A Work in Progress

Favorite Reads of 2017 & Misc.

Ah, 2017 is waning, so I best take a break from my reading and share my stand out books from the year.  This is always a little difficult as I have read quite a few very good and varied books and how to choose just a few that I really loved!

I think my top three books were all very special reading experiences.  I have linked to my reviews in case you are curious to know more about them.

We'll Always Have Paris by Emma Beddington -- A life I will never be able to experience in quite the same way, at least living abroad, which I have always dreamed of doing, but I can still completely empathize with Beddington.  I know some of those feelings she had so well and she expresses them all honestly, amusingly and eloquently.

Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym -- Gosh Barbara Pym is a marvel.  Why have I not yet read all her work?  Maybe that is a good thing?  Barbara Pym has such a knack for telling a story of seemingly misfits and eccentrics with a deftness and lightness of touch that you just can't help smiling to yourself.  Maybe modern novelists don't write about people of a certain age who are solitary souls, but lucky for us Barbara Pym does.

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham -- This not only is a remarkable science fiction tale but asks all sorts of questions on what is means to be human--what makes us human, what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom, about our laws and culpability and responsibilities and how our morals shape us and guide us, and the collective as opposed to individuality. It can be read on more than one level--simply as a story of dread verging on horror or if you are willing to dig just a little bit deeper it offers so very much more.  

***

A few more really spectacular reads, listed alphabetically by author (as I don't think I can rank them).

The Living Infinite by Chantel Acevedo -- For the reader who isn't sure they like historical fiction, or isn't convinced that it can be done really well, I give you Chantel Acevedo's excellent story of the real life Spanish Princess who lived an extraordinary life. 

Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo -- reads almost like a thriller with its twists and turns which is a little unexpected in a story of domestic drama and discord. It works, though; it works really well. This is the story of a marriage between two who on the surface seem eminently suited but the pressures of family and culture weigh heavily on them.

The Strays by Emily Bitto -- It's a perfectly told story in quite a slender volume so there is nothing extraneous and nothing wasted. I love novels like this-a really interesting story encapsulated in pristine prose that lingers in your mind long after you've finished reading.

In Fairleigh Field by Rhys Bowen -- Pure and unadulterated entertainment in the form of a WWII mystery/thriller with an added touch of romance.  There is just enough drama and suspense to keep the pages turning, but I never got the feeling that things would end badly.  

Leaving Home by Anita Brookner -- In Leaving Home, Emma is an only daughter living with a widowed mother who fears her own life will turn out much the same. She wants more. She studies landscape gardening, from an academic standpoint and ends up in Paris where she meets a vibrant, very French woman who works in the library Emma frequents. And there has her inspiration, bumps into real life, if you will.  For me a Brookner novel is always a gem of a read.

A Touch of Mistletoe by Barbara Comyns -- Comyns does "eccentric" so very, very well.  The novel follows two sisters, who after the death of their father, have 'come down' in the world, though it is the elder sister narrating events. They embark on rather bohemian lives both in England and abroad, one sister a bit more conventional than the other.

Bilgewater by Jane Gardam -- This is a story of growing up and falling in love, being thwarted in love and maybe finding yourself. It's the sort of book I want to flip back to the first page and start reading all over again now that I know what has happened and have read for the 'story'.

***

And a few interesting notable mentions!

Most creative use of fiction in nonfiction: Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg

Oddest read/Most unusual backstory/Author bio: My Holidays by Stevie Smith

Book most likely to raise the hairs on the back of your neck: Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

Most exotic locale: Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferrarris

Best debut: The Dry by Jane Harper

Upward battle to finish (and book I am most happy to have finally gotten through): Golden Age by Jane Smiley

Best new author finds: Ayobami Adebayo, Emma Flint!

Onward to 2018 and hopefully yet more wonderful discoveries.

Books by the Number: 2017 Edition

It is probably a little crazy that I do this.  Before I started blogging I kept a simple wire bound journal where I wrote down the titles of the books I read and the date I finished them.  I gave no thought to how many I read or what genre or if the book was written by a woman or man or any special detail about it.  But I do find it kind of interesting to tally things up and see what sort of year my reading turned out to be--if it was pretty much the same as last year or very different.  Most of the time the years seem pretty similar.  And then I vow to make next year different, and then a year later I do another tally and see I have once again fallen into the same reading pattern.  But you never know--the next year might just be different, right.  So a birds eye view of my reading year.

• Books read: 76 (ten fewer than last year and 24 fewer than the coveted 100 that I always sort of wish for)
• 18th century: 0
• 19th century: 2
• 20th century: 28
• 21st century: 47
• Books published in 2017: 13 (plus two that were reissued in 2017 but previously published)
• eBooks: Only one ebook exclusively in that format, but I did read a few other ebook versions at the gym of books I had physical copies of.
• Fiction: 31
• Nonfiction: 10 (more than I thought and the same number as last year)
• Nature: 0 (but I plan on changing that next year)
• Classics: 7 (better than last year but I hope to improve next year)
• Fairy Tales/Mythology: 0
• Mysteries/Crime/Suspense: 16
• Science fiction: 1
• Espionage: 0
• Juvnile/YA novels: 3
• Books written by women: 57
• Books written by men: 20 (a poor showing for male authors this year, sorry guys)
• Books written by more than one author: 1 (a collection of essays)
• American authors: 24
• British authors: 30
• Canadian authors: 0 (wow, really?)
• Australian/Irish authors: 8
• Authors from other countries: 12
• Subscription Books: 3
• Books in translation: 10 (a poor showing, I think, but I read books translated into English from Arabic, Czech, French, German, Italian and the language Kannada)
• Short story collections: 4 (also fewer than last)
• Novellas: 0 (none that I noted anyway)
• Graphic Novels: 5 (only half what I read last year)
• Diaries: 0 (I hope to read at last one next year since I have a prompt for the genre . . .)
• Plays: 0 (I had actually hoped to read a few but those plans just never panned out)
• Virago Modern Classics: 3
• Persephone Books: 0 (I swear I am going right this very minute to grab one from my shelf!)
• Books read that were checked out from the library: 12 (this surprises me--though I check out loads of library books, I tend to return them unread . . . maybe I am not such a hopeless library user?)
• ARCs/Review Copies: 1
• Books read from my own shelves: 63
• Rereads: 2
• Multiple books by the same author: 4 (Agatha Christie, Ira Levin, John Wyndham and the group of artists who produce the Paper Girls comics)
• Books by Nebraska authors: 0

So, there you have it.  The reading year that was.  To be honest my first reaction is a sigh of dissatisfaction, but I guess the year is what it is and I just followed my whims and this is how it all worked out.  Still, I think I would like to make a few tweaks next year.  We'll just see how it goes.  And previous years.

We'll Always Have Paris, Emma Beddington

If this year has been lackluster and disappointing, my (almost) last book of the year, Emma Beddington's We'll Always Have Paris: Trying and Failing to Be French, has been one of my best reading experiences of 2017.  It is warm and funny and very relatable.  This is a memoir of the best kind, where you get a sense of the writer and her life and feel almost as if you might sit down in a Paris cafe and chat with her over tea and French cakes.  Every success you root for, every setback you lament, you laugh at her funny stories and expat challenges, you feel for her bouts with depression and relationship struggles, and envy her passion for (and proximity to!) all those French cakes!

Emma Beddington did what so many young women only dream of.  She went to Paris and studied and met a Frenchman who became her husband and they moved to Paris to work and start a family.  It sounds pretty blissful, and for a time it was.  How can you not love your life if you are living in Paris, right?  But Beddington had already been dealt some terrible blows including the unexpected death of her mother.  Olivier, her husband, as well as her half-sister and stepparents provide something of a safety net, but everything she thought would make her life perfect turns out to be not so perfect after all.

It is with great honesty that Beddington writes about her life, all the good things, but the painful things as well.  She does not gloss over her own shortcomings or over her disappointments when life does not turn out quite as she hoped.  Paris is a far harder place to immerse yourself in even with a French husband and two half-French sons.  There is a clash of cultures and expectations, and she never quite feels as if she wholly belongs in Paris.  If only all husbands could be so accommodating as the family moves back to England where Emma once again feels back in her element.  Where place and people and language are all familiar.

This memoir follows Emma over the course of not so very many years, but her life is filled with so much upheaval at times, back and forth between countries and work situations and all the other curveballs that life has a way of throwing at a person.  Painful though some of them must have been she shares them with great openness, which I cannot imagine having the courage myself to share.  Ultimately the family ends up in Brussels where she finds her niche as a blogger, but there is one more wrinkle that the family must endure, but I won't give the whole narrative arc away and ruin the story.

I think that is what makes this memoir so very engaging--Emma Beddington is a marvelous storyteller.  I suspect it must come out in her blog, which from all hints in the book was (is?) immensely popular.  She started her career as a lawyer, became a stay-at-home mom, but now is a writer (and I hope she is writing another book).  This was such a pleasure to lose myself in and I wish it had not ended or there was a second book with a continuation of the story.  I know I could go in search of her blog posts, but I am a little fearful.  This was such a wonderful reading experience I don't want to jinx myself and have a fear of messing with the magic of it all. 

The takeaway to her memoir is the realization that what she so intensely imagined as a young woman, all the books and magazines she read and the music she listened to created an image of a life worth living in her head, which was never quite based in reality.  It took some hard lessons to understand what real happiness means and the people around which she must circle herself with to feel that sense of home and belonging.  I am just happy she has shared her story.  It was a pleasure to peek into another life, but also to be able to relate to it, and take away some of the lessons and know only too well what some of what she felt is so very familiar in my own life.  Very warmly recommended!

Carney's House Party, Maud Hart Lovelace

A year of prompts is very neatly coming to an end, so it is time to have a new list of prompts ready, but I must admit that I have not been especially inspired this week when it comes to blogging or bookishness (other than reading in general reading that is).  My list so far feels pretty lackluster, so I will turn my attention to writing about my last prompt instead.

I have mixed feelings about Maud Hart Lovelace's Deep Valley book, Carneys House Party.  It is a peripheral story to her Betsy-Tacy series of books.  I am not quite sure at what point Caroline Sibley, 'Carney', makes an appearance.  I think she must have been a bit older rather than younger, but she is one of the "gang", who at this point is in between her sophomore and junior years at Vassar.  It is 1911 and she is returning home to Deep Valley, Minnesota where she plans on hosting a month-long house party over the summer.  A celebration (my December prompt "A Celebration") indeed.

Carney is a very practical young woman with good old Middle West Presbyterian values.  Her father is a banker and his eye for detail and fastidiousness has rubbed off on her.  Though she has her irrepressible moments where her dimple shines through, too.  Her Vassar roommate is a thoroughly Eastern woman named Isobel.  While the two get on well, whether to invite her home to Minnesota is proving to be something of a dilemma.  Will the East/Middle West values clash?  She is not ashamed of her home, beautiful as it is, but will Isobel be disappointed?

Carney's other fear has to do with her beau, Larry, who has been in California studying a number of years.  They have been faithful correspondents during the entirety of their separation.  Their dedication is obvious, but what will it be like when they see each other again?  Curiously, though, Carney notes to herself that anyone, even her parents could read those missives.  There is nothing "mushy" about them at all.  So the tone is set and she decides that there is no reason at all not to invite Isobel.  A house party with all her friends and her beau, too, it shall be.

What is the saying about the road to love and romance not being paved well?  Enter one wealthy Deep Valley neighbor, Sam, who is rather careless in his grooming habits and all too ready to add any purchase to his "bill" as he never carries cash with him.  He thinks nothing of treating all his friends and speaks his mind.  Isobel finds him rather charming, but he rubs Carney the wrong way.  She deplores his unkempt ways and like her father would never imagine not taking care of expenses on the spot.  Sometimes his very presence just rankles.  But his charm does on occasion bring out that dimple.

It's always the way.  Those who seem least suited are often the ones who find the strongest attachment.  When Larry comes home it is as if they were never apart.  Always so close they are still the best of friends, just as they were growing up.  But Carney's fears are realized as friends they may be, there is no romantic spark between the two.  Not like the spark she feels with Sam.  It is her roommate and friend, Isobel, who complicates matters.  Despite her suitor back East, Isobel seems set on "catching" Sam, and he doesn't seem to mind one bit.

So this house party is filled with all sorts of happy get-togethers and celebrations, lots of jokes and amusements, and a fair few misunderstandings, too.  The story is steeped in the atmosphere of the times and the place (they do love to sing), and as it Lovelace was a Vassar girl herself and a Minnesotan as well, it is no surprise there is a real sense of authenticity.  The feeling that this is the real world of 1911 was my favorite part of the story.

All those details and minutiae of the times is both appealing, but the reader also is presented with different attitudes and ideas, and there is also an appreciation of just how far the world has come.  What made this something of a mixed bag read for me was Carney's insistence that she had no inkling, of course, for any sort of career.  She also had no trouble calling Sam out for being fat (though I am sure fat meant something different in 1911 than it does now), even calling poor Sam a "hippo".  It seemed mean spirited to my modern ears.  Much like rereading Little Women as an adult all those attitudes, prejudices, and moral overtones were very obvious.  I can't fault Lovelace, though, for writing what she experienced and thought.  But it did dim some of my pleasure in the end.  I do still want to go back and give the Bestsy-Tacy stories a try sometime.

Now, to work on next year's prompts.

Happy Holiday Wishes!

Happy Holidays to all! However you celebrate the season I wish you much happiness, peace and good health now and in the new year! Thank you for the comments, reading suggestions and kind words that have been shared over the course of the year. For me they are daily presents for which I am always very appreciative.

I'll be back in a day or two to begin the end of year wrap up.  Brr.  Winter arrived right on the first day of the season and we are 'enjoying' a white (and very cold Christmas here).  I am nearing the end of a couple of books and trying to be optimistic on finishing one other, but I also have a couple of new books I think I will start reading on my break, and of course my thoughts are turning to a new reading year (complete with book list) in 2018.

Until then I hope you enjoy the coming few days and you get to enjoy some end-of-year bookishness, too.

Three More: Hrabal, Brookner, Ginzburg

I think to start this post I must refer you to what Caroline wrote about Bohumil Hrabal's Closely Watched Trains, a Czech coming of age novel written in 1965 and adapted to film a year or so later to great acclaim.  I think it is one of Hrabal's best known and most successful books, though he was quite prolific and possibly one of the best known Czech modern writers.  I read it for her Literature and War Readalong earlier in the year (back when I was a better blogger and more in tune with the book blogging world, which I greatly hope to get back to in the new year).

I'm afraid the novel is going to get mostly a passing mention on my part (hence the reference to what Caroline wrote about it when it was fresh in her mind) as it is a classic that I struggled with.  I admire Hrabal and had read him before, but I think sometimes you come to classics ill-prepared and maybe not in the best frame of mind to tackle them and that is what happened with me and the Hrabal.  You know you are on to something really good, but you just can't quite grasp it on the first go. 

The story is set in Nazi Occupied Czechoslovakia and takes place mostly at a railway station run by misfits and collaborators.  At the center of it all is a young man who desperately wants to lose his virginity but has a few issues with his, should we say, delivery?  It is a comic novel, a little crazy and over the top.  It is slender, almost novella-like and really demands attention and maybe to be read in a single sitting.  Carefully.  None of which I did.  Sometimes when you can't hold all the narrative threads together in quite the right way, the story 'loses something in the translation' (and in this case, that literally is so as this was translated from Czech).  I did actually watch the Oscar-award winning film, which helped but I know it is a book where I missed something in my reading.  There is more to the story than the farcical play and sexual antics.  It is a novel that demands a better second reading by me sometime. 

***

Ah.  Anita Brookner.  She is infinitely bingeable if you ask me.  I actually intended Leaving Home to be the first of a a good binge, but it didn't materialize (so I plan on trying again in 2018).  You can put her in the Barbara Comyns category for me.  As in--more please.  I know it seems like she writes the same story over and over (it's not but she does write about the same themes quite a lot, but she does it so well it always feels fresh and new).  Maybe I am just drawn to her protagonists (maybe I am too like them and am just trying to figure the world out so it makes sense that I want to know their stories, too).  They tend to be solitary and intellectual, not necessarily by choice but certainly by circumstances.  They are not poor, but at least solidly middle class and sometimes coming rather down in the world, maybe a little awkward and wishing for something more.  For me that is highly relatable.

In Leaving Home, Emma is an only daughter living with a widowed mother who fears her own life will turn out  much the same.  She wants more.  She studies landscape gardening, from an academic standpoint and ends up in Paris where she meets a vibrant, very French woman who works in the library Emma frequents.  And there has her inspiration, bumps into real life, if you will.  Francoise, her friend, might just be a little bit manipulative even if it is not intentional.  Some people just breathe in life and exude the kind of success that seems easy and without effort.  That's Francoise.

It may be effortless for Francoise, but none of the social interactions Emma takes on is ever as easy.  It's not as though Emma never takes risks, but maybe she is just a little too quiet, a little too reserved for those efforts to make more than a tiny ripple.  I can see Emma wishing for something more and maybe making an attempt, but that ripple is never quite enough and in the end maybe it is preferable--that solitariness.  For me a Brookner novel is always a gem of a read.  Just writing about this story, even at a distance makes me want to pull another of her novels from my shelves.  So, yes, another Brookner will be joining a Comyns in my January pile of books!

***

I am disappointed to say that my NYRB subscription-reading year was a mixed bag having read less than half the books I received, though I do have several in progress books and good intentions for most of the rest.  That doesn't stop me from optimistically renewing my subscription with high hopes on potential fantastic reads.  Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon, however, was one of my favorite books both from the subscription and overall from my reading year.  I have not read much by her but I want to read more, and even with the little I have read, I feel like I can say Family Lexicon is so Natalia Ginzburg.  It was originally published in Italian in 1963 as Lessico Famigliare and just reissued this year by NYRB and translated into English by Jenny McPhee.

In her preface Ginzburg assures the reader that the events and people are real, that she did not invent a single thing, but she tells the reader to "read it as a novel, and therefore not demand of it any more or less than a novel can offer."  So it is a memoir of sorts, but creatively presented?  I always wonder how writers can do it, wrote about their history and tell their family stories in a way that seems to fresh and 'present' yet do so from the vantage point of many decades later.  Writers do it all the time, she just seems to be more forward about putting it all into that context.

It is aptly titled because her family indeed has its own lexicon--it's own language, those intimate family traditions and habits of calling things and people and references to situations in their own particular manner.  Sometimes it is a little peculiar, sometimes funny or quirky.  In a sense this is much in the vein of a Comyns novel, though not exactly like it either.  Ginzburg was born in Sicily to a Jewish father and Catholic mother and grew up in Turin in a country under Fascist rule.  However, her family was staunchly antifascist.  They were sort of quirky an bohemian and literary--just really really interesting.  The book blurb calls this a book about family and language and about storytelling--all things I love reading about.  And Ginzburg is a very good storyteller.  And yes, she is another "must read more of her work" writers for me!

Three by Comyns, Acevedo & Highsmith

Barbara Comyns has been high on my list of authors to continue reading, and specifically Viragos to pull from my shelves more regularly to read.  I had high expectations for her writing and she indeed lived up to them.  I only wish now I had written about A Touch of Mistletoe when I read it earlier in the year when the story was fresh in my mind, but my appreciation has not abated since.  Impossible to cobble together a proper post about it, but it is so very worth mentioning now even if in brief since it is highly likely to end up on  my favorites list next week.  She is one of those writers who can so perfectly write a story that is inspired by her own life and do it amusingly and effectively.  And it's the sort of quirky, early twentieth-century life that makes for good storytelling (at least the kind I am drawn to).

"Barbara Comyns is justly celebrated for her distinctive manner, her feeling for the oddity and insecurity of everyday life."

It's been far too long since I read her novel, The Skin Chairs, (can't you just imagine what kind of stories she must tell based on these two titles alone), but about her books is there an aura of eccentricity.  And I mean that in every best possible sense of the word.  Comyns, happily, was a fairly prolific author, and Mistletoe is her seventh novel published in 1967.  The novel follows two sisters, who after the death of their father, have 'come down' in the world, though it is the elder sister narrating events.  They embark on rather bohemian lives both in England and abroad, one sister a bit more conventional than the other.

"A Touch of Mistletoe is among the most purely engaging of Barbara Comyns's books, though it's not without its share of calamity and disagreeableness.  It is especially abundant in comic detail--'a dog who looked like a mad rocking horse', a hanger-on of an author, alluded to in passing, who suddenly makes a go of selling secondhand prams--as well as containing a characteristic Comyns heroine, gifted with a kind of unobtrusive panache, he idiosyncratic assurance that underlies all the novels of this invaluable author."

(Quotes taken from the introduction to the Virago edition by Patricia Craig).

Perhaps I will start the year off with her Our Spoons Came from Woolworths, which I have from my NYRB subscription.  Now there is killing two birds (reading all those unread NYRBs and more of Comyns) with one stone!

***

For the reader who isn't sure they like historical fiction, or isn't convinced that it can be done really well, I give you Chantel Acevedo's excellent The Living Infinite (another favorites list contender). I have a trend going here, as this is another novel that is based on or inspired by the real life Bourban princess, the Infanta Eulalia.  I shared a few teasers from the novel here in case you want a taste of Acevedo's prose.  The story is not bogged down by lots of extraneous historical detail, yet it is set firmly in the time and place and the characters are solidly depicted. 

Eulalia's life is inextricably linked to that of her wet nurse Amalia and Amalia's son Tomas.  Perhaps her personality is the result of a changing world being born on the tail end of the 19th century or perhaps she is rebelling against the closed and conservative upbringing which kept her cloistered tightly within her royal family.  But she is a right firebrand, railing against royal attitudes even while trying to live within its tight strictures.  She knows her place, but doesn't like it.  When she takes pen to paper and writes a revealing story of her family and its none too royal intimate lifestyle, she comes into her own.  But Eulalia, independent thinker though she is, is also a wife and mother.  Unhappy in her role, but far too familiar with what will happen if she publishes her memoir.

The story follows her from Spain, to Cuba and on to America, but also follows the fortunes of her wet nurse and Tomas.  The story has a decidedly literary quality to it, both in the way it is written but in the story itself as Eulalia is a writer and Tomas a reader who comes to own a bookstore.  He has a love of the works of Jules Verne and it is from one of Verne's novels that the title of this story comes. 

"The sea is everything, Verne wrote.  It is the Living Infinite.  Tomas had always loved the phrase.  There was so much possibility in it.  The Living Infinite.  As old as the sea was, he mused, it killed and reproduced with the stamina of youth."

This is a lyrical novel, one that came recommended by more than one source and now I can recommend it as well.

***

I think Patricia Highsmith is a pretty amazing writer, but Carol (originally published as The Price of Salt in 1952) is kind of unique compared to her crime novels.  Yet another book based on the author's own life experiences, her publisher would not touch it when she wrote it, since it was quite openly and unabashedly about a lesbian relationship.  And not just that, but one of the women was also a wife and mother.  It was picked up by a small press and published under a pseudonym.  Her publisher might not have been ready to publish it, but the world was ready to read it as it sold almost a million copies. 

"When Carol appeared, it didn't so much fill a niche as a gaping void.  Back then, the only images of lesbians in literature were as miserable inverts or scandalous denizens of titillating pulp fiction.  A novel that addressed a relationship between two women with seriousness, eroticism and classy prose was as exotic as a leopard in a Third Avenue deli."

(Quote from introduction by Val McDermid).

Therese is a young sales clerk in a department store with a boyfriend and aspirations for a career as a theater set designer.  It's Christmas in New York ca. 1950 and Therese works the toy counter as a means to an end, but it is only meant to be temporary.  In walks Carol, a sophisticated and elegant, looking for a particular doll for her daughter.  Carol is self assured but maybe a little distracted, and Therese instantly falls for her.  She takes the risky step of sending her a holiday card under the guise of a clerk following up on a sale, but the two begin a friendship that turns to romance.

Both women have partners, but both are unhappy in them.  The stakes are higher for Carol as she is married with a daughter, whereas Therese is only in a staid relationship.  Carol has something to lose, but in 1950 maybe Therese does too.  What ensues is almost a road trip novel.  Carol invites Therese to travel with her, and eventually the two realize they are being followed by a detective hired by her husband looking for inappropriate behavior. 

Maybe equally as surprising for a lesbian novel at this time, is it has a hopeful ending.  You might even call it happy, though the happiness does not come without cost.  It was adapted to the big screen and looks by all accounts as lush and gorgeous as you would expect of a story set in NYC in the 50s.  I plan on watching it (finally) very soon.

Mapping the Reading Year

I mentioned last week that I keep an Excel spreadsheet to track my reading year (though I have been lazy about keeping it up this year and had to do a lot of filling in).  I was asked to share a screen shot of it and am happy to let you have a peek at it. 

The nice thing is you can create a mini reading log with whatever information that you like and best, since it is Excel, at the end of the year you can easily sort the columns.  I can manipulate so all the information is alphabetized and then easily count things up at the end.  I don't recommend leaving it until the end, like I did, though it was sort of fun to go back and refresh my reading year in my mind.  'Oh yeah, I told myself I was going to read more Anita Brookner, or Barbara Pym, or . . . (well, now I know where to start next year, right?). 

As for the information I like to keep track of?  Basic bibliographic things--author, title, publication year, when I finished the book.  But I also like to see how many books by women versus men, what the genre is, if I own it or borrowed it, if it was translated and from what language and then some other little bit that is particular to my reading--if it was a NYRB subscription book or my monthly prompt, etc.

Had I traced my reading in a more timely manner it would have been obvious how few books in translation I was reading or I was neglecting books published in the 18th century (though that is probably pretty typical and something I vow to work on every year).  I really do see this as a reading map.  I like to see where I started and where I ended up.  What I want to try and read more of next year.  If I was really savvy I bet I could make one of those infographics which would be a really fun visual.  Hmm, maybe I will investigate that.  There are still, umm, thirteen days left in the year!

I will hopefully be wrapping up my reading year here on the blog in the coming week and next week will share my reading 'statistics' gleaned from my spreadsheet and am contemplating which books were favorites.  Do you keep a reading log?  If so, what form does it take and what information do you track?  I used to keep an actual journal, which has a certain charm, too.  Maybe next year.

December 15: Weekend Reading Notes

My how the month has just flown by.  Here we are halfway through and not much time left in the year to say nothing before the upcoming holiday and I have only managed to cross one lone book from that ambitious list I made not so long ago.  Of course one of the books is a chunky one and I have been devoting a good part of my reading time to it, so I have been making progress in my reading, it just does not seem very obvious.  So, I think I am going to have to rethink that list and pare it down to maybe half the size. 

Since I seem to be trying to catch up and dust away the remnants of this year, I am also now getting more and more excited about putting my attention to the coming new year.  I do love a fresh start.  That languishing pile that has been sitting there becomes ever more lackluster compared to the list of "new" books I want to start.  They are not newly purchased or library books per se, but mostly books from my shelves that I am looking forward to reading.  I don't think I will have any plans really for the new year (I say that now, but just wait until the last days of this year when I really think of what I want to do next year!), but I have ideas of reading themes I want to start out the year with and then I tend to let my reading meander organically after (as in give in to whim and mood!).

I did, finally, this week update the Excel spreadsheet that I keep of my yearly reading (and from which I glean my end of year statistics).  The last time I had updated it was at the end of February.  So that was a lot of work, but also it was sort of enlightening--to see where my reading started and ended up and remind myself of all the really good books I read (and how often I meant to read more books by a particular author).  I also have a list of books I never got around to writing about and which now it is probably too late to write a proper post about most of them, but maybe I will do a few catch up reviews just so I can have a record here of my thoughts. 

I think of my list the last books I will try and finish and spend my time with will be the Smiley, which is the chunkster, which I am feeling more and more ambivalent about.  I sort of feel like I am just putting in time with it to get through it rather than really enjoy my time with the Langdons.  But if I set it aside now, I am not sure I will ever return to it, so I just keep plugging away.  Maybe I will feel differently about it once I turn that halfway mark.

My last prompt of the year is my easy comfort read.  I have been keeping it in my gym locker and reading it as a nice distraction there.  I need to work on next year's list of prompts now.

Probably the two books I am most enjoying right now are Locked Rooms by Laurie King and Emma Beddington's Paris memoir, We'll Always Have Paris: Trying and Failing to Be French.  Mary Russell and San Francisco (with a cameo by Dashiell Hammett), how can you miss?  But I will say Mary is definitely not her usual self.  And Emma Beddington just has such a wonderful wry sense of humor and I love her 'voice'.  I can imagine myself in her situation if I ever had the chance to live in Paris!  More on those two later, I hope (before the year is out).  And I hope to squeeze in Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country, which has been rather at the bottom of this little stack (only because I want to be able to give it  more attention than the occasional page or two the others are getting).  This is my reshuffled night table pile looks like now.  Anything else will either just have to be carried over or (quietly) be returned to their places on bookshelves until a more auspicious moment for them comes along later.

I'm still in those happy hazy moments of just starting to think about next year's reading (list started of books and authors on my mind), but I will say one mood/whim that is going to be attended to sooner than later is a desire to read a book, preferably mystery or crime and maybe something vintage set in (preferably) WWII London.  Any ideas?  A favorite you can recommend?  If not I will be contemplating the problem myself. 

However you spend your weekend I hope it will be with a good book.  My weekend will include these, short stories (am behind in them, too) and a visit to the bookstore, where I hope to cross a few more presents off my (nearly completed) gift list (and by gift list I mean gifts for others!, though maybe a book for me will also find its way into my bag). 

The Bastards of Pizzofalcone, de Giovanni

Inspector Lojacono may not see dead people, like Maurizio de Giovanni's Commissario Ricciardi, but Giuseppe Lojacono and his colleagues at the Pizzofalcone precinct are an unusual rag tag group of detectives nonetheless.  Although Loja' made an appearance in a previous novel, The Bastards of Pizzofalcone (translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar) is the first outing of a new mystery series set in contemporary Naples.  A Naples that is alive and atmospheric and almost lives and breathes in those pages.  The crime is interesting, the setting mercurial, but the characters are 'characters' in every sense of the word. 

This isn't just Lojacono's story, but he seems to be at the heart of things.  Transferred from Sicily after a remarkable breaking of a case there, but there are rumors of ill deed that follow him.  Sicily.  Mafia.  Lots of rumors.  For Loja events include a broken marriage and an angry daughter.  A family that had to be uprooted and moved due to those rumors, for their safety. 

And now he has been nudged out and into one of Italy's dirtiest precincts.  When he arrives in Naples it is uncertain whether the precinct will even remain open.  It sits at the crossroads of the city's various social stratas.  One of the oldest police districts in the city, small but strategic, and now soiled by the illegal activity that went on there by Lojacono's predecessors.  Most of the men working there have been indicted on drug charges and now everyone attached is known as one of those "bastards" of Pizzofalcone.  Brought in from various regions the new group of detectives must prove themselves and show their worth and necessity in order to remain open.  I call them a rag-tag group because all of them have some oddity or quirk--they have been sent to Pizzofalcone because they don't quite fit in anywhere else.

Inspector Lojacono already has plenty of baggage when he arrives, but there is something unsettling about him.  Preceded by cracking the Crocodile case, a whiff of connection with the Mafia, he is serious, a man of few words, perennially tense, his features are those of an Asian man, and indeed he does look Chinese, he becomes known as the "Chinaman".  He doesn't realize how attractive he is, but the women he knows feel it.  The waitress at the restaurant he eats regularly, and particularly the magistrate back home he is still in working contact with.  There are all sorts of emotions and innuendo and secrets that circle just below the surface in this book that makes it in great part so very compelling. 

Just about every character, every detective in Pizzofalcone has something he or she is trying to keep secret.  The new Commissario heading the detectives, Luigi (Gigi) Palma is recently widowed and hiding an illness.  Loja's partner, Aragona, watches far too many crime dramas on TV and thinks he has mastered the art of using his mirrored glasses in every conceivable situation--he wants to "be the detective", a real "Serpico".  Loja' also fears for his life whenever Aragona takes the wheel of the car.  If there is any truth to the mad, crazy driving in Italy, he exudes it.  Francesco "Hulk" Romano has an anger issue and is quietly paying the price when his wife leaves him.  And Alessandra Di Nardo is trying to be the son her father always wanted, but got a little girl instead.  She is obviously fighting her own demons and has secrets that no one in the precinct must find out about.

Oh, and the crime?  Yes, there is a crime at the heart of this story.  The wife of a city official has been murdered.  The couple are wealthy and part of the upper social strata of Naples Society.  She is, was, devoted to her husband.  But he is not quite so devoted to her, as while she was being murdered he was off on a little weekend away with his mistress.  The crime?  Murder.  The weapon.  a glass snow globe.  One of many which she collects.  The suspects?  Her husband is at the top of the list, but maybe the murder has something to do with the lady who watches out her window across the way.  Or her maid who is a refugee, or her husband, another 'foreigner'. 

This is such a multilayered story.  You keep peeling back layers like an onion.  Each layer hiding, or revealing something new and surprising.  I have found that when you pick up a book by Maurizio de Giovanni you get your money's worth.  There is so much to his stories you feel like you are immersing yourself in a whole different world.  This one is populated even more so by interesting characters with interesting lives.  I especially enjoyed reading how they all relate to each other and their families and partners.  There is so much beneath the surface.  The mystery might have been resolved in this story, but so much of the characters' lives remains open ended.  Meaning you can't wait to pick up the next book in the series.