"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.