Mount TBR 2013 Reading Challenge discussion

Looking forward to climbing/reading with you all next year! and to having some freed up space on the shelves...

#1. Altered States, Anita Brookner
#2. Long Life, Mary Oliver
#3. Death of a Perfect Mother, Robert Barnard
#4. The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#5. Waiting for Aphrodite, Sue Hubbell
#6. They Came Like Swallows, William Maxwell
#7. Fidelity, Wendell Berry
#8. The Queen's Fool, Philippa Gregory
#9. The Satires of Horace and Persius
#10 Hostages to Fortune, Elizabeth Cambridge
#11. A Firing Offense, George P. Pelecanos
#12. The Collected Stories of Edith Wharton, edited by A. Brookner
#13. Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell
#14. The Sixteen Pleasures, Robert Hellenga
#15. Turn Right at Machu Picchu, Mark Adams
#16. The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, Marie Howe
#17. The Great Roxhythe, Georgette Heyer
#18. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
#19. Letters from Yellowstone, Diane Smith
#20. Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, Zadie Smith
#21. Less Than Angels, Barbara Pym
#22. The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
#23. A Trouble of Fools, Linda Barnes
#24. The Bitter Path of Death, Pierre Audemars
#25. Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
#26. Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, Michael Pollan
#27. Moonfleet, John Meade Falkner
#28. Unattainable Earth, Czeslaw Milosz
#29. Journey to Outermost House, Nan Turner Waldron
#30. Bones of Contention, Edward Candy
#31. Learning to Live in the World: Earth Poems, William Stafford
#32. The Devastating Boys and Other Stories, Elizabeth Taylor
#33. Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild, Lee Sandlin
#34. Remember Me?, Sophie Kinsella
#35. Skeleton Dance, Aaron Elkins
#36. The Clerk's Tale, Margaret Frazer

Here are the first two I'm rappelling up:
1) Altered States, Anita Brookner
2). Long Life, Mary Oliver
Enjoying them both.

#1 finished.
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Altered States, Anita Brookner. A middle aged Englishman sees a strangely familiar woman standing on a train platform in Switzerland. Is she Sarah Miller, a former flame who continues to elude him? In clear, sharp prose, he traces Sarah's malign but irresistible influence on his life.

To tackle the older peaks of the TBR ranges, I'm going to only count books I've had for at least a year toward the ascent. I started keeping track of my purchases by month a couple years ago, and it's been eye opening. The first year, I bought 180 books and read 120+....those piles add up!

I do like Anita Brookner, sounds good.

You're very organized, tracking your books like that!

More like trying to be organized :)

#2 finished.
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Long Life, Mary Oliver. This collection of 14 short essays, 10 poems and some other writings is rich in detail, insightful and celebratory. Her essays address nature, landscape, Emerson, Hawthorne, the disappearance of the town dump, and writing in wonderful sentences.

"I prefer weather in the smallest quantities. A drop will do.....We may be touched by the most powerful of suppositions--even to a certainty--as we stand in the rose petals of the sun and hear a murmur from the wind no louder than the sound it makes as it dozes under the bee's wings. This, too, I suggest, is weather, and worthy of report."

Have started climbing the next talus slope:
---Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys into the Time Before Bones, Sue Hubbell
--- Death of a Perfect Mother, Robert Barnard
And one more,
---The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#3 finished.
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Death of a Perfect Mother, Robert Barnard. No one in Todmarsh exactly likes Lill Hodsen, a loud, meddling woman, who has alienated everyone in her family except her oblivious husband, Fred. But most of the characters we meet in Todmarsh aren't very likable, including Lill's two "adoring" sons who are planning her murder, until someone gets there first. Darkly funny, with a plot that keeps twisting.

"Thought is perhaps too definite a word for what went on in Fred's head: impressions, feelings, vague impulses and desires floated through his brain like skeletal autumn leaves, driven by the vaguest breeze, slow, wanton, uncatchable."

#4 finished.
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The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Edgar Allen Poe meets Barcelona. A twisted tale of a mysterious author, disappearing books, and gothic adventures made for a compelling read. But more honest communication among the characters would have alleviated their sufferings and shortened the book by 200 pages.

Zooming along!

But then we are into February tomorrow. It doesn't bear thinking about.

Another month, another mountain....

#5 finished.
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Waiting for Aphrodite, Sue Hubbell. In this book of connected essays about invertebrates, the author moves back and forth between her new home on the Maine coast, her old home in Missouri, and other locations, including Belize. There are essays on horseshoe crabs, fireflies, millipedes, sea urchins, corals, sponges, earthworms, bees, pill bugs, and sea mice among others. One theme repeats -- there is so much that is not known about these animals' biology and habits.

#6 finished.
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They Came Like Swallows, William Maxwell. November, 1918 in a small town in Illinois. World War I is just ending, and the Spanish influenza epidemic is underway. Each event, each character, each sentence seems inevitably right in this sad but beautiful short novel.

#7 finished.
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Fidelity, Wendell Berry. These five stories tell about the hard work and realities of life in the small farm town of Port William, Kentucky. My favorite was "Pray without Ceasing", about the death of the narrator's grandfather in 1912.

"It was as though his soul, like a circling hawk, had swung back into this world on a wide curve, to look once more out of his eyes at what he had always known and to speak with his voice, and then had swung out of it again, the curve widening."

#8 The Queen's Fool, Philippa Gregory. The reigns of Henry VIII's children, King Edward and Queen Mary, are the fascinating background to the story of Hannah Verde, a young Jewish girl who becomes a fool, companion and spy in the royal court. Unfortunately, the background with the intriguing characters of Queen Mary, King Philip of Spain, Robert Dudley, Princess Elizabeth, Dr Dee, and others, tends to dominate the book instead of Hannah's story.

#9. The Satires of Horace and Persius. This book has been on my shelves a long time...I think I bought it in the 80's after reading Anthony Trollope's autobiography. The translator, Niall Rudd, did an amazing job of making the topical allusions in these 2,000 year old poems accessible to the modern reader. Philosophic and humorous looks at life in Roman times, sometimes X-rated and misogynistic. I was surprised to find the story of the country mouse and the town mouse goes back (at least) to Horace.

#10. Hostages to Fortune, Elizabeth Cambridge. Catherine and her doctor husband, William, struggle to make ends meet and raise their three children in a small Oxfordshire town after WWI. This Persephone novel tells a quiet but moving story made up of every day events and happenings which reveal the social changes and shifts of the time.

#11. A Firing Offense, George P. Pelecanos. Hard-boiled, violent mysteries aren't my thing, but A Firing Offense succeeds as a novel as well as a mystery due to the excellent writing and characterizations. The local setting in Washington, D.C. was an added plus.

#12. The Collected Stories of Edith Wharton, ed. Anita Brookner. This collection provides a generous 28 story sampling of the 87 short stories Edith Wharton wrote. She is quoted as saying short stories are about situation, while novels are about character, but there is plenty of both displayed here. It's the kind of book where you would have a different collection of favorites every time you read it, since the stories range from portrayals of social mores, to explorations of relationships, to the supernatural, and character sketches. What I loved (this time) were the unexpected humorous stories...Charm Incorporated, Expiation and Full Circle...and the sad, morally twisted story of "Her Son", which plays on themes of trust and deception explored in many of her stories.

Gosh, 12 already! Well done.

Still quite a way to go...still climbing....

#13. Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell. This charming small hardback edition includes a short story (The Cage at Cranford) and a novella (The Moorland Cottage) as well as Cranford. Cranford focuses on the foibles and particularities of the mostly feminine residents of 19th century Cranford, and reminded me a little of the Miss Read books with its gentle humor and feeling. The Moorland Cottage had a somewhat melodramatic plot, with wonderfully evocative descriptions of the moor.

#14. The Sixteen Pleasures, Robert Hellenga. A young American book conservator goes to Italy to help save volumes damaged by the 1966 Florence floods. In the process, she discovers and rescues an erotic masterpiece and perhaps her own life.

So far, read 14 books for challenge (out of 28 YTD) and acquired 24. *Sighs*.

#15. Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time, Mark Adams. Entertaining account of the author's modern day travels in Peru where he retraced the steps of Hiram Bingham III, who "discovered" Machu Picchu and may have been the model for Indiana Jones. Great maps made it easy to follow all their travels.

#16. The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, Marie Howe. While many of these poems start with observation of the everyday world, that is just the starting point for the journey they take into the life of the spirit.

"The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday./An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout/ breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps." "The Star Market"

"This is the life you have written," the novel tells us. "What happens next?" "Why the Novel is Necessary but Sometimes Hard to Read

"My soul drank enough to know how thirsty it was." Before the Fire

#17. The Great Roxhythe, Georgette Heyer. In later life, Georgette Heyer disavowed this historical novel she wrote early in her career and refused to have it reprinted. While Ms Heyer was correct in thinking The Great Roxhythe is not up to the standard of her other books, it is a fascinating read for the serious Heyer fan, because here are rough templates for characters who appear again and again in her historical romances--for example, the sardonic, cool headed Roxhythe is a rough draft for many of her later heros.

#18. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Wow. And wow again. Glad to finally make it all the way through this masterful story of sin and perhaps redemption.

#19. Letters from Yellowstone, Diane Smith. A delightful, sly humor meets scientific theory in this story of an 1898 botanical field study, told through the correspondence of the participants, especially A.E. Bartram, a young medical student and Professor Merriam, the leader of the group. Many of the conflicts between characters are based on their differing scientific ideas, which play out over the course of the novel, set in the early days of Yellowstone National Park.

#20. Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, Zadie Smith. Essays on a grab-bag of topics--Liberia, Hollywood, Middlemarch, David Foster Wallace, notes on writing a novel, Christmas memories, movie reviews, and so on. In the strongest essays, the author's feelings about the topic add a zing to skillful writing and strong analysis (Their Eyes Were Watching God: What Does Soulful Mean?; That Crafty Feeling; At the Multiplex, 2006; Notes on Visconti's Bellissima; Accidental Hero).

#21. Less Than Angels, Barbara Pym. Life among the anthropologists and English suburbanites. I'd forgotten how funny and wry Barbara Pym's writing can be.

#22. The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. In this short novel, Don Fabrizio, a Sicilian nobleman, watches the slow dissolution of the old order during the unification of Italy. One of the best historical novels I've ever read.

#23. A Trouble of Fools, Linda Barnes. This mystery highlights the quirky personality and lifestyle of P.I. Carlotta Carlyle as she tries to cash in on a promotional offer, teach her parakeet to swear, be a good Big Sister and help an elderly woman find her missing brother.

#24. The Bitter Path of Death, Pierre Audemars. In a case he considers one of his failures, M. Pinaud of the Surete investigates the murder of a Parisian jeweler.

#25. Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder. Paul Farmer works to best serve his patients in rural Haiti and around the world from the slums of Peru to Russian prisons. An unsettling but ultimately inspiring book about a group Partners in Health that places human life above cost benefit analyses of what is possible to make a real difference in the world.

#26. Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, Michael Pollan. Essays about gardening, more philosophical than practical, but entirely charming and thought-provoking.

#27. Moonfleet, John Meade Falkner. Smugglers, ghosts, true love, and hidden treasure make for a fast moving adventure story set on the English coast.

#28. Unattainable Earth, Czeslaw Milosz. "Why not include in one book, along with my own poems, poems by others, notes in prose, quotations from various sources and even fragments of letters from friends if all these pieces serve one purpose: my attempt to approach the inexpressible sense of being." Intriguing, ambitious attempt to capture what won't be captured.

#29. Journey to Outermost House, Nan Turner Waldron. Perfect book for anyone curious about the Fo'c'sle, the small seaside cottage where Henry Beston observed the seasons of Cape Cod in the 1920's. The author provides a history of the house, accounts of her own visits, and pictures, photographs and maps.

#30. Bones of Contention, Edward Candy. Who sent a skeleton to Mr Murivance at the London Royal College of Pediatricians' museum? "Was she a bequest or a loan or merely someone's unwanted guilty secret?" A clever plot and odd cast of characters made for an enjoyable read, with a humorous tone that reminded me of Edmund Crispin and Sarah Caudwell.

#31. Learning to Live in the World: Earth Poems, William Stafford

William Stafford writes deceptively simple poems that reverberate and return to memory. This collection focuses on the natural world, with standards like "Ask Me" and "Traveling Through the Dark" and less familiar (to me) poems like "Climbing Along the River", "Glimpse Between Buildings", "Fall Wind" and "Keepsakes". Here is the short "Storm at the Coast": "What moves on, moves far,/ here. What holds, holds long./ But it is the wind and water will stay,/ after the cliffs are gone."

Here's one of many traits I love about you! :) Doesn't matter if a piece of music or literature is to my taste. I love a person who doesn't keep to the same and who reaches out to variety!

C. wrote: "Here's one of many traits I love about you! :) Doesn't matter if a piece of music or literature is to my taste. I love a person who doesn't keep to the same and who reaches out to variety!"

Thanks. It's been interesting for me to see what exactly gets stockpiled vs what gets read right away.

I have a habit of trying to do/eat/read what I dislike earlier and save what I like best, last. I'm opposite: it's a treat if I take a breather from challenge themes and read what I prefer!

Hand in hand with that, I have a collector's side and read only real books. It's a way to clean up if I prioritize books I'm not passionate enough about to keep. :)

C. wrote: "I have a habit of trying to do/eat/read what I dislike earlier and save what I like best, last. I'm opposite: it's a treat if I take a breather from challenge themes and read what I prefer!

Hand..."

Like you, I definitely have books I'm saving on the TBR range for when I *need* them. But others reflect discontinuity between my reading and buying habits...I "think " I like to read essays and short stories when I'm buying books but (mostly) don't actually pick those volumes up for reading. That's why I'm enjoying stretching my reading muscles on this mountain to try some out!

#32. The Devastating Boys and Other Stories, Elizabeth Taylor. The characters and situations in the best of these eleven short stories by the "other Elizabeth Taylor" continue to reverberate in the mind after the book is closed: the country hostess of two disadvantaged city children discovers their sharp eye for mimicry, a man sends himself a birthday card, two middle aged vacationers unsuccessfully try for a night together, the head of an exclusive clothing department retires, a woman looks back at mistakes of her younger self ironically. The author has a sharp eye for the telling detail and for the insincerities of social life.

#33. Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild, Lee Sandlin. " Mizu-ziiipi was an Ojibwe phrase that meant 'very big river'". The very big river was a dangerous place in the early to mid nineteenth century, and this book covers the scene from the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812, revival meetings, river bandits, missionaries, steamboats, and the snags and hazards of the river itself up to shortly after the Civil War. A detailed and different but fascinating slant on U.S. history.

#34. Remember Me?, Sophie Kinsella. Lexi Smart wakes up in a hospital room without any of her memories of the last 3 years --which means she's forgotten her father's funeral, a stint on a corporate reality show, her husband, her new high-powered job and, oh yes, the man she'd fallen in love with-- or so he says. The story took a long time to set up, and the heroine's thoughts/reactions didn't always come across as authentic. But.....there were some very funny scenes toward the end.

#35. Skeleton Dance, Aaron Elkins. Gideon and Julie Oliver head to France to investigate some mysterious bones that surfaced in Les Eyzies, a hot spot for research into prehistoric man with the usual resident assortment of quirky anthropologists and other scientific suspects.