each chapter, July 1-24. It worked out nicely.

My Litsy post: I‘m kind of an Austen slacker. This is only the second of her novels I‘ve read, even as I know only she has that special quietly elegant and playfully ambiguous nuance of expression. I adored Anne, the baron‘s humble disregarded middle daughter, trapped in manner; and I adored her variety of quiet strength. Of course I‘m following a long line here.

There's more to say, even if I dodge the plot. This, Austen's last completed novel, foregrounds gender issues and roles, women trapped in the home, while men sent out in the world. She tells us, "We {women} cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feeling prey upon us." Later Anne is lectured about women's fickle sense of love, with citations and she is told, "But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men." And she replies, "Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."

miscellany: Persuasion was given its name by Austen's surviving siblings or publisher. She died, only 41, before having published it, but after having made a small name for herself. Her informal name was "The Elliots", the main character's, Anne's, family name.

35. Roadside Geology of Colorado (Third Edition) by Felicie Williams & Halka Chronic
published: 2014 (first edition 1980, 2nd 2002)
format: ~382-page Kindle ebook
acquired: July 15 read: Jul 15-25 time reading: 17:43, 2.8 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: popular science theme: geology/travel
about the author: Halka Chronic: 1923-2013, an American geologist born in Tucson, AR. Felicie Williams: 1953-2015, daughter of Halka, an American geologist born in Boulder, CO.

So tragic story behind this. The authors were mother and daughter. Halka Chronic, author of the original edition (and also of Roadside Geology guides for Utah, Arizona and New Mexico) died in 2013, age 93, the year before this 3rd edition. Felicie Williams, a mine mineral mapper, died of cancer (work related?) the year after, age 62. Who will do the next edition?

But it‘s good stuff, on a very complicated place.

Colorado geological history in a not so clear nutshell:

A lot happened in Colorado over a 400-million-year period, from 1.8 to 1.4 billion years ago. And then there is no record for 1 billion years. At the end of this lost record Colorado was flat, until around 300 millions years ago (Pennsylvanian period) when the Ancestral Rockies formed. These brought deep ancient rocks to the surface, and then also weathered flat over the next 200 million years. 100 million years ago Colorado was under deep water, accumulating thick deep marine sediments. Then around 70 million years ago Laramide mountain building started working west to east across Wyoming and Colorado, bringing ancient deeply buried rocks up to the surface again, creating most of current assortment of mountain structure, but these mountains were lower than today... like 5000 ft lower. About 25 million years ago all of Colorado and the surrounding region rose up 5000 ft. Before that Colorado's many famous 14,000 ft peaks were 9000 ft peaks. At the same time a deep rift formed between most of the state of Colorado and an area called the Colorado Plateau. The Colorado Plateau is not a mountain range. Incorporating southern Utah, northern Arizona, all of the Grand Canyon, and the west edges of Colorado and New Mexico, it is largely undeformed, just high. The rift is the Rio Grande Rift. This was accompanied by a lot of volcanism (at least through 6 million years ago) that created the San Juan Mountains in western Colorado.

There is a degree of confidence in explaining the Ancestral Rocky and Laramide mountain building phases. But the late phase has no settled explanation. It's largely the kind of activity expected at the end of a tectonic plate, not in the middle.

The authors put it this way: Some geologists proposed that the volcanism was triggered as the North American plate overrode the Pacific plate and part of its midocean ridge by perhaps as much as 1200 miles. If so, friction would have melted great quantities of crustal rock, which then may have risen along old faults to build volcanoes ... Eventually, the subducted plate may have run up against the deep roots of the Rockies and been unable to push farther east, creating the huge forces that brought about regional uplift in Colorado and neighboring states. Development of the San Andreas fault in California may have relieved the pressures and brought on tension, stretching the domed-up area to the breaking point and creating the deep faults associated with the Rio Grande Rift. Those faults, reaching down to the mantle, would have allowed the escape of magma from the mantle--the basalt flows of the Late Phase of volcanism.

A far-fetched story? It may be. It fits the facts, but the facts are too few."

I read it through, mostly while in the above pictured mountains in CO last week (and the flights there and back) and enjoyed it quite a bit. The geological maps of mountains can really undermine the desire for order and explanation. The authors do a great job of providing lots of local simplified geological maps and explanations so the reader can work out the bigger geological trends. The bad thing is those maps are not located on any reference map, so sometimes I needed Google Maps to figure out where the map was.

Oooofff, sorry to hear that you caught Covid. Hope the recovery is going well!

>73 dchaikin: had a great time discovering the rocky mountains; knew nothing of its history; fascinating. in the scheme of things we are all just a blip in time compared with these upheavals in the world.

>74 DieFledermaus:. Thanks. I thought I was done. Joyfully tested, confidently noted no 2nd line two minutes in. The test is of course 15 minutes. I got a faint line. Still covid positive. Day 7 😟🙁☹️

>75 cindydavid4: well, yeah. But it’s still very fragile there, in light of human capacities. But also it’s such a weird place to envision, 1.8 billion year old rocks hanging out above your head, performing your scenery.

Grrrr....sorry about the second line.

>76 dchaikin: have you looked at the cdc guidelines for post covid practices? I don't know what your workplace/life requirements are, but some people continue to test positive for weeks.

My workplace (as advised by an epidemiologist from a very good hospital) has employees testing three times a week and after a positive test requires the standard five days of isolation, no sympyoms, and a doctor's note to rerun to work. Then the individual is exempted from the testing protocol for 30 days.

>78 ELiz_M: thanks. I’ll check. since i can work from home, not too worried about being in my office. But isolating at home creates stress for everyone.

“If an individual has access to a test and wants to test, the best approach is to use an antigen test1 towards the end of the 5-day isolation period. Collect the test sample only if you are fever-free for 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication and your other symptoms have improved (loss of taste and smell may persist for weeks or months after recovery and need not delay the end of isolation). If your test result is positive, you should continue to isolate until day 10.” ☹️

That's too bad! Wishing you a negative test quickly!

Thanks Liz!

I would think that if you are still feeling exhausted, you should continue to rest. No need to provoke long covid.

Sorry that you have Covid. I had it at the beginning of May. I did get Paxlovid and had cold symptoms. My doctor told me that I could still test positive for up to a month after most of my symptoms were gone. I had fatigue for a while and was lucky that after 9 days I tested negative.

>83 labfs39: I got a lot of reading done this weekend. :) (Mostly Anniversaries)

>84 torontoc: I'm seeing a lot of mentions of 9 days. That will be tomorrow for me. I'll test again mid-week.

planning and how it played out

June wrap-up

planned - Actual
10 hrs - 8:08 King John acts 3 & 5 and afterward (took 11:55 overall)
10 hrs - 8:46 The Reef, 1912 - book II-V (took 11:14 overall)
10 hrs - 5:20 Anniversaries II by Uwe Johnson (didn't get back into it)
13 hrs - 10:17 North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell - 2nd half (took 23:03 overall)
1/2 hr - 0:23 No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (took 4:55 overall)
16 hrs- 17:26 El Llano Estacado by John Miller Morris - 1st 3/4
---
59.5 hrs - 50:20

July wrap-up

planned - Actual
11 hrs - 10:05 Persuasion by Jane Austen
15 hrs- 17:22 Sonnets (#1-88)
7 hrs - 5:13 El Llano Estacado by John Miller Morris - last 1/4 (took 22:39 overall)
16 hrs - 0:28 The Man Without Qualities by Thomas Musil (just got in one sitting)
13 hrs - 11:32 Anniversiaries II by Uwe Johnson (finally caught on this weekend)
0 hrs - 17:43 Roadside Geology of Colorado by Felicie Williams & Halka Chronic (finished)
---
62 hrs - 62:23

August plan

13 hrs The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, 1913 (first 4/5)
11 hrs Sonnets (89-154, and maybe some further reading)
8 hrs The File on H by Ismail Kadare
20 hrs The Man Without Qualities by Thomas Musil (volume 1, first 1/2)
10 hrs Anniversiaries II by Uwe Johnson (And maybe I will start vol III)
---
62 hrs

On a side note, I'm also thinking about the planned stuff I haven't gotten to and am not getting to, from my neglected TBR: The Book of Flights by le clezio, Empires of the Indus : The Story of a River by Alice Albinia & The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

Fingers crossed for your test mid-week, and I hope you'll be feeling better too by that time, because testing negative whilst still being unable to function normally is not fun! I too caught covid on holiday (in early July) and my energy levels haven't fully recovered yet.

>87 Dilara86: I'm hearing this a lot. So far I haven't pressed, but it's definitely time for me to get out the door and see where I am strength-wise. (plus I need to start a new audiobook, to get my Booker 2022 reading going)

I am a month behind on your reading, but I'm so glad I can re-live those Gaskell novels through your reviews! You've become over the years an amazing and admirable reader, Dan.

>89 avaland: imagine my flattered embarrassed face. You know, i check your thread and the what are you reading threads, see what you're reading, and immediately think I have got this all wrong.

So sorry about your covid bout. It certainly seems to be rampant. We're going out West for a cruise down the Columbia and Snake later this month and crossing our fingers.

>91 janeajones: sounds like a fabulous cruise

Hope you get to the end of your infectious time soon, Dan, and don't have too much in the way of lingering effects. Covid is such a crapshoot (among other things).

>93 lisapeet: So true, it’s a random thing. And each version is so different. I finally tested negative Wednesday morning, and I’m out of isolation. Now to find my strength.

>94 dchaikin: Congratulations on your negative test! I hope you'll regain your strength soon...

Well - I spoke too soon. I’m positive again this morning. ☹️ Rebounds are supposed to be mild, but I’m back in isolation.

>96 dchaikin: That's too bad. My parents are coming back from Alaska tomorrow, and I'm worried about what they will bring with them... Fatigue is an invisible but often significant symptom that people who don't suffer from it tend to pooh-pooh. I hope you feel better soon.

>97 labfs39: I understand your worry about your parents. And thanks.

I keep hearing about these rebounds, and the on again off again test result. Do these home tests have the same relaibilty and validity that the tests we were getting before?

>73 dchaikin: Reading about books like this always make me wish I knew something about geology. It is such a fascinating subject. I'm glad you're here with actual knowledge to fit these books in now and again!

>96 dchaikin: I had the same story. And during the approximately 5 hours I was out of isolation before testing positive again, I managed to pass the rotten thing on to my wife.

>101 rocketjk: I’m really worried about that.

I'm so sorry you have covid and it seems to be dragging on like this. Hopefully you'll be rid of it soon, without that miserable aftermath.
I notice you have some interesting books planned for August. Hopefully you get to that soon. I started Musil's Man without Qualities once and loved it. But then I lacked the time and perseverance to read the whole book. However, the book continues to stare at me from my bookcase. That happens when you place a book at eye level, of course. Anyway, I wish you a very speedy recovery and happy reading.

>103 Trifolia: I’m testing my own perseverance with The Man Without Qualities. I’m 70 pages in. I don’t mind it. He’s thoughtful and funny and has a lot of dynamic stuff going on. But I’m not feeling an 800 or 1700 page draw yet. He’s pulling a lot from Nietzsche, and I’m not familiar with him.

>104 dchaikin: - You are very brave to start with Musil while dealing with covid. Good luck!

Hi, Dan. Finally paying visits again. Sorry about the illness; not sure you should be dosing on Musil now... :)

Tip perhaps to store for future use: if The Man defeats you (not a sin), maybe broach him via stories first. Also, The Confusions of young Törless, while singularly unpleasant, is a much shorter book yet as (and possibly more) influential and symbolic of the place and time as The Man...

>73 dchaikin:

A mother and daughter pair of scientists, I wonder how often that happens? Thanks for that tidbit, albeit sad.

>106 LolaWalser: certainly very few geologists born in the 1920’s were women. I imagine Halka Chronic must have been a strong independent character, and probably someone it would have been nice to have met. I imagine they were both pioneering in their own way.

I made an iffy decision with Musil. I didn’t prep. I didn’t read his early stuff or hunt down and read the one well regarded biography of him. I decided if he’s going to subject me to 1700 unfinished pages, he’ll have to do with that book on its own. So I’m very unprepared. I don’t know anything about Nietzsche or the other philosophers he keeps mentioning and which he’s clearly having conversations with. I’m picking up he’s concerned with the soul and the soulless cacophony of his contemporary life. Heartlessness is a kind of theme. And he’s interested in how impressed we are by normal thought processes, claiming inspiration.

Anyway, i have enough to hang on for now, just enough to keep me interested and reading more, even if I never plunge into to any depth. And I have time to change my mind and start filling in on what I’m missing.

>107 dchaikin: Immersion could be a good way to absorb this book. Who says you have to have a college degree and half a year of prep work (so to speak) to read a novel. Who knows, that more intuitive approach may give you a completely different perspective. I'm curious about your opinion. Who knows, I may follow your lead.

Yeah, I think it's fair to expect from a literary fiction to be intelligible on some level without excessive supplements (although here I suppose Joyceans would immediately cry "nay!"), and Musil isn't deliberately difficult. I don't recall that Nietzsche coloured the text?--maybe as a foil, because Musil was decidedly on the liberal (in the cultural sense), humanist side. (One of the things that set him interestingly apart from the majority of conservative Catholic Austrians.)

I remain annoyed that The Man... wasn't finished. That, and the suspicion that the meanderings were due to author's not knowing where he wanted to go with it (events were constantly outpacing his fiction), is what makes it less than a dead cert recommendation from me.

>109 LolaWalser: I keep thinking why he waited till 1930 to get out this first WWI mindset volume. I think of all the authors he didn’t influence over those ten years he kept going. Obviously he struggled. He had a lot of unresolved contradictions.

>39 dchaikin: Dan, you were absolutely right about Jennifer Raff's Origin (that touchstone is endlessly frustrating). It's much less sensational than that Article paints it. Which to me way of thinking is a good thing. Really what she wrote is an extensive overview of the current science and the slow progress we have made to understand the origins of the people of North America. This is far more interesting than the myth that there is only one simple theory that replaces the outdated land bridge. Nuance is hard for the general audience to understand so i can see the angle from New York Times, but Jennifer Raff is nothing but nuance and detail.

I'll be curious to see how the White Sands Footprints with their tight dating will shape future research and studies.

>111 stretch: I’m glad you read Raff. It’s a really nice book, expertly done. I encourage you to search YouTube on White Sands footprints. There are terrific videos explaining the nature of the dating and all the other stuff - tons of other animal prints. It’s unique and beautiful.

Hi Dan, I'm sorry you caught covid and I hope you are feeling better!
I just returned from a trip to Malaysia and was not worried at all because everybody was wearing masks, most people even wore theirs outdoors. Even in restaurants, most people took off their masks only while eating and wore them before and after the meal, while reading the menu, while waiting for the bill, while chatting etc. I was amazed and felt very safe.
Now I'm back in Germany and got the real reverse culture shock because despite frequent announcements, most people didn't wear masks on the train home from the airport, and neither did they in the supermarket (in the supermarket you don't have to).

>26 dchaikin: >72 dchaikin: Beautiful landscape!

>71 dchaikin: Persuasion is one of my Austen favorites and one I soon hope to reread. Wonderful review!

>107 dchaikin: Robert Musil is still on my reading list, too. Your comments are very interesting.

>113 MissBrangwen: Malaysia?! Vacation or work?

I’m past covid, finally. Getting back to normal. Thanks for the comments. Musil froze me on his waxing on Geist. I spent about an hour on two pages, rereading over and over.

Glad you made it through covid. It seems to have gotten everyone who managed to avoid it up to now.

glad you are feeling better. So far its stayed away from us, but I won't be surprised if that changes. still washing hands and wearing masks when Im volunteering and shopping. >113 MissBrangwen: like you, amazed how non chalant everyone is now, but the CDC said we could be so there we are.

>115 RidgewayGirl: >116 cindydavid4: it’s like a flu these days. Almost everyone seems to have gotten it these past 6 months. (Of course, it’s more contagious than the flu) Unfortunately it’s still very dangerous for many people. But the vaccine is a game changer. Before that a lot more people were hit really hard. (Like Lisa and Kevin)

In my case, if I don’t take paxlovid, I have one bad day, a couple iffy days and a ten-day isolation. But because of Paxlovid I had a 20-day isolation. Ultimately that extra time had a cost on other aspects of life and work life.

Sorry about the Covid Dan! Glad you’re feeling better.

>118 FlorenceArt: thanks!

36. Anniversaries II by Uwe Johnson
translation: from German by Damion Searls, 2018
published: 1971
format: 458 pages within a 1671-page Nook ebook, from New York Review Books Classic
acquired: January, read: Jun 5 – Aug 14, time reading: 22:09, 2.9 mpp
locations: 1967-1968 New York City and WWII Germany
about the author: 1934-1984, East German author born in Kamień Pomorski in Pomerania (then in Germany, now in Poland)

I finished the 2nd book, so half way home, but also a month behind my year plan. It feels a little anticlimactic to finish, since in my Nook I just flip a page and start book 3.

I read book one January-to-April. Waited till June to start book two, and did not get into it for a long time. Then one day in late July it clicked, and I was back involved. However, as I was reading this, I would come across a name I had forgotten, look it up in my Nook app search, and find entire sections of the book I have no memory of reading. huh.

Bk2 has changes from Bk1. It‘s more distinctly Gesine‘s voice, but at the cost of much of the atmospheric other feel he generated in book 1, largely by paraphrasing the NY Times daily. It's an unfortunate cost. This book also covers all WW2 in the backstory, Gesine as young school-age child in Germany, and that backstory takes priority over the then contemporary NYC, excepting MLK‘s assassination and aftermath. I hadn't really though about the riots after King's assassination, and Johnson brings that aspect home. I'm glad I did really get into this eventually. I started Book 3 yesterday.

side note - now that I'm reading Musil, one thing I notice in Anniversaries is its debt to Musil. Johnson doesn't use Musil's satire, but I sensed he pulled some of his pacing, his mixing of plots and side notes, from Musil. (although maybe not directly) Musil was, in a way, a post-WWI voice. And Johnson strived to be post-WW2 voice in a somewhat similar vein.

Skipping book 37, on Shakespeare's sonnets, until I finish another book on the sonnets.

38. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
published: 1998
format: 235-page paperback (49th printing of a 2002 edition)
acquired: 2017 read: Aug 6-21 time reading: 5:01, 1.3 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Mystery theme: none
locations: Batswana
about the author: born in 1948 in Bulawayo in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe). Helped co-found the law school and teach law at the University of Botswana in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Covid, and the medication I used, had some weird aspects on my brain. It led to my first day of not reading after a 300-day streak. It also left my concentration all over the place. I had days of amazing reading, and days of almost no ability to concentrate. So I should call out SassyLassy. She left me a note that simply said, "find yourself an old favourite book, or a light and easy one". I took this to heart. I looked around in my isolation room, our guest room, and found this book on the shelf. (It was my daughter's, a book I helped her pick-out when she was looking for mysteries. I had rescued it from her discard pile earlier this summer. She told me she had started it at one time.)

Well, it's actually kind of slow, dwelling on setting, and so my initial response was mixed. I liked it, but it was still difficult for my mindset. But I found I kept coming back to it whenever everything else seemed too difficult. And it provided an enjoyable escape every time. So success. It‘s a nice book, thoughtful in its sort of simple-life wisdom. I‘m not sure I‘ll pursue more books from the series, but I‘m glad I met Mma Ramotswe and read this one.

>123 dchaikin: That series seems custom-written for someone who needs something undemanding and pleasant, but not boring.

>124 RidgewayGirl: yes, exactly.

>120 dchaikin: Great review! I stopped reading Anniversaries altogether when my reading fell apart due to my mom's second fall in March, and now I am just not feeling it and am drawn somewhere else altogether... But well, one day!

>123 dchaikin: I hope to get to that series one day, too.

I am experiencing some of these concentration problems, too. Whatever I do, I cannot do it for too long. Today I listened to my audiobook for 30 minutes and later read a book for another 30 minutes, that was all I could do in that regard, but it is at least something!

>126 MissBrangwen: I’m sorry you’re dealing with that too. It’s very frustrating. (I encourage you to take SassyLassy’s advice. 🙂)

>127 dchaikin: Thank you, I think I will! It's a very good idea.

>123 dchaikin: Just glad you found something that worked.

I'm trying to get myself motivated to pick up Anniversaries again. I set it aside half way through book 2. Reviews from you and from annamorphic on our group read thread have me feeling a little more like getting back to it. We'll see . . .

>129 SassyLassy: Thanks for that message. :)

>130 japaul22: I wish I knew why I got into it (Anniversaries) again. It just happened. It wasn't plot or WW2, I was just into it. Before that it was a challenge to keep reading.

Catching up. Enjoyed the geology chat. My husband's very interested in geology so I've become more interested by association. When we were in the Cotswolds in July we noticed that the Cotswold stone shingle that was used around the house we were renting had sea fossils in it. By the end of the week we'd quite the collection picked out. It fascinated all of us that there we were, sitting 60 miles inland from the nearest sea, yet we were surrounded by these interesting relics over 160 million years old.

You might be interested in this little link on the sea fossils they've found in this area: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/july/huge-jurassic-seabed-uncovered-in-...

Well done on finishing Anniversaries II - enjoyed your review. I really need to start III, but I'm finding that I have a whole pile of other books that seem more interesting to read first. Perhaps in the winter when the days get shorter again.

>132 AlisonY: that’s cool about the Cotswald fossils. I understand about Anniversaries III. So far it’s a lot like the second book.

I'm late in catching up. Sorry about the covid episod, and I'm glad you're feeling better.
>123 dchaikin: Not your usual type of books, I'd say, but I'm glad you like it. It is on my shelves, so I know I can pick it up when I need an undemanding and pleasant, but not boring book!

>134 raton-liseur: Hi racoon. I'm glad I read the Alexander McCall Smith. It was fun and leaves a nice impression.

39. Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
reader: January LaVoy
published: 2022
format: 13:44 audible audiobook (480 pages in hardcover)
acquired: August listened: Aug 2-22
rating: 3
genre/style: Contemporary Fiction theme: Booker 2022
locations: mainly 1840’s/1850’s Baltimore. But also NY City, Panama, San Francisco, London and elsewhere.
about the author: American author born in Bloomington, IN, 1950

You might have seen my comment on the Avid Readers thread on historical fiction. I called Booth " too long, too much setting for me. The first 80% of the book is set up for the assassination. But these early 19th century characters feel like 2020 personalities to me, tossed in a shack with a bunch of time-period nouns. I didn’t buy in."

My first completed book from the Booker longlist is a novel on the family of J Wilkes Booth. It‘s not actually a bad novel. It's clean and has its way. But I really wasn‘t a fan, so much so that I‘ve been hesitant to review. I found it barely kept my interest through the opening 11 hours on audio, which in hindsight I view as an overly drawn-out setting. (It‘s 13 hours) Also I didn‘t like how a story about a family with 4 (!) Shakespearean actors failed to bring in Shakespeare‘s language. And I don‘t understand the novel‘s purpose. Why put the spotlight on such a terrible person? (Fowler tells us she asked herself this question, but she doesn't really explain how she resolved it except to say she was interested in learning about the family.)

Too bad about Booth. It had potential...

>137 Dilara86: a lot of readers like it, including Lois who I consider a exceptionally good guide. So don’t conclude based on my response alone. For what it’s worth, it would take a lot to get me like a novel that foregrounds the person who killed one of my favorite people in history.

>136 dchaikin: Hm. I don't mind books which spend most of their time setting up the scenes as long as it is done properly. It is coming from the library this weekend so we shall see how it goes.

As for spotlights on terrible people and all that - I think we should keep the spotlights on them, especially after they die (and had been dead for awhile). Mainly so we do not forget. And even if Booth was a terrible person (or at least did a terrible thing), his family and circle may deserve a chance to be shown in some way...

>139 AnnieMod: Yes, I do agree about the spotlighting. And those are good points. If I had bought in, I might have seen value here in that kind of way.

However I think his family was iffy at best, even if she makes them more sympathetic. A lot of problems that she arguably gives a rosy tint to, without changing the known facts. A lot of crazy actors doing narcissistic stuff.

>136 dchaikin: I had to look up Booth, because apparently for Americans his name is enough information. So I guess there wasn't much suspense about the ending ;-)

“But these early 19th century characters feel like 2020 personalities to me, tossed in a shack with a bunch of time-period nouns.” I find that's a very frequent problem with historical novels, and it's extremely annoying.

Looking at the info on Booth I saw that Karen Joy Fowler is also the author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I read that one and although the story was intriguing, I was unimpressed by her writing.

>141 FlorenceArt: I actually really enjoyed We Are Completely Beside Ourselves. I could relate to the college atmosphere she created. (My main complaint with Booth is I didn’t feel like she captured the atmosphere. Very subjective, of course.)

Funny about the end. But it was actually really good. Because while we know what it going to happen to Lincoln, we don’t know what’s going to happen to Booth’s family. I was into it at that point. Curiously, on Litsy, I came across a reader I follow who enjoyed the first 11 hours, but found the ending felt like an add on. So we each saw the book as two separate parts, but with opposite perspectives.

40. The File On H. by Ismail Kadare
published: 1981 in Albanian
translation: Translated from Albanian to French by Jusuf Vrioni (1989). Translated from French to English by David Bellos (1998).
format: 202-page hardcover
acquired: June read: Aug 17-30 time reading: 4:56, 1.5 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Novel theme: none
locations: northern Albania
about the author: born 1936 in Gjirokastër, Alabania

Preface: I‘ve wanted to read Kadare for a while, care of LT. He keeps cropping up with appealing reviews (in threads by Mabith, wandering_star, arubabookwoman, SassyLassy, and DieFledermaus, who reviewed this book here in 2012, and probably others). I picked this book up because of the connection to Homer (The "H." in the title). An off-site conversation about the oral tradition behind Homer led me to read it with a small group on Litsy.

It's a quick read. It looks at Albanian culture through two Irish Homeric scholars from Harvard who have come to record Albanian traditional saga singers, bringing along the first widely available tape recorder (first available in 1930). This happens to be exactly what Milman Parry and Albert Lord actually did, becoming famous for their theories of the oral tradition behind the Iliad and the Odyssey. But Parry and Lord notably recorded Serbian singers in Yugoslavia, not Albanian singers.

Kadare is having fun. He doesn't lead us to the Homeric ideas; but instead begins very oddly with an entertaining satire of repressive 1930's Albania (presumably directly applicable to 1981 Albania). And everything he does tell us is oddly indirect. But it all works. We touch on Homeric origins in only way we can, reaching as we do into the unknown, and extending only with our imagination.

I found this a terrific little playful novel.

Recommended for the spontaneous.

41. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
editor: Linda Wagner-Martin (introduction and notes, 2006)
published: 1913
format: 384-page Penguin Classic
acquired: July read: Aug 1-30 time reading: 15:29, 2.4 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic novel theme: Wharton
locations: New York, Paris, and elsewhere in France
about the author: 1862-1937. Born Edith Newbold Jones on West 23rd Street, New York City. Relocated permanently to France after 1911.

One of Wharton's better-known novels is a quite fun and disturbing look at the New York City leisure class she was famous for attacking. She is playing with social Darwinism, and looking at the interaction between the those who came to New York and struck it rich on Wall Street and the old moneyed families of New York, often with Dutch sounding names, who are very protective of their turf. (There are a few striking parallels to The Great Gatsby, a later novel. But this one would be from Daisy's point of view.) The nouveau riche are presented like an invasive species in the more ancient other's habitat. One old-family character is described as having "bratracian" (frog-like) features. His last name is Van Degen. Your smartphone, being a good literary critic, may try to autocorrect that to "degenerate". Another, uselessly poetic, is describe as "a survival", a doomed species.

Wharton centers her book on a magnificent villain. Undine Spragg is a stunningly beautiful young woman who cannot be satisfied. The daughter of Wall Street new-comers, she strives for what she cannot get, access to the old rich families. But she is relentless in pursuit of whatever it is she thinks she wants. And, it‘s never enough; and nothing, nor anyone, is sacred. She is like an insatiable predator. But she hides this in a meek outwards appearance, like a shiny fishhook, snagging the interest of single and married men. But what is it she ultimately wants and why? And why doesn‘t there seem to be anything underneath?

I think I was horrified by Undine, especially as I watched other characters stumble into her storm, unaware. But I also I think with Undine, Wharton has created a masterpiece. She is, in a way, an allegory of practical cutthroat Wall Street then and now, the perfect goddess of soulless economy.

The novel isn‘t perfect IMO, but Undine maybe is. Recommended to anyone interested in Wharton.

37. The Sonnets by William Shakespeare
editor: Stephen Orgel, with introduction by John Hollander (1961, 1970, 2001)
published: originally 1609. This edition says 2001 but has a 2010 reference.
format: 193-page Pelican Shakespeare paperback
acquired: 2019 (with kidzdoc, at the Joseph Fox in Philadelphia, which closed earlier this year)
read: Jul 3 – Aug 19 time reading: 12:18, 3.8 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: Classic poetry theme: Shakespeare
about the author: April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616

42. All the Sonnets of Shakespeare edited by Paul Edmondson & Stanley Wells
published: 2020
format: 290-page Cambridge University hardcover
acquired: July 2 read: Jul 4 – Sep 2 time reading: 16:38, 3.4 mpp
rating: 4
about the editors: Stanley Wells is an English Shakespeare scholar, born in 1931. Paul Edmonson is an English Shakespeare scholar and priest, born maybe in the 1980’s.

I read these as a group read on Litsy, at a pace of 22 sonnets a weak, or roughly 3 a day. They are really difficult to read. They take time, and you have to read them a few times, just to get the surface meaning. It's nothing like his plays, which are all light fun in comparison. For perspective, we usually at have 10-15 people in our group reads, but only four of us were really active for these. My feeling on finishing them was akin to having just finished a marathon. I was happy I made it. Then I went back and read the first 126 poems again, but rapidly, getting a different take. But both ways were rewarding.

They‘re difficult, but as you work through them they do open themselves up with so much language play. They are full of lines and stanza's and phrases that strike and stun and that you want to remember, especially once they click. They stretch the reader's mindset. And they reward re-reading. Each visit seems to give a different poem, and a different experience, even as favorite lines reward with recognition.

My favorite stanzas are those that open Sonnets 60 & 65, ones I would like to etch into memory. Sonnet 60 opens on the relentless ripples and their implications for wearing time:

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

(Full sonnet here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45095/sonnet-60-like-as-the-waves-make-to... )

Sonnet 65 opens on how the world destroys those impractical fragile beautiful things we love:

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

(Full sonnet here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50646/sonnet-65-since-brass-nor-stone-nor...

There is also a curious thing about the subject. I don't normally think about the nature of Shakespearean all-male theatre-crews off stage. Surely they must have been a draw to gay men. I just never thought about it with Shakespeare. (Are there any gay characters in his plays...other than the scene Coriolanus?) Anyway, these are mostly gay poems. This was a thing in 1590's London--both Petrarchan sonnets and gay sonnets were in vogue. So Shakespeare was writing to fashion. But I never thought of him as gay, and I can't picture the author of these poems as straight. So... it requires some mental adjusting.

Another curious thing is that Shakespeare may not have been involved in the 1609 publication of these sonnets. Which means we have to wonder how private these were, and also about their ordering. There is a narrative here. A man chides another man, a youth, about finding a woman and having children to perpetuate his line, or, as the sonnets suggest, his youth. Then Sonnet 18 comes, the most famous. "Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?" And it's here that it comes clear our writer is in love with this young man. Sonnets 18-126 go through a whole assortment of love's emotions - direct love, being apart, staying awake all night, jealousy, and then surprisingly asking for forgiveness, and what might be construed as a breakup. Within are rants on time and death and public reputation and criticism. It is the heart of this collections and, both in sum and in parts, really beautiful, but not simply. The passive-aggressive string is raw. Sonnets 127-152 are the dark lady sonnets. They are anti-Petrarchan. This lady is described as unattractive, impure, and unfaithful. (I imagined a common prostitute). Also these poems are much more difficult to follow. The collection closes with two playful Greek references to the flame of Love run amok.

The Pelican Edition

I like the Pelican edition. It's minimalist, with an interesting but not very helpful intro. The notes were curt, but smart and insightful. It doesn‘t have any real analysis.

The Edmondson/Wells Edition

This is a beautiful but odd edition and needs some extra commentary. The editors deconstruct the narrative. They reorder the sonnets in what they think might be the order of actual composition, adding in all the sonnets from the different plays. It's terribly destructive, but also this forces us to look at the sonnets differently, which is actually really nice.

They do two wonderful things: For each sonnet they give a one-line explanation/synopsis. And then in the back of the book they present the whole sonnet in plain words. This is crazy helpful. But, oddly, their notes on specific words and phrases are not well done. I'm glad I had this version, but very grateful I also had a different version too (with the correct ordering and with high-end notes).

So the Sonnets have a different appeal from Shakespeare's plays. They are not for the faint of heart. They do reward, and they reward re-reading and re-reading more. Recommended for the brave.

I enjoyed your last three reviews, Dan. I'm glad you've enjoyed Edith Wharton as much as you have. Your review of The File on H. reminds me that I need to read more by Kadare. After all, the man has been nominated for the Nobel Prize 15 times!

Thanks Lisa. I should read more Kadare. I’m pretty sure I would like it.

I'm curious about The File on H. because it sounds different from the two I read, Chronicle in Stone and Doruntine, which were both historical.

>148 labfs39: The File on H. is very playful. It does touch on history, and deep history with Homer, and Balkan tensions. Would you recommend those two novels, or one over the other? I was thinking The Siege should be next.

Yep, The File on H sounds really good, on the wishlist it goes.

>144 dchaikin: Great review of The Custom of the Country and great description of Undine. I unfortunately wimped out on the Litsy discussion of this one, which I failed to start on time and I never caught up. I am still only half way through, thoroughly hating Undine. She certainly is one of Wharton's more masterful creations.
Looking forward to Summer, which I have read twice, and which as I recall has a devastating ending (but could we expect less from Wharton ?)

>149 dchaikin: The Siege is a good one if you have it up next. (can't get a touchstone for it right now)

>150 stretch: I think you will like File on H. Hope you have a chance to read it.

>151 arubabookwoman: I think I’ve learned to expect tough treatment and tough endings with Wharton.

>152 SassyLassy: Thanks! Good to know. I need to acquire a copy first…

>145 dchaikin: Congratulations on reading Shakespeares sonnets. They are difficult and you do need some help to get much out of them. I read them in February this year and it took me a month. When I read them I found that reading them aloud helped a great deal, I tended to read each sonnet 4/5 times and referred to various commentaries. I put post-it notes on my favourite poems and at the end of my reading I counted 30 notes which is not bad out of a total of 154. It has to be said that they are not all great poems and certainly some are pretty dreary, the compensation is that most of them have some great lines.

The issue of the poet addressing the majority of his poems to a man can be disconcerting and added to this when he does write to the "dark lady" they are downright nasty for the most part. I read Dan Pattersons New Commentary on the sonnets and said:

"Patersons description as utterly heartbreaking, puts him fairly and squarely into the camp of those critics who think that the speaker in the poems is WS himself and that at least some of the poems are written from personal experience. If this is the case then WS was clearly homosexual or bisexual, which would account for the fact that his sonnet collection was not universally liked following the initial publication. There are examples of analysis where critics tie themselves into knots trying to prove that WS was heterosexual."

All good fun and it's a bit of an experience to get through them all.

Thanks Bas. I remembered your review and was glad to have some overlap. I reread your review on the work page after posting mine. I had a number of thoughts going through my head as I read these about who the poems were addressed to, what WS was trying to say, and how personal they were, vs craft-with-emotional-distance. The last is roughly pro/anti Patterson’s idea as summarized by you, and very interesting to me. My bias is to believe WS was playful and was toying with the reader, but also serious with personal stuff getting through. I had trouble seeing these poems as generally sincere as emotions expressed often felt too exaggerated. But when lines struck home, I found myself wanting them to be sincere. I wish I understood his motivations better. I came away with attachment to lots of “youth” poems, Sonnets 18 - 126; but there are patches in there that drifted past me. I never connected with the “dark lady” poems.

monthly silliness - August

planned - Actual
13 hrs - 15:29 The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton (started & finished)
11 hrs - 10:22 Shakespeare's Sonnets (finished the Pelican Shakespeare, but not All the Sonnets of Shakespeare)
  8 hrs -   4:56 The File on H by Ismail Kadare (started & finished)
20 hrs - 15:16 The Man Without Qualities by Thomas Musil (read almost the 1st half of volume 1)
10 hrs -   7:02 Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson (finished book II, started book III)
  0 hrs -   1:07 The book of flights by J.M.G. le clezio (read ~30 pages)
  0 hrs -   5:01 The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (started & finished)
---------------
62 hrs - 59:13

September plan

6 hrs - By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolano
9 hrs - Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard (1st half)
3 hrs - All the Sonnets of Shakespeare (now finished)
22 hrs The Man Without Qualities by Thomas Musil (2nd half, volume 1)
10 hrs Anniversiaries by Uwe Johnson (all Book III)
10 hrs The book of flights by J.M.G. le Clezio (finish?)
---
60 hrs

The planned books I've been unable to get to include Empires of the Indus : The Story of a River by Alice Albinia, The Periodic Table by Primo Levi & A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark. All three are from my TBR shelf.

Also I have toyed with 2023 plans, and it started to feel very settled. I can't gage my TBR reading, but I can imagine the rest

a 2023 Geoffrey Chaucer theme:

January: Chaucer: A European Life by Marion Turner 624 pages
March: Penguin Love Visions : Four poems by Geoffrey Chaucer, Brian Stone (Editor, Introduction, Translator), 255 pages
- includes The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Birds (or Foules), and The Legend of Good Women
May: Broadview Troilus and Criseyde 464 pages
July: Broadview Canterbury Tales 550 pages

a 2023 Richard Wright theme:

January: Uncle Tom's Children (1938 collection of novellas) 301 pages
February: Eight Men (1961 collection of short stories) 242 pages
March: Native Son (1940) 504 pages
April: 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (1941, with photos from Farm Security Administration) – 166 pages with photos
May: Black Boy (1945, autobiography) 419 pages
June: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952), 581 pages
August: The Outsider (1953) 672 pages
October: Savage Holiday (1954) 235 pages
November: The Long Dream (1958) 384 pages
December: American Hunger (1977 posthumous autobiography) 147 pages

other options
- Black Power: Three Books from Exile: The Color Curtain (1956)/ Black Power (1954)/ White Man, Listen! (1957) 864 pages!
- Pagan Spain (1957) 288 pages
- Lawd Today (1963) (posthumous novel) 234 pages
- A Father's Law (2008, posthumous unfinished novel) 320 pages

A 2022 Booker longlist plan

August 2022 audio Booth by Karen Joy Fowler, 480p, 13:44 - done
September 2022 audio Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo, 416p, 16:10 audio - almost done
October 2022 My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout, 193p
October 2022 audio Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer, 448p, 12:20
November 2022 Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout, 254p
November 2022 audio Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley, 288p, 10:48
December 2022 Oh William! by Eliza,beth Strout, 240p
December 2022 audio Trust by Hernan Diaz, 416p, 10:21
January The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, 368p
January audio The Colony by Audrey Magee, 376p, 8:10
February The Trees by Percival Everett, 309p
March After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz, 288p
April Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet, 288p
May Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, 128p
June Treacle Walker by Alan Garner, 152p

>158 dchaikin: Impressive plans, as always. When do you want to start Bolano?

>159 labfs39: By Night in Chile - actually this week Thursday is a really good day for me start (yes, I know, random day). Does that work for you?

>160 dchaikin: Sure. I'll finish Taras Bulba soon and then start.

Perfect!

We lost a cat Monday, my cat, the one that was my reading buddy, the one who insisted on getting between me and my books, or, if not that, then at least between me and my coffee mug. He was very proud of this, and as he was a big chunky cat, he really did get in the way. He also ate all my bookmarks. And he was a fine looking tuxedo cat who made many of my Litsy post pictures. His name was Diesel and I read Shakespeare’s sonnets to him, and he looked at me with understanding and assumed he was obviously the youth most of the sonnets were addressed to as he was clearly deserving of such praise, and aptly fickle. It’s tough with pets, but he was healthy last week Monday and in heart failure this week Monday, so it maybe seems extra-hard, or maybe it always is.

oh I am so sorry. what a beautiful cat!Lossing one never gets easier. Looks like he was very loved and he gave back in spades. Hoping memories bring you peace and comfort

I'm so sorry, Dan. I'm not sure it's ever easy, but such a sudden decline must have been hard.

So sorry about your kitty. He sounds like a great companion.

I'm so sorry! I hope that after some time you will be able to find comfort in your wonderful memories of Diesel.

>164 cindydavid4: >165 labfs39: >166 dianeham: >167 MissBrangwen: thank you

Oh no! So sorry, Dan. What a beautiful cat.

Oh, I'm so sorry. What a handsome boy, and such beautiful white paws. Those reading buddy cats are special.

I'll add my voice to those offering condolences, Dan. Our pets burrow into our hearts and leave a hole there when they depart.

>169 LolaWalser: >170 lisapeet: >171 rocketjk: thanks all. They do leave a hole.

I'll add my voice to all the people who offered their condolences. I'm so sorry.

I was so happy finally taking the time to catch up with your thread. Too bad it is ending on a sad note. But I hope you'll keep the good memories, and on your photo, your cat seems to be reading the best book he could imagine Hot milk (I don't know the book, but the title fits perfectly!).

>173 Dilara86: >174 raton-liseur: thank you.

Raccoon - Hot Milk is a fun curious book. I read it last year, which is when the picture was taken.

>163 dchaikin: So sorry for your loss.

Aw - sorry to hear that, Dan. My cat looks almost identical - it's uncanny.

Always hard losing pets. You convince yourself that you're a grown up and circle of life and all that and it won't be too bad, but it's always hard.

>176 LibraryLover23:, >177 AlisonY: thanks

Alyson - after losing our little dogs, our two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels that predated our kids, and that we treated as kids (until a baby came), I really didn't want to connect to another pet. It was really hard to lose them. But then these new furry things came in house, not exactly against my will, but they came. And I wasn't going to get attached. But...you just don't have a choice. They need affection and you just find yourself attached. And we learn we kind of need that affection too.

My second from the Booker 2022 longlist (and first from the shortlist)



43. Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
reader: Chipo Chung
published: 2022
format: 16:10 audible audiobook (416 pages in hardcover)
acquired: August 23 listened: Aug 23 – Sep 11
rating: 3½
genre/style: Contemporary Fiction theme: Booker 2022
locations: Zimbabwe
about the author: NoViolet Bulawayo is the penname of Elizabeth Zandile Tshele. She was born 1981 in Tsholotsho Zimbabwe, and is currently in a creative writing fellowship at Stanford University.

A satire on Zimbabwe, part brilliant, part satire dump.

This is an important and creative work but there is no getting around that it's really difficult to get through. Bulawayo, a native of Zimbabwe, was apparently (according to Wikipedia) writing a history of the country, and instead came out with an Animal Farm-like satire. The book opens with a heavy satire on the last days of Robert Mugabe's rule, on his mental weakness as he aged, on his imperious wife of that time, and on the power struggle with the vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, who would replace Mugabe after a coup in 2017. Mugabe was president from independence in 1980 through his removal in 2017, and oversaw the catastrophic financial collapse of the country in the 1990's. He is infamous not only for his sunglasses, but also for his autocratic rule where his main focus was always on his own power and wealth, two things that certainly did not help the countries dead economy.

I found the satire that opens the book funny and creative. I was expecting to get tired of it, but it kept me entertained a while. Listening on audio, I was still happy with it 2 hours in, and entertained with the various intonations of the fictional country's name, fully given as "Jidada.. with a da- and another da". But it just kept going. Four hours in I was really tired of it. I thought even the reader was getting tired, because she slowed down, giving extra-emphasis to the satire (the reading is excellent). I posted on Litsy about abandoning it, and one person there encouraged me, telling me it will get better when I get to Destiny about halfway through. It does. Destiny, a scarred native of Zimbabwe, returns, broken, to her country, and learns of her heritage, a dark catalogue of awful repression that I knew nothing about. (I had always assumed a country that named itself Zimbabwe must have a decently happy history. The truth is about the opposite.)

So, I made it through. I really liked meeting Destiny and her family history. I appreciated the creativity and all Bulawayo did here. Also I'm glad I'm not on the Booker committee, because I would not want to read this a second time. I'm exhausted thinking about it.

44. By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño
published: 2000 translation: from Spanish by Chris Andrews (2003)
format: 130-page paperback
acquired: 2010 from a Houston Public Library book sale
read: Sep 15-17 time reading: 4:31, 2.1 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: novel theme: TBR
locations: Chile (with some travel)
about the author: 1953-2003, Chilean author who moved to Mexico City with his family in 1968, and to Spain in 1977.

I've had this for a while, and finally read it as a buddyread with Lisa (Labfs39). It's my second novel by Bolaño. My first was The Third Reich. This novel is focused on Chile and its intellectual community's discomfort with Allende's goals, and (lack of) response to Pinochet and his crimes.

I posted some summary comments on Lisa's thread:

Bolaño is having fun, keeping it a little surreal but also very bitter about Chile. The main character is a literary priest who writes poetry but doesn’t seem to be interested in connecting with any real people. He writes under a pen-name even though everyone knows who he is. He is a member of the Opus Dei, and extreme catholic group focused on purity. He prefers to stay in the purity of the mind, and to connect with literary demi-gods. It leads to some very odd interactions.

...

practically every provable aspect of the book is historically real. It highlights a lot of real surreal stuff.

...

I tend to really enjoy these kind of games, even if I don’t get them. I like the pressing on things, the mixture of tones (satire and sincere, humor and serious, true and surreal, deep and ridiculous). I like how he (and other authors) balance these things and, when successful, make them both playful and interesting. So, first, I enjoyed the tone and the conflict between narrator (he is serious) and reader (who thinks he’s a nut, but an interesting nut).

On the flip side, I did not get it. I can’t say what he was getting at. I don’t know why he approached this stuff from this angle

...

So I have insecurity of my understanding, and yet I enjoyed the sense of play and purpose.

I found it a playful/serious look at Bolaño‘s home country and the legacy of Pinochet. The whole short novel is the deathbed raving of a poetic Catholic priest, and literary critic, who found himself, at one point, teaching Communism to Pinochet (who deposed Communist-supported Allende). He is haunted by a “wizened youth” who criticized him in some manner that has touched him deeply, and he partly raving in a sort of apology and defense. The novel is oddly real/surreal except that its most surreal moments are factual. It also has some obscure aspects. So I can‘t say I understood this well, but I enjoyed it.

Allende was a democratically elected president of the country, which I think is more pertinent to note than just say that he was "Communist-supported", as if that's somehow in itself excusing of what happened to him (I suppose to Americans, it does). He was a marxist and a member of the socialist party and elected as such. Yeah, leftists all over the world rejoiced in his victory and supported him.

And Pinochet's coup and dictatorship was supported by the Americans, the best democrats in the world.

I recommend Ariel Dorfman's compilation Chile, the other September 11 for clarification.

I was living in salt lake city and that time, belonged to the unitarian social justice committee. We set up an event that has thousands of people marching in the street against Reagan and his secret war. Also saw guy in black on top of buildings taping us (we all made sure to wave)I not sure how many know about the wars in central america and the assasinations we were involved in.

BTW author Isabel Allende is his cousin. She mentions this time frequently in her early books

Skip this review or save it until you a lot of time. :)



45. The Man Without Qualities: A Sort of Introduction; Pseudo Reality Prevails (Vol. 1 of 2) by Robert Musil
translation: from German by Sophie Wilkins, with assistance from Burton Pike (1995)
published: 1930
format: 725-page Vintage paperback
acquired: June read: July 28 – Sep 23 time reading: 35:00, 2.9 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: novel of ideas theme: Robert Musil
locations: Vienna, 1913-1914
about the author: 1880-1942, Austrian, but grew up mainly in Bohemia (then within the Austro-Hungarian empire, now within the Czech republic). “In 1938, when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, Musil and his Jewish wife, Martha, left for exile in Switzerland” (Wikipedia)

An unfinished novel of ideas, considered a kind of under-appreciated classic.

Musil's setting is a satire on the Austro-Hungarian empire before WWI, which he calls Kahkania (This is a play Austro-Hungarian's ruling Habsburg family, known as "Kaiserlich und Königlich", or Imperial and Royal, abbreviated k. u. k.). His main character, a kind of alter-ego, Ulrich, is a mathematician in his 30's with no career prospects. Through a cousin, he gets involved in royal campaign in 1913 that is planning to celebrate the 70th year of the reign of Franz Joseph I in 1918. As 1918 will also mark the 30th year the reign of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, there is some pressure on Austria to have a better celebration, one of peace. The competitive idea in Austria is named The Parallel Campaign.

The problem with the campaign, other than that the future will make it irrelevant, is that no one is sure what to celebrate. The campaign leadership is given to Ulrich's cousin, the wife of an important mid-level diplomat. Ulrich calls her Diotima for her beauty and chastity. Diotima is political an asset for her husband, but she is known for her propriety not her creativity. She leaves much of the leadership to a sort of hired man who's spell she has fallen under, the charismatic Paul Arnheim. Except Arnheim is awkwardly Prussian, and, in a growing antisemitic climate, Jewish.

As the novel progresses, Diotima and Arnheim will fall in love, several characters will fall in love or lust with Ulrich. Ulrich will largely stand passively aloof of this all. And Musil will have a great deal of fun with the oddities he comes up with. But he will also use this story as a prompt for his unconcluded ideas. Musil explains his novel as an essay, by which he roughly means he is working within and around his ideas, ideas that defy simple summaries or closure. That's maybe also why he never finished the novel.

Musil's interests are broad and hard to summarize, but he has a love/hate relationship with the sciences, which he pursued in depth in the early days of space-time. He presents a world in an awkward state of rapid flux, where traditional values and religious ideas are meaningless, while practical material needs and cutthroat finance are creating new values no one is comfortable with. This creates lots of contradictions, part of which he addressed in Ulrich and others.

Ulrich ponders the soul within this:

"a soul.
What is that? It is easy to define negatively: it is simply that which sneaks off at the mention of algebraic series.
But positively? It seems successfully to elude every effort to pin it down."

And he thinks through fragmentation in a variety of ways

"There are several thousand occupations in which people lose themselves, where they invest all their wits. But if you are looking for a universal human element, for what they all have in common, there are really only three possibilities left: stupidly, money, or, at most, some leftover memory of religion"

...

"But we know the picture art presents today. Fragmentation everywhere; extremes without connections. Stendhal, Balzac, and Flaubert have already created the epic of the new mechanized social and inner life, while the demonic substrata of our lives have been laid bare by Dostoyevsky, Strindberg, and Freud. We who live today have a deep sense that there is nothing left for us to do."

Another major there, which in Ulrich is presented as a sort of artistic/rational divide, an almost irreconcilable divide, is how to manage the nature of human spiritual needs and the practical meaning of science which very much undermines this, leaving humanity in oddly irrational mindsets. I found this very relevant to today:

"Credible received wisdom indicates that it all began in the sixteenth century, a time of the greatest spiritual turbulence, when people ceased trying to penetrate the deep mysteries of nature as they had done through two millennia of religious and philosophical speculation, but instead were satisfied with exploring the surface of nature in a manner that can only be called superficial."

...

"And while faith based on theological reasoning is today universally engaged in a bitter struggle with doubt and resistance from the prevailing brand of rationalism, it does seem that the naked fundamental experience itself, that primal seizure of mystic insight, stripped of all the traditional, terminological husks of faith, freed from ancient religious concepts, perhaps no longer to be regarded as a religious experience at all, has undergone an immense expansion and now forms the soul of that complex irrationalism that haunts our era like a night bird lost in the dawn."

...

"Now he experienced a moment of that special lucidity that lights up everything going on behind the scenes of oneself, though one may be far from being able to express it. He understood the relationship between a dream and what it expresses, which is no more than analogy, a metaphor, something he often thought about. A metaphor holds a truth and an untruth, felt as inextricably bound up with each other. If one takes it as it is and gives it some sensual form, in the shape of reality, one gets dreams and art; but between these two and real, full-scale life there is a glass partition. If one analyzes it for its rational content and separates the unverifiable from the verifiable, one gets truth and knowledge but kills the feeling."

There is a quite a lot here, and no easy way to break it down. I read a few web-availably analyses, and each picked a part of the book to talk about, and left a whole lot unaddressed (as have i here). The ideas accumulate and build on each other as the novel progresses. And, that alone provides the novels pulsive drive...if there is any. But it has an awkwardness to it because of where he started and ended. He started in 1920, but only published these 1st 2 parts in 1930, to a changed world. The novel is difficult & slow. It gets better as it goes, but I never found it gripping. I imagine I‘ll appreciate it more down the road. But for now I‘m happy I made it through.

A note on the translation

Musil never uses an easy phrasing. His wording is very careful, and that comes across in translation. But it also defies translation.

Regarding the title, I found this:

For readers of an English translation of Musil’s magnum opus, the difficulties begin with the book’s title. For while Eigenschaften can indeed mean “qualities,” it carries with it a penumbra of associations that no English word quite captures. “Qualities,” “properties,” “attributes”—Eigenschaften can mean any or all of these things. But it suggests something more. Eigen is the German word for “own,” as in “for one’s own use.” Hence the eigen in Eigenschaften insinuates a sense of self-possession that remains inexplicit in the English approximations. To speak of a man without Eigenschaften is therefore not so much to deny that he exhibits any definite qualities but rather to suggest that whatever qualities he displays are not really his. To be without Eigenschaften is in this sense to be without character—that inscribed residuum of identity that makes us who we are—though to be without character is by no means to be anonymous. As Ulrich admits to himself, “he was, after all, a character, even without having one.”

source: https://newcriterion.com/issues/1996/2/the-qualities-of-robert-musil

The same article explains that the translator's title of the second part, "Pseudoreality Prevails", is entirely made up. A previous translation came up with "“The Like of It Now Happens" - not particularly satisfying, but also completely different.

>181 LolaWalser: I was under the impression that Allende was very popular. But Bolano implies he was a divisive figure, particularly because he was seen to threaten the traditional wealth holders. There was a lot of controversary around him. That was news to me. I should pursue your suggestion by Dorfman.

Great reviews, Dan. You were busy today!

>181 LolaWalser: I agree, the history of the US in Central and South America is appalling. Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, the list is long. The US upholds only the democracies who align with their national interests of the moment and subverts those it doesn't. Sometimes it comes back to bite them.

>185 labfs39: I still have two more to post on. But, later. 🙂

>184 dchaikin:

But Bolano implies he was a divisive figure, particularly because he was seen to threaten the traditional wealth holders.

Dan, I don't know if you're joking... :) I mean, a socialist "divisive" because he threatens the rich... getting rid of the rich is the whole point of socialism. Allende was elected by a majority of people who were in sync with his programme. (And recently the Chileans made the same choice electing socialist Gabriel Boric, after decades of the rich raping Chile in the name of neoliberalism, to the point where water and clean air were turned into capitalist commodities).

But I guess the point here is, do you mean to say that Bolaño saw a problem in that, because I would have thought that you knew that Bolaño was not just a participant, on the side of Allende, but was among those imprisoned and exiled by Pinochet. Whatever this grief-filled book does, it does NOT posit some sort of "neutral" balance between Allende's socialism and capitalism, like, hmmm, there was a debate on pros and cons for him here.

>187 LolaWalser: Bolaño is as you suggest. He’s so critical of Pinochet, that he uses the crimes and repression of Pinochet as a literary device.

He doesn’t praise or criticize Allende, or express any clear opinion that I could pick up. He does write about a strong opposition to Allende, mentioning that there were large demonstrations against him. (Which I think he means as factual.) Bolaño also suggests these critics were happy with the Pinochet coup, at least initially.

The MC in the novel could be viewed as one who didn’t take sides and so helped allow Pinochet to happen.

>188 dchaikin:

Sorry, my dude, you know I'm blunt: you seem to want to believe that "Pinochet happened" because that's what the Chileans wanted. No, that's what the rich and their American masters wanted. Pinochet didn't "happen" like a summer rain might, out of the sweet blue sky, nor did his bloody dictatorship put a song into the heart of every Chilean. The US, as ever, found a suitable tool to keep their imperial reach intact and their interests looked after. (And when Pinochet was prosecuted by the Spanish for crimes against humanity, the US protested and demanded his release. Nothing but TLC until he died.) That the majority of Chileans wanted Allende and a system different to capitalist bloodsucking didn't matter one whit. It's appalling that you'd bother construing this as some sort of... legitimate outcome. So what if there were demonstrations against him? When and where on earth did the comfy ever roll over and tell the people "yes please, go ahead, redistribute my gajillions, fair is fair"?

If you follow the news, you may have heard that recently Boric and his supporters suffered a setback when the draft of the Constitution--one of the most progressive the world, at least in that region, had seen--was rejected by some 62% of the electorate. There are many good analyses of why this happened, and I read some from both the left and the centre. One thing is clear: of course the opponents and natural enemies of the progressives played a huge and likely decisive role in its rejection. Because money is might, and those people have money. They bought the media, they spent fortunes on spreading lies, and they succeeded. Which is not to say that the proposal was perfect. Just this--that the rich will never, ever, allow any real progress to happen without fight--most likely to death. Usually and largely the death of the poor... but we may full well expect that there will be revolutions yet when it'll be the comfy choking on their blood.

You might also consider the case of Lula in Brazil, another leftist smeared and campaigned against from Washington. They succeeded not just in ousting him but throwing him in prison. And guess what, those crazy Brazilians seem poised to elect him again.

In short, the world is at war, has always been at war, and it's a war by the rich and comfy haves against the vast majority of the not-haves. Protests by one or the other do not have the same moral legitimacy.

Just catching up on your (very interesting) reading, Dan.

>189 LolaWalser: These conversations can bring my blue-personality-type to a self-consuming brink. So this is me trying to step back. I’m not Bolaño and I can’t convey his work in a manner appropriately to address your comments, especially as I found his novel complex enough that I didn’t fully understand it. I do believe your discussion is not with me, but with Bolaño through my poor presentation of him. I encourage you to read the book in order to take this further.

>191 dchaikin:

I have read the book. I think you ought to read more about what Pinochet's dictatorship did to the people of Chile, and then see how you might present an opponent like Bolaño--again, imprisoned and exiled by the regime--as some sort of relativist on the question.

No need for you to "step back" in your own thread, I'll step away from it.

>189 LolaWalser: No, that's what the rich and their American masters wanted. Pinochet didn't "happen" like a summer rain might, out of the sweet blue sky, nor did his bloody dictatorship put a song into the heart of every Chilean. The US, as ever, found a suitable tool to keep their imperial reach intact and their interests looked after. (And when Pinochet was prosecuted by the Spanish for crimes against humanity, the US protested and demanded his release. Nothing but TLC until he died.)

yup, true that

>192 LolaWalser: I have read the book.

Wish you had me told me that sooner. 🙂

46. Anniversaries III by Uwe Johnson
translation: from German by Damion Searls, 2018
published: 1973
format: 323 pages within a 1671-page Nook ebook, from New York Review Books Classic
acquired: January, read: Aug 20 – Sep 28, time reading: 14:53, 2.8 mpp
locations: 1968 New York City, 1945/1946 Germany
about the author: 1934-1984, East German author born in Kamień Pomorski in Pomerania (then in Germany, now in Poland)

Part 3 is the shortest of these 4 volumes. We're in New York City for April, May & June 1968. Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June. Uwe Johnson handles this in an interesting way, showering us with the press coverage, especially the television coverage, the obsession with this coverage that so many people had. Whereas our German-born Gesine, the book's narrator, can remain aloof, her American 10-yr-old daughter is fully caught up in this, glued to the black and white screen for days. The contrast with MLK is striking. After MLK there was sadness and riots, but no emotional drama in this white NYC world. Very curious. Johnson also highlights that there was a large the part of the US population that didn't mind RFK's assassination.

The other part of this novel is Gesine's German history. Here it's the first year of post-WWII Soviet Germany, which makes for really messy history. What does a communist country do when it conquers a wealthy capitalist country? Whatever the policy was, it was practically incoherent in Gesine's experience. Prominent Nazi's are punished, and suicide and the crimes of Russian soldiers, like rape, was very common. Food is always scarce, and there were so many starving refugees. But the Soviet Union wasn't out to destroy Germany, or to blindly press Communism upon it. So what comes out is an assortment of whatever seemed pertinent at the moment. Property owners might lose or win, depending on whatever was needed. And powershifts for both prominent Germans and Soviets were rapid and extreme. It‘s a very strange story. And in this casual style, supposedly relayed by Gesine to her daughter, it makes for tough reading. There is just no narrative drive within confusion.

This volume was curious to me, even if it's least satisfying of the series so far. I'll try to begin the last book later this month.

My third from the Booker 2022 longlist. This one did not make the shortlist.



47. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer
readers: Lydia Wilson & Tamsin Greig
published: 2022
format: 12:20 audible audiobook (448 pages)
acquired: September 11 listened: Sep 12-29
rating: 4
genre/style: Contemporary fiction theme: Booker 2022
locations: London
about the author: London-based screen writer born in London in 1996. This is her first novel.

I have developed an odd relationship with the Booker longlist. I'm making my fourth consecutive attempt to follow it, and apparently I'm at the point where I get pleasantly surprised when I actually like a book. I really enjoyed this novel.

My worry when I started was that this would be too much like Sophia Ward‘s Love and Other Thought Experiments, a novel that is basically applied philosophy with an emotional overlay. I didn't mind Ward's novel, but I didn't love it, and I didn't want to read another version of it. And there are major similarities. Like Ward's novel, this is a 1st novel from the English screen world. Ward is an actress, and Mortimer is a screen writer, and both are based in London. Both novels deal with a terminal illness, and personify the illness as its own character. When Lia's cancer opens the novel speaking in 1st person, all these similarities fell into place. What is different here is that I never fully took to Ward's characters, whereas early on I took to Lia here, the Christianity drenched atheist daughter of a minister.

Lia is young mother facing uncertainty and terminal illness, and she spends the novel revisiting her past. She's a beautiful character, and I found I simply really enjoyed spending time with her. That disarmed my inner critic, and I was i no hurry for this to end. The novel also has interesting structure, playing with voices. Lia's "voice" is a 3rd person narrative. Her cancer is told in 1st person. As the novel progresses, they interact in interesting ways. And, even though we know the end, I wanted to know everything. Mortimer kept me curious through the end, through to the last word. It's a very interesting ending.

This a sad but enjoyable novel. Gently recommended.

>194 dchaikin:

Received, read and rated 5 stars back in 2009, as can be seen on its work page.

Sorry for posting again, it just irks me that you think I'd have gone at length about a book (or author) I haven't read.

monthly summary - September/October

September
plan - actual
  3 hrs - 1:12 - All the Sonnets of Shakespeare - edited by Paul Edmondson & Stanley Wells - finished
    ---- (stared in July, took 16:38)
22 hrs - 19:16 - The Man Without Qualities: A Sort of Introduction; Pseudo Reality Prevails {Vol. 1 of 2} by Robert Musil - finished
    ---- (started in July, took 35:00)
10 hrs - 12:45 - Anniversiaries III by Uwe Johnson - finished
    ---- (started in August, took 14:53)
  6 hrs - 4:31 - By Night in Chile - Roberto Bolano - started & finished
  9 hrs - 5:56 - Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard - intro to Chapter 7 (not quite half)
10 hrs - 2:48 - The Book of Flights by JMG le Clezio
  0 hrs - 4:57 - Empires of the Indus : The Story of a River by Alice Albinia
---
60 hrs - 51:25

October plan

  9 hrs - Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard - 2nd half
20 hrs - Middlemarch by George Eliot, 1st half
  7 hrs - Summer by Edith Wharton, 1st half
  7 hrs - My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
  8 hrs - Anniversiaries IV by Uwe Johnson, 1st 1/3
  8 hrs - The Book of Flights by JMG le Clezio, finish?
  3 hrs - The Man Without Qualities: Into the Millennium; From the Posthumous Papers {Vol. 2 of 2} v2 by Thomas Musil, just want to get started
---
62 hours

I finished a lot of big stuff in September and then kind of floundered. I was reading but with limited drive. Hoping to get regoing with new stuff in October. I'm really enjoying Middlemarch, but it's very slow. My Name is Lucy Barton is terrific and won't take my allotted 7 hours, more like half that. But I'm not sure I really want to start Musil again, or that I want to finish this le Clezio - which is more of a mindset/meditation than a plot. Just experience the moment. I have not set any time aside for 4 planned books from my neglected TBR pile: Empires of the Indus : The Story of a River by Alice Albinia, which I have started, A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark, which I'm really looking forward to, The Periodic Table by Primo Levi, which is intimidating, and The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence, which is immensely intimidating. I always find books on the TBR the hardest to get to and, oddly, the least satisfying of my currently selections. Maybe I just haven't found a healthy way to tell myself, for a book I've started, that "this book is ok, maybe great, but you don't have to read it".

>198 dchaikin: "this book is ok, maybe great, but you don't have to read it"
I think many of us struggle with this. I loved Middlemarch when I read it decades ago, and Summer is a book I own and am looking forward to. I'm glad you are enjoying Lucy Barton. I read Olive Kitteridge and have never felt compelled to read anything else by Strout. People seem to either love her or hate her.

>199 labfs39: I didn’t like Olive*, and I’m adoring Lucy so much. (*the book, not the character)

If Summer in October sounds good, check out #whartonbuddyread on Litsy. 🙂 We discuss the 1st 5 chapters on Saturday, Oct 22. (And I think it’s funny Wharton called Summer her “hot Ethan”.)

>200 dchaikin: Interesting about Olive and Lucy. Darryl despises all and sundry. I'm tempted by the Wharton, but I feel like I'm inundated at the moment with books I "should" get to.

>201 labfs39: that’s a very good reason not to join in on Summer. No worries.

>201 labfs39: I would never have guessed that it would be Elizabeth Strout who so sharply divides the members of Club Read!

>203 RidgewayGirl: Well, that’s what makes life around here interesting - you may be around for years and you still can get surprised by things like that. Taste has no friends - you can almost never guess what someone may like (or dislike). :)

and im sharply divided just with my own self. Her first two books I thought were pure genius. and I liked the first Lucy Bartons. But don't think the rest of her sequels worked well at all.

>203 RidgewayGirl: 🙂

>203 RidgewayGirl: LOL. And even between members whose tastes usually seem to be aligned!

My new thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/345047