"The Power and The Glory" by Graham Greene. ****

● Audiobook
●  US author
●  Originally published in 1940
●  Review:  A lovely subtle novel, set in communist Mexico.  A renegade priest eludes the law for years and the reader comes to understand the meaning of humility and holiness.  Thought provoking!

"Go Tell It On The Mountain" by James Baldwin *****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 1953
• Review:  James Baldwin......I know...what more is there to say about this powerful, profound writer.  This story of spiritual journey is eloquent, moving and engaging.  How did John come to his commitment to the Lord?  Read and you will know.  This novel is about individual and collective faith and identity.  It is about the humanity of the devout.  It is about leaps of faith and deep wisdom.  And, it is about family.

"The True Deceiver" by Tove Jansson *****

• Summer Sub Club with Beth
• Swedish author
• Originally published in 1982, translation published in 2009 
• Introduction:
• "Anna Aemilin, has no foothold on winter and is a being particularly associated with spring."
• "How does deception relate to truth?"
• Quotes:
• p.12..."Anna Aemilin had the great persuasive power of monomania, of being able to see and embrace a single idea, of being interested in one thing only."...the ground, the promise of what's to come in spring?  
• p.23..."But you never know, you can never really be sure, never completely certain that you haven't tried to ingratiate yourself in some hateful way-- flattery, empty adjectives, the whole sloppy, disgusting machinery that people engage in with impunity all the time everywhere to help them get what they want...".
• p.50..."And politeness can sometimes be almost a kind of deceit, can it not?"
• p.128..."...I would much rather be cheated than go around distrusting everyone."...Anna to Katri....me too, maybe
• p.171..."What's happened to me is that I can no longer see the ground."...Anna
• Review:  When I finished this novel from Finnish author, Tove Jansson, I sat quietly, feeling deeply moved, a little sad, even almost teary.  Set in a stark, isolated Finnish town in the dead of winter, the author draws the reader into an understanding of the role illusion plays in our lives, and what some of the consequences are when those illusions are stripped away. Using the metaphors of a trained dog losing its purpose, we are witness to the discovery that the real "true deceiver" is ourselves.  I strongly urge you to come visit the child's author at the rabbit house, the boat builder in town, the mailman on skis, the shopkeepers, and the two protagonists, Anna and Katri.  Beware of your heartstrings, for they will be tugged by the beautiful, profound tale and the poignant characters!

"The Starling Project" by Jeffrey Deaver ***

• Audio performance
• US author
• Originally published in 2014
• Review:  Not much to write home about here.  The plot was run of the mill.  The interesting part was that this is an audiobook which is an actual audio performance which made listening to it a bit like listening to the golden oldie radio shows of yesteryear. An interesting experience versus an interesting read.

H is For Hawk" by Helen MacDonald *****

• Book Club Selection for November 2015
• English author
• Originally published in 2014
• Vocabulary:
• pickelhaube: Prussian spiked helmet
• louche:  dubious, shady
• accipitrine:  raptorial, related to hawks
• coracle:  a small, round, or very broad boat made of wickerwork or interwoven laths covered with a waterproof layer of animal skin, canvas, oiled cloth, or the like: used in Wales, Ireland, and parts of western England.
• brumous:  misty, foggy
• Quotes:
• p.22..."It seemed that the hawks couldn't see us at all, that they'd slipped out of our world entirely and moved into another, wilder world from which humans had been utterly erased."
• p.27..."When I was six I tried to sleep every night with my arms folded behind my back like wings."
• p.39..."The safest way to avoid trouble if one may not be going to fit is to take as great a part as possible in what is going on." ...T.H.White, about his efforts to hide his homosexuality and sadistic tendencies
• p.58..."What happens to the mind after bereavement makes no sense until later."
• p.60..."What we see in the lives of animals are lessons we've learned from the world."
• p.65..."The hawk had filled the house with wildness as a bowl of lilies fills a house with scent."
• p.86..."The hawk's apprehension becomes your own.  You are exercising what the poet Keats called your chameleon quality, the ability to 'tolerate a loss of self and a loss of rationality by trusting in the capacity to recreate oneself in another character or another environment'.
• p.171..."You see that life will become a thing made of holes.  Absences.  Losses.  Things were there and are no longer.  And you realize, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are."
• p.199..."he archaeology of grief is not ordered.  It is more like earth under s spade, turning up things you had forgotten.  Surprising things come to light...".
• p.275..."In my time with Mabel I've learned how you feel more human once you have known, even in your imagination, what it is like to be not.  And I have learned, too, the danger that comes in mistaking wildness we give a thing for the wildness that animates it."
• Notes:
• chalk cult
• Review:  Imagine a combination of a journal of grief, a biography and autobiography, and a journey through time.  Helen McDonald provides all of this in her memoir.  In the midst of great loss, she turns to what she knows, falconry.  She takes the reader on her journey of grief, immersion in nature, and training of her goshawk, Mabel, all in eloquent prose.  She lets go of her sense of self and regains it during this intimate time with Mabel, while getting perspective throughout by juxtaposing her experience with that of renowned author, T.H. White. Falconry ties it all together, prose brings it alive.  Absolutely lovely! 

"24 Hours" by Greg Iles **

• Audiobook
• German author
• Originally published in 2000
• Mystery/Suspense
• Review: Very disappointing!   Usually, Greg Iles' books are engaging  and multi-layered.   Definitely not true in this suspense novel.  The story is straightforward and simple, a tale of kidnapping.  Nothing about it stands out. Too bad!

This House of Sky: Landscape of a Western Mind" by Ivan Doig *****

• Audiobook 
• US author 
• Autobiography 
• Originally published in 1980

Review:  My maternal grandmother grew up on a Montana ranch.  Her best friend was the daughter of Judge Rankin, whose name was apparently a curse word amongst other ranchers and ranch hands. Jeannette Rankin became my mother's godmother, and the first woman elected to the US House of Representatives, so I felt a special kinship.

My, oh my!  Ivan Doig, always a master of lovely prose, applies his gift to his autobiography.  The reader is immersed in the landscape of Montana and it's reflection in the Doig family's life.  It is noble, human, gritty, grueling, and full of deep love.  A treasure!

• 
  

"The Silkworm" by Robert Galbraith. ****

●  Audiobook
●  English author,  aka J.K. Rowling
●  Originally published in 2014
●  Review:  Cormoran Strike is now firmly established as one of my favorite P.I.s in literature.   Something about his combination of strength, intellect,  sensitivity and humility is quite engaging.   The plot is engrossing, the characters are engaging,  and, of course, there is the ongoing development of Strike's relationship with his assistant, Robin.  Excellent read!

"Dreaming Spies" by Laurie R. King. ****

●  #13 in the Mary Russell series
●  Originally published in 2015
●  Early Reviewer book for.   LibraryThing.com
●  US author
●  Review:  This installment of the Mary Russell series was very satisfying.  The humor, engaging plot, and intriguing narrative of the earlier installments were all present again.  Very good story with world travels, international intrigue, and even female ninjas!

"The Blind Owl" by Sadegh Hedayat *****

• Summer Sub Club with Beth
• Iranian author, born 1903, committed suicide in 1951
• Originally published in 1932
• Introduction by Porochista Khakpour:  fascinating story of her childhood with this novella being a forbidden book
• Hedayat was 33 when it was published
• 50 handwritten copies comprised the initial publication
• Censored and banned, yet no "circulation hiatus" amongst the people
• "Given the usefulness of his (her father's) tactics with respect to that, I'll then pass on what got me to these pages:  refrain, reader, from reading this book, whatever you do. ....You've been warned."
• Vocabulary:
• mandrake:  a narcotic, short stemmed European plant, Mandragora officinarum,of the nightshade family, having a fleshy, often forked root somewhat resembling a human form.
• Quotes:
• p.17..."There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker."...opening line
• p.18..."My one fear is that tomorrow I may die without having come to know myself."
• p.19..."I am writing only for my shadow, which is now stretched across the wall in the light of the lamp.  I must make myself known to him."......Jung anyone?
• p.67...."Within the four walls that form my room, this fortress which I have erected around my life and thoughts, my life has been slowly wasting away like a candle.  No, I am wrong.  It is like a green log which has rolled to one side of the fireplace and which has been scorched and charred by  the flames from the other logs; it has neither burnt away nor remained fresh and green; it has been choked by the smoke and steam from others."
• p.84..."Is not life from beginning to end a ludicrous story, an improbable, stupid yarn?  Am I not now writing my own personal piece of fiction?   A story is only an outlet for frustrated aspirations, for aspiration which the storyteller conceives an accordance with a limited stock of spiritual resources inherited from previous generations."
• p.140..."I had become like a screech owl, but my cries caught in my throat and I spat them out in the form of clots of blood.  Perhaps screech owls are subject to a disease which makes them think as I think.  My shadow on the wall had become exactly like an owl and, leaning forward, read intently every word I wrote.  Without doubt he understood perfectly.  Only he was capable of understanding.  When I looked out o the corner of my eye at my shadow on the wall I felt afraid."...of understanding?
• Notes: 
• recurrent image....old man with scarf by stream with young girl in black, along with blue morning glories
• recurrent....biting nail of index finger of left hand, the old man and his wife
• narrative of killing a woman, chopping the body, putting it in a suitcase, hiring the hearse with the old man
• significant symbols:
• old man
• girl in black
• stream
• blue morning glories
• wife/bitch/unborn child
• nanny
• trip to bury dead woman
• Review:  Enter, if you dare, into the landscape of madness, the delirium of opium, the fever dream of a genius.  This novella is exquisitely painful to read, and I would not have missed the experience for anything.  The author, Iranian born Sadegh Hedayat, who committed suicide upon finishing this novel, offers this oh so generous and passionately painful glimpse into the existential madness of his mind.  Determined to know himself fully, the narrator shares a  nightmare compilation of childhood and adult fantasies, passions, and despair. To top the experience off of reading this masterpiece, the introduction is magnificent in and of itself.  Not for the fainthearted, this mesmerizing work of art!

"Appointment in Samarra" by John O'Hara. ****

• Summer read with Beth
• Originally published in 1934
• US author
• Review: This is a fairly depressing tale of the dissolute upper middle class in the United States in the late 1920s.  Alcoholism, social hypocrisy,  and dishonesty seem to be the predominant traits of the country club set of characters.  Not a pretty picture!  Well written, but depressing. 

"Hard Eight" by Janet Evanovich ****

●  8th in Stephanie Plum series
●  Mystery /Suspense
●  Originally published in 2003
●  Review:  I laughed out loud all the way through this installment of the Stephanie Plum series.  New characters like a lawyer named Kloughn (pronounced clown) and others are a delight.  As always Stephanie has a couple of cars blow up, continues sexual jousting with Ranger, and debates the pros and cons of her love for Morelli.  Great fun!

"Skipping Christmas" by John Grisham ***

• Stewart Place Book Club 
• Originally published in 2001
• US author
• Review: A sweet, simple story about the meaning of Christmas, with a sidenote theme of what happens when someone decides not to follow the herd.  That's about it.  

"Rochester Knockings: A Novel of the Fox Sisters" by Hubert Haddad **

• Open Letter Series
• Based on true story of the founders of the Spiritualist religious movement
• Originally published in 2015
• Tunisian author
• Review:  I read this book for two reasons.  First, I read and love all Open Letter publications to date.  Secondly,I plan on attending a release party for this book in a couple of days and received a complimentary copy prior to the event which will include a reading by the translator and other activities with the spiritualist theme.  Yikes!  Imagine my surprise when I encountered this poorly written novel.  The story is based on fact, the Fox sisters from Rochester and their being the impetus for the Spiritualist Movement. I do not know whether the problem is with the author's writing or the translation.  However, the choppy, awkward narrative was very  difficult to read.  I am disappointed in this, the first publication which elicits only frustration.

"Mr. Mercedes" by Stephen King ****

• First book in Bill Hodges Trilogy
• Originally published in 2015
• US author
• Mystery/Suspense
• Review: This Stephen King novel might be his oddest yet.  Why, you ask? There were no supernatural plot twisters.  Disappointing?  Not at all.  Welcome to the plain old mystery/suspense genre, Mr.King!  This was an excellent, suspense filled thriller.  Great characters abound, mostly misfits who become heros while helping Bill Hodges, retired detective, break lots of rules in order to save the day. I couldn't be happier that this is the first installment of a trilogy! 

"The Physics of Sorrow" by Georgi Gospodinov *****

• Summer Sub Club with Beth
• Bulgarian author
• An Open Letter Publication
• Originally published in 2011, translation published in 2015
• Link to article in "The New Yorker":  http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-bulgarian-sadness-of-georgi-gospodinov
• Epigraphy:
• "Myth is the nothing that is everything" - F. Pessoa, Mesagem
• There is only childhood and death.  And nothing in between..." - Gaustine, Selected Autobiographies
• "The world is no longer magical.  You have been abandoned.." - Borges, 1964
• "...And I enter the fields and spacious halls of memory, where are stored as treasures the countless images..." - Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book X
• "Only the fleeting and ephemeral are worth recording." - Gaustine, "The Forsaken Ones"
• "I feel a longing to fly,to swim, to bark, to bellow, to howl.  I would like to have wings, a tortoise-shell, a rind, to blow out smoke, to wear a trunk, to twit my body, to spread myself everywhere, to be in everything, to emanate with odors, to grow like plants, to flow like water...to penetrate every atom t descend to the very depths of matter--to be matter." - Gustave Flaubert, "The Temptations of St. Anthony"
• "...missing...memory and desire..." - T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"
• "Purebred genres don't interest me much.  The novel is no Aryan." - Gaustine, "Novel and Nothingness"
• "If the reader prefers, this book may be taken as fiction..." - Ernest Hemingway, "A Moveable Feast"
• Quotes:
• p.21..."The tears stream down his face, down my face, they mix with the flour dust on the face, water, salt , and flour, and knead he first bread of grief.  The bread that never runs out.  The bread of sorrow, which will feed us through all the coming years.  Its salty taste n the lips.  My grandfather swallows.  I swallow too.  We are three years old."....gf's memory of being accidentally left behind at a mill
• "the wicked man flees though no one pursues"
• p.39..."His reappearance, like all resurrections, only upset the normal course of life."
• p.43..."I can't offer a linear story, because no story, and no labyrinth is ever linear."
• p.52..."I did not know so much death dozed beneath language."
• p.53..."The absence of children in greek mythology is striking."
• p.74..."...a man who finds himself in hell is freed from the fear that something worse could befall him."
• p.82...."A History  of Boredom in the 1980s needs to be written.  This is the decade that produced the most boredom.  The afternoon of the century."
• p.102..."In December we heard about  AIDs for the first time.  Which, in 1981, put an end to the '60s.  All sexual revolutions were called off for health reasons.  Since they had never really started here in Bulgaria, we didn't take their end as anything particularly tragic."
• p.105..."Yes, unlike the '60s, which were truly sexy, colorful, they knew how to dress, the '80s, like communism as a whole, came to an ugly end.
• p.108..."Empathy predisposes you to closeness to people, but not in my case, when the weight of others' sorrows pressed down on me like a sickness."
• p.110..."I know that the past is as as fruitless as a barren mare. But that makes it all the more dear to me."
• p.119..."The aging of an empath is a strange and painful process.  The corridors toward others  and their stories, which once were open, now turn out to be walled up.  House arrest in your own body."
• p.138..."Every cliche (and a cliche is nothing more than an abstraction that has swallowed its own tail) becomes dangerous when it is made literal."
• p.143..."A whole life can be told in a catalog of moves."
• p.155..."The basic question, the litmus test, the divider between good and evil--could what I've thought up be done by an animal?"
• p.201..."Meaninglessness has entered the uncertain Troy of the body via a wooden horse
• p.211..."The saddest place in the world, as the Economist called it in 2010, as if there is truly a geography of happiness."
• p.225..."The labyrinth is someone's fossilized hesitation."
• p.225..."The most oppressive thing about the labyrinth is that you are constantly being forced to choose.  It isn't the lack of an exit, but the abundance of 'exits' that is so disorienting
• Notes:
• Life for a Bulgarian is akin to that lived by the Minotaur in the labyrinth
• Ability to live another's life via his/her memory: Pathological empathy, or Obsessive-Empathic Somatic Disorder
• 80% of Bulgarians never left the country prior to 1989
• Life pre-1989 was like having lived in a basement
• "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"
• p.55...invisible fruit ink
• p.56..."I am books."'...
• p.66..."Come see what mythology has become.
• Labyrinths:
• inner ear
• life
• life in Bulgaria
• stories
• Blind Man's Bluff
• the internet, we are "Min-avatars" on Facebook
• an amphitheater, concentric circles...story of bull recognizing it
• Sheherazad's 1001 Arabian tales
• Colony Collapse Disorder...apian, humans
• Death has lost its face.....now it is from a distance
• Retell "The Old Man and The Sea" from the point of view of the fish
• Phobia of  being asked "How are you?"...triviality
• Review:  Brilliant!  Before reading this brilliant piece of literature, I recommend pondering the notion that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", and familiarizing yourself with the legend of the Minotaur.  Both are central to this collection/series/story.  Can you fathom being able to enter someone else's memory and then experiencing the memory as if it is yours? The experience of reading this literary wonder was akin to being in an intellectual and emotional labyrinth.  And lest you be misled, this is also a tribute to Bulgarian life, pre-1989, which is likened to living in a basement for almost an entire lifetime.  I laughed out loud and cringed with sadness because of this wonderful writer's use of language.  If it is this powerful in a translation,  I  am envious of those who are priveleged to read it in the original.

"The Son" by Jo Nesbo. *****

●  Audiobook
●  Norwegian author
●  Originally published in 2014
●  Mystery/Suspense
●  Review:  The perfect suspense novel in my opinion.  Good guys & bad guys, moral ambiguity, surprises, the power of love, loyalty, & forgiveness, even the eyes of an innocent witness to it all.  What more could anyone ask for?  Memorable characters, you say?  It has those too!  Read it!

"Take Me With You" by Catherine Ryan Hyde **

US author
Stewart Place Book Club
Originally published in 2014

Review:  Simplistic.  Dull.  Yuck!

"The Girl in the Spider's Web" by David Lagercrantz. ***

●  4th book in the Elizabeth Salander series
●  Swedish author
●  Originally published in 2015

● Review:   I was very disappointed in this book.  Stieg Larsson developed characters and drew the reader in from the very start. I was so annoyed with the techno-babble that I lost interest. Darn!

"Crossing Places" by Elly Griffiths ****

• Audiobook
• English author
• 1st in the Ruth Galloway series
• Mystery/Suspense
• Originally published in 2009
• Review: This is the first story in the Ruth Galloway series.  Ruth is a forensic anthropologist who is wonderfully human.  I thoroughly enjoyed this character.  While almost accidentally solving a major crime, she manages to wend her way into the reader's heart.  She is not svelte,  sophisticated or particularly dynamic.   In other words, she is realistic.  How refreshing!

"Medicine Walk" by Richard Wagamese *****

• Audiobook 
• Canadian Ojibwa author
• Originally published in 2014
• Title: walking to find what a person needs to make medicine from plants, metaphor for the father son relationship
• Review:  This is an absolutely exquisite rite of passage story.  Richard Wagamese captures the heartfelt pain and sorrow which comes with love and loss, which comes with the parent/child relationship, and which comes with the passage into adulthood.  A father and son, and an adoptive father struggle with the hard facts of hard scrabble lives, with the hardened heart which has trouble expressing itself fully, and with the limit to lifespan which brings that unique pressure to make things right.  Love takes so many forms, and goes through so many filters, that sometimes it is tough to express, and this wonderful story demonstrates that with the grace of good writing, engaging and believable characters, and its ability to capture some of the truths of being human.

"The Palm-Wine Drinkard & My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" by Amos Tutuola ***

• Summer Sub Club Read with Beth
• Nigerian author, born 1920 in Nigeria, Christian family, six years of education, became a copper smith, member of Yoruba tribe
• Originally published separately in 1953 & 1954, this combined edition originally published in 1994
• Review:  This combination of two novellas in one edition by Nigerian author, Amos Tutuola, was quite interesting. Written in the early 1950s, both stories read like mythology meets pen and paper.  Both stories are about cultural and personal transitions and conjure up the image of being shared orally around a campfire.  I cannot honestly say that I liked the stories so much as I found the biographical information about the author and his folktale style very interesting.  I preferred "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts", which read like the fever dream of a young boy lost in a world turned inside out by war.  I could hold on to a sense of the boy's struggle in that story more than I could grasp meaning in "The Palm-Wine" Drinkard".   

"The Unamericans" by Molly Antopol ****

●  Audiobook
●  Short Stories
●  US author
●  Originally published in 2014
●  Review:  A marvelous set of short stories, "The UnAmericans", is written in a new and confident voice.  The stories encompass characters from Prague to Israel to New York and more, all of whom seem to be seeking some sort of peace in complex socio-political circumstances.  There is an undercurrent of courage, determination, and desire for connection in the characters and each of the stories.  I  think Molly Antopol is an author to keep an eye on!

"A Replacement Life" by Boris Fishman *****

• Book Club selection for September 2015
• Russian author
• Debut novel
• Originally published in 2015
• Setting: New York City, summer of 2006
• Characters:
• Slava:  protagonist, writer, forger of remuneration letters
• Grandfather:  "a child of other people's gardens", wheeler dealer, survived by lying
• Mother:  "...had taken from Grandmother the condiments without the meal."
• Arianna:  Co-worker, lover, expects American version of honesty
• Vera:  Russian girl, met Slava in Italy and again in NY, favors lying for a bigger good
• Israel:  1st letter, became symbolic of all the others to Slava, joyful city tour
• Otto:  German administrator:  figured out the scam, baits Slava
• Vocabulary:
• demotic: of or relating to the ordinary, everyday, current form of a language, vernacular:
• ferrier:  a ferryman
• Epigraph:  "All writing is revenge." - Reinaldo Arenas
• Quotes:
• p.2..."Your grandmother isn't.....".....unique death announcement
• p.9..."Like a Soviet high-rise, each floor of Berta was stuffed beyond capacity."
• p.9..."This--more than the profusion of meat in American supermarkets, the open availability of rare technology, even the cavalierness with which Americans spoke of their president--was the mysterious grandeur of the country that had taken in the Gelmans of Minsk.  It had the power to turn tormentors into kitchen help."
• p.10..."Our great realizations are slow dishes, but once they're ready, they announce themselves as suddenly as an oven timer."
• p.10..."If he wanted to live among those who said "we don't go to America" except for the DMV and Brodvei."
• p.46..."...until they left the place that was soaked with the blood of her family for a place that meant nothing to her except what it would do for her grandson, for whom she had lived since the moment she had approached Zhenya Gelman at the Spartak Dance Club in 1945 and said can you help."
• p.79..."The bar drinkers were undermining their noble solitude by staring into the blue screens of cell phones."
• p.103..."The broom f the seasons was starting to sweep summer under the rug."
• p.117..."It's got that silence of ours.  That terrible Russian silence that Americans don't understand.  They are always making noise because they need to forget life is going to end.  But we remember, and so we have silence, even when we're shouting and laughing."
• p.117..."But you need more than that.  Nice sentences is like a beautiful woman who doesn't know how to cook.  It's not your story.  Forget about yourself for a moment."
• p.159..."These unlike people had been tossed together like salad by the cupidity of the Soviet government, and now, in America, they were forced to keep speaking Russian, their sole bond, if they wanted to understand each other, and they did, because a Ukrainian's hate of a Russian was still warmer than his love of an American."
• p.160..."How cheaply they fell--the heart's greatest terrors or a bushel of euros.  Slava wasn't a judge:  He was a middleman, a loan shark, an alchemist--he turned lies into facts, words into money, silence into knowledge at last."
• p.167..."...he could draw off the sense of home she felt in the city, the way poor people in poor countries got light by siphoning from the municipal wires."
• p.206..."Of you wanted to write a good story, the fact had to become a story's instruments.  You couldn't write without being coarse to the facts."....?
• p.214..."However, the stories came out better if he didn't know everything in advance."
• p.234..."Compliance with instructions--just say what the rules were--was a molecularly satisfying as a cool plum on a hot day."
• p.234..."After fifty years of Soviet chatteldom, they had come here to get fucked in the ass for a little bit longer before packing off to a spot at Lincoln Cemetery, even this impossible to acquire without money being passed under the table."
• p.235..."Grandfather had passed down his fraudulent soul?  Slava was a pinkie on Grandfather's hand, no more."
• p.254..."I am a finished man...But you are quite a different matter:  God has prepared a life for you...Become a sun and everyone will see you.  The sun must be the sun first of all."....Otto to Slava
• p.257..."The suffering of your grandparents belongs to you not any more than I belong to the crimes of my father."...Otto to Slava..German to Russian
• p.272...."For a person like Grandmother, there was no law but what we find in each other.....Slava lived in a different country.  A lie meant something different here, even if it was easier to pull off thanks to the American insistence on imagining the best about the next person.".....naivete?  wisdom?
• p.275...He had survived the war at the price of punishing himself for the rest of his life with the lie that had made it possible."....Grandfather
• p.276..."At every step, everyone had lied about everything so the one truth at the heart of it all--that abused people might flee the place of abuse--could be told."
• p.276..."Grandfather was already a liar--this kind of liar--when he twirled his finger in his temple that afternoon in Vienna, and Slava was young enough to understand such lies as a better kind of truth.  It wasn't until they'd come to America that the truth started to mean exactly what was said and not something else.  The calculus had changed in America."
• Notes:
• Title...p.167......the fictitious lives of Slava's letters
• Review:  I think that it is almost unfair to call this a brilliant debut novel, because in my opinion, Boris Fishman does not write like a debut novelist.  Taken at face-value, this story is marvelous, with memorable, powerful, evocative characters and a stirring and gripping plot, not your typical story of immigration by a long shot. This story is one with the literary flavor of the ubiquitous onion, peeling away at multiple layers of one's sense of self, of history, of love, of connection across the generations, of the ability to sacrifice and to use within each person, of the variation in cultural definitions of lies and the truths that matter.  On top of all of that, the ending is suspenseful and satisfying, and that is not always seen despite reading a great story, particularly in a debut novel.  Upon completion, I can genuinely say that I think I gained some measure of new insight into the heart and mind of a new immigrant to the United States. Just read it!

"Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands" by Jorge Amado *****

• Summer Sub Club Read with Beth
• Brazilian author
• Originally published 1967
• Setting: Bahia, the northern coastal region of Brazil
• Characters:
• Flor, good girl, owner of cooking school
• Vadinho: #1, gambler, lover
• Teodoro: #2, pharmacist, steady and loyal
• Vocabulary:
• lagniappe:a small gift given with a purchase to a customer, by way of compliment or for good measure; bonus.
• encomia:  a formal expression of high praise; eulogy
• kermess:  a local, annual outdoor fair or festival
• callipygous:  having well-shaped buttocks
• latifundium:  a great estate
• Epigraphs:
• Quotes:
• p.4..."A wake without rum shows a lack of respect for the dead, implies indifference and disrespect
• p.32..."A moment of silence at all the roulette wheels, flags at half mast in the whorehouses, asses in despair, sobbing", "...With him dawn departed mounted on the moon."...at Vadinho's death
• p.209..."But if your guest wants even finer and more unusual game, if he is looking for the ne plus rien, the last word, the pleasure of the gods, then why not serve him up a young and pretty widow, cooked in her tears of suffering and loneliness, in the sauce of her modesty and mourning, in the moans of her deprivation, in the fire of her forbidden desire, which gives her the flavor of guilt and sin?  Ah, I know of such a widow, of chile and honey, cooking over a slow fire every night, just ready to be served."
• p.273...."I am launching this appeal to the four winds, to the mercy of undersea currents, to the phases of the moon and the tide, in the wake of any ship or coastwise vessel, for I am a port whose harbor is hidden, a secluded gulf, a refuge for the shipwrecked.  If you hear of any unmarried man whose object is matrimony and who is looking for a widow, tell him that he will find Dona Flor here beside the stove, standing over a vatapa of fish, consumed by fire and accursed."
• p.335..."On Wednesdays and Saturdays, at ten o'clock, give or take a minute, Dr. Teodoro took his wife in upright ardor, and unfailing pleasure, always with an encore on Saturday, optional on Wednesday."....LOL
• p.337..."He who is born to three pennies, never gets a dime."
• p.373..."...a Bahian who was proud of the progress of her country, took offense at this disdain, with her city relegated to the condition of a village where there was nobody with whom to be unfaithful to one's husband, nor any place to do so in safety."
• p.394..."Happiness leaves no history."
• p.477..."Why is everyone two people?"
• p.503..."Only the Master of the Absurd can save you"...the Prince of Baghdad
• p.510..."Thus the three acts ran parallel and arrived at the same destiny:  the interplanetary agreement between the Captain of the Cosmos and the martians, the game of asking and giving,, an innocent amusement with which the mystic and the Amazon amused themselves to while away the time, and the ennui of Vadinho's friends."
• Notes:
• Comical when Vadinho and Lev crash the big political event and fool all
• Duality:
• Flor
• Celia:  handicapped teacher, pitied..then turned Vadinho in
• Frequent mention of stereotyping by skin color
• Gender issues such as Flor giving up decision making over her own money
• Loved the woman who named her lovers after products purchased by her husband for business...The Dead-Shot, The Wonder-Working Cure
• Common theme of linkage between food and sensuality, pleasure, passions
• "Accelerated rhythm" of action, events, building to climax
• Mr. Cadoso and the Martian theory
• Gambling v. winning....the joy  and thrill of the risk was gone when always winning
• Review:  Undoubtedly one of the best novels I have ever read about the duality of the human spirit. This novel reached into my heart and mind and drew me into its mystical, magical, superstitious Brazilian tale.  Jorge Amado starts by tickling the reader's fancy with a romance between a good girl, Flor, and a lovable, sensual gambler, Vadinho.  He is the classic villain we hate to love.  That is the skeleton of the story.  Amado proceeds to people the Bahian city with fantastic and fantastical characters.  The reader meets the literati, the illiterate, the pagan and the prudish, the rich and the poor,the gossips, the whores, the matriarchs and more.  Eventually, the reader finds it harder and harder to surface for air.  All the while, Amado, while weaving a marvelous, prototypical Brazilian melodrama, is laying the complex groundwork for what I consider to be the primary theme of the novel.  Just when I thought I was in the groove of the story of duality within our protagonist, Flor, Amado's tale erupts in primordial chaos of mind, body, and spirit.  Mystical upheaval ensues as the gods become transparent in their own duplicity.  Social class inequity, personal destiny, loyalty and love.....no topic remains off limits in this sweeping psychological story.  Amado is an absolute master in his ability to create a culture and to reel in the reader using hooks baited with marvelous plot, engaging prose, absolutely wonderful character development and more. In the end, what can one believe in?  Peace comes with acceptance of duality? Or, as the final sentences purports, "And with this we come to the end of the tale of Dona Flor and her two husbands, set forth in all its details ad mysteries, as clear and dark as life itself.  All this took place in Bahia, where these and other acts of magic occur without startling anybody.  If anyone has his doubts, let him ask Cardoso e Sa., and he will tell him whether or no it is the truth.  He can be found on the planet Mars or on any poor corner of the city.

"Leaving Time" by Jodi Picoult ***

• Stewart Place Book Club 
• Audiobook 
•  US author 
•  Originally published in 2014
• Review:  I am fascinated by descriptions of elephant social behavior, and thoroughly enjoyed that aspect of this Jodi Picoult novel.  I do not want to spoil the ending, so I will just say that it felt gimmicky.  The basic theme of the incredible strength of the mother-child bond is well represented in the story.  I found the plot to get a bit choppy at times, but otherwise was enjoyable.

"The Nature of the Beast" by Louise Penny ****

• Audiobook
• #11 in the Inspector Gamache, Three Pines series
• Canadian author
• Mystery/Suspense
• Review: First of all,  kudos to the new narrator!  As always,  Ms. Penny wound the tension as tight as possible , bringing the reader to the edge of her seat.  What will happen if the world descends on Three Pines?  What will happen if John Fleming, the essence of evil, is freed from prison? No spoilers here! The best part is that there is a cliffhanger of an ending, so now I  just have to wait for the next book!  

"The Quiche of Death" by M.C. Beaton. ***

●  Audiobook
●  Scottish author
●  #1 in Agatha Raisin series
●  Originally published in 1992
●  Review:  This was a very enjoyable Agatha Christie style mystery, with a Miss Marpleish protagonist.  Fun!

"Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut *****

Audiobook
Originally published in 1979
US author
Review : 
What if you were the only sentient being and everyone else was a robot, all of you part of an elaborate cosmic experiment?  I listened to the audio version narrated by the wonderful John Malkovich, and he and the book were both brilliant!  I do not have anything to say that hasn't already been said about this novel.  It is a brilliant, multi-layered, hysterically funny, darkly foreboding novel.  Only a brilliant mind could produce this.

"Neverhome" by Laird Hunt. ***

● Stewart Place Book Club selection
●  Audiobook
●  Originally published in 2014
●  Review:  The subject matter of this novel, women who posed as men in order to fight in the Civil War, was very intriguing.  I also was impressed by the noted difference between historical accounts of war and the nitty gritty, smelly, awful, bloody side of a soldier's life.  It was a good story, except much seemed unexplained to me.  The end was quite gripping and creative.  Nonetheless,  the overall feeling I was left with was that the writing was run-of-the-mill.

"Under The Wide and Starry Sky" by Nancy Horan. ****

• Stewart Place Book Club
• US author
• Originally published in 2013
• Review: Much like Horan's debut novel, "Loving Frank", this novel is about a strong woman behind a famous man, in this case, Robert Louis Stevenson.  Given that, and the fact that this is a fictional biography, somewhat questionable in and if itself, I learned a lot about both husband and wife and enjoyed the book very much.  They lived in a different era, that in which a son of a gentleman could wander the planet throughout his adulthood.  Nonetheless,  marriage is marriage, and theirs was quite fascinating.
  

"Parrot and Olivier in America" by Peter Carey *****

• Audiobook 
• Originally published in 2009
• Australian author
• Review:  This novel has it all!  Travel from post French Revolution France to England to post Revolutionary War America to Australia and back again, with Parrot, an indentured servant, and Olivier, a French "child of the Guillotine" and the French Revolution.  Root for their loves to flourish, for their fortunes to grow, for their art to be appreciated, and for their minds and hearts to be opened.  I did! If you enjoy a multi-themed plot with engaging characters, then this is for you.  I found the observations of the characters of various political systems and class systems to be really interesting!  

"The First Honeymoon: New and Selected Stories" by Lyn Coffin *****

• Early Review edition for LibraryThing.com
• Short Stories
• Originally published 2015
• US author
• "A Gift Horse": love, loss, mother's thoughts on dying
• p.  She wanted to tell Leah that 'Mommy', was a plate of chocolate chip cookies, warm from the oven, and 'alone' was a glass of fresh, cold milk, and nothing could be better than to have them together."
• The gift of a lie...I wept
• "Rodin's Girlfriend": reflecting on the relationship with the man of stone
• p.28..."Thinking abut the two men I learned too late to stop loving has exhausted and betrayed me."
• "Fable": witty, sarcastic, multi-moraled tale of the tortoise and the hare
• "The First Honeymoon": perfect story of turning around a tense situation with patience and soul, and an artichoke
• "Dear Ron": author's letter, funny, and expresses her definition of great short story
• "The Psychiatrist's Second Wife": story of a divorce
• p.54..."her first reaction was one of anger, an anger built on fear like a skyscraper on sand."
• "The Butterfly":  Love
• p.64..."Even now, he might be calling, the one she felt drawn to in spirit and truth.  Not like a moth is drawn to a flame.  More like a white butterfly, responding to the invitation of a perfectly open hand."
• "Failing May Broxholm": Life on one's own
• p.71..."She had plenty of time, and emotions to burn.  Normal or not, it was true."
• "Among Friends":  short, sweet, and determined
• "Dante's Three-Part Structure": triangulated relationship.....
• "Her Political Body":  a brief glimpse into an imagination
• "The Dexter Mill": sudden parenthood
• "Point of View Problems": The complexity of getting to know someone and getting past assumptions
• "A Fable for John":  Trust, via correspondence
• "A Lesson in Black and White": madness
• "Falling Off The Scaffold": easily stayed from original plans...can be great
• :Loved Ones in Lucite"
• "On The topmost Branch of a Beckett Tree":  the eagle falls off the tree and goes right back to the top risking all....dating life
• Review: Lyn Coffin's short story collection is immediate and emotionally evocative.   I  laughed out loud, I  cried, I was shocked, and I was intellectually stimulated.  Coffin's writing is crisp and clear.  To use the author's words, "Reading you, I had the impression of moving many ways at once, as if I were dispersing.  It was pleasurable , yet terrifying, like a ride on the roller coaster.  When I wanted to get out of it, I couldn't. Mostly, I wanted in." I think this is the most well balanced short story collection that I have ever read.

"Midnight Road" by Tom Piccirilli ***

• Audiobook
• US author
• Mystery/Suspense
• Originally published in 2007
• Review:  I did not enjoy this suspense novel.  The notion of two brothers dying in the same car, with one of them surviving, was interesting.  However,  the plot was just not particularly well laid out.  Oh well, can't win them all.

"The Temple of Dawn" by Yukio Mishima *****

• Japanese author
• 3rd in tetralogy,  "The Sea of Fertility"
• Originally published in 1970
• Vocabulary:
• Bangkok....bang=town, kok= olives
• ecstasy:  enthusiasmus=being god possessed, exstasis=exiting the self
• isinglass:  mica, especially in thin translucent sheets
• cryptomeria:  a coniferous tree, Cryptomeria japonica, of China and Japan, with curved needle-like leaves and small round cones
• Setting:
• Part I:  1941, just as WWII is about to start, Honda age 46
• Part II:Spring 1952, Gotemba vvacation home, Honda age 57
•  Japan to Bangkok to India and home to Japan
• Characters:
• Honda:  age 46, an attorney, travels from Bangkok to India to Japan seeking answers
• Princess Chantrapa (Moonlight), Ying Chan:  6 years old, Indian princess, believes she is a reincarnated Kiyoaki
• Hishikawa:  Honda's guide in Bangkok, had a talent "for smelling out rottenness in human matter faster than anyone else
• Rie:  Honda's completely submissive, nondescript wife
• Keiko Hisamatsu: neighbor in Gotemba, beautiful and worldly woman, friend of Honda, Isao's youthful love
• Makiko Kito: poetess, tutor to Mrs. Tsubakihara
• Mrs. Tsubakihara: grieving death of son in WWII, studying poetry
• Mr.Imanishi: guest, expert in German literature, writing "Millenium of Sex", which ttakes place in "The Land of the Pomegranate", where "reading is strictly forbidden.  It spoils natural beauty....".
• Iinuma: Isao's father, failed when committing sepokku
• Katsumi Shimura: Keiko's nephew, chosen to deflower Ying Chan so Honda could verify the three moles and her being the reincarnation of Kiyouaki and Isao

• Quotes:
• p.13..."Like the wings of a hummingbird which change into rainbow colors as it flutters about sucking the honey from flowers, the world shows us a brief glimpse of its potentiality for soaring; all things in the evening glow fly rapturous and ecstatic...and then in the end fall to the ground and die."
• p.14..."They formed a multicolored pagoda whose every level was crushed with layers of dreams, expectations, prayers, each being further weighted down with still other stories, pyramid-like, progressing skyward.".....Princess Moonlight's palace
• p.18..."Kiyoaki and Isao had died contrasting deaths on contrasting battlefields"
• p.32..."He who never contacted the external world without first filtering it through rational thought, here felt through his skin..."
• p.37..."The beauty of these people is the beauty of fruit; fruit should ripen lazily and gracefully.  There's no such thing as diligent fruit."
• p.45..."To be beneath a clear blue sky and perceive so clearly a world of rain meant that different time periods and different spaces coexisted.  The rain cloud permitted a glimpse of the gap between separate times, and the vast distance involved testified to the hiatus between the two spaces
• p.74..."The plain itself had a tranquilizing effect on Honda whose heart had been seared by frightening and ominous flames.  Instead of the spatter of sacrificial blood, a virginally white heron fluttered up from the jungle."....white and red seem significant throughout
• p.80..."His mind was at rest, but he carried a heavy load of terrifying impressions from his journey, and he remained leaning against the railing of the upper deck throughout the voyage, the cargo groaning deep in the hold of his heart."
• p.88..."Whether in success or in failure , sooner or later time must lead to disillusionment ; and if foresight of this disillusionment remains only that, it is mere pessimism.  The important thing is to act on this foresight even by dying.  Isao achieved that magnificently.  Only by action can one see through the glass walls erected at various points in time--glass walls insurmountable by human effort, but which can be sen through equally from both sides.  In eager desire, in aspiration, in dreams, in ideals, the past and future become equal in value and in quality; they are coordinate."
• p.106..."Enthusiasmus and extasis merged in this philosophy of transitory unity, according to which one was all, one came from the all, and all from the one."
• p.113..."But Honda saw an indescribable beauty in the parable which Nagasena used to explain samsara and transmigration, that of a sacred taper, whose flame is not quite the same in the evening, at midnight, and at dawn, and yet no different either as it continues on the same wick burning throughout the night.  The karmic existence of an individual is not substantive existence but merely a succession of phenomena similar to the flame."
• p.118..."It was surely not an unusual event, even in the mind of a child, that a flood of dreams should invade reality, that past and future, breaking their dikes, should overflow into this world."
• p.123..."Thus it was clear that what migrate in samsara and reincarnation, what passed from one life to the next was the vast flow of selflessness of the alaya consciousness."
• p.128..."The true meaning of Yuishiki is that the whole of the world manifests itself now in this very instant.  Yet this instantaneous world already dies in the same moment and simultaneously a new one appears."
• p.133..."yes, he must grasp in his mind the instant-by-instant, inevitable total destruction and prepare for the carnage of an uncertain future."
• p.210..."He was neither self-satisfied nor secure.  And yet he was no longer ignorant either.  He had seen only the borderline between the knowable and the unknowable; still it was enough to make him aware."
• p.256..."...anything born of necessity is accompanied by bitterness...".
• p.258..."...his  own need to turn away from her charms, he could not help but change her into an unlovable creature."
• p.261..."Falling in love was a special privilege given to someone whose external, sensuous charm and internal ignorance, disorganization, and lack of cognizance permitted him to form a kind of fantasy about others.  It was a rude privilege."
• p.291..."Life strove mightily to exile orthodoxy, hospitalize heresy, and trap humanity into stupidity.  It was an accumulation of used bandages soiled with layers of blood and pus.  Life was the daily changing of the bandages of the heart that made the incurably sick, young and old alike, cry out in pain."
• p.297..."It now became clear that Honda's ultimate desire, what he really, really wanted to see could exist only in a world where he did not. When a voyeur recognizes that he can realize his ends only eliminating the basic act of watching this means his death as such."...the final peephole sighting
• p.297..."Incited by his perceptions, he dreamed about the supreme bliss of the moment of suicide, when the Ying Chan who had been seen by no other person would appear in all her brilliant, pure amber nudity like a resplendent moon rising."
• p.316..."Nothing was more unattractive than the fact that both the forces moving one to the noblest or most just of deeds and that inspiring the most obscene pleasure and the most ugly of dreams should spring from the same source and be accompanied by the same warning palpitations."
• p.322...."Where Honda had discovered reality, Rie had found out her illusions."
• p.327..."The huose had turned into kindling and life had become fire."...as in the purification rites in India
• Notes:
• As always, water imagery and water journeys abound
• Didactic in terms of Buddhism, Hinduism and their relationship
• death before disillusionment or after, only two choices, chosen by intuition
• 1939....Siam became Thailand
• Benares, five rivers meet there, sacred location in India
• the wheel of samsara like a ferris wheel lit up in the carnival of the gods
• Sunrise is most godlike manifestation of Brahma, also, Isao had seen a sun repeatedly in his suicide dreams
• Buddhism seen as primitive religion leading to him order to see what he truly wished to he must die  her form in Hinduism
• Honda's focus on samsara and transmigration
• Fascinating notion of  a cycle of "Natural Savagery" to "Premeditated Savagery", and after centuries of progress, a s\civilization must "necessarily perish".
• Wisdom reborn as a god, ignorance reborn as man, and anger reborn as and animal...p.115
• Notion of a 7th sense, all mental powers that perceive self and individual identity
• The world is born and dies in every instant
• I liked the way writing poetry was just a natural part f events and daily life
• p.196...juxtaposition of geishas looking across the river at hospital for maimed American soldiers from WWII
• Ying Chan was "a rainbow bridging the firmament of death.  If not knowing was the first factor in eroticism, the ultimate had to be the eternally unknowable...death."
• p.259...tradition of tying a red cord across bride's sleeves to keep them down...https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+wedding+tradition+of+tying+red+cord&espv=2&biw=1422&bih=666&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CCoQ7AlqFQoTCITPhvC3ycYCFQEzPgodstYLbg..............One story featuring the red string of fate involves a young boy. Walking home one night, a young boy sees an old man (Yue Xia Lao) standing beneath the moonlight. The man explains to the boy that he is attached to his destined wife by a red thread. Yue Xia Lao shows the boy the young girl who is destined to be his wife. Being young and having no interest in having a wife, the young boy picks up a rock and throws it at the girl, running away. Many years later, when the boy has grown into a young man, his parents arrange a wedding for him. On the night of his wedding, his wife waits for him in their bedroom, with the traditional veil covering her face. Raising it, the man is delighted to find that his wife is one of the great beauties of his village. However, she wears an adornment on her eyebrow. He asks her why she wears it and she responds that when she was a young girl, a boy threw a rock at her that struck her, leaving a scar on her eyebrow. She self-consciously wears the adornment to cover it up. The woman is, in fact, the same young girl connected to the man by the red thread shown to him by Yue Xia Lao back in his childhood, showing that they were connected by the red string of fate.
• 1962....Tokyo, Honda meets Ying Chan's twin sister, who tells that Ying died at age 20 from cobra bite, while under a phoenix tree with vermilion flowers
• Strange moments:
• p.49..."He wished it was possible for him to hold the Princess' smooth brown thighs in his hands as she urinated."...WHAT?  
• p.179..."He thought the look in her eyes was that of an innocent little girl who craved to be raped."
• Peephole in his bedroom
• p.195..."Boiling water of passion would overflow and the dancing ashes of death would fly up to blind him."
• p.290...The peeping tom who uses his ivory cane to lift the skirt of entwined loves in the woods
• Review: This is the third book of a tetralogy, "The Sea of Fertility".  As was true in the first two books, Mishima's prose is elegant, evocative, and full to overflowing with magnificent metaphors.  Honda, our protagonist, focuses on reincarnation and the teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism.  I felt that Mishima  was overly didactic in some sections,  which diminished pleasure of the rhythm of the story. However, a surprise ending, which was perfectly written,  left me eagerly anticipating the fourth and final volume.  Mishima was a fascinating and gifted writer.

"Society's Child: My Autobiography" by Janis Ian ****

• Audiobook 
• Originally published in 2012
• US author
• Autobiography
• Review:  This phenomenal singer-songwriter, Janis Ian, had some sort of dark cloud following her in her life.  Perhaps it was the curse of being born with a genius IQ and the soul of an artist. The author narrated and her voice was mesmerizing. She is so open about her darkest moments and deepest struggles, both physical and emotional.  She is intellectually voracious, brutally honest about her emotional life, and also shares her experiences in the music world, which are fabulous.  Imagine sitting around jamming with Jimi Hendrix?!  Having Ella Fitzgerald ask where you've been because she is waiting for some new music of yours?!  This is an autobiography which is engaging, poignant, and inspirational.  Strongly recommend reading or listening to it!

"The Melancholy of Resistance" by Laszlo Krasznahorkai. *****

• Summer Sub Club read with Beth
• Hungarian author
• Originally published in 1989, translation published in 1998
• Epigraph:  "It passes, but it does not pass away"...no attribution
• Setting:  
• Characters: 
• Professor Eszter:  recluse, idealist, had lain down in despair many years before this story starts and decided never to get up again because of his angst over human decline, devised his own tuning system for the piano
• Mrs. Eszter:  Power hungry manipulator, estranged from the professor
• Mrs. Plauf:  the melancholy resistor, sacriificed to Mrs. Eszter's ambition, 1st and last to be mentioned
• Valuska , Mrs. Plauf's son, an innocent, honorable man, employed by Mrs. Eszter, caretaker of the Professor, p.77.."...he--trusting everyone, protected by his half-wit reputation and accustomed through the excesses of his imagination to the 'free highways of the universe', ......would roam the streets as blindly, as blindly and tirelessly as he had done for the past thirty-five years
• Mr. Harrer: Minion of Mrs. Eszter
• The Prince:  mysterious dark figure behind motives of the circus,  a devilish figure
• The Colonel:  called in to quell the anarchists, fling with Mrs. Eszter
• Vocabulary:
• mystificatory: ?
• Quotes:
• p.3..."...a sense of ever-spreading all-consuming chaos which rendered the future unpredictable, the past unrecallable and ordinary life so haphazard that people simply assumed that whatever could be imagined might come to pass....if there were only one door in a building it would no longer open, that wheat would grow head downwards into the earth not out of it"....mood at opening of story
• p.32..."...that while those, including herself (Mrs. Plauf), who snuggled down in quiet little nests, in tiny oases of decency and consideration.....the furious hordes of the anarchic and unshaven would instinctively assume command."
• p.97..."...he would see that birth and death were only two tremendous moments in an eternal waking, and his face would glow with amazement as he understood this."....Professor Eszter's new-found optimism
• p.193...""...if there was reason in the world, it far transcended his own."...Professor Eszter
• p.238..."It's as pointless to predict as to judge..."....Mr. Eszter
• p.271..."...besides it own ignorance, the public prized nothing so much as novelty."
• p.293..."Better to burn in a fever of activity than to put your slippers on and hide your head in the pillows."
• Notes:
• Prelude in B Major by Bach, music played by Professor to soother himself
• Circus as anarchic instigation
• Mrs. Eszter was "repulsed" by Mrs. Plauf's "cozy little nest"
• People suspect chaos at the prospect of something new, the circus, in this case
• p.74...poem about chaos
• Mrs. Eszter wanted her husband to support her proposed new government
• Abandoning use of intellect would all clarity about what would survive beyond that point
• Professor Eszter's appreciation of Valuska was in his presence, "being there", that all else was extraneous
• Resistance references
• p.158.....a sense that any resistance might trigger the impending :big trouble"
• p.187...resistance meant having to face the problem
• Title of Conclusion:  Sermo Super Sepulchrum, translates to "The word on her grave"
• "a veritable transfer of power"...summarizes the 14 days of anarchy
• Review:  This is a very difficult review to write.  This was one of densest books I have ever read.  The basic story of anarchy in a Hungarian city which is capitalized upon by a brutal, power hungry, opportunistic woman, is told in a Kafkaesque and fairly abstruse manner.  The characters are quite memorable, including, the reclusive professor, his opportunistic wife, and their humble and honorable minion.  The story's trajectory occurs painfully slowly at first and then seems to proceed in leaps and bounds.  Am I  glad that I read this? Yes.  Do I  know why? I  think so.  Do I  understand it? On some levels, but I believe that this story would reveal new nuances with multiple readings. Do I think highly of the writing? Absolutely brilliant!

"The Spy Who Came in From The Cold" by John LeCarre. ****

●  Audiobook
●  English author
●  Originally published in 1960
●  Review :  I enjoyed the book.  It is considered a classic Cold War era spy novel, with good reason.  Current espionage novels include significant technological emphasis,  while this novel is purely psychological.   A long time agent must risk his life to try and topple a Eastern bloc spy master.   An excellent read, and a piece of literary as well as socio-political history.

"The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins. ***

●  Audiobook
●  Originally published in 2015
●  Zimbabwean
●  Review :  I found myself engaged in the twisting plot of this novel, yet did not feel it particularly stood out amongst suspense novels.  At times the twists and turns were just too contrived.  Not a bad way to pass time, but not particularly memorable.

"Invitation to a Beheading" by Vladimir Nabokov. *****

●  Audiobook
●  Russian author
●  Originally published in 1935
●  Review:  Nabokov's prose is uniquely beautiful.  It reaches right into my soul,  and nestles in forever.  This novel is a Kafkaesque tale taking the reader into the psyche of a man condemned to death by beheading.  It is only through the freedom of imagination, which cannot be chained, that Cincinnatus, the protagonist,  is able to escape his cell temporarily while he tries to find meaning in his life.  As the reader, I  had to allow myself to let go of any expectation of structure or reality and soar into the world with the prisoner's imaginings. A marvelous reading experience!

"Natchez Burning" by Greg Iles. ****

●  Audiobook
●  #4 in Penn Cage series
●  German author
●  Originally published in 2014
●  Review:  Civil rights history, assassination plots, family secrets, and the long lasting consequences of choices we make.....if that isn't enough to pique your interest,  I give up.  This Penn Cage novel is all that I have come to expect from Greg Iles' writing.  He is able to write a story encompassing history and horror,  complex relationships and engaging characters, and just a gripping, thought provoking plot.  I felt some sections were o rely drawn out, yet not enough to diminish my engagement in the story.

"Orphan Train" by Christina Baker Kline. ****

• Audiobook
• Book Club selection
• English author
• Originally published 2013
• Historical Fiction - 75 years of operation, ending in 1929
• Links:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Train
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/
• Characters:
• Molly, doing community service with elderly Vivian
• Niamh {Neeve}, orphan on the train
• Review:  This novel of historical fiction opened my eyes to a part of American history I had never heard about, and for that reason alone this book is worth reading.   I must be honest and say that the plot was fine and the story was good, but those were far out shone by the historical aspects of the orphan train events. A very good read.

"The Dream Lover" by Elizabeth Berg ***

• Early Reviewer's edition for LibraryThing.com
• US author
• Originally published April 2015
• Imagined life of author George Sand
• Epigraphs:
• "The finest female genius of any country or age." -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• "She is beyond doubt or comparison the strongest woman and the most astonishingly gifted." --Franz Lizt
• "When my submission has been claimed, no longer in the name of love and friendship but by reason of some right or power, I have drawn upon the strength that is buried in my nature, I have straightened my shoulders and thrown off the yoke.  I alone know the latent force hidden within me.  I alone know how much I grieve and suffer and love." -- George Sand
• Review:  I must start with a disclaimer.  I had a terrible time reading and/or appreciating this book.  I spent way  too much of my time wondering what was "imagined" by the author and what was not..  I just was unable to suspend my desire to know more about George Sand and somehow disentangle that desire from the well written novel in front of me.  Elizabeth Berg's writing was very good, but I am a bibliophile and have really enjoyed Sands' writing. I now realize that I do not want to have to tease truth from fiction about someone so important, yet I couldn't let go and engage in the novel as a good story.  If that is not a problem you think you would run in to....by all means read this.