Pick-a-Shelf discussion

Can't wait to see what you have read this month :0)

finished up Chronicle in Stone: A Novel - I didn't actually realize it was on the list and started it late last month, but it turned out to be an interesting read - set in Albania during WW2 - it looks at a smaller country who wasn't really participating in the war and what happened...how they were invaded by one country and then another...for a while it went Italy then Greece, then Italy, then Greece...but it was an interesting read and I can see why it won the man booker prize


ETA - so i'm going to chalk this up to me being an idiot...I realized that I was the one person who had shelved it as world-lit, because i've been doing that for any books that I read for my around the world in 80 books challenge...yep, i'm an idiot!

I finished The Housekeeper and the Professor last night and it was great! 4.5* If you liked The Samurai's Garden then you will like this book. It had a very similar feel to me. The character developement was fantastic and it had the same "quiet" feel to me.

It is an interesting story about how a woman who goes to work for a math professor who has been in an auto accident and has a memory that stops at 1975 or the last 80 minutes.She ends up bringing her son to work with her and the book explores how they find a way to build a friendship despite the professor's disability.

It had a lot of mathematics and baseball (both of which I love) but even if you don't like those, the wonderful people in the story should keep you going. These are definitely characters worth spending time with.

I finished Aura by Carlos Fuentes a few days ago. It was pretty good and a neat bit of experimental writing. I gave it ***/3 stars.

Here's a direct link to my review on the book's page, but I'll paste it here as well, for convenience:

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Well, that certainly wasn't what I was expecting. Panamanian author, written in the 1960s, said to be a bit fantastical... I was expecting magical realism, and I got a good old-fashioned Gothic. I had to keep reminding myself where the book was set, because it felt like it was set in a dark and drafty old manor in England, yet it was set in a (dark and drafty old) city home in Mexico City.

Foreboding atmosphere? Check. Young scholar with talents uniquely suited to the story? Check. Creepy old woman? Check. Beautiful and enigmatic young woman? Check. Bad lighting, strange noises, confounding architecture? A trio of checks. Mystery, old documents, unseen servants, overly simplified reasons why the protagonist cannot leave blithely accepted as sensible, feeling drugged for unknown reasons, romantic/sexual impulses one cannot fight, rationalizing it all, slowly-dawning realizations, weird caveats (Don't open that door, don't put on that light, don't do X when Y is in Z), creeping dread on the part of the reader? Certainly, checks all around. Ghosties and oddities of identity? Well, you see where this is going...

Really, it was a charming (if gloomy and vaguely unsettling) tale, and yes I'm jaded enough a reader that it certainly wasn't scary, per se, but I probably still shouldn't have read it at 2am, under the covers, on a cold, rainy and windy (Yes, it's June...tell it to Pacific NW weather.) night. I couldn't put it down, even when my lids were losing the battle to stay open, which is a mark (in my opinion) of a good and effective Gothic. I'd say this was worthy of 4 stars if various areas had been fleshed out a bit more, but it's still a solid 3.5 and was both timeless and independent of setting...a self-contained, classic-style little thriller.

Oh, did I neglect to mention the thing is written in 2nd person? It was like reading a Gothic Choose Your Own Adventure book. Yes, almost exactly like that - good fun, as well as a neat experiment in form. (I will say that the structure would possibly be more effective still if the reader were male, as well as a smoker, and I am neither.)

I just read Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. **** I really liked the main character. She was not all perfect, but also was not so flawed that I wanted to throw the book across the room. She was realistic and certainly was charming. I liked the way the book just meandered along. It dealt with some tough subject matter, but in a light way. I would like to try more of her writing.

This was a big change from the other book I started the month with - Madame Bovary *. I just wanted to shake her and scream. I gave up after about 130 pages. I think it was just about to get a little more interesting because the affairs were about to begin, but I just couldn't take it anymore and I decided to end the agony. Aside from the infuriating main character, the endless details of mundane conversations were just boring. I had such a headache from it. Not a fan.

I read and reviewed Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I really enjoyed it. My review is here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I just finished The Inheritance of Loss. I gave it 2 stars. The rating is that high based on the end of the book. I had a lot of trouble following the writing style and I had to spend a chapter or two getting back into the book each time I picked it up again.

I read The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani. The book had an interesting setting - Iran in the 17th century - but I felt very distanced from the main character. I really didn't feel for her, even though she went through pretty tough times. It wasn't only her though, most characters were a bit caricaturish and the end was rushed and didn't seem to with the story somehow. Even the rug designing parts were somewhat difficult for me to get because I couldn't picture the rugs.

The best parts were the ones that dealt with cultural aspects. I knew about sighehs (temporary marriages) and knew the purposes of them (basically so men can get something on the side and still comply with their religious laws) but I didn't realized how that affected the woman's reputation.

Overall an interesting read but not touching like I expected.

finished up listening to The Dogs of Riga yesterday - this is the second in the Wallander series set in Sweden and I actually enjoyed it more than the first - he travels to Latvia during the course of the book and I learnt a lot about that country as well.

Looking forward to reading/listening to the next one in the series which I already reserved from the library. I would recommend him for people who liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the other Steig Larsson books, but I feel that Mankell is a much better writer and had a much better translator

I just finished The Twentieth Wife and I really enjoyed it. It was more about the political landscape in India than I was expecting but it was a light read and the story was compelling enough to keep me wanting more. I rated it 4 stars.

I just finished reading The Summer Book by Tove Jansson ****

I loved the voices of the unique characters. Sophia (6 yrs) and her grandmother talk, fuss, and yell with each other throughout. This book has stories from a summer on an island off the coast of Finland. The grandmother is unpredictable and Sophia is precocious - a wonderful mix.

So far my foray into world-lit has been less than overwhelming. I have little experience in writing reviews but I will give it a try!

First up was The Book Thief. I hadn't really planned on this book but it was sitting next to The Shadow of the Wind on the shelf so I picked up both. I could of enjoyed the story of Liesel and Rudy if the narrator had been less intrusive and opinionated. As it was, the book seemed more of a soapbox than a story, and I felt like I was being kept at arm's length from the characters. It did interest me enough that I finished it but only a 3 star read for me.

Next up was Daughter of Fortune. Isabelle Allende has been on my list of TBR authors for a while so I was glad this opportunity came up. I thought the first half of the book was good but it all fell apart for me when they set sail for California. The author seemed more interested in detailing the Gold Rush than in the story she had begun to tell. The characters developed little after that and the ending was just plain flat. Again I did finish it, hoping that the end would redeem the middle but no such luck. 2.5 stars for me.

finished up Baking Cakes in Kigali and interesting look into post civil war Rwanda - there was some political discussion about the different factions in the population, but for the most part, it focused on Angel, a Tanzanian woman who runs a cake baking service out of her house. I liked how the author tried to put some of the local dialect into - instead of saying someone was dead, they are "late", and she utilized the Rwandan word for white person as well, which gave it an authentic feel.

next up is The Cellist of Sarajevo

Dee wrote: "next up is The Cellist of Sarajevo "

Dee, I loved this book. I hope you enjoy it, too!

i'm looking forward to it - been planning to read it for a while

I read The Inheritance of Loss, a book about India.
A child, Sai, is sent to live with her grandfather, a retired judge who lives in a crumbling house at the foot of Kanchenjunga near Darjeeling in India. The story takes place when she has reached her teen years living with the judge and his cook. There is an uprising of Gorkha nationalists that causes lots of problems in the region. Another part of the story follows the adventures of the cook's son who has gotten a tourist visa to visit the US and has gone underground in Harlem as undocumented cook. Filled with flashbacks, the author writes of much of the contemporary times as seen from a small corner of a large country. I really liked her descriptions.

also finished up - A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder - I had hoped that it would be good like some of the other asian mystery authors out there, but it was mediocre at best...it basically follows the murder of a malaysian business man and his wife who has been accused of his murder - she is a Singapore citizen, so a detective from sinapore is sent to help out...bleh

Dee wrote: "also finished up - A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder - I had hoped that it would be good like some of the other asian mystery authors out there, but it was mediocre at best...it basic..."

I'm disappointed to hear that, Dee. I just picked it up at the library, and it looked interesting. Guess it belongs on the bottom of the pile.

it was weird...I dunno...I've read better asian mysteries...don't know if your book is the same, but it was formatted really weird in that it had huge margins as well which was a bit distracting for me

Dee wrote: "it was weird...I dunno...I've read better asian mysteries...don't know if your book is the same, but it was formatted really weird in that it had huge margins as well which was a bit distracting fo..."

Have you discovered the Sonchai Jittlecheep ones set in Bangkok? I forget the author's name.

I haven't and I haven't hit thailand yet for my around the world challenge - so i'll take a look see

I haven't but i'll check it out - I just searched and the first one is Bangkok 8 (Sonchai Jitpleecheep, #1) - and my library has it...

have you tried The Case of the Missing Servant (the first book in the series)

I just finished Like Water for Chocolate.

I think I could have gotten a lot more into this story had I liked the writing style. I found all the cooking instructions and recipes bits sprinkled through the prose to be super irritating. Also it would have helped if I found the main character to be likable in the first place. Yes her life was tragic but she didn't help herself at all.

I've finished several books from the world-lit shelf this month and am just now getting around to posting.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Interesting cast of characters in a smart crime novel. There is some hard (abusive) sex in the book. I'm really interestsed to follow the characters and will be reading the next one.

The Reader This book really left me with a lot to think about. I didn't like that the boy was 15. I would have prefered him to be 17 or 18 but as I got farther into the book I could see why he was so young.

Ender's Game This has been on my tbr list for a while. I'm not a huge fan of sci-fi so its been easy to put off reading it. But it fit a ROAR task so I finally took it on. I was very surprised by how much I liked this book. I loved the characters and actually I am really looking forward to reading the next one in the series.

The Invisible Bridge A fantastic book. The characters were well drawn and I quickly fell in love with all of them. If you have a tendency to be at all soggy while reading I suggest you keep a box of tissues handy. There were a couple of elements that fell slightly short of being believable so this book falls slightly short of 5 stars. 4 1/2 stars.

A Midsummer Night's Dream I listened to the audio verson which was an interesting experience. I couldn't always keep the characters as strait as I would if I'd read it but the cast of readers and special audio effects made it fun.

Oedipus Rex I've never read this before. I knew most of the story of Oedipus but am glad to now be able to say I've read it.

Lahni, nice to see that you liked Ender's Game as I have that on my current to-read list!

Oops. I've been forgetting about posting my world-lit reviews. Great shelf-choice! So far this month, I've read:

The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A classic that I was disappointed not to like as much as I thought I would. My review here .

The Poisonwood Bible: This took a long time to get really absorbed in, but I really liked it. It has a lot of very great reviews, and some terrible ones. A good book to check out. My review here .

The Angels' Game: Fabulous. My review here . But you might want to read his The Shadow of the Wind first.

Lahni wrote: "I've finished several books from the world-lit shelf this month and am just now getting around to posting.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Interesting cast of characters in a smart..."

I really liked the whole "Ender" series. Card has built a beleivable universe with great heros and bad guys. I picked them up when I was working for a book fair that took books to elementary schools.

Susan wrote: "Oops. I've been forgetting about posting my world-lit reviews. Great shelf-choice! So far this month, I've read:

The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A classic that I was disappointed not to l..."

I haven't quite finished The Bridge of San Luis Rey but so far I have been disappointed in it too. I will finish it this month, but it is a struggle.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

I've read a lot of rave reviews about this book and I've been meaning to read it for several shelves in the past. Well this month I finally got around to it and .... I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting but that wasn't it. There were a lot of beautiful ideas and I didn't mind the fantasy elements but I couldn't lose myself in it and I felt it was trying to hard to teach you something. I can see why people have found it inspiring but I don't think I was quite in the right mood for it.
3 stars from me

Sarah wrote: "The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

I've read a lot of rave reviews about this book and I've been meaning to read it for several shelves in the past. Well this month I finally..."

I had the same problem with it. Something about it just didn't grab me.

Lauren wrote: "I just finished Like Water for Chocolate.

I think I could have gotten a lot more into this story had I liked the writing style. I found all the cooking instructions and recipes bits sp..."

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one underwhelmed by this book. I read it last month and had some of the same issues with it. I said in my review that all the characters, except for one, are weak or mean or both. (view spoiler)[I think the only one I liked was John and he got the shaft in the end! (hide spoiler)]

I really loved Bless Me, Ultima. It paints a beautiful picture of a young boy growing up in a small town on the edge of the New Mexican llano. My review here .

I guess it's only fair that after reading something really terrific, I ended up with something I didn't like at all. I gave Persepolis a rare single star. I picked it because it took care of 3 shelves on the July challenge, but I wish I'd kept hunting for something else. It's only saving grace was that it was short. My review here .

I don't know what I expected from The Summer Book, but that wasn't what it was. Even after reading the introduction that said there wasn't much of a plot, I still found it frustrating that the various stories didn't go anywhere. Each was fine on its own, but altogether I thought it was just ok. My review here .

I finished Day of Confession well into the night last night and would give it 4+ stars.

This was a great thriller involving an assination, an explosion and a misidentified body, and that was all just to set up the rest of the story.

There were several times when the story seemed to be tying up (which I knew could not be true due to the number of pages left) when all of the sudden a new twist would appear and the protagonists were faced with another seemingly insurmountable challenge. The characters were well developed and some of them were truly memorable.

There were a couple of things which I could have done without in the book. One was an unnecessary romance and the other were two, what I found to be, extraneous sex scenes. All three of these elements seemed to be thrown in for the sake of being able to say that the book contained romance and sex. But these are minor complaints, more than made up for by the fact that the rest of the book was an interesting thrill ride. There was even a seemingly mistaken plot point which turned out to be a crucial clue. It totally took me in.

All in all I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes mystery/thrillers.

Here are my World Lit reviews.

The Book Thief - 4 stars

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...


Siddhartha - 3 stars

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I read A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder in spite of Dee's review, because I was in the mood for a little light escape. And I found it perfect for that. Overall, I gave it 3 stars. It won't make it to my favorites list, but I liked it better than Dee did, and might well read others in the series. My review here .

Dee wrote: "it was weird...I dunno...I've read better asian mysteries...don't know if your book is the same, but it was formatted really weird in that it had huge margins as well which was a bit distracting fo..."

Dee, what are some of the Asian mystery writers that you've read and liked?

i actually haven't found a lot of asian mysteries that i've read - I didn't mind The Case of the Missing Servant set in India - and i'm reading Bangkok 8 (Sonchai Jitpleecheep, #1) right now

Susan have you read anything by M.M. Kaye. I saw the HBO series of The Far Pavilions and love it. It wasn't a mystery but was set in India. I then went on to read some of her other books including Death in Kashmir: A Mystery.

I just googled Asia and Mysteries and this author popped up - Colin Cotterill, so I requested the first book from the library - The Coroner's Lunch - set in Laos

As usual, I have been very slack in writing my reviews. Here are some of the books I have read this month.

News of a Kidnapping 3 stars
A non-fictional account of nine hostages (in smaller groups) taken by Colombian druglords who were campaigning to ensure that they were not extradited to the USA. Gabriel García Márquez interviewed the surviving hostages and their families to give a balanced account of the months of tension from both inside and outside.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet 4 stars
I enjoyed this story of an earnest young dutchman trying to do the right thing in an alien world.

Seeing 4 stars
This was my first book by José Saramago and, at first, I found the dialogues hard to follow. However, once I got into it I really the manouevrings of the various polititians and their struggles against an unknown enemy.

Empress Orchid 2 stars
I did not like any of the characters in this book, particularly Orchid herself. I felt that China would have been better off without the lot of them. The only action Orchid took that I approved of, was her attempt to discipline her son.

The Tree of Man 3 stars
This is not my favourite book by Patrick White, probably because I am too much a product of the city. However, he does a great job of portraying an ordinary couple, establishing a livelihood on the land, while battling with flood, fire, friends and frightful children.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet 3 stars
After all the other depressing books this month I thought that I wanted a happy ending until I read this book. Then I remembered that I prefer sad endings to overly unlikely happy ones. This could have been a really good book if he hadn't tried to make it a romance, and if he hadn't set part of it in a totally unrecognisable 1986.

Dee wrote: "I just googled Asia and Mysteries and this author popped up - Colin Cotterill, so I requested the first book from the library - The Coroner's Lunch - set in Laos"

Interesting! Let us know how you liked it, even if it's not on the month's shelf at the time you finish it.

Just finished Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho, 2 stars only. I had read The Devil and Miss Prym and loved it so was looking forward visiting with Coelho again. Unfortunately the only word I have for this book is tedious. Neither the characters nor the message engaged me, I found it quite heavy-handed by times. Coelho has a premise about insanity and I think let it rule the book.

finished up The Cellist of Sarajevo - really enjoyed it - liked how it was told from multiple points of view and that is was based on a known person/event

Dee wrote: "I just googled Asia and Mysteries and this author popped up - Colin Cotterill, so I requested the first book from the library - The Coroner's Lunch - set in Laos"

I didn't get a chance to read it but the Mystery, Crime & Thriller Group recently read this. Here's the thread (As a warning - I don't think I saw any big spoilers but there may be): http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/5...

I loved A Thousand Splendid Suns every bit as much as Hosseinei's first book. I gave it a rare (for me) 5 stars. My review here .

Finally finished One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez which was a struggle.
I found I didn't like any of the characters, I couldn't understand anyone's motivation as they all seemed deeply flawed with no redeeming or interesting qualities. It was also difficult to keep track over 7 generations when they all blurred into each other due to an annoying habit of giving everyone the same names.
I also found the magical realism difficult to understand, it seemed quite at odds with the dark gritty subject matter. It was almost like when Márquez got bored with a character he simply got rid of them in the most infeasible way possible.
I don't mind difficult books but this one didn't have much to make it worth the effort.
A rare 1 star from me.

I read The Namesake. This novel follows the Ganguli family as a young Bengali couple meet when their parents arrange a marriage in Calcutta, India. They move to Massachusetts where the husband is in graduate school. The story is about their American-born son, the namesake of the title. Gogol is given the name of a Russian author when his great-grandmother's letter with names doesn't arrive in time. The main part of the story tells how he deals with his bi-cultural life as he grows up. I have a lot of friends who are immigrants or 1st generation in their families and have seen how they try to deal with this fact of American life. I enjoyed her story.

I can't say enough about Macho! It's a terrific book, and I think every Mexican or U.S. citizen should read it. Yet you can tell by how few shelves it's on that very few Goodreaders have even heard of it. Villaseñor's later work Rain of Gold seems to be much better known.

Please see my complete review here .After reading it, I concluded it fits in the political section of the May ROAR challenge, and it's only 236 pages, so I heartily recommend it to everyone. I did have trouble finding it at my local library. But that only means that, as avid readers, we should all let our libraries know it's one that's worth owning.