RidgewayGirl Reads All Over the Place - Part Four

A final thread to see the year out. It's almost time to start thinking about ideas for my 2019 Category Challenge thread!

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired



Books Acquired in 2018: 125

Books Off of My TBR: 48

Category One -- Ellensburg, Washington

I was born here, but was moved when I was four. I don't remember a single thing about it.



Debut Novels First books by new authors.

1. The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris
2. I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
3. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
4. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan
5. Tangerine by Christine Mangan
6. Brass by Xhenet Aliu
7. The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
8. Elmet by Fiona Mozley
9. The Unforgotten by Laura Powell
10. Ohio by Stephen Markley

Category Two -- Fort Collins, Colorado

Kindergarten was where I learned to read. Thank you Miss Kindicutt!



Free Reading

1. Educated by Tara Westover
2. The Outsider by Stephen King
3. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
4. Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
5. Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks
6. Severance by Ling Ma
7. The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling
8. The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

Category Three --Ottawa, Ontario



Louise Bourgeois was an artist who received far too little acclaim while she was alive. One of her spider sculptures lives outside of the National Gallery of Canada.

Books by Women

1. The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald
2. Tampa: A Novel by Alissa Nutting
3. Multitudes by Lucy Caldwell
4. The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky
5. Florida by Lauren Groff
6. Kudos by Rachel Cusk
7. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
8. His Favorites by Kate Walbert
9. Transcription by Kate Atkinson
10. Sugar Land by Tammy Lynne Stoner

Category Four -- Edmonton, Alberta



Books Published in 2018

1. Sunburn by Laura Lippman
2. I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell
3. The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman
4. In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills by Jennifer Haupt
5. You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld
6. How to Be Safe by Tom McAllister
7. Melmoth by Sarah Perry
8. In the Shadow of Statues by Mitch Landrieu
9. The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
10. Waiting for Eden by Elliot Ackerman

Category Five -- London, Ontario



This is the house I lived in when I was 13 to 16. There was a good snow last night and our old neighbors sent pictures of the old house with new snow.

Library Books

1. My (Not So) Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella
2. Keep Her Safe by Sophie Hannah
3. Heaven's Crooked Finger by Hank Early
4. Dating You / Hating You by Christina Lauren
5. The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
6. Country Dark by Chris Offutt
7. Some Trick: Thirteen Stories by Helen DeWitt
8. Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
9. Calypso by David Sedaris
10. Dark Chapter by Winnie M. Li

Category Six -- Phoenix, Arizona



The summer I turned sixteen, we packed up and moved to Arizona. It was quite an adjustment.

Books I Brought Home

1. Promise by Minrose Gwin
2. The World's Largest Man by Harrison Scott Key
3. Let's No One Get Hurt by Jon Pineda
4. The Last Child by John Hart
5. The Hush by John Hart
6. Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter
7. Varina by Charles Frazier
8. What Luck, This Life by Kathryn Schwille
9. The Potlikker Papers by John T. Edge
10. Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro

Category Seven -- Paris, France



Expats, Immigrants and Works in Translation

1. Refuge by Dina Nayeri
2. Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
3. The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat
4. The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani
5. Straying by Molly McCloskey
6. The Italian Party by Christina Lynch
7. The Aviator by Evgenii Vodolazkin, translated from the Russian by Lisa C. Hayden
8. The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
9. Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated from the Spanish by Lucia Graves
10. America is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo

Category Eight -- Bavaria, Germany



One of the places we lived in Bavaria was an old cottage originally built for the fish workers hired to work the ponds in the area. Later, the area became a protected wetland, but the two tiny cottages remained and we got to live there (it was damp all the time, but beautiful). We raised chickens with the neighbors so this is the category for all the various books listed on one of the Tournament of Books longlists. The Tournament of Books is commonly known as The Rooster.

The Rooster

1. The Idiot by Elif Batuman
2. Smile by Roddy Doyle
3. The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch
4. White Tears by Hari Kunzru
5. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
6. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
7. Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim
8. Census by Jesse Ball
9. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
10. The Incendiaries by R. O. Kwon

Category Nine -- Warwick, Warwickshire



CATs

1. Trell by Dick Lehr (January ColorCAT - Black)
2. Red Clocks by Leni Zumas (March RandomCAT - Ripped from the Headlines)
3. Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall (June ColorCAT - Purple)
4. Detective Inspector Huss by Helene Tursten (July MysteryCAT - Police Procedurals)
5. Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott (September MysteryCAT - Noir and Hardboiled)
6. In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes (September MysteryCAT - Noir and Hardboiled)
7. The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster (Group Read - Jacobean Drama)
8. Defectors by Joseph Kanon (October MysteryCAT - Espionage)
9. Vox by Christina Dalcher (November ColorCAT - Red)
10. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra (December RandomCAT - SantaThing)

Category Ten -- Wantage, Oxfordshire



We lived for two years in a refurbished barn along an ancient footpath called the Ridgeway. It was a path that led people all across Britain.


Create Your Own Visited Countries Map

Around the World

1. At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl edited by Inge Jens, translated from the German by J. Maxwell Brownjohn (Germany)
2. Savage Theories by Pola Oloixarac, translated from the Spanish by Roy Kesey (Argentina)
3. The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis, translated from the French by Michael Lucey (France)
4. Riot Days by Maria Alyokhina (Russia)
5. Tomb Song by Julián Herbert, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney (Mexico)
6. Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright (Iraq)
7. The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao by Martha Batalha, translated from the Portuguese by Eric B. Becker (Brazil)
8. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tabley Takemori (Japan)
9. The Witch Elm by Tana French (Ireland)
10. Foe by Iain Reid (Canada)

Category Eleven -- Munich, Germany



Munich is a city where a quarter of its residents were born somewhere else. It's a large, vibrant and beautiful city, made more vibrant and beautiful by the many people who chose to make their lives here.

Diverse Voices

1. So Much Blue by Percival Everett
2. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
3. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
4. Watershed by Percival Everett
5. So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
6. When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors
7. Grace by Natashia Deón
8. White Houses by Amy Bloom
9. Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
10. There There by Tommy Orange

BingoDOG



2. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
4. At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl edited by Inge Jens
6. White Tears by Hari Kunzru
7. The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald
8. Sunburn by Laura Lippman
9. A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor (acquired in 2011)
10. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
11. The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
12. The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis
13. Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
16. The World's Largest Man by Harrison Scott Key
17. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
18. Vox by Christina Dalcher
21. The Italian Party by Christina Lynch
22. So Much Blue by Percival Everett
24. In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills by Jennifer Haupt
25. The Idiot by Elif Batuman

And there it is. The last thread of 2018 is open for business.

Happy new thread. Excellent work on the target of 100 books, 6 in 2 months should be a doddle. Lovely to have the opportunity to review your pictures again.

Happy new thread! I never know how anyone manages to read so much - and you have such consistently good quality books! Your thread is one of my BB danger zones.

Helen, I may change out my pictures for new ones.

Jackie, I think that fiction reads more quickly than non-fiction? You've had a lovely reading year yourself.

>18 RidgewayGirl: Yes, I've not done badly, although I still have some classic fiction to get through to finally complete this year's challenge. I think this year I've read more than ever before, but 100 is still a distant dream!

Happy thread #4! Looking forward to your thoughts on The Witch Elm.

Happy new thread! I agree with your comments about Indian Horse in the previous thread. I was sad to hear of his passing last year and I hope more people will get to know his work.

Also, I was happy to hear that things are good with your medical issues.

I'm so glad you started a new thread. Now maybe I can finally catch up! :-)

Happy new thread, Kay. I'm glad to hear the outcome was more or less good.

rp, The Witch Elm took it's time getting going, but it's hard to put down now.

Paulina, I'm certainly going to read more of Wagamese's work.

Shannon, there are so many threads I want to catch up on. And in a few months, it will be a whole new collection to fall behind on.

Thanks, MissWatson. The one thing that clearing one's schedule for a week does is provide plenty of time to read.

It's been more than ten years since his brother, about to be caught sharing secrets with the Soviets, defected to the Soviet Union. Simon Weeks had to leave his job at the State Department, but connections and hard work have brought him a comfortable job as an editor with a New York publishing house. Now he's in Moscow. His brother has written a memoir and Simon is there to go over the final edits, always in the presence of his brother's handler. But all is not as it seems. His brother's wife is unhappy and Frank wants to return to the US for her sake.

Joseph Kanon has a skill for writing complex novels set in the immediate aftermath of WWII and Defectors is one of his best. Once again, a man of principle is placed into an impossible situation and how he works his way through all the various lies and subterfuges to find his way out is just a lot of fun. Kanon also writes vividly of Moscow in 1961 and of the peculiar world of American and British defectors living in the USSR and their precarious place of both suspicion and privilege.

Vox: In which a popular and timely classic dystopian novel is reimagined in such a way as to remove all tension and danger, replacing them instead with romance, paper-thin characters and a ridiculous plot. I was hugely disappointed with Christina Dalcher's retelling of A Handmaid's Tale. There have been a few recent riffs on this classic vision of a society in which women are reduced to the contents of their uteruses published this year and, by and large, they have been well worth reading; imaginative and thought-provoking novels that take both Margaret Atwood's chilling tale and current events and say interesting things about the role of women. This was not one worth reading.

Jean is suffocating in this brave new world where women are fitted with bracelets that allow them only one hundred spoken words a day. She's more worried about her six year old daughter and what not being allowed to speak is doing to her development. And while she's sure her middle sons are fine, she actively dislikes her oldest son, who believes what he is being taught about gender roles. Her husband is nice and all, but even though he works in the current Administration, he's a passive and apolitical guy. Luckily, Jean is also an intelligent scientist who, in the final days before being sent home with all of the rest of the female workforce, and with the help of a super hot Italian dude scientist and a sassy Asian sidekick who is also a scientist, but strangely expendable, had just developed a serum that cures Werneke's aphasia. So when the President's brother develops exactly this medical issue, she's recalled for duty, her bracelet is removed and she's back being a scientist again, along with the hot Italian dude and her Asian sidekick friend.

Of course things are terrible and repressive and the lab they are working in is highly monitored, except for the parts with she and her sexy Italian lover are able to talk freely and also other things. She's torn, of course, between escaping with her sexy Italian lover and saving her daughter, and also she has to wrestle with the way her work is helping a repressive regime. Clearly, Jean will have to make some moral choices and people she love will die or be taken from her, right? Actually, not. Everything works out super fine for Jean and all the characters she likes. Yay!

Happy new thread! Gotta love this time of year when reading goals are beginning to hit the target.

Happy new thread, Kay. I can't say I'm much of a fan of the retelling of previous books. Although I have read a few here and there. So I'll take your advice and avoid Vox.

>25 RidgewayGirl: I didn't like this as much as I did some of his others: possibly because the brothers were difficult for me to empathise with? Not sure. Preferred Kate Atkinson's recent take on the genre.

I will also avoid Vox (I really must read The Handmaid's Tale)!

Vivienne, it is fun, especially filling in the last spot or two in my categories.

Betty, my favorite retellings are those based on Jane Austen's. Generally, I like a well-done reimagining.

Charlotte, you should read A Handmaid's Tale. It's quite good. And while Vox was terrible, Red Clocks was good and I'm looking forward to reading The Power.

Red Clocks was one of my surprise favorite books of this year, and I also really enjoyed The Power. I too will avoid Vox, so thanks for taking that bullet for the rest of us.

I am glad more of this kind of book are being written, though.

So Kate Atkinson has written another novel about WWII, this time coming at it from the direction of a young woman involved in spying on German sympathizers in London. At first, she simply types up transcripts of recorded conversations, but later her duties expand.

Transcription is the work of a master. Atkinson takes her time setting things up and then lets loose, finishing up with an ending that left me wanting to turn back to the first page and start the novel over again.

>33 RidgewayGirl: - I like her books a lot too and hope to fit in another one next year. You wanted to start over because you liked it so much or because there were things you thought you missed the first time? I can't remember which book of hers I read where I had to thumb back through at one point because I felt I had missed something.

Betty, because there's this thing revealed at the end and I want to reread it and see how it was worked into the novel without me noticing.

>33 RidgewayGirl: That might just have snuck onto the wishlist. I loved the surmise of Life After Life even though I was never quite sure that the ending was the right one.

>33 RidgewayGirl: - Now I really want to read this! Just checked and I'm number 20 at the library so hopefully I'll be getting it soon.

Helen, Transcription is a straight-forward historical novel, although the story is nuanced and complex. I wonder what you'll think of the ending.

Stacy, my personal experience with library holds is that they come in waves.

Convenience Store Woman, by Japanese author Sayaka Murata, and translated into English by Ginny Tabley Takemori, is a novella about a woman who is happy and fulfilled with her job at a large convenience store. But as she ages, her friends marry and advance in their careers and a menial job is no longer acceptable. Keiko's happiness begins to falter at the pressure and disapproval. At the same time, a new employee, one who openly despises the job, begins work at the store.

This is just a delightful story. Keiko is an unusual narrator, utterly devoted to routine and rules, she carefully studies the demeanor of others to know how to behave. This leaves her unable to withstand the social opprobrium she faces from her friends and family. Keiko is such a wonderful character, and her story is told with such understated compassion.

>35 RidgewayGirl: - See - now when I read it, I'll be wondering - "is this the thing Kay was talking about?"

>39 RidgewayGirl: I found this book to be delightful! Loved Keiko’s dedication to her job.

As usual, I can't wait to get my hands on a new Kate Atkinson book, although there is a lengthy wait for that one at the library. And, after reading your review Lethal White, that's another one just begging for my attention.

Betty, you will know.

Stacy, Convenience Store Woman was delightful. Keiko was such an interesting person to spend time with.

Vivienne, I think it was kind of mean of Rowling and Atkinson to release books right at the same time.

The Witch Elm sits at the bottom of the garden of the Dublin house once inhabited by Toby's grandparents. Now and during his teenage years, it has been lived in by Uncle Hugo, a gentle, easy-going man who allowed the teenage cousins, Toby, Susanna and Leon, to live there during the summer holidays and to hold parties. It's the place where the entire extended family gathers.

Toby is a young man with a job he loves, being in charge of PR for a prominent art gallery. He has an airy, modern flat, drives a BMW and has a girlfriend he adores. He's a charming guy who has always sailed through life until suddenly his luck changes, when he wakes one night to the sounds of intruders in his home.

Tana French takes her time setting the scene, developing the characters and their relationships with one another before she dives into the central mystery. She's less concerned with the crime than with how crime impacts the members of the Hennessy family, and especially Toby. While The Witch Elm lacks some of the heart and easy familiarity of her Dublin Murder Squad series, this is French's most skilled and complex novel to date and one well worth reading.

Potlikker is the liquid left in the pot after boiling greens like collards or mustard. During slavery, the owners would dine on the greens, while the liquid in the pot was left for the slaves to consume. This potlikker is far more nutritious than the boiled greens and modern Southern chefs have reclaimed it. The Potlikker Papers is a social history of food in the American South and how the food the South is known for, from fried chicken to hopping John to gumbo to po' boys is a result of the African, Native American and European cultures that influenced what we eat now. John T. Edge, is the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and his passion for every aspect of Southern cuisine is evident in every page of this excellent book.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in food or who lives (or has lived) in the American South. For those who appreciate good food and live in one of the Southern states, it's required reading.

>45 RidgewayGirl: - Obviously a BB for me!

Interestingly, my BIL and wife adopted a dog from one of the Caribbean islands that is called a "potlikker"

Betty, how interesting. According to the dictionary, a potlikker is a stray dog.

I can see that. I thought she told me that it was a breed but it did have something to do with them originally being strays that people put pots out after they ate so the dogs got to "lick the pot". Or something like that - I don't recall exactly.

Ohio is a big book with big ambitions. Stephen Markley has written a book that intends to take in the sweep of what it is to be an American in a specific place and time, and he mostly nails it. Bill returns to the Ohio town of New Canaan to deliver a package. He spends his first hours back doing his best to get as wasted as he can, as he wanders the streets, avoiding cops and talking with a guy who might have some drugs on him, a guy who attended high school at the same time, but who moved in different circles. At the same time, a few other people from that graduating class are back in town for Thanksgiving, one a vet, another a graduate student. As the visitors run into the people who never left, they remember their high school years.

Ohio felt to me like an attempt at writing the Great American Novel. There was a bit of everything in here, from the fate of a dying factory town, to the horrors of our foreign wars, to our political divide, to the opiod epidemic, to the struggles of getting by, to the experience of growing up gay and Evangelical. It's a lot and, for the most part, Markley manages to hit all the issues while crafting a character-driven novel that allowed for each of his disparate characters to be complex and sympathetic. Markley is skilled at giving that telling detail, delivered off-handedly, the kind of detail that sticks and makes a character into a breathing person.

There is a series of events in this book involving sexual assault. Markley manages to tread that very fine line of writing about the full effects of rape without downplaying or glorifying the abuse. And he writes so well about the effects on the teenage girl who lived through it. There is also a murder that is depicted with such vividness, and yet with no voyeuristic thrill to it. It's a terrible deed, done badly and the reader is left cringing and appalled.

The hardest part of a novel is knowing where to end it and this is Markley's one real misstep, the book was a chapter too long. Sometimes a story remains stronger and more resonant when not all the questions are answered. Still, this is a remarkable achievement for a debut novel and I'm eager to see what the author writes next.

Tommy Orange's debut novel, There There, follows several Native Americans before and during a big Pow Wow in Oakland, California. Each of the many characters has a story to tell, and Orange gives them the space to tell it, not unlike Dene Oxendene, one of Orange's characters. He comes up with the idea of getting Indians to just talk about their life experiences, filming them telling their stories. He applies for a grant to finance his project, feeling out of his league in the interview stage, when surrounded by people with slick presentations. As the twelve characters in There There tell their own stories, Orange moves them purposefully toward the Pow Wow, where they will come together in ways both hopeful and disastrous.

There's a lot packed into this relatively slender novel. Orange has things to say and he will say them. Often when an author is angry or has a purpose behind his writing, it diminishes the writing, but this forcefulness works well with this novel of urban Indians navigating a world that has disadvantaged them without care or understanding. There are a lot of separate voices, but they sort themselves out as the book progresses. This is a remarkable achievement and I look forward to being broadsided by Tommy Orange again with whatever he writes next.

I'm embarrassed to say this is my first visit to your threads this year. The year has almost gone by, I have only read little and been on LT much less than I used to. But now I've read through all of your threads, and can see I have missed a lot. A beautiful category setup, two adorable kittens and an impressive list of books with the usual bullets flying around (11 hit their target...). Enjoy the year's last month!

Hi, Chrischi! Eleven is a lot, but I've had a great reading year. Hope your year was full of fun and interesting things, if you weren't reading. Time to start thinking up a theme for next year!

R. O. Kwon's The Incendiaries begins with the end; a group of people standing on a rooftop and watching an explosion in the distance and celebrating. And then the novel returns to the start of the story, when an awkward sophomore, who transferred from his Bible College when he lost his faith, is standing alone at a party when he has a drink spilled on him by the vivacious, popular Phoebe. Both have secrets. Will's are routine and prosaic - he doesn't have money and to get by works at an Italian restaurant on the other end of town. He also has a difficult relationship with his mother. Phoebe's secrets go much deeper - her mother is dead and she feels it was her fault, the specific circumstances change over the course of the book, and she had devoted her entire childhood to the piano, and once giving that up, she's left floundering for purpose. Which leaves her open to the oddly charismatic John, who reportedly was held for a time in a North Korean labor camp, and who arrives in town and begins to drawn people to him and his version of Christianity, carefully controlling who is allowed in.

A lot is going on in this slender novel. Kwon tells the story from the viewpoints of the two main characters and she dives deeply into who they are and what motivates them. I found Will to be the more compelling character as he struggles with his girlfriend becoming more and more entangled with John's cult, and his own ambivalence about his past. There are a lot of ideas here, presented with some beautiful writing.

I'm on a wait list for the Tommy Orange book. Your review makes me hope my name comes up soon. I just hope it doesn't appear at the same time as the Kate Atkinson, Tana French and Robert Galbraith books.

>53 RidgewayGirl: I heard an interview with the author recently and it certainly piqued my interest in the book; your review has only added to that.

Vivienne, they will all be ready on the same day, which will coincidentally the day after you start something huge, or the day after you check a few other books out of the library. Sorry, but I don't make the rules.

Jackie, yes, Kwon is really interesting, isn't she? I love finding books through author interviews. I've also opted out of reading an author after wish listing their book, as they were so insufferably smug in their interview.

Taking a bb for >53 RidgewayGirl:...

>57 whitewavedarling: Good, it's a fascinating book.

Iain Reid first came to my attention with his eerie horror novel, I'm Thinking of Ending Things. It was so well conceived and there was a twist at the end that I never saw coming, yet was carefully written into every chapter of the book. So I was quick to grab a copy of his new novel, Foe, which I read watching for any clue as to what would come next. It did me no good. I spotted nothing and was exactly as surprised as when I wasn't expecting it.

Foe tells the story of Junior and his wife, Hen, who live in an isolated farmhouse in a rural area. Junior works in a local grain mill, Hen in a nursing home and while their lives are simple and quiet, Junior is content. And then a man from the government shows up at their house with some astonishing news, Junior has been put on a long list of candidates to go build a space colony. As they wait to hear back, their relationship goes off-kilter, even more so when the government man returns with more exciting news.

Foe is all about atmosphere, and this rising sense that things are wrong, without precisely being about to say how or why. Reid sets this novel in a near-future where things are almost, but not quite, identical to how things are now, creating a sense of being off-balance that he uses to enhance the reader's sense of both familiarity and dislocation. This book is just fantastic and I'm still thinking it over.

>59 RidgewayGirl: Reid is new to me but my library has Foe, it sounds so good!

clue, I hope you enjoy it. If you're going to read it, I recommend finding out as little as possible about the book going in. A lot of the reviews here are unnecessarily spoilery.

The Book of M begins with a couple hiding out. They've run out of food and Ory is determined to go and find something in Arlington, the nearest city. He's equally determined that Max remain behind and wait for him. As Peng Shepherd's novel continues, she describes a world in chaos. People are losing their memories and, as they forget things, they alter the way their surroundings are structured. The only way to know who is infected and who is not is that those who are losing their memories first lose their shadows.

This is a highly imaginative work of fiction by an author who is unafraid to stray far from scientific reasons and effects and into the metaphysical. There were a lot of interesting ideas woven into this world. In the end, this is a novel filled with odd and wonderful ideas, and the world-building often took precedence over character development. Certainly one of the better dystopian novels I have read this year.

Sounds like you are on a roll with good books, Kay. I have Foe on my wishlist already, I think my library recommended it but I am adding The Book of M as well, I am always ready for good dystopia books!

I keep saying that dystopian fiction is not in my wheelhouse, but I read so much of it, that I might need to reconsider that.

And here are a few pictures of Melmoth for this frosty morning. She's off for The Operation today, so all sympathy to her and also me, who had to take food and water away from all the cats last night. They were perturbed.

>59 RidgewayGirl: Thanks for bringing Foe to my attention. I also enjoyed I'm Thinking of Ending Things, which I read quite by chance, so I will seek this one out.

>64 RidgewayGirl: Hope Melmoth's Operation went well! I love the picture of her in the sink :)

It did, rp. Her belly no longer is as furry and she's sore and groggy, but she's currently asleep on my chest, recovering.

Glad to hear the surgery went well and that she found the perfect place to sleep!

I love the sink picture - pleased to hear she's on the road to recovery now.

Glad to hear Melmoth is doing well. She looks so adorable!

Lori, thanks, I am also happy the surgery was uneventful.

Charlotte, all the cats love drinking out of the sink far more than out of any of the many water dishes in the house, and here the kitten is waiting for it to fill with water.

MissWatson, we all love her so much, except for the other cats, who are mostly tolerating her antics.

This morning, she was running around almost up to regular speed. I admire her power of recuperation.

So glad Melmoth is recovering well. My cat took the op very personally and wouldn't play for a couple of weeks. But she was a laid-back kind of cat anyway.

Vivienne, Melmoth is not laid back. And the older cats would like it if she were to calm down a bit. She is very loving, sometimes in the middle of the night. It is impossible to sleep with a kitten insistently nuzzling your chin or licking your nose.

Oh, Kay - I'm so far behind on threads this week. I'm taking a BB for both Iain Reid books and also The Book of M. I too say I don't do dystopian but keep reading and enjoying them. I agree about the author interviews. I end up reading Mary Doria Russell because of an interview I heard her do. And I'm sure there are others.

Glad kitty made out ok. The picture in the sink is so cute.

Betty, I'm behind on all the threads. I'm hoping that that quiet week between Christmas and the new year will let me find out what everyone's been reading and to see what everyone's got planned for 2019. And, at some point, I need to figure out what I'm doing next year, too!

Did you get hit by the storm?

>75 RidgewayGirl: It is increasingly difficult to keep up. I really haven't made real specific plans for next year. I've got lists from which I want to work, but I hope to knock things off my own TBR lists and piles and request fewer ARCs. The new stuff attracts me though!

Carlos Ruiz Zafón says in The Labyrinth of Spirits that the beginnings of books are merely entry points and that his quartet, The Cemetery of Forgotten Books can be jumped into at any point. While possible, I do think that this is a series that rewards being read in order, in seeing the Sempere family change over time, and in truly enjoying the way this final novel ties up old story-lines. Each of the four novels is different from the other, and The Labyrinth of Spirits is an old-fashioned noir, where the hard-boiled, quick-witted, world-weary and self-destructive detective is also the femme fatale.

Alicia Gris lost her mother to a wartime bomb in Barcelona, Spain. She is escapes across the rooftops as the city burns, pulled from the wreckage by a family friend, who loses her when she falls through a glass dome and into the mysterious cemetery of books, a labyrinthine library. She is terribly injured in the fall, and those injuries still affect her now that she's an adult and working in Madrid for a secretive agency working for Franco's government. When a powerful cabinet member disappears, leaving behind his daughter and a banned book, Alicia is pulled in to partner with a police detective to find him. Their path takes them to Barcelona, to secrets from the past and to a small bookstore run by the Sempere family.

No one does atmosphere like Zafón. His version of Barcelona appears like an old movie, all fog and shadows, a black and white homage to a complex and colorful city. Alicia is a wonderful character to follow. She's the one men fall in love with, but she also terrifies them. She's good at her job, and her job is not one for the faint of heart. Still, she is drawn to the warm family life of the Semperes and will need their help to not only solve the mystery, but to survive.

This novel was a delight. The plot was convoluted and tended to wander off into lengthy tangents, but the whole journey was just so entertaining that I was happy for each of the more than 800 pages.

>78 RidgewayGirl: I have only read the first one and loved it! I need to read the rest of the series.

>78 RidgewayGirl: - I recently picked this up from the library and am looking forward to reading it. Quite the hefty book though! Much longer than his previous books.

Lori, I somehow missed the third book and plan to read it in 2019.

Stacy, I hope that the holidays allow you to finish it before you owe the library too much money!

>78 RidgewayGirl: - I need to get back to these books too. I've only read #1 so I have a way to go.

>81 RidgewayGirl: - Lol. Actually one of the best parts about my library is that you are allowed to renew up to 99 times as long as nobody else is in line for the book. So far I'm in the clear for quite some time!

Betty, you have some fun ahead of you.

Stacy, no fair! My library only allows two renewals, for a maximum of six weeks, no matter what.

>83 LittleTaiko: goodness, and I thought 20 renewals of 3 weeks was generous! I could have a book for over a year, by which time I think I'd have forgotten that I'd borriwed it at all! But it does make getting through the larger novel a lot easier, knowing that there's unlikely to be any time pressure to finish.

In Dark Chapter, Winnie M Li's debut novel, Vivian, a young Asian American woman sets out for what she hopes will be a pleasant and relaxing hike on the outskirts of Belfast, Northern Ireland. But not long into the walk she encounters a teenage boy. What happens will change both of their lives forever.

This is a book about rape and its aftermath. The author had a similar experience and the novel is both an honest depiction of what happens, in both the legal sense and in the ramifications for her. Li also imagines the life and thoughts of the boy who rapes Vivian who, as an Irish traveller, lived a marginalized life even before he committed a violent rape. Dark Chapter was well-written and the bravery required to write it is unquestionable, even as the subject matter made it difficult to read at points.

Elliot Ackerman's powerful short novel, Waiting for Eden, concerns a soldier named Eden who was injured in the Iraq War. Narrated by his dead best friend, who was in the same vehicle when it drove over an explosive, the novel describes how Eden's wife sits by his bedside and advocates for him, caring for him tirelessly, despite being the mother of a young child and that Eden is incapable of communicating, covered in burns and with terrible brain injuries.

This novel is one that pulls no punches. Eden's injuries are not glossed over, nor are the conditions of the VA hospital he is in. It reminded me so much of Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, both in the nature of the injuries sustained by the soldier, but also in the clear rage at the fate of a man who was once so full of promise, but who was ground down by multiple deployments even before he was injured. Ackerman probes what deployment does to an otherwise strong marriage and his depiction of Eden's thoughts and experiences is stark and brilliant. This is a novel well worth reading and one that will be read for some time to come.

Did you see that the TOB shortlist came out yesterday? Early Christmas present! I've read zero of the 18 books so lots of library requests coming up in my future. :)

>88 LittleTaiko: Yes! It was far too early for me as I had just gotten a stack of books from the longlist from the library and had gotten all set to read them, and then only one of the seven was on the shortlist. I've read six of the shortlist so I'm feeling confident that I'll have all the books read before March. I'm not happy that The Overstory made the cut as I didn't like the one book by Richard Powers that I've read, but the rest of the list looks great.

>78 RidgewayGirl: - Fabulous review! I will definitely be adding this to my 2019 reading.

As the end of the year races towards me, I need to catch up on my reviews so that I can start to think about the 2019 Challenge. There's not much time left!

I'm not going to summarize the plot to Jamie Quatro's first novel, Fire Sermon, because the book is less interested in a plot than it is in exploring faith and infidelity. This is a gutsy book and Quatro is fearless in writing a book that is guaranteed to alienate a large proportion of its potential readers. The novel centers on a woman who is deeply committed to her Evangelical faith and who also has an extra-marital relationship. See? A bunch of you decided not to read the book because of one thing or the other.

Fire Sermon is an introspective and thoughtful novel, one that is willing to explore ideas and doesn't flinch from honestly portraying some very uncomfortable themes. While I disagreed with the protagonist often, there's no question that she wrestled with her thoughts and actions. I'm looking forward to reading whatever Quatro writes next and I've got her earlier book of short stories on my wish list.

>86 RidgewayGirl: At first glance I thought this was just for me, having a character with my name and the setting of Belfast, my old hometown. But the subject sounds very dark, not my choice of reading, so I'll take a pass on this one.

>93 VivienneR: It was not always easy to read, Vivienne.

I think I've read 5 of the TOB list, but only because those overlap with the Booker. I really want to read There, There, and great to see so many new to me authors included. Look forward to hearing more.

Charlotte, There There is excellent. One of the best books I've read this year. One of the things I like about the ToB is that they always include books from small presses. I've really enjoyed reading those and I think I need to make an effort to find these books myself. There's a small press one city over from where I am. My local independent bookstore carries them, and I have yet to be disappointed by one of their books.

I have enjoyed every single book by Sebastian Faulks that I have read, and loved On Green Dolphin Street so much, so my reluctance to read Paris Echo makes no sense at all, except that the bare outline of the description made me nervous. Hannah, an American post-doc, comes to Paris ten years after her last stay, to do research into the lives of ordinary Parisian women during the Second World War. Tariq is an Algerian teenager who, through a series of events, ends up as a lodger of sorts in her small apartment. I think I was worried about what would happen in the wrong hands, that Tariq would do something terrible, or Hannah would, and I would be left feeling unhappy about the novel.

But Sebastian Faulks is not a first-time author looking to write something edgy or controversial. He knows exactly what he's doing. Here, Hannah is a naturally cautious woman who is used to being alone. She's given access to a series of recordings of women recalling their wartime experiences living in Paris and she is drawn into their lives. Meanwhile, Tariq is figuring out how to survive in a city that doesn't welcome him. His natural resilience means he's willing to explore the city and he especially loves the Metro. He gets a menial job at the fabulously named Panama Fried Poulet spends his free time exploring. The careful way they manage to form a friendship is just wonderful.

There's a clever bit of blurred time in this novel, but the main thing is how evocatively Faulks describes a Paris, not of tourists and grand avenues, but of immigrants, not always in France legally, trying to get by and of ordinary Parisian women during the war, and how they managed to survive. There were moments where it was clear that Faulks is much more comfortable with the thoughts of teenagers living eighty years ago than with a teenager today and he sometimes adds actions and thoughts to Tariq that don't feel entirely natural, but this was still and extraordinary novel, that I enjoyed thoroughly.

>50 RidgewayGirl: I'm happy to see your positive review of this book, as it's one of the ones on the ToB shortlist I definitely want to read.

I must add that, in past years, you've inspired me to read as much as I can from the ToB list, with your reviews and commentary. I'm sure this year will be no different. :)

Hope you enjoy the holidays with your human and furry family. Looking forward to sharing your reading again next year.

Paulina, There There is one of the best books I have read this year. I highly recommend it. I'm looking forward to following your reading again next year.

Merry Christmas to you, too, Vivienne. May it be merry and bright and include lots of time to read.

Wishing you and your family a very happy holiday, Kay.

Elaine Castillo's debut novel is about a Filipino family in Milpitas, California. Paz is a nurse who emigrates from the Philippines to take a nursing job in California, when Pol, a doctor she had had a relationship with, needs to leave the Philippines, they marry and have a daughter. Paz supports her family, as well as a number of siblings and cousins, sending money back to the Philippines and helping those in the US as well. She works two jobs, often adding extra shifts so that she often gets home long after everyone is in bed, and is gone before they wake in the morning. Pol works as a security guard, working through his naturalization papers. When his sister, Hero, moves in, entering the US on a tourist visa, she takes care of their daughter and learns to negotiate this new country, even as she deals with what happened in the Philippines.

The experience of Filipinos in the US is one I know almost nothing about and I enjoyed getting a glimpse of that culture and how it adjusts to life in the US. Hero is a fascinating character to follow. She is guarded and quick to shut out people, so learning about her was a gradual process. Life in the Filipino community of Milpitas is almost as foreign to her as it was to this reader and that angle allowed Castillo to explain without it feeling like she was dumbing things down for her readers. Castillo also structures things well, having a prologue that gives the story of Paz's life in the Philippines, so that although she is largely absent from the narrative, she remains central in the reader's mind.

America is Not the Heart has it's clumsy moments and a romantic relationship overwhelms the novel for a stretch, but this is an solid addition to American literature and I look forward to reading whatever Elaine Castillo writes next.

In a small town in Texas in the summer of 1923, Miss Dara falls in love with a girl. Terrified of what that means and what her family and community would think, she flees to the safety of the kitchen of the farm prison at Sugarland, which isn't a safe place for a young woman, but she makes a place for herself nonetheless.

Sugar Land follows the life of Miss Dara from a young woman falling in love, to a cook in a difficult environment who makes a few friends; an inmate with immense musical talent, another cook whose quiet decency protects her, and the prison warden, to a wife and step-mother and through to the end of her life.

Despite the bleakness of Miss Dara's surroundings and her situation of always have to conceal who she really is, Tammy Lynne Stoner keeps the tone of the novel upbeat. Miss Dara is simply too pragmatic and too optimistic to allow herself to do anything other than to persevere and to take joy out of what she can, from a stray cat to the trailer she'll eventually call home.

This is a novel about family, and about loving the family and friends that you are given. It's about learning to accept oneself and to accept others as they are and not as you'd wish them to be. Sugar Land is published by the very small Red Hen Press and it reminded me of how small presses are constantly publishing interesting and unusual novels, and how finding and reading books put out by small presses is always rewarding.

Christmas gifts and then me spending my bookstore gift cards within hours of receiving them have blown my last aspirations of keeping my tbr at least steady to shreds. Oh, well, there's always next year.

Now to catch up on reviews so I can plan next year's categories!

Not long ago, I decided that the genres of romance and dystopian lit don't mesh very well. Now, I'm here to say that dystopian lit meshes superbly with literary fiction, with Severance by Ling Ma being my sole example.

Candace is a young woman living in New York. She shares an apartment with a friend, throwing parties and filling her blog, NY Ghost, with pictures of the city she is growing to love. She's met a guy she likes and eventually finds a job at a publishing company, supervising the printing of various Bibles, which involves her going on business trips to China, the country she emigrated from when she was six years old and her father received a grant to get his doctorate at a university in Utah.

Ma writes so engagingly about Candace, a woman who prefers to have things happen to her than to take decisive action. Her job's not great, but it's not bad. Her boyfriend isn't perfect, but he's not terrible. When Shen Fever reaches New York, she keeps going into her job in Manhattan. Once bus service ends, she stays in an empty office and continues to send emails to China, and filing status reports, despite the rapidly diminishing number of people coming in to work. Long after she's the last one working, she finally leaves New York and finds a small group to travel with. The group's leader wants to be some kind of cult leader, but no one really takes him seriously, or at least Candace doesn't.

What made this novel work is that all of it was so interesting. Ma makes Candace's memories of growing up in Salt Lake City and of being generally aimless in New York as fascinating as life in the cult, traveling across the depopulated US, stopping now and then to "go stalking," which is to say, breaking into people's houses and stealing stuff. As the group becomes more restrictive, Candace awakens to the fact that she will have to take decisive action if she wants to survive.

>105 RidgewayGirl: Look forward to seeing your categories for next year and following you here (and on GoodReads).

>107 thornton37814: Lori, I know I'm late to the party. I hope to put together my 2019 challenge tomorrow.

I still haven't set mine up either... I know, I know....

>105 RidgewayGirl: Hey, it's what Christmas is all about (ahem). I had thought I had increased Mt TBR by 10 this Christmas, but then another present arrived this morning, so make that 11.

>108 RidgewayGirl: >109 VictoriaPL: The only reason mine is up is because I did it over Thanksgiving when I had time. I'd planned categories in the summer.

Victoria, so instead of setting up your 2019 Challenge, you were off on a museum heist and eating pizza.

Jackie, book gifts are the best ones.

Lori, I hadn't even thought of what my categories would be until I set up the 2019 thread!

I've just finished two five-star reads in a row and I feel drained. Will probably spend the next week reading crime novels and non-fiction to recover.

The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling begins with a woman's sudden decision to leave work mid-morning, pack a few bags, collect her baby from daycare and drive out to the high country of northern California, where she has inherited her grandparents house. She misses the space and the smell of the air and the sheer weight of working, caring for her daughter, managing to pay the bills and all the daily hassles of life in San Francisco have worn her down. Her husband, though a bit of dishonesty on the part of Immigration, surrendered his Green Card and while they battle the system and pay for a lawyer, he's stuck back in Turkey.

But life in a rural community is not quite the respite she'd thought it would be. For one thing, she's still the sole caregiver to a toddler, a challenging, rewarding and yet mind-bogglingly boring task. And it's not like the dying neighborhood she's landed in is going to provide much in the way of social interaction. At best, there's Cindy, the neighbor who has joined a separatist movement or the elderly lady who is always in the diner when they go there to get out of the house.

This is a novel that isn't afraid to make clear the repetitive and constant work of raising a toddler. The forward movement of the plot is constantly hindered by Honey's need for constant care and supervision. The space Daphne needs to figure out what to do is filled instead with the need to monitor what Honey eats, when she naps, how she's doing. I don't think I've come across a clearer picture of what it means to have a baby in fiction, layered in with what life in a dying rural community is like, the reactions she receives when people find out that she's married to someone they blithely categorize as a possible terrorist, and the challenges of a long-distance marriage conducted over a slow and unreliable internet connection.

Wishing you a Happy New Year Kay, filled with good health and good reading.

Happy New Year, Lori and Vivienne. See you next year!

The Great Believers tells the story of the AIDs crisis from the vantage point of the Boystown neighborhood of Chicago. Rebecca Makkai begins the novel with a wake, a gathering of Nico's partner, his sister and his friends, who were specifically not invited to the funeral held by his parents. The novel moves forward from there, and a second plot-line follows Nico's sister, Fiona, in 2015, as she looks for the daughter who cut ties some years ago.

This is perhaps the best book I've read this year. It's just superbly written, and the way the stories mesh together is brilliant. I'm already looking forward to rereading this book.

Five years ago, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra was the book everyone was talking about and somehow, despite my love of the new and shiny and talked about, I missed it. But I've read it now, and it's just wonderful.



After two intense reading experiences, I retreated to the comfort of a nice novel about serial killers. What You Don't Know by JoAnn Chaney was an above average book in which two detectives and a reporter find their lives permanently affected by the time they spent with a man who tortured and murdered twenty-two people and buried their corpses in the crawl space of his Denver home. Seven years after he was found guilty and imprisoned, people associated with the killer are murdered, in ways that bear an uncanny resemblance to the original crimes.

While it wasn't difficult to figure out who the killer was, the characters were well-developed and the plot was neither too arcane nor too predictable. I enjoyed it.