"A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara *****

• Summer Read with Beth
• US author
• Review:  Four friends, one with a stark, horrifying secret past, and beyond that I am somewhat at a loss for words.  This is a phenomenal novel about love, the enduring, unconditional kind of love.   It is about love that survives anger, betrayal, and completely unsolvable sorrow.  The characters are followed over their adult lives in a realistic trajectory over time. I could not put this book down, despite some horrifying scenes which were anything but gratuitous. The author needed the reader to come as close to despair as possible, in order for the reader to most fully understand the psychological dynamic in the group and in each character.  Brava!

"The Arsonist" by Sue Miller ****

•  Audiobook
•  US author
•  Originally published in 2007
•  Review:  I had mixed feelings about this novel, until about the last third.  The scales tipped when I realized that for once, the endings (multiple plot lines) were not going to be trite at all.  There is a compassion in the writing of this book that sees people with the sense of the multi-dimensionality of human beings.  I applaud the author for her endings!  Also, having been "summer people" in a rural area all of my life, kudos for the keen grasp of the issues which arise in a lake resort area.

"Dance To The Music of Time: 1st Movement, Spring" by Anthony Powell ****

• Summer Read with Beth
• English author
• Originally published in 1951
• Review:  Imagine if you will.......you.....settled into a cozy chair, inside the mind of the protagonist of a novel, with nothing better to do than be a silent observer of his every thought and feeling.  Weird?  Boring?  Fascinating?  All of these feelings were part of my experience reading this first volume of "A Dance To The Music of Time:First Movement".  I am thoroughly impressed with Powell's ability to communicate the impressions, feelings and thoughts of a character to the degree he has done so in this novel.  Set in the early 1900s in London, the story moves through the development of a prep school coy as he matures and moves out into London society, dipping his toes in several different social groups.  As the volume ends, he may or may not have found love, and the reader is left heaving a sigh of relief at finishing this somewhat strenuous read, and also looking forward to the second volume.  Reading this novel is not for the reader who requires action.  It is more for the lover of the psychological.  It would be a five star read if not for the occasional long tedious stretches.

"Lean Mean Thirteen" by Janet Evanovich ****

•  Audiobook
•  US author
•  #13 in Stephanie Plum series
•  Mystery/Suspense
•  Review:  This 13th installment of the Stephanie Plum series is a winner!  Along with an engaging plot, the mounting competition between Stephanie's men for her affections makes the book entertaining, as usual.

"Mountain Time" by Ivan Doig ****

•  Audiobook
•  US author
•  Originally published in 2000
•  Review:  Another gruff, yet lyrical Doig novel!  Excellent narrator,  by the way!  This story winds its way through the mountains of Montana, the trails worn deep by relationships, and the tough trek that is the struggle to resolve a parent/child relationship,  a love relationship, and a sibling relationship.   When Ivan Doig weaves a tale, it sweeps you along into its very heart and soul!

"Thrice The Brinded Cat Hath Mewed" by Alan Bradley ****

•  Audiobook
•  #8 in Flavia de Luce series
•  Mystery/ Suspense
•  Originally published in 2016
•  Review:   Another delightful installment in the Flavia de Luce series!  Very little chemistry in this installment.  However, the author smoothly layers an identity based mystery with Flavia's own identity development.  Well done!

"To The Bright Edge of The World" by Eowyn Ivey ****

This novel, comprised of letters, journal entries, and newspaper articles,  felt real.  Journey back to the 1880s in Vancouver and Alaska.   Meet Sophie and Alan Forrester.  Meet a fledgling married couple, a fledgling country, and the mystery of Native American folklore.  Sophie becomes synonymous with the delicate yet determined hummingbird fledgling, while her adventurer husband becomes synonymous with the fledgling country.  Adventure, Mystery, love, and history.  Great mix.  Excellent read!

"Miracl e in the Andes: 72 Days On The Mountain " by Nando Parrado ****

An absolutely remarkable tale of the human spirit!

"Today Will Be Different" by Maria Sample **

•  Audiobook
•  US author
•  Originally published in 2016
•  Review:  I did not like this novel.  I think I have lost interest in flip sarcasm.  The writing is witty....just not enough to hold my interest.

"Bob, Honey Who Does Stuff" by Pappy Pariah *****

•  Audiobook
•  US author (Sean Penn or not?)
•  Debut
•  Originally published in 2016
•  Review:  A rollicking,  absurd, dark, disturbing, tale of a guy who does stuff.  That stuff ranges from espionage to annoying the neighbors.  Is Bob a regular genius?  Is he brilliant observer of American culture and politics?   is he nuts?  You be the judge.  This is the kind of novella that will likely be seen as weird or brilliant. I am leaning toward brilliant.

"The Redbreast" by Jo Nesbo. ***

• Audiobook
• # 3 in Harry Hole series
• Norwegian author
• Originally published in 2000
• Mystery/Suspense
• Review:  Definitely not my favorite in the series.  It seemed to drag for me

"The Forgotten Seamstress"by Liz Trenow ***

•  Audiobook 
•  English  author 
•  Originally published in 2014
• Review:  A nice story with some interesting themes, including women's institutions used to solve men's problems, love and friendship, healing, and the power of family. Frankly, the writing was adequate rather than enhancing to the story line.  Nice light read.

"Zinky Boys: Stories of The War in Afghanistan" by Svetlana Alexievich. ****

•  Interviews
•  Non-Fiction
•  Russian author
•  Originally published in 1992
Review:  Dark, disturbing and riveting.  When will humanity learn not to send it's young adults to war?

"The Stories of the Steppe" by Maxim Gorky. *****

•  Short Stories
•  Reproduction of 1918 edition
•  Russian author
•  Review:  In the course of reading three short stories, Gorky is able to create a vision in the mind of the reader.  The vision is of the steppe, vast, golden, lonely and yet richly endowed with history. The tales told here evoked an image in my mind of the vast miles of golden wheat fields in the Midwestern portion of the United States.  Sparsely populated, yet richly appreciated, a place with ancient indigenous tales as well as modern tales of survival in the vast open spaces.  Lovely!

"The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad. ****

• Audiobook
• Originally published in 1905
• English author
• Review: To me, this is one of the darkest novels I have read in a long time.  It is a tale of a simple man used by the "government" with disastrous results.  The simplest are affected the most adversely.  Clearly, the author held some significantly negative perceptions of the hierarchies within government, and their manipulations of the little people!

"A Great Reckoning" by Louise Penny. ****

●  Audiobook
●  #12 in the Inspector Gamache series
●  Canadian author
●  Originally published in 2016
●  Review:  How does she do it?  Another book replete with beloved characters, a fascinating plot, and a mystery.  It is hard to describe the intense attachment I feel for the village of Three Pines, it's residents, and Inspector Gamache.  They are real in my heart! 

"Bardo Or Not Bardo" by Antoine Volodine ****

▪  Summer read with Beth
▪  French author
▪  Originally published in 2016
▪  Open Letter Series
▪  Review:   A spiritual farce?  A human comedy?  A satiric view of the absurdity of humans?  All of the above?  Volodine takes a belief regarding the afterlife and demonstrates that humans, with their foibles, cannot manage to navigate it without total chaos ensuing. The author even takes a stab at the "play within a play" concept.  Three vignettes within one vignette.  It is a jumbled life, a jumbled afterlife, and a bit of a jumbled read.  Very well done!

"My Grandmother Told Me To Tell You She's Sorry" by Fredrik Backman. ****

●  Audiobook
●  Swedish author
●  Originally published in 2016
●  Review:   Fredrik Backman sure knows how to tell a story!  His characters are engaging, memorable, and oh so human.  A girl's grandmother leaves a series of clues as a means of demonstrating the strength of her love.  Absolutely delightful!

"Sweet Caress" by William Boyd. ***

• Audiobook
• Ghanaian author
• Originally published 2015
• Review: The story of a woman who repeatedly defies social morays  and finds herself photographing her way through history

"Larose" by Louise Erdrich ***

●  Audiobook
●  US author
●  Originally published in 2016
●  Review:   Not my favorite by Erdrich, but a good book, nonetheless.   The tragic accidental death of a young boy precipitates a lengthy grief process in two Native American families.  The novel addresses grief, heritage, traditional, and above all, family.

"Sacred Hearts" by Sarah Dunant. ***

• US author
• Originally published in 2008
• Early review addition acquired through BookMooch.com
• Review: This was an interesting piece of historical fiction.  There was a period of time during which large numbers of women were forcibly locked up in convents , against their will, because it was too expensive to marry off more than one daughter.  Additionally,  there was a clamp down on nuns' ability to have contact with the outside world. The happy ending seemed improbable, but otherwise it was a well written story.

"Buddhaland Brooklyn" by Richard C. Morais. ****

• Audiobook
• Originally published in 2012
• US author
• Review: This book is fictional, but it reads like non-fiction. It is the story of a Buddhist priest who is haunted by a tragedy from his youth.  He resolves his past tragedy by living his present life most fully.   Excellent story with insights on multiple levels.

"Britt-Marie Was Here" by Fredrik Backman ****

• Audiobook
• Swedish author
• Originally published 2016
• Review:  Wouldn't it be nice, after your death, if someone remembered that you had existed?  Well, that desire was a catalyst for Britt-Marie to attempt some new, if terrifying and bewildering, experiences.  The resulting tale is marvelous.  I became quite attached to Britt-Marie, and definitely rooted for her as the story moved along.  I think you will too!  Here's to being the kind of person willing to "take the leap".

"As Good As Gone" by Larry Watson *****

• Early Review edition for LibraryThing.com
• US author
• Originally published in 2016
• Review:  As always, Larry Watson has given us as readers an intense story which leaves a lasting impression.  I read the entire book during a rainy vacation day.  Set in Gladstone, Montana in the early 1960s, three generations of men in one family face moral dilemmas and must figure out how to come to terms with their own set of life principals.  The reader is presented with a cowboy, a businessman, a boy, and a teenage girl as well.  I was fascinated at the way the character of the three generations remained true throughout, yet the cultural changes impacted the choices being made.  There are primal moments of passion, anger, and love.  Excellent novel.

"Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury *****

• Audiobook 
• US author 
• Originally published in 2006
• Review:  A dark, mesmerizing coming of age tale about two boys and a father.  The plot is scary, complex, and engrossing.  The characters are winsome, dark, and powerful.  And of course, love conquers all, and I can live with that as the moral of the story.  This one could be nightmare inducing, but maybe not quite?  Great read!

"Alive on the Andrea Doria!" by Pierette Domenica Simpson. ***

● Non-Fiction
●  Italian author
●  Originally published in 2006
●  Review:  Interesting piece of history, yet not particularly gripping as a read.

"Euphoria" by Lily King. ****

●  Audiobook
●  US author
●  Originally published in 2014
●  Review:  This is a story of intrigue, greed, and love between three anthropologists in the African jungle.  The characters and plot are engaging and offer a window into the manner in which all those fascinating artifacts end up under glass in our natural history museums.  For me, this misses being a five star read because the use of language was adequate, but not stellar.

"The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss" by Anderson Cooper- ****

●  Audiobook
●  Non-Fiction
●  Originally published in 2016
●  Review:  I will say up front that I am an Anderson Cooper fan, and I really wasn't familiar with his mother's infamous childhood.  I was totally engrossed with this book.  I listened to the audio version, with Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt,  narrating.  It was interesting on multiple levels.  Themes included the mother-child relationship, the tragedies that shape a person's future, the difference in parenting styles, and life among the old world of old money.  It ain't all it's cracked up to be.  Excellent listen!

"Between The World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates *****

●  Audiobook
●  US author
●  Originally published in 2015
●  Review:  A powerful essay/letter from the author to his son.  He shares his struggles, questions, beliefs about African American  identity in the United States.  His prose is evocative, poignant, and painfully direct.  As a Caucasian American,  the author opened my eyes to new perspective, and I appreciate that. 

"The White Castle" by Orhan Pamuk *****

• Nobel prize winning author
• Turkish author
• Originally published 1985, this translation in 1990
• Vocabulary:
• orrery:   an apparatus showing the relative positions and motions of bodies in the solar system by balls moved by a clockwork
• ergovan:  
• Epigraph:  "To imagine that a person who intrigues us has access to a way of life unknown and all the more attractive for its mystery, to believe that we will begin to live only through the love of that person--what else is this but the birth of great passion?....Marcel Proust, from the mistranslation of Y.K. Karaosmanoglu
• Quotes:
• p.12...I suppose that to see everything as connected with everything else is the addiction of our time.  It is because I too have succumbed to this disease that I published this tale (prologue)
• p.13..."Many men believe that no life is determined in advance, that all stories are essentially a chain of coincidences.  And yet, even those who believe this come to the conclusion, when they look back, that events they once took for chance were really inevitable."
• p.32..."So like tow dutiful students who work faithfully at their lessons even when the grown-ups are not at home listening through a cracked door like two obedient brothers, we sat down to work."
• p.37..."...a prattling began on the subject of how human beings were created in pairs, hyperbolic examples on this theme were recalled, twins whose mothers could not tell them apart, look-alikes who were frightened at the sight of one another but were unable , as if bewitched, ever again to part, bandits who took the names of the innocent and lived their lives."
• p.63..."I encouraged him, perhaps because I already sensed then that I would later adopt his manner and his life-story as my own."
• p.65..."...just as man could view his appearance in a mirror, he could examine his essence within his own thoughts."
• p.90..."...prediction is buffoonery, but it can be well used to influence fools."
• p.123..."While I looked apprehensively into his face, I felt an impulse to say 'I am I'.  It was as if, had I been able to find the courage to speak this nonsensical phrase, I would obliterate all those games played by all those gossips scheming t turn me into someone else, played by Hoja and the sultan, and live at peace again within my own being."
• p.143..."It was as if everything were as perfect as the view of that pure white castle with birds flying over its towers, as perfect as the darkening rocky cliff of the slope and the still, black forest......would never be able to reach the white towers of the castle".....
• Notes:
• p.39...the pasha wanted a weapon "to make the world a prison for our enemies."....
• the frustration of being surrounded by people who did not want to know what they did not know
• never connected the words infidel and infidelity before
• the mirror was hugely significant object in the book....seeing self and other
• use of nightmarish stories to influence the pasha's mind, rather than science
• switching back and forth in being the favored one
• the sultan brought a mimic to exemplify the shared and specific traits of both men
• constant desire to "rouse ourselves at last and take action, of the future and the mysteries of our minds."  p.127
• Going int the forest, always a symbol of mystical transformation...p.137
• all genius has some evil
• Review:  Brilliant, again, as always.....Orhan!  A mind-bending story of identity, of dreams, of the schism between Eastern belief and Western discoveries.  This will stick with me for a long time to come.  Pamuk's writing, his plot, his ability to layer theme upon theme, is extraordinary!  Can you tell I am a huge fan?

"Our Souls At Night" by Kent Haruf ****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 2015
• Review: An absolutely lovely, poignant story of two lonely elderly people seeking comfort and friendship, and maybe more.  

"The Wright Brothers" by David McCullough ***

• Non-Fiction
• Book Club selection
• US author
• Originally published in 2015
• Review: A very readable history of flight and the Wright Brothers.  I very much enjoyed the family history and the familial relationships.   I could feel the tension building up to the first flights.  After that, I found throughout book to be a bit dull.

"Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither" by Sara Baume *****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 2016
• Internal monologue of isolated man who adopts a dog
• Review:  Marvelously written, poignant and shocking story!  So deceptively simple at the outset.  A lonely man rescues a lonely dog.  The entire novel is comprised of the man's internal monologue and the reader is drawn in oh so slowly as it all unravels.  I was moved by the powerful prose of this writer.  I look forward to reading more of her work.

"New and Collected Poems: 1975-2017" by Jay Parini ****

• Early Review edition for Librarything.com
• USA
• Poetry
• Originally published in 2016
• Review:  I read most of these poems aloud to myself.  I particularly liked Parini's poems about nature.  They called to mind those wonderful poems by Robert Frost.  Overall the collection evoked a sense of yearning for the simple, lovely pleasures in life and in nature.  Very nice collection!

"The North Water" by Ian McGuire ****

• English author
• Originally published in 2016
• Setting:  Greenland whaling trade, 1850s
• Vocabulary:
• bathos:  the sudden appearance of a silly idea or event in a book, movie discussion, etc., that is serious in tone
• chunter:  to talk in a low inarticulate way
• flensing:  to strip (as a whale) of blubber or skin
• gallimaufry: hodgepodge
• Quotes:
• p.19..."Life will not be puzzled out, or blathered into submission; it must be lived through, survived, in whatever fashion a man can manage."
• p.19..."What does 'free' even mean? Such words are paper-thin, they crumble and tear under the slightest pressure."
• p.51..."Sumner's opiated mind slips its moorings and drifts backwards, sideways, through fluid dreamscapes as fearsome and as thick with unnameable life as the green arctic waters which press and crash only twelve wooden inches from his head."
• p.78..."Affection is a passing thing.  A beast is no different from a person in that regard."
• p.88..."If you are seeking persons of gentleness and refinement, Sumner, the Greenland whaling trade is not the place to look for them."
• p.105..."Words are like toys:  they amuse and educate us for a time, but when we come to manhood we should give them up."
• p.136..."Their world is hard and raw enough, they think, without the added burden of moral convolution."..whalers
• p.141..."Behind every piece of sweet-smelling female loveliness lies a world of stench and doggery....he's a lucky man who can forget that's true or pretend it isn't"......regarding the brutal work of  getting the whalebone for the corsets of fine ladies
• p.156..."Through a stuttering veil of snow he sees at the floe edge a bluish iceberg, immense, chimneyed, wind-gouged, sliding eastwards like an albinistic butte unmoored from the desert floor."
• p.200..."He has walked much too far, he knows it now:  he has strayed from his true purposes, he is lost and bewildered, and his failure is complete."...sums up Sumner's experience.
• Review:  A whaling tale, a tale of civilized men returning to their primal existence.  This is not a nice story.  This is not for the,faint-hearted.  However, if you want to feel a sense of being on the whaling ship, of smelling and tasting and hearing and seeing the brutality of survival, and the brutality of man, than this is the book for you.  Somehow, the author manages to convey primal, brutal details with lyrical prose.  I could not put the book down once I had gotten into it and gratefully inhaled the bits of wisdom spaced throughout its pages.  Very interesting.

"A Whole Life" by Robert Seethaler ****

• Austrian author
• Originally published in 2015
• Setting:  Austrian village just pre WWII until 1970s
• Characters:
• Andreas Egger (fictional), mountain man, abused by uncle, crooked leg
• Marie:  Egger's wife
• Horned Hannes:  mountain encountered at beginning, alive, and at the end, not
• Quotes:
• p.2..."...it  had turned icy-cold again, and the snow fell so thickly and incessantly from the sky that it seemed softly to swallow the landscape, smothering all life and sound."...nice alliteration
• p.22..."He though slowly, spoke slowly and walked slowly; yet every thought, every word and every step left a mark precisely where, in his opinion, such marks were supposed to be."
• p.25..."Then he would think about his future, which extended infinitely before him, precisely because he expected nothing of it."
• p.27..."....Egger carried inextinguishably within him:  a pain that, after the brief touch of a fold of fabric, had sunk into the flesh of his upper arm his shoulder, his breast finally settling somewhere in the region of his heart."...falling in love with his future wife
• p.30..."Scars are like years, he said:  one follows another and it's all of them together that make a person who they are."
• p.31..."His kind of man needed to lift up his eyes and look as far as possible beyond his own small, limited patch of ground."
• p.44..."You can buy a man's hours off him, you can steal his days from him, or you can rob him of his whole life, but no one can take away from any man so much as a single moment.".....hmmm..Egger's employer
• p.85..."If you're on the way to Hell, he'd say, you have to laugh with the devils:  ;it costs nothing and makes the whole thing more bearable.
• p.130..."Egger was profoundly shocked by this unexpected encounter.  Almost a whole life lay between Horned Hannes' disappearance and his turning up again."
• Review:  A quiet gem of a read.  When it comes right down to it, what constitutes 'a whole life"  Is it our memories, although they change with time?  Is it who we have known?  Is it the challenges we have faced and the manner in which we have done so?  In the end, it seems to me that it is an ephemeral notion, and Robert Seethaler quietly, eloquently, and simply portrays that.  He somehow captures the unimportance, yet undeniablility, of the passage of time.  He takes the reader into the mind of a man who is deceptively simple, because he is quiet, yet his internal world is vibrant, sensitive, and profound.  Lovely story of one man's whole life, which no one can really tell at all.

"Shylock Is My Name" by Howard Jacobson *****

• Early Review edition for LibraryThing.com
• Publish date Feb. 2016
• US author
• Vocabulary:
• obloquy:  harsh or critical statements about someone, the condition of someone who lost the respect of other people
• chthonic:  of or relating to the underworld
• indurated:  having become firm or hard especially by increase of fibrous elements <indurated tissue>
• Characters:
• Shylock....religious Jew, "the Hebrew", protagonist, symbol of timelessness
• Strulovich....cultural Jew, father of Beatrice
• Beatrice...runs from father only to appreciate his value later, modern child, wants to be a performance artist
• Leah....Shylock's dead wife
• Plurabelle....the spoiled smart type, manipulator, 
• Kay...Strulovich's wife, bedridden and mute from stroke, calls Strulovich a "Judeolunatic"
• D'Anton....Plurabelle's procurer
• Barnaby...........Plurabelle's beautiful and brainless lover
• Gratan....Beatrice's Gentile lover, footballer, gave Nazi salute during match
• Quotes:
• p.12..."When mothers see what's been done to their baby boys the milk turns sour in their breasts."....intense
• p.13..."...there is no end to what those executioners we call fathers do.  First they maim their boy children than they torment them."
• p.17..."Sometimes....even the fortunate and gifted can feel their lives are mortgaged to a perplexing sadness."
• p.18..."Only someone who enjoyed the benefits of great wealth himself could have been made so angry by the great wealth of others--the difference being that he hadn't had to earn his, the fact of which also made him obscurely angry."
• p.25..."For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some covered after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows"
• p.27..."Whether it's a flaw or a stratagem I cannot say, but they have always put themselves at the centre of every drama, human or theological.  I think of it as a political sadness.  The glue of self-pity is very strong."
• p.33..."A girl who would sleep with her father's enemies was of a succulence beyond description, plunder that exceeded in value even Simon Strulovich's rubies and turquoises."
• p.34..."Beatrice's presence cheered her, but she seemed to wish to see her only on her own, as though they were separate families, individual spokes of a wheel that had fallen off."...just like that metaphor
• p.49.."It's an invariable law that fathers love their daughters immoderately."
• p.54..."Wounding doubt wounds not as fatally as wounding certainty."
• p.66..."After so many years of eing told what Gentiles see when they look at us it's hardly a surprise that we end up seeing something similar.  That's how vilification works.  The victim ingests the views of the tormentor."
• p.67..."Jews hunched over their private parts.  Jew hunched over their money.  In the eyes of Gentiles it's one vas fevered panorama of degenerate self-interest."
• p.83..."Christianity, when all was said and done, counted as no more than an interregnum; the only true distinction was between Judaism and paganism."
• p.112..."And finally, he failed to see that a gallery of British Jewish art was any less intrinsic to North Cheshire than an ostrich park would have been."
• p.120..."There was no fine point of etiquette that said a father interviewing an accidental Nazi sympathizer who wanted to sleep with his daughter had to wear a tie."...LOL
• p.122..."..the magnetic force of indurated revulsion..."
• p.175..."Every transaction between Jew and Gentile is metaphorical."
• p.177..."To lose to Jews is to lose to half-men."
• p.251..."Sadness is among the tools which those who would live nobly employ to distance themselves from the farcicality of existence engulfing everyone else.  The unfairness, the banality, the repetition of cruelty.  That some are delivered to far grander sorrows than these is proved by their sadness."
• p.273..."To the modern mind there is a dignity in being tricked.  it confirms the preposterousness of existence."

• Notes:
• Anna Livia Plurabelle Cleopatra A Thing Of Beauty Is A Joy Forever Christine...a character
• Plurabelle's trap with three cars, a BMW, a Porsche, a Volkswagen, p.21
• p.37...eloquent description of the "covenant" Strulovich feels at the birth of Beatrice, the reasoning he wants her to marry a Jew
• p.40...Mehdi Mehdi, French Algerian ventriloquist whose dummy espouses Nazi affinity, but he himself says he does not
• Monkey....used as a metaphor for the primitive, in epithets, 
• Beatrice misses her father the one time he does not chase her
• Strulovich wants Beatrice to marry a Jew for "the sake of continuity", the "covenant"
• p.238....notion of God speaking vs. painting the world into existence, so the word rules over the senses, Shylock's thoughts as he gazes at and begins to appreciate Strulovich's artwork

• Review:   "Merchant of Venice" meets reality TV.  Not enough to decide whether to read this absolutely brilliant novel? I was deeply impressed by Jacobson's "The Finkler Question" and now feel comfortable saying that I think he is a brilliant writer.  Crisp, eloquent use of language coupled with a gripping plot and satirical wit matched by few make this an outstanding read. Meanwhile, the central theme of the novel, Jewish identity, is examined in depth.  Cultural Jews debate with religious Jews, both Jews debate with Gentiles. Using Shakespeare's play as a jumping off point, the author highlights the seeming timelessness of the Jewish position in society across time.  Anti-Semitism is described in all of its glaring subtleties as well.  A superlative story, an erudite dissection of Jewish identity, and writing to write home about. And it all starts with two Jews in a graveyard!

"Eleven On Top" by Janet Evanovich ***

• Audiobook
• #11 in Stephanie Plum Series
• US author
• Originally published in 2005
• Review:  As always, the characters were wonderful.  However,  the plot for this installment fell a bit flat. Oh well, can't win 'em all.  I  will still continue with this Stephanie Plum series.

"The Violet Hour: Great Writers At The End" by Kate Roiphe *****

• Early Review edition
• Publication in 2016
• US author
• Review:  If you ever ponder death, your own or someone else's, then I believe you would find this book to be brilliant, fascinating, and in some ways uplifting.  The author, who has had her own brush with death, shares the results of her in-depth research on the last days and lifelong influences of Susan Sontag, Sigmund Freud, John Updike, Dylan Thomas, and Maurice Sendak.  She adds commentary, but primarily lets the research speak for itself.  I will just add the words of James Salter, whom the author spoke with after completing her research, "We make our own comfort."

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"The Cure For Dreaming" by Cat Winters ***

● Audiobook
● US author
●  Originally published in 2014
● Review :  I have a hunch that a young adult reader might have rated this book more highly than I have.  While it had enjoyable characters,  and important historical information, the plot and themes were a bit more obvious than I enjoy.  I guess I am a glutton for punishment, and prefer a bit more obscurity and having to think more to get the point.

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll *****

• Audiobook, narrated by Scarlett Johansson
• English author
• This version published in 2015, originally published in 1865
• Review:  Johansson is an absolutely delightful narrator for this iconic children's story.  She brings all the characters to life.  Enough has been written about this.  I just loved listening to the story.  As an adult I can hear the poignant straddling of childhood's joys with childhood's fears, in a manner which endears and delights!

Summer Crossing by Truman Capote ****

• Audiobook 
• US author
• Originally published in 2004.  It was written in the 1940s, never published, then found among his papers after his death
• Review:  This audio version of Capote's novella was very good.  A 20th century Romeo and Juliet-esque tale set in the hot summer in NYC.  So, that tells you the outcome, but it is the wonderful prose of Capote's which makes this worth reading nonetheless.  His phrasing made me catch my breath a few times, it was so perfect.  Capote is a painter with words.  Lovely, lovely, tragic tale!

"The Early Stories of Truman Capote" by Truman Capote ****

• Audiobook
• Short Stories, written when author was a teenager
• Originally published in 2015
• Review: What a lovely collection of short stories.  Capote is able to say so much with his careful word choices.  He also ends his stories really well, which I believe to be one of the signs if a really fine writer.  Witty, eloquent, mournful, sarcastic, and clearly stories written by a man with marvelous powers of observation. Excellent!

"The Zafarani Files" by Gamal al-Ghitani ****

• Summer Read with Beth
• Egyptian author
• Originally published in 1976
• Review:  Feel like a satirical romp in Cairo?  This is the book.  Just when the marvelous character descriptions of the folks living in Zafarani Alley were beginning to seem a bit tedious.....zing!  Major plot development takes the story to a new level.  Basically this is about a universe inside a universe inside a universe, all of which are consistently absurd, and which seem filled with more conflict than resolution....until the Sheikh shakes things up for all!  Excellent read!

Computer glitch caused me to lose all my notes, quotes, etc.  DANG!

"The Nightingale" by Kristin Hannah ****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 2015
• WWII, occupied France
• Review:  I was uncertain about reading this WWII tale of a survivors.  I've read a lot of novels from this period.  I am definitely glad that I read this one.  Two sisters, seemingly polar opposites to one another in temperament, must survive WWII in occupied France.  This is a marvelous story of family, love, and above all, in my mind, honor and integrity.  Some wrongs can be ignored, while others demand action.  Excellent read.

"When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kanalithi ****

• Audiobook
• Non-Fiction, Autobiographical
• Foreword by Abraham Verghese
• Medical philosopher, neurologist, US author
• Originally published 2016
• Chronicle of his own death
• Review:  This autobiographical story of living with and being killed by cancer was extremely well written.  From firsthand knowledge I can say that the author captured eloquently the feelings associated with living with cancer.  It was a courageous act and I would recommend this book to anyone affected by cancer, whether as a patient, or as someone who cares about a patient.

"Five Spice Street" by Can Xue

• Summer Read with Beth
• Chinese author
• Originally published in 2001, translated in 2009
• Quotes:
• p.11..."When foxes can't eat grapes, they say grapes are catfish."...lol
• p.15..."They greatly admired the widow's genius for probing, especially when they went a step further and came up with the term 'eunuch's psychology' to describe the husband.  What joy they felt at having come up so spontaneously with this diagnosis."
• p.18..."The people of Five Spice Street had bitterly despised and feared X's behavior behind closed doors, and they'd come up with a lot of strange ideas:  one said that X was manufacturing dynamite in the house and getting ready to set it off in the public toilet; one said she was raising scorpions and planning to retaliate against the people who had talked about her........".
• p.33..."The older the ginger the hotter".
• p.27..."A crowd's emotions are always subtle, like the colored glass in a kaleidoscope."
• p.45...:How can we be sure about 'character' - this infinitely more complicated issue?  If we can't be clear about it, we won't try."
• p.49..."Men's sexual power is useless; it has no impact on life.  Yet, a woman's sex is her magic weapon for defeating the outside world and revealing the significance of her existence."
• p.50..."Sexual power is unique to women:  it is a kind of self-consciousness about one's bodily functions.  When this consciousness sharpens, a woman becomes like a goddess."
• p.52..."It's only through a woman that man can realize his virtues-and the woman must be strong, filled with the charm of sex.  Otherwise, because of their fragile nature, men are likely to be corrupted by depraved women and become degenerate troublemakers disturbing the tranquility of the world."
• p.67...."Everything they did was done purposely to destroy Five Spice Street's social system.  They desperately wanted to take this hostility to the grave."...X's family
• Notes:
• Madame X's name for her business, "diversion to dispel boredom - or mischief-making"
• Review:  I read a third of this book.  I loved a quarter of this book.  Then it fizzled, and in a rare fit of frustration, primarily with the author, secondarily with myself, put it down and did not finish two thirds of this book.  It started out with such surreal, humorous, profound promise!  Was it just me?  I will never know.  A mystery forever unsolved.  Perhaps the Eighth Wonder of the World?.......Not.  Not that important in the big scheme of life......just disappointing.  Can Xue captured the minutiae of life on one street in a neighborhood of the most human humans you could possibly meet, with the introduction of the dread......wait for it....SOMEONE NEW AND DIFFERENT.  Thus begins the romp of absurd, wonderful gossip, speculation, assumptions, wild postulations.  but then......it stays that way and lost me before I could discover the "outcome", the "point", the anything.  Oh well.

"The Boston Girl" by Anita Diamant. ***

• Audiobook
• Book Club
• American author
• Originally published  in 2016
• Review: Anita Diamant's is able to make the mundane interesting.  A young Jewish girl grows up in Boston.  Abigail proceeds to share her life story with her granddaughter and thus we have the story.  Linda Lavin's reading of the story was wonderful.  Her accent lent additional depth to the story.  A nice story of a girl becoming a woman, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a friend.  Nice book.

Spandau Phoenix" by Greg Iles ***

• Audiobook
• German author
• Originally published in 1994
• Review:  A very good "what if" tale.  What if Rudolf Hess was never held in Spandau prison, but had a double who took his place?  This story pits the English, Germans, & Russians against one another while simple folks suffer for the nations' need to protect their images.  Not my favorite Greg Iles novel, but that is okay.

"Journey to Munich" by Jacqueline Winspear. ***

• Audiobook
• #12 in the Maisie Dobbs series
• English author
• Originally published March 2016
• Review: Not my favorite in this wonderful series.  It fell a bit flat.  Maisie is tasked with transporting an important person out of pre-WWII Munich.  The suspense felt muffled and restrained.  I look forward to the next one.

"Be Frank With Me" by Julia Claiborne Johnson ****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 2016
• Review:  An absolutely charming story.  I strongly recommend the audio version because the narrator is delightful. This is the story of a young woman tasked with care and management of a writer with a deadline and her very unusual, brilliant, complicated son.  I just loved the characters!  They include:  The harried author with a complex child and an even more complex life history, the beloved, charming, exasperating, talented man who pops in and out randomly, the patient, loving narrator, and the kind, insightful gentleman who oversees all and comes in for the crisis.  A memorable read!  I want to meet Frank!

"Ten Big Ones" by Janet Evanovich ****

• Audiobook
• #10 in the Stephanie Plum series
• US author
• Originally published in 2004
• Review:  Another fun romp with Stephanie Plum and her band of merry cohorts: Italian Stallion Joe Morelli, James Bondish Ranger, Lula the hooker turned file clerk and bounty hunting muscle, along with Sally, the cross dressing bus driver and wedding planner.  Yes, it is quite a group, and of course there is Stephanie's family who are a hoot.  The best part of this series is that it makes me laugh out loud!

"The Whip" by Karen Kondazian ****

• Audiobook
• Historical Fiction
• US author
• Originally published in 2012
• Review:  A very good piece of historical fiction about Charlotte (Charley) Parkhurst, a well-known stagecoach driver.  The story conveys the difficulties which led to the gender deception in the first place, and the difficulties maintaining it over a lifetime.  The story immediately called to mind "Pope Joan" and "The Last Report From Little No Horse", both about women in the same position.  Very good read!

"Go Set A Watchman" by Harper Lee *****

• Book Club
• US author
• Originally published in 2015, although actually written in the 1950s, prior ro "To Kill A Mockingbird"
• Vocabulary:
• enisled:  to isolate, to make an island of
• Asquithian: like the British politician, a liberal
• anthropophagous: eater of human flesh, 
• gulosity: excessive appetite, gluttony
• Childe Roland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childe_Roland_to_the_Dark_Tower_Came, trials and tribulations to complete a journey
• Characters:
• Scout, now 26, living in New York
• Atticus, now72, rheumatoid arthritis (stiffness, a metaphor?)
• Uncle Jack/Dr. Finch: brother of Atticus, lives in town, close to Scout, loved her mother
• Henry, pseudo son to Atticus, wants to marry Scout, comes from poor white trash
• Calpurnia:  former housekeeper, now retired, grandson in legal trouble
• Aunt Alexandra: lives with Atticus, cares for him, "the last of her kind"..."she had river-boat, boarding-school manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was a disapprover; she was an incurable gossip"
• Mr. Stone:  the minister of the Methodist church
• Title: 
• taken from the Bible, Isaiah, 21:6, "For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth."......Scout's task
• "Mr. Stone set a watchman in church yesterday.  He should have provided me with one.  I need a watchman to lead me around and declare what he seeth every hour on the hour.  I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference.  I need a watchman to go forth and proclaim to them all that twenty-six years is too long to play a joke on anybody, no matter how funny it is."...Scout during confrontation with Atticus
• p.265..."Every man's island, Jean Louise, every man's watchman is his conscience.
• Notes:
• Colonel Maycomb, Finch ancestor, "sat out the war in bewilderment" in the "forest primeval".....forests...transformation.....bewilderment
• loved the memory of the "revival" reenactment by Jem, Dill, and Scout (p.62ish)
• allusion to Carson McCullers "Member of the Wedding" (1952), Scout contemplating married life in Maycomb
• funny story of Scout wearing falsies to dance, and resolution at school
• p.248...reference to trial from "To Kill A Mockingbird", Scout realizes that Atticus loved justice, not the Negro
• Quotes:
• p.15..."Love who you will, but marry your own kind"
• p.117. ..."She did not stand alone, but what stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life, was the love of her father."
• p.122..."Had she insight, could she have pierced the barriers of her highly selective, insular world, she may have discovered that all er life she had been with a visual defect which had gone unnoticed and neglected by herself and by those closest to her;  she was born color blind."
• p.154...."It was not because this was where your life began.  It was because this was where people were born and born and born until finally the result was you, drinking a Coke in the Jitney Jungle."
• p.196..."No war was ever fought for so many different reasons meeting in one reason clear as crystal.  They fought to preserve their identity.  Their political identity, their personal identity."....Dr. Finch to Scout re: Civil War, and war between Scout and Atticus
• p.197..."As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons."...Civil Rights Movement
• p.198..."The only thing in America that is still unique in this tired world is that a man can go as far as his brains will take him or he can go to hell if he wants to, but it won't be that way much longer."
• p.199..."Human birth is most unpleasant.  it's messy, it's extremely painful, sometimes it's a risky thing.  It is always bloody.  So is it with civilization.  The South's in its last agonizing birth pain."...Dr Finch
• p.225..."Hell is eternal apartness.  What had she done that she must spend the rest of her years reaching out with yearning for them, making secret trips to long ago, making no journey to the present?"
• p.237..."Men tend to carry their honesty in pigeonholes, Jean Louise.  They can be perfectly honest in some ways and fool themselves in other ways."
• p.249..."Why didn't you tell me the difference between justice and justice, and right and right?"....Scout to Atticus
• p.257..."If he had fought her fairly, she could have flung his words back at him, but she would not catch mercury and hold it in her hands."...referring to Atticus' refusal to get upset with her
• p.266..."He was letting you break your icons one by one.  He was letting you reduce him to the status of a human being."
• p.267..."You have a tendency not to give anybody elbow room in your mind for their ideas, no matter how silly you think they are."...Dr. Finch on why Scout is a bigot
• Review:  Wow!  I could not put this book down.  Harper Lee is clearly a gifted storyteller. Beginning with imagery of a journey home, she takes us on the journey from child to adult, from idealized to human, and from old ways to new.  I felt completely engaged in Jean Louise's shock, disillusionment, and coming of age.  It was as if it were happening to me.  As a stand alone novel it is stunning.  Knowing that it was actually written prior to "To Kill A Mockingbird" is almost overwhelming.  The chronological order of the plots seem fitting.  It is as if we were the generational child of Atticus Finch, idolizing and idealizing him, who is forced unexpectedly to confront our literary hero's humanity.  Right along with Scout, we must step back and fully experience the emotions right along with her, and we must grow up and open up as well.  Long live Dr Finch for having the courage to slap Scout, and Harper Lee for doing the same to her readers!  A searingly emotional literary experience! 

"Memoirs of a Porcupine" by Alain Mabanckou ****

• Summer Read with Beth
• Congolese author
• Originally published in 2012
• Setting: Village of Sekepembe, the Congo
• Characters:
• Kibandi:  master, starting at initiation at age 11
• Ngoumba:  a porcupine, Kibandi's harmful other, narrator of the tale
• Baobab:  The tree to which porcupine tells his tale
• The Governor:  Head Porcupine
• Vocabulary:
• sinecure:  a job or position in which someone is paid to do little or no work
• Fun Expressions:
• ...p.15"When the ears are cut off it is time for the neck to worry" - the governor
• p.31..."When the wise man points to the moon, the fool looks at his finger"
• p.38..."the cake wasn't worth the candle"
• p.41..."away with feast, however great, that may be spoiled by fear"
• p.42..."we only believe fear when it is upon us"
• p.47..."a vagabond's shelter is his dignity"
• Quotes:
• p.4..."...I was stuck with my role as a double, as a turtle is stuck with his shell, I was my master's third eye, his third nostril, his third ear, which means that whatever he din't see, or smell, or hear, I transmitted to him in dreams..."
• p.14..."I know no that thought is of the essence, it's thought that gives rise to human grief, pity, remorse, even wickedness or goodness..."
• p.21..."...and yet the spoken word, it seems to me, delivers us from the fear of death, and if it could also help me stave it off for a little while, or escape it, that would make me the happiest porcupine in all the word."
• p.56..." with age Papa Kibandi returned to his animal state"....like his double, a rat
• Appendix:  Letter to publishers from Stubborn Snail, Literary executor of "Broken Glass", owner of the bar, credit gone west.....?
• "The books we really remember are those which reinvent the world, revisit our childhood, pose questions about the origin of all things, examine our obsessions and question our beliefs."
• "As he sees it, the world is just an approximate version of a fable wc we will never understand as long as we continue to take account only of the material representation of things."
• Notes:
• People could have "other" and peaceful or harmful "doubles, raising the front right paw ans waving it three times
• The first question animals would ask if they could speak to humans would be whether humans believe animals capable of thought
• Governor ruled by fear...not unlike colonial occupiers?
• Kibandi's other self had no mouth or nose...?
• Review:  Despite the fact that I am not a huge fan of fables, I really enjoyed this tale.  This is the  stream of consciousness memoir of a porcupine , narrated by himself. If that doesn't grab your attention, how about the fact that the porcupine is the "harmful double" of a Congolese boy/man.  Yep.  Now you must be just a bit curious, right? The prose is witty, dark, thought provoking,  and engaging.  The ultimate question appears to be whether man or beast are more beastly? Given the dark history of the Congo, the author's native country it is not surprising that he believes the question merits some serious consideration.

"The Alexandria Quartet" by Lawrence Durrell *****

• Reading this as part of a LibraryThing.com group read of Middle Eastern Literature
• Originally published as a tetrology between 1957 and 1960
• English author
• Epigraphs:
• "I am accustoming myself to the idea of regarding every sexual act as a process in which four persons are involved.  We shall have a lot to discuss about that" - S. Freud, "Letters"
• "There are two positions available to us - either crime which renders us happy, or the noose, which prevents us from being unhappy.  I as whether there can be any hesitation, lovely Therese, and where will your little mind find an argument able to combat that one?" - D.A.F. De Sade, "Justine"
• Vocabulary:
• phthisic:  a wasting disease of the lungs, asthma
• pegamoid:  imitation leather material developed a bit before 1900, used in bookbinding or upholstery
• exiguous:  scanty; meager; small; slender:
• quinquereme:  an ancient Roman galley with five banks of oars on each side
•  porpentine:  like a porcupine
• mumchance:   silent; struck dumb
• trismegistus:   a name variously ascribed by Neoplatonists and others to an Egyptian priest or to the Egyptian god Thoth, to some extent identified with the Grecian Hermes: various mystical, religious, philosophical, astrological, and alchemical writings were ascribed to him.
• khamseen: a hot southerly wind, varying from southeast to southwest, that blows regularly in Egypt and over the Red Sea for about 50 days, commencing about the middle of March.
• hebetude:  the state of being dull; lethargy.
• fatidic: prophetic
• pullulation:    sending forth sprouts, buds, etc.; germinate; sprout.
• desuetude:  the state of being no longer used or practiced.
• mephitic:  offensive to the smell
• "Justine":  
• p.111.....:For my part Justine always reminded me of a somnambulist discovered treading the perilous leads of a high tower; any attempt to wake her with a shout might lead to disaster.  One could only follow her silently in the hope of guiding her gradually away from the great shadowy drops which loomed up on every side."
• "Balthazar":
• p.78:  If Mnemjian is the archives of the City, Balthazar is its Platonic daimon - the mediator between its Gods and its men.
• Book I:  Justine
• p.17....." I return link by link along the iron chains of memory to the city which we inhabited so briefly together; the  city which used us as its flora--precipitated in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own:  beloved Alexandria!"
• p.22..."I have become one of these poor clerks of the conscience, a citizen of Alexandria"
• p.23..."Our city does not permit anonymity to any with incomes of over two hundred pounds a year."
• p.23..."She could not help but remind me of that race of terrific queens which left behind them the ammoniac smell of their incestuous loves to hover like a cloud over the Alexandrian subconscious."...re:  Justine
• p.25..."There are only three things to be done with a woman, said Clea once.  You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature."
• p.26...."...I studied this small bottle, sadly and passionately reflecting on this horrible old man's love and measuring it against my own; and tasting too, vicariously, the desperation which makes one clutch at some small discarded object which is still impregnated with the betrayer's memory."....reminds me of Orhan Pamuk's "museum of Innocence"
• p.37..."Capodistria has the purely involuntary knack of turning everything into a woman; under his eyes chairs become painfully conscious of their bare legs."...love that!
• p.39..."Anything pressed too far becomes a sin."
• p.39..."...all ideas seem equally good to me; the fact of their existence proves that someone is creating."...love that idea!
• p.50..."These are the moments which are not calculable, and cannot be assessed in words; they live on in the solution of memory, like wonderful creatures, unique of their kind, dredged up from the floors of some unexplored ocean."
• p.57..."A city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants."...interesting concept
•  p.81..."To love in such an unpremeditated way is something that most people have to re-learn after fifty."...re:  Nessim, Justine's husband
• p.83..."...one must reconcile two extremes of habit and behaviour which are not due to the intellectual disposition of the inhabitants, but to their soil, air, landscape."....Balthazar re:  Alexandria
• p.111..."A mania for self-justification is common both to those whose consciences are uneasy and to those who seek a philosophic rationale for their actions; but in either case it leads to strange forms of thinking."...too true
• p.111..."There are some characters in this world who are marked down for self-destruction, and to these no amount of rational argument can appeal."
• p.113..."There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self--because she does not know where to find it."
• p.121..."Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment:  only there does its satisfaction lie."
• p.140..."The cocktail party - as the name itself indicates - was originally invented by dogs.  They are simply bottom-sniffings raised to the rank of formal ceremonies."...LOL 
• p.164..."One always falls in love with the love choice of the person one loves."
• p.165..."The four of us were unrecognized complementaries of one another, inextricably bound together.".........Nessim, Justine, narrator, Melissa
• p.171..."One is not an ordinary man if one can say things so pointed that they engage the attention and memory of others."
• p.185..."Whenever I enter a school and see a multitude of children, ragged thin and dirty but with their clear eyes and sometimes angelic expressions, I am seized with restlessness and terror, as though I saw people drowning."...narrator quoting Tolstoy upon starting to teach north of Alexandria
• p.187..."Far off event, transformed by memory, acquire a burnished brilliance because they are seen in isolation, divorced from the details of before and after, the fibres and wrappings of time."
• p.192.."Humility!  The last trap that awaits the ego in search of absolute truth."
• p.193...."Lovers are never equally matched--do you think?  One always overshadows the other and stunts his or her growth so that the overshadowed one must always be tormented by a desire to escape, to be free to grow.  Surely this is the only tragic thing about love?"
• p.195..."Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?" 
• Book II:  Balthazar
• p.234..."The golden fish circling so languidly in their great bowl of light--they are hardly aware that their world, the field of their journeys, is a curved one..."......true of humanity as well?
• p.264...".....Egyptians believe the desert to be an emptiness populated entirely by the spirits of demons and other grotesque visitants from Eblis, the Moslem Satan
• Book III:  Mountolive
• Book IV:  Clea
• Review:  I cannot possibly convey the depth and power of this magnificent tetralogy.  It took a very long time to read all four, and the only reason is that it deserved to be savored.  Durrell's prose is exquisite, lyrical and sensual.  I feel as though I have lived, or at least extensively visited, Egypt.  The entire British colonial period, its conflicts, its impact, its deviousness, all are exemplified by characters of both British and Egyptian origins.  The reader is seduced by language that is poetic and whose descriptiveness is equal to Dickens, yet far surpasses that master of language in its lushness and exotic flavor.  That is probably a function of the times and life experience of the author, yet in a way it is a comparison of culture.  Dickens' London is dank, dark, malodorous.  Durrell's Egypt is textured, mysterious, and sensual.  I guess I love reading both, but would most like to visit Durrell's Egypt.  It is an immense reading project, but definitely well worth it!
• P.S.:  I gave up on notes and just gave myself over to the book......lazy, I know

"Lady Windermere's Fan" by Oscar Wilde ****

• Audiobook
• Drama
• Irish author
• Originally published in 1892
• Review:  A well-written coming of age tale.  Witty repartee, a young wife's coming of age, and a mother's sacrifice combine for a touching drama. Wilde makes a clear statement about the impossible standards human beings believe they should be able to live up to.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde. ****

• Audiobook
• Irish author
• Originally published in 1890
• Review: An emotionally charged romantic drama! A young man sells his soul and suffers the consequences.  Once again, Wilde's use of language is masterful.  The reader is immediately drawn in, much as the protagonist is.  Hmmmm......

"The Importance of Being Ernest" by Oscar Wilde. *****

• Audiobook
• Drama
• Irish author
• Originally published in 1895
• Review: This drama is absolutely fantastic!  It is fast-paced, wonderfully witty, replete with double entendres, and full of rapid about-faces.   The moral of the story, of course, is never to forget "the importance of being ernest"!

"An Ideal Husband" by Oscar Wilde ***

• Audiobook
• Drama
• Irish author
• Originally published in 1895
• Review: A witty commentary on the double standards which politicians, and people in general, are often expected to live up to.  A timeless theme, apparently!

"A Woman of No Importance" by Oscar Wilde *****

● Audiobook
●  Drama
●  Originally published in 1893
●  Irish author
●  Review:  A small gem of a drama.  Oscar Wilde's perfect t use of language  makes this play both witty and stinging.  A mother maintains her dignity in the face of disgrace, and endears herself to her son while deflating his natural father's haughty condescension.   Excellent!

"To The Nines" by Janet Evanovich ****

● Audiobook
●  #9 in the Stephanie Plum series
●  Mystery/Suspense
●  Originally published in 2004
●  Review:  I love the characters in these Stephanie Plum novels.  I guffawed aloud numerous times.  Lula, the ex-hooker, was divine this time around.  Joe Morelli's grandmother and her visions were wonderful as well.  Great read!

"Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words" by Malka Marom ****

●  Audiobook
●  US author
●  Originally published in 2014
●  Biography
●  Review:  I really enjoyed this compilation of interviews with Joni Mitchell over a 40 year span of time.  No wonder she so polarizing in terms of her reputation.  She is genuine, outspoken, intelligent,  articulate, and profound.  Strong women contend with other people's sense of intimidation, and Joni Mitchell is no different.  Such a true artist!

"My Name is Lucy Barton" by Elizabeth Strout. ****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published January 2016
• Review: Elizabeth Strout seems to occupy a unique niche.  Her stark prose pokes and prods until the reader must sit up and take notice.  As the closing line asserts, "this is life".  The story emerges from the hospital bed of the narrator.  It is a perfect setting for the hurt and healing which occurs there.  A complex past catches up to, overwhelms, and then moves on for the patient and the reader.  Indeed, this is life!

"Caleb's Crossing" by Geraldine Brooks ****

●  Audiobook
●  US author
●  Originally published in 2011
●  Review:   Once again Geraldine Brooks delivers a marvelous work of historical fiction.  Set in colonial America,  the reader meets a cast of colonists and Native Americans,  who struggle to cohabitate.  As always, Brooks creates engaging characters whose relationships tell the tale.  She adeptly illuminates the common traits shared by all people, as well as the traits which are culturally based, and the complications of trying to force assimilation.  Excellent read.

"I Am No One" by Patrick Flanery ****

• Early review edition for LibraryThing.com
• Original publication 2016
• US author
• Vocabulary:
• gaudy: vulgar display
• Notes:
• notion of the British having deeply ingrained suspicion of strangers, from IRA threat and/or WWII spy fears
• reference to the film, "The Conversation" in which the snooper becomes the snooped upon
• the frightening power of the combined force of scrutiny
• societal training to observe and report starts at an early age, although tattlers are reviled
• the terrifying realization that we are observed, and the data is "reserved for future use"
• it is not the unintended criminal act which is new, it is the "degree and speed" of the actions taken by government authorities
• technology is teaching us "to react rather than reflect"
• HOW AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL IS THIS?
• Quotes:
• p.20..."...for those people who have been rich from birth, who have, as his mother jokes, been paying taxes since they were in utero, they can never entirely understand the realities faced by most Americans, never mind the realities of the profoundly impoverished people elsewhere in the world, to whom America's poor would look comparatively well off."
• p.22..."Each word I put on paper I imagine may be the last I write in freedom."
• p.78..."Those of us who are rational believe that as long as we are not breaking any laws, there is no reason the government should be watching what we do inside our homes, within confines of our private property, and yet this apparently rational belief has been demonstrated, time and again, by the behavior of law enforcement and intelligence services, to be profoundly false."
• p.120..."What is crazy is to imagine we are living private lives, or that a private life is a possibility any longer.....".
• p.281..."Though not in a state of detention, I am at least in a state of suspension: suspension of belief in the possibility f liberty  In other words, I believe that one day soon, perhaps today or tomorrow or the next, I may no longer walk free in the world, left with nothing but the memory of an illusory freedom once enjoyed with too little appreciation for its rarity."
• p.305....."...I saw how easily I might become one of the city's legions of unhinged, a man muttering and unkempt, scribbling proof of his own life on scraps of paper, covering every surface of notebook upon notebook, ever convinced of his sanity."
• Review:  This is a deeply compelling novel.  On a personal level it is deeply disturbing.  On a societal level it is despairing.  I can only hope that the trend will change if enough people draw attention to it.  The premise of this novel is that everybody is a no one, until they take some sort of action which makes them a someone, and it is nearly impossible to know which actions precipitate the transformation.  I could hardly put the novel down.  It was reminiscent of the film, "Beautiful Mind", without the actual insanity of the author.  The insanity was societal. Take a deep breath before reading this one.  It may keep you awake at night for a while, and hopefully raise awareness of the myriad ways we are observable.

"Pretty Baby" by Mary Kubica **

●  Audiobook
●  US author
●  Palm Springs Book Club selection
●  Originally published in 2015
●  Review:  I did not like this book.  I  thought the characters were stereotypical

"Marvel and A Wonder" by Joe Meno *****

• Early Review edition for LibraryThing.com
• US author
• Epigraph:  "To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of Thus conscience does make cowards of us all." --William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
• Characters:
• Jim Falls, grandfather
• Quentin, 16 year old grandson
• Deirdre, Quentin's mother, drug addict
• Gilby & Edward.....brothers who steal horse
• Rick....evil, sent to buy stolen horse and bring his boss's granddaughter, Rylee, home
• Rylee, troubled teen, a blind grandmother "sees" her
• Notes:
• Unnamed horse...white, symbol of good, valued above all, priceless once loved
• Epic good v. evil battle
• Power of hope and determination
• Grandfather's disillusionment with the world v. his love of grandson
• Love and hope are the antidote to disillusionment
• Review:  I could not put this book down.  It is truly a marvel and a wonder!  Joe Meno has written a novel about family, good v. evil, hope, and above all else, love.  A grandfather and grandson journey to save their unexpected windfall of a racehorse.  Along the way they fight for their very survival.  The plot had me right to the end, the dark aspects were oh so dark, but the glimmer and shine of love and hope are always there, not in a sappy way at all. A marvelous read, a very well-written novel, and maybe even a classic in the making!

"Love Among the Haystacks and Other Stories" by D.H. Lawrence ***

• Short Stories
• Audiobook
• English author 
• Originally published in 1930
• Love Among The Haystacks:  two brothers and their first experience of romantic love
• #2:  Mother and daughter with enmeshed relationship.....competitive re: love.....very sexist attitude, which I can usually understand in context of the times, but this was extreme
• Odor of Chrysanthemum :  miners, husband of poor family dies, associated with smell of the flowers, death clarified the distance which had existed between them
• Blue Moccasins : Older woman marries younger man....becomes bitter....Moccasins become a symbol of lost love
• Goose Fair: 
• The Maid:  High society airs
• Review:  Must admit that these stories have been disappointing.  I have thoroughly enjoyed Lawrence's novels, but the short stories in this collection were not as well developed as one can find in other collections.  I think I will stick with his novels!

"Fury" by Salman Rushdie *****

• Summer Read with Beth
• Indian author
• Originally published in 2001
• Characters: 
• Professor Solanka, retired from academia, left wife and child and fled from London to New York City, struggling with his fury, his father was the creator of Little Brain doll
• "Great Minds" dolls....description on page l6
• Krysztof Waterford-Wajda, aka Dubdub, friend from Oxford
• Mila: young woman with "Papi" complex, "special thing turned out to be the collection and repair of damaged people", gets involved with Solanka, suggests new generation of dolls, Mila as incarnation of a doll
• Akasz Kronos, the new cyber-doll, leader of the Puppet Kings....."deep and unimprovable flaw in his character that made him unable to consider the issue of the general good, intended them to guarantee nobody's survival or fortune but his own."...p.139
• Jack Rhineheart....friend of Solanka, got caught up by S & M Club, murdered by them
• Neela....wife of Jack Rhinehart, killer beauty, loyal to home nation, broke through Solanka's fury, turned tide to love and hope, ruffled his hair, unlocked his childhood nightmare
• Vocabulary:
• sanyasi: Hindu, a wandering beggar; ascetic
• solepcism: extreme preoccupation with and indulgence of one's feelings, desires,etc.; egoistic self-absorption
• Notes:
• Solanka came to the US to detach from his fury, "Bathe me in amnesia and clothe me in your powerful unknowing."...p.51
• Mysterious deaths of female socialites scare Solanka, the living dolls ("behind their high-style exteriors, beneath that perfectly lucent skin, they were so stuffed full of behavioral chips, so thoroughly programmed for action, so perfectly groomed and wardrobed, that there was no room left in them for messy humanity.....thus represented the final step in the transformation of the cultural history of the doll.  Having conspired in their own dehumanization, they ended up as mere totems of their class, the class that ran America, which in turn ran the world, so that an attack on them was also, if you cared to see it that way, an attack on the great American empire.....A dead body on a street....coming down to earth, looks a lot like a broken doll."
•  Secret society, the S & M Club, Single & Male
• Solanka travels to Neela's home country, where the leader adopted the persona of Solanka's cyber leader
• Night of the Furies, confronted by Eleanor, Mila, and Neela all at once in his bedroom
• References to "fury":
• p.19...Dubdub's idea, "In The Rat Hole.  Construction of a Machine without a Purpose. Fury."
• p.30...."Life is fury, he'd thought.  Fury--sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal--drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths.  Out of furia comes creation, inspiration, originality, passion, but also violence, pain, pure unafraid destruction, the giving and receiving of blows from which we never recover.  The Furies pursue us; Shiva dances his furious dance to create and also to destroy."
• p.70...Let's get to anger, okay? Let's get to the goddamn fury that actually kills.  Tell me, where is murder bred?"
• p.100..."Fury stood above him like a cresting Hokusai wave.  Little Brain was his delinquent child grown into a rampaging giantess, who now stood for everything he despised and trampled beneath her giant feet all the high principles he had brought her into being to extol; including, evidently, his own."
• p.114..."America, because of its omnipotence, is full of fear; it fears the fury of the world and renames it envy, or so my dad used to say."...Mila
• p.135...notion of dollification..."Above all the matter of sentences that must never be completed, because to complete them would release the fury, and the crater of that explosion would consume everything at hand."...exploitation of children
• p.178..."Furis.  This was the self she had never fully shown, Mila as Fury,the world-swallower, the self as pure transformative energy."....driven by desire to create virtual world for Solanka's new doll series
• p.185..."Furious and newly kindled desire was hard to give up for that calmer, gentler old flame."
• Quotes:
• p.4..."...well heeled white youths lounged in baggy garments on roseate stoops, stylishly simulating indigence while they waited for the billionairedom that would surely be along sometime soon."
• p.6..."America insulted the rest of the planet.....by treating such bounty with the shoulder-shrugging casualness of the inequitably wealthy."
• p.8..."While we marionettes dance, who is yanking our strings?"
• p.8..."...the epoch of analog (which was to say also of the richness of language, of analogy) was giving way to the digital era, the final victory of the numerate over the literate."
• p.35..."This is the country of the diminutive.  Even the stores and eating places got friendly fast."
• p.45..."He felt like one of the shuffling thousands in the old movies of Chaplin and Fritz Lang, the faceless ones doomed to break their bodies on society's wheel while knowledge exercised power over them from on high."
• p.51..."We were our stories , and when we died, if we were very lucky, our immortality would be in another such tale."
• p.56..."America's need to make things American, to own them was the mark of an odd insecurity.".....American Graffiti,
• p.58..."...Solanka was sure he could see, in his friend's eyes, the self-loathing fire of his rage.  it took him a long while to concede that Jack's suppressed fury was the mirror of his own."
• p.65..."When one is too young to have accumulated the bruises of ones own experience, one can choose to put on, like a hair shirt, the sufferings of one's world."
• p.81..."When a man without faith mimicked the choices of the faithful, the result was likely to be both vulgar and inept."
• p.87..."Yes, it had seduced him, America; yes, its brilliance aroused hi, and its vast potency too, and he was compromised by this seduction.  What he opposed in it he must also attack in himself."
• p.89..."This about New York Professor Solanka liked a lot--this sense of being crowded out by other people's stories, of walking like a phantom through a city that was in the middle of a story which didn't need him as a character."
• p.128..."There is that within us which is capricious and for which the language of explanation is inappropriate.  We are made of shadow as well as light, of heat as well as dust.Naturalism, the philosophy of the visible, cannot capture us, for we exceed.  We fear this in ourselves, our boundary[breaking, rule-disproving, shape-shifting, transgressive, trespassing shadow-self, the true ghost in our machine."
• p.158...."We all fear that the cold, machine-like thing in human  nature will destroy our magic and song."....Rushdie repeats this notion in "Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights"
• p.179..."Laptop as lapdancer."
• p.183..."For the real problem was damage not to the machine but to the desirous heart, and the language of the heart was being lost."
• p.184..."This was the only subject:  the crushing of dreams in a land where the right to dream was the national ideological cornerstone, the pulverizing cancellation of personal possibility at a time when the future was opening up to reveal vistas of unimaginable, glittering treasures such as no man or woman had ever dreamed of before."...this theme is returned to in "Two Years....."
• p.187....Links were electronic now, not narrative.  Everything existed at once."
• p.188..."He found himself inhabiting a world he greatly preferred to the one outside his window...".....his cyberworld...."...the river of Solanka's imagination was fed from a thousand streams.
• p.193..."Rights are never given by those who have them....only taken by those in need."
• p,206..."For furia could be ecstasy too, and Neela's love was the philosopher's stone that made possible the transmuting alchemy.  Rage grew out of despair; but Neela was hope fulfilled."
• p.228..."The speed of contemporary life, thought Malik Solanka, outstripped the heart's ability to respond."
• "Men are less hesitant about harming someone who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared.....Because love is held together by a chain of obligation which, since men are a sorry lot, is broken on every occasion in which their own self-interest is concerned; but fear is held together by a dread of punishment which will never abandon you."....answer to question whether it is better to be loved or hated by leader of Blefescu
• Review:  As always, I am a bit breathless when I finish a novel by Rushdie.  The vigor of his ideas and the multitude of analogies he draws from contemporary events, history, and mythology are nothing short of astonishing.  This novel, set in New York City, traces one academic man's journey from an existential crisis to efforts to drown out his fury, to his effort to face it and make meaning in  his life.  In my opinion, this novel is one of the more generally accessible reads because the plot is more clearly discernible than in several of his other works.  Per usual, the characters are at once humorous and terrifying in their humanity.  So take the ride, by all means, and hold onto your hat.  You will run smack into pathos, rage, passion, fear, with a smattering of love and hope.  Great novel!

"Crooked Heart" by Lissa Evans ***

• Audiobook
• Book Club selection for February 2016
• Review:  A so-so novel of wartime England and an unexpected relationship between an evacuated child and a struggling young woman.
  

"Musical Moment and Other Stories" by Yehoshua Kenaz ****

• Summer Reads with Beth
• Israeli author
• Short Stories
• Originally published in 1980
• "The Three Legged Chicken":
• Young boy's heightened sensitivity when grandfather dies
• Listens to woodworm at night
• The "loathsome thing" in his room at night that terrified him
• the three-legged chicken....a fake.....disillusionment, loss of innocence
• "...like awakening from a dream into a new dream".   p.12
• "Hendrik's Secret":
• secret desires
• His older sister sneaks to bars to dance and flirt with young men....his secret
• His friend's secret desires for the sister
• "Musical Moment":
• a singular, unique moment hearing a violinist play a piece which spoke to his young soul
• "...have never forgotten the aroma of colophony".  (substance rubbed on bow strings to stick them together
• blinking problem which faded as he moved into adolescence
• "between night and dawn":
• the seemingly overnight tranformation into young adults, with all the requisite intensity and volatility
• Pesach, the red-headed, handsome outsider, a scapegoat, a rebel, a man more quickly, inspired fear, hatred, passion, boys wanted to love and fight him, girls wanted him
• Review: Yehoshua Kenaz is an exceptional author.  He writes with great clarity and somehow also with great subtlety.  This collection of short stories are bound together by a common thematic denominator of youth and the rite of passage into adulthood. Each of the four stories tackle an aspect of the passage to adulthood and it's revelations about death, love, beauty, and sexual awakening. A very male perspective coupled with Israeli cultural norms make this very interesting and enjoyable reading!

"Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights" by Salman Rushdie ****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Originally published in 2015
• Indian author
• Epigraph:  
• "Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels."...(caption to Goya's "Los Caprichos, no.43)
• :One is not a 'believer' in fairy tales.  There is no theology, no body of ogma, no ritual, no institution, no expectation for a form of behavior.  They are about the unexpectedness and mutability of the world."....George Szirtes
• "Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic."...Italo Calvino
• "She saw the dawn approach, and fell silent, discreetly."......The Thousand and One Night
• Characters:
• Geronimo: floats off the ground, Dunia's child
• Alexandra Bliss Faina, fodder heiress
• Jimmy Kapoor, graphic novelist who travels into worm hole
• Mayor Rosa Fast, adopted Baby Storm who could detect deception
• "Mac" Aroni....really?
• Notes:
• War of the Worlds, between dark and light jinni and jinnia, parable
• jinn: creatures made of smokeless fire
• the time of strangenesses, lasted two years, eight months and twenty eight nights (1001)
• Dunia, the princess of the light jinn world, warrior who could feel human emotion
• the quest for scapegoats had begun
• reference to President Obama, too level headed for the jinnia (ISIS?)
• Chinese box of stories, bottomless pit of stories
• Peace brought the loss of dreams
• Quotes:
• p.22..."If you walk away from God you should probably try to stay in the good graces of Luck."
• p.47..."Reason could not and would never triumph over savage, undimmed unreason."
• p.55..."Yet in considering that strange era, the era of the two years, eight months and twenty-eight nights which is the subject of the present account, we are forced to concede that the world had become absurd, and that the laws which had long been accepted as the governing principles of reality had collapsed, leaving our ancestors perplexed and unable to fathom what the new laws might be."
• p.57..."A child understands nothing, and clings to faith because it lacks knowledge.  The battle between reason and superstition may be seen as mankind's long adolescence, and the triumph of reason will be its coming of age."
• p.74..."...there are very few cases in which a jinnia bore human children.  That would be as if the breeze were to be impregnated by the hair it ruffled and gave birth to more hair.  That would be as if a story mated with its reader to produce another reader."
• p.75...It was the resilience in human beings that represented their best chance of survival, their ability to look the unimaginable, the unconscionable, the unprecedented in the eye."
• p.92..."It was easier to believe that Chance, always the hidden principle of the universe, was joining forces with allegory, symbolism, surrealism and chaos, and taking charge of human affairs, than it was to accept the truth, namely the growing interference of the jinn in the daily life of the world."
• p.101..."...he had begun to grasp the difficult truth that a thing could have a cause, but that was not the same thing as having a purpose."
• p.140..."Beware the man (or jinni) of  action when he finally seeks to better himself with thought.  A little thinking is a dangerous thing."
• 213..."...the practice of extreme violence, known by the catch-all and often inexact term terrorism, was always of particular attraction to male individuals who were either virgins or unable to find sexual partners."
• p.269..."It seems to us self-evident, however, that the use of religion as a justification for repression, horror, tyranny, and even barbarism, a phenomenon which undoubtedly predated the War of the Worlds but was certainly a significant aspect of that conflict, led in the end to the terminal disillusion of the human race with the idea of faith."
• p.274..."The doors of perception opened and he saw that what was evil and monstrous about the jinn was a mirror of the monstrous and evil part of human beings, that human nature too contained the same irrationality, wanton, willful, malevolent, and cruel, and that the battle against the inn was a portrait of the battle within the human heart, which meant that the jinn were somehow abstractions as well as realities, and that their descent to the lower world served to show that world unreason which was the name of the dark jinn within people, and as he understood this, he also understood Teresa Saca's self-hatred, and knew, as she knew, that the jinn self within them both needed to be expunged, the irrational in man as well as jinn had to be defeated, so that an age of reason could begin."
• p.286..."This is the price we pay for peace, prosperity, tolerance, understanding, wisdom, goodness, and truth; that the wildness in us, which sleep unleashed, has been tamed, and the darkness in us, which drove the theater of the night, is soothed."
• Review:  Once again, Salman Rushdie cuts loose his verbal bombardment, leaving the reader gasping for breath, reeling from the word rush, and jumping for joy at the author's combination of wit and wisdom.  Come witness the War of the Worlds, the battle for peace and power, and don't miss the blatant references to contemporary issues and public figures.  It seems Rushdie wants the reader to be a child who is terrified and then soothed by a fairy tale.  Perhaps he even wants the reader to step back, breathe deeply, and get some perspective on the events on our planet, our priorities, and our problems.  A magnificent fairy tale for the erudite.

"Wake" by Anna Hope ***

• Audiobook 
• US author 
• Originally published in 2014
• Review:  A mediocre novel which centers around wartime and loss. It just did not read easily, although there were sections and characters who were engaging. Keep writing Anna Hope!

"A Duty To The Dead" by Charles Todd ****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 2009
• Mystery/Suspense
• #1 in Bess Crawford Series
• Review:  An excellent suspense novel, first of the series. Bess Crawford is the protagonist, a WWI nurse, who feels duty bound to carry out the wish of a dying patient. What ensues will keep your attention throughout and keep you guessing. Loyalty, duty, honor, and the insanity of family are all themes you will encounter. Enjoy! I will certainly move on to the next in the series.

"The Sandman: The Dream Hunters" by Neil Gaiman *****

• Book Club
• Graphic novel 
• English author 
• Fable style
• Exquisite illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano
• Characters:  young monk, fox, badger, Baku
• Review:  This was my first graphic novel, and if others are this magnificent, I am all in!  The illustrations, by Yoshitaka Amano, are exquisite.  The story is a fable of a monk, a fox, and their connection in the real and dream worlds.  It is a lovely fable about life, love, and death. Just a fabulous reading experience, both in terms of Gaiman's prose and Amano's visual feast!

"Heart Earth" by Ivan Doig. ****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 1992
• Review: This installment of Ivan Doig's autobiographical stories of life in Montana is one of his shortest books.  Doig's prose, eloquent as ever, is focused on his mother, Berneta, who died when he was young. As I work my way through Doig's books I feel that I am connecting more and more to his family, his life in Montana, and his prose.  Fascinating!