Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
It has been past time to rearrange my To-Be-Read Pile. I can already see that some books will be put on my challenge list in January since they are not appealing to me at the current time. That is fine. I don’t panic anymore that I bought books and didn’t read them because my challenge list of twenty books each year has used up nearly all the books that had been lying around.
In fact, I only have two more books on this year’s list to finish. I am working on one of those, now.
What happens is that some things get buried and by rearranging my pile they come to light again and that is good. The books that I really am not interested in have now been put at the bottom and the books that should not have been overlooked have risen to the top. I recommend going through your pile every once in a while because our moods change depending on what we just finished reading and sometimes we are surprised by what is on the pile.
I found Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo this way. It is a tiny book that got stuck between some others and disappeared. I am reading it now.
It begins:
I came to Comala because I had been told that my father, a man named Pedro Paramo, lived there. It was my mother who told me. And I promised her that after she died I would see him. I squeezed her hands as a sign I would do it. She was near death, and I would have promised her anything.
Lincoln and His Generals by T. Harry Williams is going to the bottom because I just finished reading This Hallowed Ground by Bruce Catton and I have learned a lot about the generals already. Plus it is a used book with tiny print. On the other hand I am looking seriously at
The Unwritten Chronicles of Robert E. Lee: A Novel by Lamar Herrin. I am not sure a novel will go over well after reading so many non-fiction books, but The Library Journal says on the back that it is “Historical fiction at its best.” Hmmm…
The Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke. I opened it up and read the first two pages and smiled. I moved it to the top.
There are some re-reads to consider:
C. J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station will probably seem like new since I read it so long ago.
Magic: The Final Fantasy Collection by Isaac Asimov. I may have read all of these short stories before, but I am not sure.
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. I want to re-read this quite soon. I had originally read a library book and I decided to buy my own copy.
It begins:
Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town.
A sign announced that this was no ordinary footpath but the celebrated Appalachian Trail. Running more than 2,100 miles along America’s eastern seaboard, through the serene and beckoning Appalachian Mountains, the AT is the granddaddy of long hikes. From Georgia to Maine, it wanders across fourteen states, through plump comely hills whose very names-Blue Ridge, Smokies, Cumberlands, Green Mountains, White Mountains-seem an invitation to amble. Who could say the words “Great Smoky Mountains” or “Shenandoah Valley” and not feel an urge, as the naturalist John Muir once put it, to “throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence”?
Then the books that I have been looking at with fingers twitching:
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. It promises me a good read, but it warns me that I must be able to concentrate. Ooops. That has been hard lately. But I will try not to let it sink out of sight again.
It is odd that I found a whole new trilogy by Kate Elliott that I hadn’t known about. Usually her books show up in the science fiction and fantasy catalog. I read three of her series and then gave them to my sister. How could I have missed these? Again, the first page of the first book is luring me in.
Cold Magic begins:
The history of the world begins in ice, and it will end in ice.
…last night I had slipped a book out of my uncle’s parlor and brought it to read in my bedchamber by candlelight, even though we were expressly forbidden from doing so. He had even made us sign a little contract stating that we had permission to read my father’s journals and the other books in the parlor as long as we stayed in the parlor and did not waste expensive candlelight to do so. I had to put the book back before he noticed it was gone, or the cold would be the least of my troubles.
At least I have all of the books and I won’t have to wait in between for the sequels
Cold Fire and
Cold Steel.
I have The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian that begins:
A woman is sitting before an art nouveau vanity, brushing her hair in the mirror. It is, at least according to the police report, somewhere between midnight and three in the morning, on the first Tuesday of June 1955.
The book is going to go back to 1943. It rises to the top of the pile while
Sir Francis Drake by John Sugden slips down toward what will probably be the challenge list of 2014.
Travels by Paul Bowles. Moved upward.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/...
Overview
In more than forty essays and articles that range from Paris to Ceylon, Thailand to Kenya, and, of course, Morocco, the great twentieth-century American writer encapsulates his long and full life, and sheds light on his brilliant fiction. Whether he’s recalling the cold-water artists’ flats of Paris’s Left Bank or the sun-worshipping eccentrics of Tangier, Paul Bowles imbues every piece with a deep intelligence and the acute perspective of his rich experience of the world. Woven throughout are photographs from the renowned author’s private archive, which place him, his wife, the writer Jane Bowles, and their many friends and compatriots in the landscapes his essays bring so vividly to life.
On Bear Mountain by Deborah Smith has been on the pile for several years. I bought it used from the library. It begins:
I vowed to embarrass Quentin Riconni if he died in my arms that day, there on that Georgia mountaintop under a cold winter sky. “Powells don’t grieve the way ordinary people do,” I whispered in a voice that shook against the wind curling over the high mountain glen. A hard night was coming; the frost would kill every vulnerable living thing, including him.
“I’ll spend the rest of my life telling everyone I meet who you were and why I love you and why I was never the same after you died. And I’ll make you sound a lot better than you were, stronger and kinder than you ever had any intention of being. People will say you must have charmed me with big talk and good looks. I’ll have to tell them you didn’t talk much or look that good. Do you really want me to lie?”
His eyes remained closed and his lips slightly parted, his breath now making only a faint mist in the frigid air…
The First Rule of Ten by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/...
“Don’t ignore intuitive tickles lest they reappear as sledgehammers.”
That’s the first rule of Ten.
Tenzing Norbu (“Ten” for short)—ex-monk and soon-to-be ex-cop—is a protagonist unique to our times. In The First Rule of Ten, the first installment in a three-book detective series, we meet this spiritual warrior who is singularly equipped, if not occasionally ill-equipped, as he takes on his first case as a private investigator in Los Angeles.
Growing up in a Tibetan Monastery, Ten dreamed of becoming a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. So when he was sent to Los Angeles to teach meditation, he joined the LAPD instead...
After I read the first page this book went to the very top of the pile.
After Rome by Morgan Llywelyn begins:
In the beginning Albion was a shaggy wilderness belonging only to itself. When the glaciers melted and the seas rose Albion and the neighboring land of Eire became two large islands on the western edge of Europe. Stranded together in a cold ocean, they awaited an uncertain future.
Wool by Hugh Howey. I keep hearing good things from friends. It will move up a bit.
I also have Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will by Judith Schalansky with maps, but very small print so it is going down for a while.
Slipped down toward the bottom again…The Pat Barker Regeneration
Trilogy because…sadness about WW I. I know the books will be good.
Regeneration Trilogy:
Regeneration (1991)
The Eye in the Door (1993)
The Ghost Road (1995)
The Proud Tower:A Portrait of the World before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara Tuchman. I have never read this and I should have.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/...
During the fateful quarter century leading up to World War I, the climax of a century of rapid, unprecedented change, a privileged few enjoyed Olympian luxury as the underclass was “heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate.” In The Proud Tower, Barbara W. Tuchman brings the era to vivid life: the decline of the Edwardian aristocracy; the Anarchists of Europe and America; Germany and its self-depicted hero, Richard Strauss; Diaghilev’s Russian ballet and Stravinsky’s music; the Dreyfus Affair; the Peace Conferences in The Hague; and the enthusiasm and tragedy of Socialism, epitomized by the assassination of Jean Jaurès on the night the Great War began and an epoch came to a close.
I am going to have to be rested to read this one so it may become a challenge book.
Down to the very bottom...the P. G. Wodehouse letters. After learning about his war activities, I don't even know if I will be able to read this book. Was he just being silly and naive? The little programs that he did for the Germans were done before the US entered the war and that makes it more serious to me. Will I be able to get past this considering he was given an award by the British later? This story was brought to my attention and it was discussed at Bookflurries in an earlier diary and I am still wondering what to do.
Wiki says:
https://en.wikipedia.org/...
Although Wodehouse and his novels are considered quintessentially English, from 1914 onward he split his time between Britain and the United States. In 1934, he took up residence in France, to avoid double taxation on his earnings by the tax authorities in Britain and the U.S. He was also profoundly uninterested in politics and world affairs. When World War II broke out in 1939 he remained at his seaside home in Le Touquet, France, instead of returning to Britain, apparently failing to recognize the seriousness of the conflict. It is also said that his wife couldn't bear to leave their dog, Wonder. Subsequently the German military authorities in occupied France interned him (along with several other Englishmen in the same position) as an "enemy alien" according to the Geneva Convention. He was interned first in Belgium, then at Tost in Upper Silesia (formerly Germany, now Toszek in Poland), of which he is recorded having said, "If this is Upper Silesia, one wonders what Lower Silesia must be like…"
While at Tost, he entertained his fellow prisoners with witty dialogues. He was released from internment a few months before his 60th birthday when, under the Geneva Convention, he should have been released anyway; the early release led to allegations that he had made a deal with the Nazi authorities. He then drafted several humorous talks, based on his life at Tost, as the basis for a series of radio broadcasts aimed at America, which was not then at war with Germany. After his release from internment, he lived for a time at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, before moving to Paris, which was still under German occupation. When the text of his talks were published in the UK many years later, several short sentences were suppressed (probably by Wodehouse himself) which showed him being relatively friendly to the German military when they arrived at Le Touquet. Wodehouse believed he would be admired for having "kept a stiff upper lip" during his internment, but he misjudged the mood in wartime Britain, where the broadcasts led to many accusations of collaboration with the Germans and even treason...
An investigation led by Major Cussen of the British security service MI5 concluded that Wodehouse was naïve and foolish but not a traitor. Documents declassified in the 1980s revealed that while he was living in Paris, his living expenses were paid by the Nazis, but papers released by the British Public Record Office in 1999 showed that this had been accounted for by MI5 investigators when establishing Wodehouse's innocence. By their account, the money was Wodehouse's legitimate earnings, including an advance from his Spanish publisher, but had to be channeled via the German Central Bank.
For security reasons the results of Major Cussen's investigation were not published during Wodehouse's lifetime. Wodehouse felt that the unwillingness to publish the document prevented his full rehabilitation.
The criticism led Wodehouse and his American-born wife to move permanently to New York. Apart from his stepdaughter Leonora, who died during Wodehouse's internment in Germany, they had no children. He became a United States citizen in 1955, spending the remainder of his life in Remsenburg, New York, never to revisit his homeland.
Wodehouse continued to write novels and to follow an exercise regime into his nineties. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the 1975 New Year Honours; it is widely believed that the honour was not given earlier because of lingering resentment about the German broadcasts. His doctor advised him not to travel to London for the investiture and his wife later accepted the knighthood on his behalf from the British consul.
One Hundred Names for Love by Diane Ackerman
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/...
Overview
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Finalist for the National Book Circle Critics Award
Everyone who cherishes the gift of language will cherish Diane Ackerman's narrative masterpiece, an exquisitely written love story and medical miracle story, one that combines science, inspiration, wisdom, and heart.
One day Ackerman's husband, Paul West, an exceptionally gifted wordsmith and intellectual, suffered a terrible stroke. When he regained awareness he was afflicted with aphasia—loss of language—and could utter only a single syllable: "mem." The standard therapies yielded little result but frustration. Diane soon found, however, that by harnessing their deep knowledge of each other and her scientific understanding of language and the brain she could guide Paul back to the world of words. This triumphant book is both a humane and revealing addition to the medical literature on stroke and aphasia and an exquisitely written love story: a magnificent addition to literature, period.
I have been reading a lot of books about the brain and its problems. I feel the need to rest up a bit before starting this one, but it is near the top.
Tonight as I think of which one I should start next, I am attracted to the ones with large print because I am tired. Larger print is one thing I appreciate these days.
So what is on your TBR pile and what are you going to reach for next? Are they exciting or do you feel it is your duty to read them?
Diaries of the Week:
Write On! Of Cuckoos and Bookscan.
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Contemporary Fiction Views: It's the most wonderful time of the year
by bookgirl
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Wonderful World says:
I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE YOU AGAIN, the latest short-story anthology from Novelist's Inc, is now available for download or purchase. A collection of pieces from a group of multi-published authors including several NY Times and USA Today best-selling writers.
http://www.amazon.com/...
and
HERO FOR HIRE is the first in C.B. Pratt's new action & adventure e-book series starring Eno the Thracian. If you have villainy in your village and basilisks in your barnyard, who are you going to summon? When you can't afford a big-name hero, and they're all fighting in Troy anyway, Eno will deal with your mythological and/or mortal monsters for one low, low price. Available on Amazon, B&N, and Kobo. I-Tunes coming soon!
Robert Fuller says:
Chapter 17 of The Rowan Tree is up.
http://www.rowantreenovel.com/...
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plf515 has book talk on
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