Lilisin in 2024!

Welcome to another reading year!

While I was ready for last year to be a strong reading year, I was blindsided by an unexpected event that left me mourning for most of the year, unable to really enjoy things, and just trying to wash away the hours by scrolling through social media. I have finished mourning now and I feel like I have also additionaly managed to get rid of some other remaining emotional baggage that was weighing me down for years. So I think this year will finally be the winning reading year as my mind is finally clear for reading enjoyment.

Recent trends in my reading have me reaching for classics, wanting to get lost in well established stories that I know will be well written. I realized I'm a bit tired of exploring contemporary fiction as most reads seem to fall in the middle of the road range. I have also been going for door-stopper long books, both fiction and nonfiction, and I see that continuing this year as well. I just get so much satisfaction when I've finished yet another 700 page book. Another recent discovery is my enjoyment of American history. I've been reading nonfiction about the American Native populations mixed in with some Texas history and I've been truly enjoying myself. I have bought two books in this same topic recently that I feel won't be lagging on the TBR for long.

As for Japanese fiction, I'm not too sure where I stand with that right now. I know I'm known for this but I haven't been reaching for it lately. It almost feels like I've already read the greatest of greats and it's hard to find gems these days although I do know they are out there still. I think for now I won't push this interest and will wait for it to naturally come back to me.

As always, thanks again for those who continue to follow my ever-decreasingly active threads.

Books read in 2024:
1) Alexandre Dumas : Vingt ans après (Twenty Years After)
2) John Wyndham : Trouble with Lichen
3) George Eliot : Middlemarch
4) Jon Krakauer : Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
5) Wilkie Collins : The Moonstone
6) Pingru Rao : Our Story: A Memoir of Love and Life in China
7) Kayleen Schaefer : But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood
8) David Grann : Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
9) Ranpo Edogawa : La bête aveugle
10) J.-M. Machado de Assis : L'Aliéniste
11) Victor Hugo : Lucrèce Borgia
12) 沙耶香 村田 : 消滅世界 (Vanishing World)
13) Francoise Sagan : Dans un moi, dans un an (Those without Shadows)
14) Paulo Coelho : The Alchemist
15) Emile Zola : L'argent
16) Kanji Hanawa : Backlight
17) Jules Verne : Deux ans de vacances (Two Year's Vacation)
18) 秋吉理香子 : 暗黒女子 (The Dark Maidens)
19) Aki Shimazaki : Mitsuba: Au coeur du Yamato
20) Aki Shamazaki : Zakuro: Au coeur de Yamato
21) Leo Tolstoy : War and Peace
22) 乙一 : 死にぞこないの青
23) 志駕 晃 : スマホを落としただけなのに
24) 有希子 本谷 : 異類婚姻譚 (An Exotic Marriage; also published as Picnic in the Storm; located in The Lonesome Bodybuilder: Stories)
25) Robert Louis Stevenson : Kidnapped
26) Pierre Boulle : La planète des singes (Planet of the Apes)
27) Robert Louis Stevenson : Catriona
28) Molière : Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman)
29) 今村 夏子 : あひる
30) James Baldwin : The Fire Next Time
31) Aki Shimazaki : Tonbo: Au coeur du Yamato

Manga read in 2024:
キャプテン翼 1-37
極主夫道 12-14
聖闘士星矢 8-10
らんま1/2 19-23
ドラゴンボール 1-42
クジマ歌えば家ほろろ 5
寄生獣 1-8
Detective Conan 102-103
Shoot! 熱きの挑戦 1-12
Black Cat 1-20

Books read in 2023 - 2022 - 2021 - 2020 - 2019 - 2018 - 2017 - 2016 - 2015 - 2014 - 2013 - 2012 - 2011 - 2010 - 2009

Yes, following. And I’m interested in both Native American and Texas history. I’m sorry you had such a rough 2023. Wish you a good new year.

I'll be following along with your years of reading regardless of the directions it might take. Always something to learn.

I'm glad you are back, Lilisin, and I'm glad you have been able to find some solace after your loss. Like Kevin, I will look forward to following along regardless of what you read. Welcome back and happy new year.

Welcome back! Give yourself permission to return to mourning for an hour or a day when you feel you need it - sometimes that's the best way to handle things.

If you do not feel like Japanese literature, so be it. One day it will call back to you but in the meantime, it is a big world. And I absolutely agree about long books - while I love short fiction, getting to the end of a long novel is always a great feeling :) I may not always remember to post but I do try to keep up with your reading.

Thank you all for the lovely words of support and encouragement. It's one of the big reasons I always come back to LT even in periods of lowered interest.

I thought I'd start the year with my Christmas book haul. I went back to Texas for the holidays and bought some books and also brought back some unread books I left behind when I moved to Japan. I love a freshly renewed TBR pile.

Nonfiction in English
Jon Krakauer : Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
Thant Myint-U : The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma
Jung Chang : Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China
- three authors whom I have read other works by and really respect and trust with nonfiction; always fascinating and informative reads

Dee Brown : Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
David Grann : Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
- continuing on my Texas history/Native American history theme I purchased these two books; unfortunately the Wounded Knee was delayed by Amazon and won't arrive until I'm back in Japan so my mom will hold on to it for now; the Killers of the Flower Moon book I purchased to make up for the delayed Amazon delivery and since I'm neither much of a Scorcese fan nor a diCaprio fan, I thought it best to read the book rather than watch the movie

Bradley K. Martin : Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty
- continuing my Asian history studies

Pingru Rao : Our Story: A Memoir of Love and Life in China
- a wonderful find in the used book store this is a beautifully put-together book of a man's love for his wife, filled with his illustrations

Fiction in English
Ursula K. Le Guin : The Left Hand of Darkness
Wilkie Collins : The Moonstone
Ngugi wa Thiong'o : Weep Not, Child
Philip K. Dick : Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
John Wyndham : Trouble with Lichen
John Wyndham : The Kraken Wakes
- all authors I've read before

Min Jin Lee : Pachinko
Isak Dinesen : Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass
- two books I already owned but never picked up; maybe now is the time?

Fiction in French
Herbjorg Wassmo : Le Livre de Dina, tome 1,2,3
Honore de Balzac : Eugénie Grandet
Takiji Kobayashi : Le bateau-usine
Léonora Miano : L'intérieur de la nuit
Ryû Murakami : La Guerre commence au-delà de la mer
Ranpo Edogawa : La bête aveugle
- all books I already owned but had left behind; a mix of authors I've never read and have read

I've decided to not participate in the ROOTs group this year as I have struggled in the last years updating one thread let alone two. But this means I need to bring the type of content I had in that thread and bring it over here, which means a list keeping track of my acquisitions and also a list showing the manga I'm reading. I always separated out my manga read as CR always was more of a high-brow type of group to me but now I think it'll just be nice having everything in one spot. So now to look at where my TBR stands at the beginning of the year.

TBR at beginning of 2024
Spanish 3
Japanese 37
French 88
English 52
Total 180

I actually did an excellent job in 2023 getting my pile down. I had a net loss of 10 books, going from 170 to 160 physical TBR books, having made a huge dent in my English language books. Now with my recent acquisitions I'm back up to 180 but I'm not mad at that as it replenished my English books and as I'm quite quick at getting recent purchases off my pile.

My manga TBR however is out of control considering I haven't been reading much lately. It is currently at 614 volumes, 540 of those on my shelves here in Japan. I'm hoping to make some progress on that front this year as it is much needed. I will be limiting my manga purchasing to just new volumes that have come out in currently ongoing series that I'm actively reading. (I actually had this rule in 2023 and was following it very well until one fateful day traveling in my friend's hometown when the used book store was selling manga sets for 70% off. Let's just say I HAD to open my wallet to that deal!)

A list of my acquisitions for the year. I will be striking the titles that I manage to read during the year. After the initial posting of my holiday acquisitions, may this post be short and uneventful.

Books acquired in 2024:
Jon Krakauer : Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
Thant Myint-U : The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma
Jung Chang : Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China
Dee Brown : Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
David Grann : Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
Bradley K. Martin : Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty
Pingru Rao : Our Story: A Memoir of Love and Life in China
Ursula K. Le Guin : The Left Hand of Darkness
Wilkie Collins : The Moonstone
Ngugi wa Thiong'o : Weep Not, Child
Philip K. Dick : Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
John Wyndham : Trouble with Lichen
John Wyndham : The Kraken Wakes
Min Jin Lee : Pachinko
Isak Dinesen : Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass
Herbjorg Wassmo : Le Livre de Dina, tome 1,2,3
Honore de Balzac : Eugénie Grandet
Takiji Kobayashi : Le bateau-usine
Léonora Miano : L'intérieur de la nuit
Ryû Murakami : La Guerre commence au-delà de la mer
Ranpo Edogawa : La bête aveugle
Margaret Mitchell : Gone with the Wind
Ngugi wa Thiong'o : Petals of Blood
H. Rider Haggard : King Solomon's Mines
D. H. Lawrence : The Rainbow
Alessandro Manzoni : The Betrothed
Leo Tolstoy : Resurrection
Sei Shonagon : The Pillow Book
Aldous Huxley : Brave New World
Pierre Boulle : The Bridge on the River Kwai
Yukio Mishima : Thirst for Love
Osamu Dazai : The Setting Sun
Edogawa Rampo : Beast in the Shadows
Junichiro Tanizaki : Quicksand
Sayaka Murata : Life Ceremony: Stories
Mieko Kawakami : All the Lovers in the Night
Kanji Hanawa : Backlight
Richard Lloyd Parry : In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos
Jr. John E. Wills : Past and Present in China's Foreign Policy: From "Tribute System" to "Peaceful Rise"
Jung Chang : Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
James Baldwin : The Fire Next Time
Sylvia Plath : The Bell Jar
Joaquim Maria Machado De Assis : Quincas Borba: A Novel
Paulo Coelho : The Alchemist
Jean Racine : Andromaque
Molière : Le Malade imaginaire
Victor Hugo : Ruy Blas
Victor Hugo : Hernani
Molière : Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
Beaumarchais : Mariage de Figaro
Amélie Nothomb : Le Livre des soeurs
Pierre Boulle : La planète des singes
Yasmina Khadra : Dieu n'habite pas La Havane
Laila Ibrahim : Le Crocus jaune
Yann Bécu : Les Bras de Morphée
Alexandre Dumas : Dame de Monsoreau
Alexandre Dumas : Reine Margot
Alexandre Dumas : Les Quarante-Cinq
Annette Wieviorka : Mes années chinoises
Cédric Gras : Alpinistes de Staline
Françoise Sagan : Dans un mois, dans un an
今村 夏子 : あひる
松永K三蔵 : バリ山行
沙耶香 村田 : 地球星人

Manga acquired in 2024:
さよならフットボール 1-2
極主夫道 14
クジマ歌えば家ほろろ 5
セーラーV 2
Detective Conan 102-103

I read Killers of the Flower Moon for my book club last year. I thought it was going to be true crime, a genre I don't care for, and it was, but it was more historical and I liked it a lot. I had known nothing about the Osage murders and found it fascinating. I hope you like it too. I also liked Pachinko, and the tv series (what they have released so far) was fantastic. I love how diverse your reading is.

Please do share your manga. For the last two years, although not so far this year, Annie curated a Graphic Stories thread here on Club Read, where we shared reviews of graphic novels, comics, manga, etc. We even have a list I started of Club Read's Graphic Stories Recommendations. So there are those of us who are interested. Post away!

Personally I've never worried to much about ROOT. I read for pleasure and/or information, and I don't care where that reading comes from: my shelves, library, borrowed from friends, ebooks, etc. Plus I get a lot of enjoyment out of book sales and browsing at bookstores. For me that's part of my love for reading. So IMO until I run out of room in my house, it's all good.

>7 lilisin: CR always was more of a high-brow type of group to me

Don't tell anyone but I like reading comics, graphic novels, thrillers and pulps and you cannot get less high-brow than that. We do have our literary readers but we have a few of us that read all over the place.

Still - it is your thread, you decide what to talk about. :) I will be curious to see what manga you are reading - even if it is not translated so I cannot read it :) But if you rather not, that's ok.

>9 labfs39: I am considering if I want to do it again this year - probably will as soon as I read my first GN for the year. We shall see... :) The start of the year is crazy in Club Read so starting a bit later is not such a bad idea.

>10 AnnieMod: The start of the year is crazy in Club Read so starting a bit later is not such a bad idea.

Absolutely. My first graphic work will probably be Paracuellos later this month or next.

Welcome back! I hope 2014 will bring you the peace of mind you're looking for, and hope you have the stellar reading year you're wishing for.
I will be following your thread, whatever you decide reading. And I hope you'll share your manga reading as well. I love CR but don't consider myself an high-brow reader, and I love reading varied books, and reading about varied books as well.

I like long books so much better than short works. It always takes me forever to get into a new book. It can take me days to get through the first 10 or 20 pages, but once I'm in ("hooked") I can keep reading forever.

>13 arubabookwoman: I have a hard time leaving some books, especially if I've been immersed in them for a while. Not only do I feel like I'm still in the book, but sometimes I don't want to leave it either!

1) Alexandre Dumas : Vingt ans après (Twenty Years After)

I finished my first book of the year and it follows exactly the indications from my introduction as I've started the year with a long book, logging in at 940 pages. I know a lot of people like to start with short novels to get the year started with a roaring start but I quite enjoyed sinking into a long and fun adventure story. Really nothing can go wrong when you start the year running about with the three musketeers.

This is actually the second book of the trilogy and now that I have read this I have finally finished the series. I have already read the third installment as I had purchased it while I was in France and wasn't patient enough to wait till I was back in the states to read it, hence having read the third before the second volume.

In this second volume we find our four beloved characters, d'Artagnan, Aramis, Porthos, and Athos, 20 years after the events of the first book. The musketeers have separated into their own very distinct lives and political leanings. In this second installment we are with a new cardinal, Mazarin, at a time where Paris is revolting against the government. Aramis and Athos are siding with the Frondeurs but d'Artagnan is required to follow Mazarin and brings along Porthos with him. Our friends are now enemies!

When a mission comes up to send all of them in England to deal with Charles the 1st fate, we find that the friends must reunite and fight as one against a common enemy, the ghost of Milady.

Another amazing adventure that had me turning the page from beginning to end, and has me wanting to read the entire series again. If only Dumas could have written another fourth book. I love these musketeers.

The length of those Muskateer novels puts me off...................

>15 lilisin: Way back when, I started with the third novel in the series (new translation in 3 volumes just around the time I was starting to read grown up books) - did not even realize it was part of a series for a long time - it was titled "Louise de La Vallière" in that edition. It was my introduction to Dumas... I had been thinking about getting back to the trilogy - and your post reminds me that I really should...

I forgot to add a warning when I posted my Musketeers review.

Twice while reading my original French copy I got curious as to how the English translation dealt with a passage and when I checked Project Gutenberg for the English document, all the passages I was curious about had gotten cut out! Glancing my eyes on another page I noticed an easy mistranslation - as in so easy that it shouldn't occur -- and then noticed other paragraphs cut out.

Project Gutenberg doesn't state what edition they are using nor who translated it but it is heavily edited.
And it turns out, looking up the books on Wikipedia, the books had been seriously edited and mistranslated back in the day so definitely check up on the edition if you decide to read this series in English translation.

>16 baswood:
They are ridiculously long but ridiculous in quite a fun way, and there is never a moment that feels like it could have been edited out to make the book shorter. Every paragraph has its appropriate place and the length of the book in turn makes the adventure even more fun. Plus the books are really straightforward to read with no archaic language nor endless descriptive scenes and instead the adventure is fast paced full of witty dialogue and humor. So it's worth giving them a chance.

>17 AnnieMod:
Yeah, in French there are three volumes:
1) Les Trois Mousquetaires
2) Vingt Ans Apres
3) Le vicomte de Bragelonne

In English translation they typically split up that third volume into
a) The vicomte of Bragelonne
b) Louise de la Valliere
c) The Man in the Iron Mask

But other bindups are possible. So definitely go back and read the series!

>18 lilisin: Oh, I did read the other 2 later (all of them in Bulgarian - if I go for a reread, it will be in English this time around). The Bulgarian editions' titles were... interesting ("The vicomte of Bragelonne" was used for the translation of "Vingt Ans Apres" for example). Then another publisher decided to mix them up again. :)

Project Gutenberg has only translations that are out of copyright after all and the ones that are old enough to be there are from the school of translation that considered the French texts too risque. You should check what they have for Jules Verne. The stories are there but I tend to look for newer translations when I look at French classics.

>15 lilisin: sounds like a great way to start your year

>18 lilisin: “there is never a moment that feels like it could have been edited out to make the book shorter. Every paragraph has its appropriate place and the length of the book in turn makes the adventure even more fun.”

Pretty impressive for 940 pages.

>19 AnnieMod:
I have seen that 20 Years Later has been called the Vicomte in other translations! It's just asking for confusion by the readers!

I'll try to remember to compare my next Verne to the English translation on Gutenberg. I can see parts being cut for length but not sure what kind of content would be considered too disagreeable for translation. Lately I've been reading the more obscure Verne texts so I'm extra curious to see how they are messed with as they shouldn't be as abridgeable as say 20000 Leagues is.

>20 dchaikin:
Thank you, it was!

Going to do a currently reading update since I'm reading two big books thus haven't completed anything lately. Also, haven't made huge progress on those books since I went skiing, had a lovely day trip to see cherry blossoms with wanderingstar, and have been up to quite a few things.

The two books I'm currently reading are:
Gordon W. Prange : At Dawn We Slept
George Eliot : Middlemarch

The Prange book is a 900 page detailed nonfiction about Pearl Harbor. It's fascinating but it's a 25 pages per day kind of read and I haven't been keeping up with that schedule so it's taking me a little longer to read than intended. But it's very good and I can't wait to get to the major actions bits.

Middlemarch is my current read via PDF at work and on my phone book when on the train but I haven't been on the train much (other than the ski trip but I was chatting with friends the entire time) and being able to work is all dependent on the level of business so either the book can get read quickly or it will take three months. In the meantime I am greatly enjoying it. I plan to post mini summaries and highlighted quotes like I did with Anna Karenina as I go through each part. That was a wonderful way to read AK and now that I've read part 1 of Middlemarch I can post that shortly, hopefully today.

In the meantime since I'm reading those two large books I decided my leisure reading will be manga! And more than that, soccer manga! Nothing gets me back into reading manga, and equally, back into reading in Japanese like a fun soccer manga. And the exciting thing is that after having read every other soccer series in existence, I'm finally reading the most famous one: キャプテン翼 (Captain Tsubasa)! I grew up on the anime series in French as a kid under its French title Olive et Tom (which I actually always thought was Olivier et Tom until recently) so it's wonderful to finally read it. It's soooo... positive. lol Such a different vibe than other soccer manga I've read. It's cute, actually.

Also keep forgetting to post one of my favorite pieces of dialogue from Dumas' Vingt Ans Apres.

Pg. 645
Écoutez, dit d'Artagnan, je comprends peu l'anglais; mais, comme l'anglais n'est que du francais mal prononcé, voici ce que j'entends: Parliament's bill; ce qui veut dire bill du Parlement, ou Dieu me damne, comme ils disent ici.

---
And later on that page...

Mon ami, interrompit d'Artagnan, comme je n'entends pas l'anglais, mais que nous entendons tous l'espagnol, faites-nous le plaisir de nous entretenir dans cette langue, qui est la vôtre, et que, par conséquent, vous devez parler avec plaisir quand vous en retrouvez l'occasion.

— Ah! parfait, dit Aramis.

Quant à Porthos, nous l'avons dit, toute son attention était concentrée sur un os de côtelette qu'il était occupé à dépouiller de son enveloppe charnue.

— Vous demandiez donc? dit l'hôte en espagnol.

— Je demandais, reprit Athos dans la même langue, s'il y avait deux parlements, un pur et un impur.

— Oh! que c'est bizarre! dit Porthos en levant lentement la tête et en regardant ses amis d'un air étonné, je comprends donc maintenant l'anglais? j'entends ce que vous dites.

— C'est que nous parlons espagnol, cher ami, dit Athos avec son sang-froid ordinaire.

— Ah! diable! dit Porthos, j'en suis fâché, cela m'aurait fait une langue de plus.

Ha! I just love the humor in The Three Musketeers series. Cracks me up.

Middlemarch: Part 1
Miss Brooke

I have finished part 1 and am fully immersed in the story and characters. I also very much enjoy connecting the quotations at the beginning of each chapter to the chapter itself. What amount of research must have gone into this book! George Eliot's wit is also refreshing to read and her skills of observance on the social mores of the time and human interaction is fascinating. However I must make the observation that reading these so well written books saddens me somewhat in thinking how much women could have thrived if men hadn't, and didn't continously, try to stifle their talent. What a waste.

FULL SPOILERS BELOW
Dorothea Brooke is a 19-year-old orphan, living with her younger sister, Celia, as a ward of her uncle, Mr Brooke. Dorothea is an especially pious young woman whose hobby involves the renovation of buildings belonging to the tenant farmers, although her uncle discourages her. She longs to live an ascetic life devoted to some great project for improving the world. Dorothea is courted by Sir James Chettam, a man close to her own age, but she is oblivious to him. She is attracted instead to the Rev. Edward Casaubon, a 45-year-old scholar. Dorothea accepts Casaubon's offer of marriage, despite her sister's misgivings. Chettam is encouraged to turn his attention to Celia, who has developed an interest in him.

Dorothea meets Lydgate, the new, young surgeon. Lydgate thinks she is a fine girl, but too earnest, and prefers the company of Rosamond Vincy, the daughter of the mayor. She equally fancies Lydgate, preferring to marry a man who is not from Middlemarch, and she believes Lydgate has important, aristocratic relatives.

Rosamond and her brother, Fred, decide to go visit their elderly uncle, Peter Featherstone. Featherstone's second wife, Mrs. Vincy's sister, died with no children. She hopes that her own children, especially Fred, will inherit Featherstone's wealth. Featherstone accuses Fred of borrowing money for gambling debts, using his possible inheritance of Featherstone's wealth as security. He names Mr. Bulstrode, Fred's uncle, as the man who could prove or disprove the rumor. Bulstrode, a wealthy banker, would know everything about the borrowing or lending of money. Featherstone demands that Fred secure a letter from Bulstrode confirming or denying the rumor.

Mary Garth, Featherstone's niece by his first marriage, is charged with the care of the sick old man. Fred is also madly in love with her. He asks Rosamond if Mary mentioned anything about him. He fears that Mary has heard the rumor about his gambling debts. Rosamond replies that Mary only said that he is unsteady and that she would refuse to marry Fred if he proposed.

Other characters of note:
Mrs. Cadwallader - who plays matchmaker and informs Sir James that Dorothea is not interested in him and he should instead go for Celia; she is also against the Dorothea-Casaubon match
Mr. Cadwallader - the Rector
Will Ladislaw - young grandson-nephew to Mr. Casaubon; undecided on his profession, Mr. Casaubon decides to send him abroad
Lydgate - new, young surgeon in Middlemarch; uninterested in Ms. Brooke, prefers Rosamond Vincy
Rosamond - daughter of current mayor; equally interested in Lydgate
Fred - brother to Rosamond
Peter Featherstone - uncle to Rosamond and Fred
Mr. Bulstrode - brother-in-law of Featherstone

Quotations:
Chp 3, pg 35
(Sir James) "You have your own opinion about everything, Miss Brooke, and it is always a good opinion."
(Dorothea to herself) What answer was possible to such stupid complimenting?

Chp 3, pg 39
Certainly these men who had so few spontaneous ideas might be very useful members of society under good feminine direction, if they were fortunate in choosing their sisters-in-law!

Chp 7, pg 73
But he (Mr. Casaubon) had deliberately incurred the hindrance (of courtship), having made up his mind that it was now time for him to adorn his life with the graces of female companionship, to irradiate the gloom which fatigue was apt to hang over the intervals of studious labor with the play of female fancy, and to secure in this, his culminating age, the solace of female tendance for his declining years.

You have me intrigued with soccer manga. My teen boy loves soccer and has recently gotten into anime and manga. Is there any soccer manga translated into English that you're aware of that I could recommend to him?

Enjoying your Middlemarch adventure. It's one of my favorite books.

>24 lilisin: I revisited Middlemarch last year. I think my enjoyment was lessened because I listened to it on audio, not the best format for me, but it was still enjoyable. I like reading your notes.

>24 lilisin: enjoy Middlemarch! Like Lisa, I read it last year (but for the 1st time, and not on audio). I had a little trouble with the pace. But you seem quite happy with it.

>25 japaul22:
Your teen boy would have a heydey with my bookshelves then! I don't read manga in English so I'm not well versed in what is out but this article mentions four that are available in English. Perhaps you can start there.

https://www.cbr.com/best-soccer-manga-before-world-cup/

---

Thanks everyone for the Middlemarch encouragement. I think just the fact that I'm reading it mainly on computer and phone will make any pace issues less of a problem because my reading pace in itself will be inconsistent. In any case, I had huge success with Anna Karenina reading this way so am enjoying the journey!

>28 lilisin: thank you! I will check those out.

You make me want to read Dumas again! Well, actually I’m not sure how much I read of the trilogy. Les Trois mousquetaires for sure, probably twice. I remember fondly d’Artagnan’s arrival in Paris on his yellow horse, and his blunders. I may have read Vingt ans après but I’m not sure, and probably not Le Vicomte de Bragelonne.

Middlemarch: Part 2
Old and Young

The hustle and bustle within Middlemarch remains interesting although it lacks a bit of the tension that was in say, Shirley. I'm curious to see in what direction the relationships will go. Currently just copy and pasting, and revising online summaries but they are a bit messy and I will try to summarize part 3 in my own words.

FULL SPOILERS BELOW
Middlemarch tensions continue as a decision must be made about who will head the new hospital: Lydgate (as nominated by Bulstrode) with his "new medicine" or Mr. Tyke (side of Farebrother) who is a safe decision despite and due to his outdated treatments. Tyke ultimately becomes chaplain to the infirmary, and Lydgate continues to work with Mr. Bulstrode.

We learn about Lydgate's youth and then his pursuit of an actress in Paris. He falls for her despite a strange theatre incident but upon her admitting to killing her husband, Lydgate recedes and decides to avoid romance.

We learn about Bulstrode's arrival in Middlemarch twenty years ago but no one knows his origins. He married Mr. Vincy's sister which allies himself with an important, respectable family. He has an intimate view into the private lives of Middlemarch citizens through their finances. He uses his money as a lever to spread his strict Protestant ethic and to scrutinize its effect on his fellow citizens. Power is his favorite game.

Fred has told his father about Featherstone's request. Bulstrode is reluctant to write the letter because he disapproves of Fred's extravagant habits. He believes that Vincy made a mistake in paying for Fred's expensive college education. Vincy criticizes Bulstrode for moralizing and hints that his sister, Mrs. Bulstrode, will disapprove of Bulstrode's refusal to help her brother's family. Bulstrode agrees to write the letter after a short consultation with his wife.

Fred delivers the letter, and Featherstone gives him one hundred pounds as a gift. Fred retreats to speak with Mary. He doesn't want to be a clergyman, and he has failed his examination at college. Fred demands that she promise to marry him, but she refuses. She suggests that he pass his exam as proof that he is not an idler, even though she thinks he would be an unfit clergyman. She refuses to encourage his marriage prospects. Fred returns home in low spirits and asks his mother to hold eighty pounds. He owes one hundred and sixty pounds for a gambling debt. His creditor holds a bill signed by Mary's father as security against the debt.

We briefly go to Rome where a crying Dorothea is seen by Naumann, a painter friend of Will Ladislaw. They come up with a plan so that Naumann can paint her portrait. We see that Dorothea is starting to see the truth behind her marriage and Casaubon.

Other characters of note:
Rev. Camden Farebrother - the Vicar
Mrs. Farebrother - the Vicar's mother
Miss Noble - Mrs. Farebrother's sister
Miss Winifred Farebrother - the Vicar's elder sister

Quotations:
Chp 16, pg 178
It was a principle with Mr. Bulstrode to gain as much power as possible, that he might use it for the glory of God. He went through a great deal of spiritual conflict and inward argument in order to adjust his motives, and make clear to himself what God's glory required.

pg 179
Whatever was not problematical and suspected about this young man (Lydgate) ・for example, a certain showiness as to foreign ideas,and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled and forgotten by his elders as positively unwelcome to a physician whose standing had been fixed thirty years before by a treatise on Meningitis, of which at least one copy marked own・was bound in calf.

pg 181
This was one of the difficulties of moving in good Middlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as a qualification for any salaried office.

pg 181
Certainly, small feet and perfectly turned shoulders aid the impression of refined manners, and the right thing said seems quite astonishingly right when it is accompanied with exquisite curves of lip and eyelid.

Chp 17, pg 199
But a good wife— a good unworldly woman—may really help a man, and keep him more independent.

>31 lilisin: I'm loving these summaries. Last year I reread Middlemarch for the first time in thirty years. Or rather I listened on audio, which is not quite as easy for me. Anyway, it's interesting to see the story unfold in your summaries.

Good stuff on Middlemarch. I had forgotten about Lydgate’s Paris actress

Middlemarch: Part 3
Waiting for Death

A bit of a slower week at work has allowed me to get through part 3 at a nice pace. We end with quite the exciting cliffhanger which makes me want to jump right into part 4. As I suspected, writing the summary myself (and as I read) is much easier and logical.

FULL SPOILERS BELOW
Fred ends up losing most of the money he received after trying one last gamble with horses, and is forced to confess his debt to Mrs. and Mr. Garth, and furthermore, to Mary Garth. His troubles continue when he comes down with typhoid fever, picked up from his "adventures".

This however gives an opportunity to Lydgate -- who becomes Fred's doctor after once again proving Middlemarch's medical practices outdated -- to interact with Fred's sister, Rosamond. However, while he convinces himself that these are mere interactions, Rosamond and the town itself consider these flirtations, and rumors of engagement begin to fly about despite Lydgate's desires to not marry so soon.

However, Lydgate's self-denial of his feelings fade quickly enough and Rosamond and Lydgate confirm their engagement, on the day that Mr. Vincy is found walking back from Mr. Featherstone's, who is on the brink of death, and will indeed be passing his fortune onto Fred.

Dorothea and Mr. Casaubon return from their honeymoon in Italy, Dorothea continuing to feel the unease of her marriage and Mr. Casaubon doing nothing to aid her. Celia announces her engagement to Sir James Chettam.
Shortly after receiving two letters from Will Ladislaw, Mr. Casaubon has a heart attack and Dorothea is told by Lydgate that Casaubon must slow his studies lest he study his remaining years away too quickly. Dorothea is hit by the idea that Casaubon could die without having finished his work meaning that she would have been found useless.

Dorothea asks her uncle, Mr. Brooke, to reply to the letters to stop Ladislaw from visiting the Casaubon's, which Mr. Brooke does but not without inviting Ladislaw to his own home instead.

At the news of Mr. Featherstone's imminent death, his opportunistic relatives come to visit. On the brink of death, he asks a favor of Mary Garth, to open up a chest and rip up one of the two wills he has written. She refuses this task, along with the gold he offers, and Mr. Featherstone dies with two wills in his name.

Characters to remember:
Mr. Bambridge - horse dealer that Fred Vincy owes money to
Caleb Garth - signed Fred's debt and thus must lend money to Fred

Quotes:
ch 24, pg. 281
Curiously enough, his (Fred Vincy) pain in the affair beforehand had consisted almost entirely in the sense that he must seem dishonorable, and sink in the opinion of the Garths: he had not occupied himself with the inconvenience and possible injury that his breach might occasion them, for this exercise of the imagination on other people's needs is not common with hopeful young gentlemen. Indeed we are most of us brought up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong. But at this moment he suddenly saw himself as a pitiful rascal who was robbing two women of their savings.

ch 29, pg. 316
Providence, in its kindness, had supplied him with the wife he needed. A wife, a modest young lady, with the purely appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is sure to think her husband's mind powerful. Whether Providence had taken equal care of Miss Brooke in presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could hardly occur to him. Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy. As if a man could choose not only his wife but his wife's husband! Or as if he were bound to provide charms for his posterity in his own person! When Dorothea accepted him with effusion, that was only natural; and Mr. Casaubon believed that his happiness was going to begin.

ch 29, pg 317
For my part I (George Eliot as the narrator) am very sorry for him (Mr. Casaubon). It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self-- never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ard or of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted.

>34 lilisin: I loved the scene with all the relatives waiting in the downstairs room, eyeing each other and gossiping about who will get what.

A lot more life in your own summaries and a lot more vivid memories brought back. Eliot was having so much fun. The first-person interlude surprised.

Middlemarch: Part 4
Three Love Problems

Part 4 was remarkably short with fewer memorable moments or passages, but since I'm now halfway through I suspect things are about to gain intensity in Middlemarch. Things have picked up at work however so I regret it might take a while to read through part 5 and beyond. Hopefully I can continue to steal a page of reading here and there. In the meantime, thank you for the lovely comments on my reading logs. I should mention that while I'm reading these long books (although my Pearl Harbor nonfiction has been unintentially on pause for almost a month now), I have been devouring the Captain Tsubasa manga series. Having fun with that of course and am now more than halfway through it.

FULL SPOILERS BELOW
A crowd has gathered, along with a mysterious Joshua Mr. Rigg, for Mr. Featherstone's funeral, awaiting for news on his will. Reading the first will reveals money left here and there to various relatives with a larger amount going to Fred; the second will leaves the smallest of donations but gives all, including the land to Mr. Rigg instead, as well as giving Rigg the Featherstone name. Fred is left with nothing and is left to figure out his fate while Rosamond's upcoming wedding with Lydgate is allowed to go on without interruption.

Mr. Brooke has bought a paper, "The Pioneer", and Ladislaw is his writer; but people around are very much against this turn of events.

A week remains until the Rosamon-Lydgate wedding and we go to the Garths where Mary has decided to teach at a school in York now that she is no longer connected to Mr. Featherstone. However, a letter from Sir James Chettam arrives, offering to Mr. Garth the management of the family estates Freshitt (Chettam's) and Tipton (Mr. Brooke's). With this the Garth money problems seem to be over and Mary can stay in Middlemarch.

Shortly after the vicar visits the family to discuss Fred who has left in shame due to his debts to the Garths, and has decided to leave in search of education. The Garths reveal to the vicar Farebrother that according to Mary Mr. Featherstone had sought to burn the second will which means Fred should have gotten the 10000 pounds. It also revealed that a particular transaction was going on between Mr. Bulstrode and the new Mr. Rigg Featherstone concerning his inherited land.

We witness a conversation between Riggs and his father-in-law, Raffles, a direspute man whom Riggs wishes no longer to see. We last see Raffles as he leaves town with a note signed by Burstrode.

Lydgate calls upon Mr. Casaubon on return from his wedding to discuss his illness. Lydgate confirms Casaubon's concerns and Casaubon realizes there is no chance for him to finish his work. Surprisingly he finds solace in Dorothea.

Characters:
John Raffles : fatherinlaw to Mr. Riggs

Quotes:
ch 35, pg. 372
When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied species made much private remark on each other, and were tempted to think that so many forms feeding on the same store of fodder were eminently superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations. (I fear the part played by the vultures on that occasion would be too painful for art to represent, those birds being disadvantageously naked about the gullet, and apparently without rites and ceremonies.) The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora who formed Peter Featherstone's funeral procession; most of them having their minds bent on a limited store which each would have liked to get the most of.

ch 36, pg. 392
I (Lydgate) feel sure that marriage must be the best thing for a man who wants to work steadily. He has everything at home then -- no teasing with personal speculations -- he can get calmness and freedom.

I wish we learned more about Riggs. Enjoyed your update.

Middlemarch: Part 5
Book v. the Dead Hand

As suspected there was a lot of movement in part 5. Everything is about expected according to the rules of Victorian literature. I enjoy the subtlety in juxtaposition between Celia and Dorothea's lives. While we are fully immersed in Dorothea's life, Celia's journey through the standard path of wifedom and motherhood is revealed only through short, brief sentences. I find this a clever way to compare the sisters.

FULL SPOILERS BELOW
Dorothea visits the Lydgate home wishing to speak to him about her husband's condition; instead she meets the new Mrs. Rosamond Lydgate and happens to find Will Ladislaw there as well. Rosamond discovers Will's feelings for Dorothea, while in the meantime, Lydgate as managed to get Dorothea to commit funds towards the new hospital.

Middlemarch is undergoing changes: 1) The New Hospital has been built and Bulstrode is looking for financial donors but the residents are against this antagonist to the current medical doctors, 2) Political reform is the hot topic for the potential upcoming elections. Ladislaw and Lydgate along with Brooks are for, but know that Middlemarch will be stubborn to adopt change.

Rosamond is pregnant. Celia has had a baby.

Will Ladislaw makes an attempt to see Dorothea at the local church but immediately regrets his decision at seeing her resentfulness to his coming. It turns out Dorothea was quite pleased to see Will and was looking forward to some consensus of agreement with Mr. Casaubon but she saw that no reconciliation could be had between the two.

Mr. Casaubon, chiefly aware of his limited time has finally decided to focus on the completion of his work and Dorothea is happily a part of this new work (although she admits to herself that even if he were to complete his work, it would amount to nothing). However, she is taken by surprise when he asks her to fulfill his wishes (which he does not give details upon) without question if and upon his death. Dorothea is taken aback and asks for time to decide. But before she can give her answer, the next day, Mr. Casaubon passes.

It is revealed that Mr. Casaubon had written a codicil to his will about Dorothea. In it he states that Dorothea would lose all the property of the estate if she were to wed Ladislaw. The reactions of Celia and Sr. James Chettam is one of disgust towards the ill will Casaubon's codicil implies about Dorothea, and Dorothea's reaction is one of shock and lack of trust. Casaubon's codicil begins to backfire as, while Dorothea had never once entertained such feelings to Ladislaw, revelation of the codicil makes her begin to rethink her feelings.

In the meantime Mr. Brookes fails politically and decides to give up The Pioneer to Ladislaw. And Fred Vincy has now returned in hand with a college degree. Mary indirectly declines Mr. Farebrother's hand and keeps herself open to Fred with the condition that he become a better man, but not seek to become a clergyman.

Mr. Bulstrode has purcased the deeds for Stone Court from Riggs who has now left Middlemarch. However, Buldstrode runs into Raffles, with whom it seems they were once acquaintances long ago and with whom Bulstrode does not seem happy to meet. Aptly so as Raffles has come to blackmail Bulstrode about some connection in the past. Bulstrode has a step-daughter: Ladislaw.

Quotes:
ch 43, pg. 489
Rosamond felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world, especially in discovering what when she was in her unmarried girlhood had been inconceivable to her except as a dim tragedy in by-gone costumes that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and enslave men. At that time young ladies in the country, even when educated at Mrs. Lemon's, read little French literature later than Racine, and public prints had not cast their present magnificent illumination over the scandals of life.

ch 44, pg 492
Half the town would almost take trouble for the sake of thwarting him. In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set.

....

"But what is there against Mr. Bulstrode? I (Dorothea) know that my uncle is friendly with him."
"People don't like his religious tone," said Lydgate.
"That is all the stronger reason for despising such an opposition," said Dorothea.

ch 44, pg 493

I (Lydgate) suppose one must expect to fight one's way: there is hardly anything to be done without it. And the ignorance of people about here is stupendous. I don't lay claim to anything else than having used some opportunities which have not come within everybody's reach; but there is no stifling the offence of being young, and a new-comer, and happening to know something more than the old inhabitants."

Coming in late, but i like revisiting Middlemarch here. A lot going on in this last section.

Casaubon really shot himself in the foot with that codicil. It's interesting how both Featherstone's and Casaubon's wills end up not fulfilling the intentions.

Middlemarch: Part 6
The Widow and the Wife

I have less quotations to pull from the book as the book goes into the main plot and its conclusion. I continue to be entranced but I'm not sure how easy it'll be for me to read at work from here out. I recently got an assistant which is all good but she sits right next to me so pulling out Middlemarch, albeit via PDF, is a bit less discreet when someone is staring at your screen with you. Obviously I can't complain about having to work while at work, and having an assistant definitely was a huge help today so I'm happy to have her but I'll miss the reading. In any case, Middlemarch is still a pleasure and I have now only two parts left to the book!

FULL SPOILERS BELOW
Dorothea goes back to her estate as conversations fly about whether she should take on another husband. Will Ladislaw comes to visit her to share his farewells and they both leave the conversation after miscommunicated feelings.

In the meantime Fred Vincy has come under the tutorship of Mr. Garth, officially declining to join the clergy, and hopefully sealing his match with Mary.

Rosamond loses her baby. Lydgate and Rosamond are suffering from miscommunication and a difference in expectations in their marriage leading to Lydgate being in debt due to having to provide for a home beyond his means. Rosamond meanwhile tells Will Ladislaw about the codicil, and furthermore goes behind Lydgate's back to ask money from her father, who himself reveals that he is in a bit of trouble himself.

At a Middlemarch estate auction, Will Ladislaw encounters Mr. Raffles, and is asked if Sarah Dunkirk is his mother.

As Mr. Raffles puts pressure on Bulstrode we finally learn about his past: he was excelling as a young banker's clerk and was an esteemed member of the church, considering entering the ministry as his vocation. Then one day he is invited to the home of the richest man in the congregation, Mr. Dunkirk. After the death of a partner, Dunkirk chooses Bulstrode to manage his affairs and a company with seedy origins. After time, Mr Dunkirk died and his wealth went to his wife. It was thought that Bulstrode would marry the new widow but first it seems the Dunkirk's had had a daughter who has run off was married but they couldn't find her, and now Mrs. Dunkirk wished to find her again before getting married so as to pass on some of her wealth. Bulstrode proceeds to find the daughter, but pays a man to keep the finding a secret, so that he may marry Mrs. Dunkirk and her wealth.

Mr. Bulstrode calls in Will Ladislaw to his home to admit his marriage to Will's mother. Mr. Bulstrode reveals their connection, and offers a yearly allowance when Will understands Bulstrode's secret, but in a surprising turn of events Will refuses the money due to the seedy nature of the fortune, as he wishes not to ruin his reputation in the ideas of Dorothea and the deceased Mr. Casaubon.

Will makes one last visit to Dorothea before he leaves town, leaving behind miscommunication but also love.

Quotes:
ch 61, pg. 695
The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through life the ground he alleged to himself for his choice of action: it had been the motive which he had poured out in his prayers. Who would use money and position better than he meant to use them? Who could surpass him in self-abhorrence and exaltation of God's cause? And to Mr. Bulstrode God's cause was something distinct from his own rectitude of conduct: it enforced a discrimination of God's enemies, who were to be used merely as instruments, and whom it would be as well if possible to keep out of money and consequent infl uence. Also, profitable investments in trades where the power of the prince of this world showed its most active devices, became sanctified by a right application of the profits in the hands of God's servant.

ch 62, pg. 704
He (Chettam) sent the groom on an unsaddled horse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs. Cadwallader, who already knew the gossip, and would think it no compromise of herself to repeat it as often as required.

I have nothing to report in terms of reading unless I were to report on my manga reading, but instead of that, I want to report my window shopping results. While waiting for friends I decided to check out the foreign books store in Shinjuku to see if anything would catch my eye and a lot did actually. Some of these I can thank the striking new covers for.

First are books by authors I've been wanting to revisit for a while.
William Golding : The Inheritors
- I was very happy when I read The Spire almost 20 years after reading Lord of the Flies; it kicked a bad habit of not revisiting the books of authors I've enjoyed a work by

When spring comes, the people leave their winter cave, foraging for honey and shoots, bulbs and grubs, the hot richness of a deer's brain. They awaken the fire to heat their naked bodies, lay down their thorn bushes, and share pictures in their minds. But strange things are happening - inexplicable scents, sounds, and violence - and, suddenly, unimaginable creatures are half-glimpsed in the forest; an upright new people of bone-faces and deerskins. What the early people don't know is that their season is already over ...

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley : The Last Man
- this would be in the same vein as above; I've read and loved Frankstein twice so why have I never read any other works by Mary Shelley!; this must be fixed!

Mary Shelley's apocalyptic fantasy of the end of human civilisation. Set in the late twenty-first century, the novel unfolds a sombre and pessimistic vision of mankind confronting inevitable destruction.

Nella Larsen : Quicksand
- I read Passing last year and while I simply liked, but didn't love it like others have, I felt Larsen's genious and relevance to society both then and now and I truly want to read another by this author

Crane is the lovely and refined daughter of a Danish mother and a West Indian black father who abandons Helga and her mother soon after Helga is born. Unable to feel comfortable with any of her white-skinned relatives, Helga lives in various places in America and visits Denmark in search of people among whom she feels at home. The work is a superb psychological study of a complicated and appealing woman, Helga Crane, who, like Larsen herself, is the product of a liaison between a black man and a white woman.

E.M. Forster : The Machine Stops
- never read author but I've been enjoying my foray into older science fiction

First published in 1909, Forster's short science fiction work, "The Machine Stops," posits a technology-dependent humanity now living underground, its every need serviced by machines. But what happens if--or when--the machines stop? "The Machine Stops" was named one of the greatest science fiction novellas published before 1965 by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Margaret Mitchell : Gone with the Wind
- a book I've always been curious about and the edition in the store finally made me closer to picking it up

Next, two books I hadn't heard of but the covers were striking and then the blurbs sealed the deal.
Chester Himes : If He Hollers Let Him Go

This story of a man living every day in fear of his life for simply being black is as powerful today as it was when it was first published in 1947. The novel takes place in the space of four days in the life of Bob Jones, a black man who is constantly plagued by the effects of racism. Living in a society that is drenched in race consciousness has no doubt taken a toll on the way Jones behaves, thinks, and feels, especially when, at the end of his story, he is accused of a brutal crime he did not commit.

Toni Cade Bambara : Those Bones Are Not My Child: A Novel

On Sunday morning, July 20, 1980, Marzala Rawls Spencer awakens to find that her teenage son has gone missing, even as the Atlanta child abductions are beginning to be reported. As she and her estranged husband frantically search for their son, the story moves with authority through the full spectrum of Atlanta's political, social, and cultural life, illuminating the vexing issues of race and class that bedevil the city.

>43 lilisin: Wonderful book haul! Like you I often find myself thinking, why haven't I read more by this author? I need to follow your example and actually do it!

>44 labfs39:

Actually just window shopping! I’ve added everything to my wishlist but didn’t buy anything. I haven’t even completed my second book of the year so definitely not the time to be buying books!

>45 lilisin: That's good too! I love browsing in bookstores.

Middlemarch: Part 7
Two Temptations

I'm close to the end goal! Only 70 pages left! The book has turned into a full blown romance novel now, much lighter in social commentary and definitely fully pushing the plot forward. When one character yelled "Don't touch me!" I actually had to take a step back and make sure I was indeed reading a Victorian novel and not a modern romance novel. In any case it's time to find out how all the relationships end up and what the conclusion is to Middlemarch's big scandal!

FULL SPOILERS BELOW
Lydgate is deep in debt, to the amount of 1000 pounds, and confesses his debt to Rosamond in hope that he can convince her that they need to limit their spending and adopt a new lifestyle. However, Rosamond is unwilling to make a change and instead entreats Lydgate to ask for help. Lydgate refuses, and Rosamond goes behind his back trying to find a solution by herself, but messes up the situation further, angering Lydgate in the meantime. Their relationship begins a rocky back and forth of mistrust and lack of mutual respect. Both begin to doubt their marriage.

Lydgate goes to the Green Dragon to gamble and fortunately is able to pull himself away with Fred Vincy's help after one bout of losing but not before this one slip in his personality leads to rumors of his debt being spread about Middlemarch. Upon being called upon to Bulstrode's home, whom he notices is stuffering from some unknown stress, he confesses his debt and requests help but Bulstrode refuses and instead suggests he declare bankruptcy.

Raffles has now returned to Middlemarch to pull more money from Bulstrode's pockets. Bulstrode drops him off away from Middlemarch with 100 pounds and a promise of an allowance if Raffles agrees not to return. It doesn't take long for Raffles to find his way back again, but this time sick from alcoholism. Caleb Garth is the one to run into Raffles and drops him off at Stone Court. He then mysteriously quits Bulstrode's services; he has discovered Bulstrode's secret! Bulstrode decides then he must leave Middlemarch temporarily and transfer the management of the bank and hospital.

Before that, however, Bulstrode is eager to find out who else Raffles has told his secret to and decides to take it upon himself to look after Raffles' health. He calls upon Lydgate to check up on Raffles and Lydgate prescribes a treatment of opium and refusal of alcohol treatments. To keep Lydgate in check, Bulstrode goes back on his earlier decision and decides to give the 1000 pounds to Lydgate, who accepts, but not without some suspicion.

Bulstrode follows Lydgate's treatment to the T until he passes on the task to his housekeeper. Upon her begging to give alcohol to the patient, Bulstrode hesitates but ends up allowing the housekeeper to give brandy to Raffles. In the morning Lydgate visits again to find that Raffles has died overnight. Slightly suspicious that Bulstrode might have ignored his instructinos, but grateful to be relieved of his debts, Lydgate leaves the situation as is.

The news about the mystersious death of Raffles is out along with the revelation of Bulstrode's claim to money. All the pieces of the puzzle have been placed together, his secret is out, his reputation is ruined and the affair makes waves in Middlemarch. All is lost for Bulstrode and now Lydgate is also under suspicion of having taken a bribe as hush money to Raffles murder.

It seems only Dorothea believes in Lydgate's innocence and she is determined to ask him for the truth so she can save him, and the hospital.

Quotes:
ch. 71, pg. 803
He was not fond of solitary contemplation, but he had only just come out of the house, and any human figure standing at ease under the archway in the early afternoon was as certain to attract companionship as a pigeon which has found something worth pecking at.

A fun window shopping expedition. Thanks for sharing. I read the Chester Himes novel several years ago. It was gripping, indeed.

>43 lilisin: The Machine Stops is a really interesting story for the time it was written. I was shocked when I first discovered how old it was after reading it. I feel its world where no-one goes out and just does everything at home on what is basically the internet might seem even more prescient now, post-pandemic.

Middlemarch: Part 8 and Finale
Sunset and Sunrise

I finished a little while ago and can say I enjoyed the experience of reading this book. But having now finished it, there is none of that lingering feeling when you've read a book that has impacted beyond the entertainment the book provides. So, while a pleasant read, I fear in a few years I won't really remember the characters or the plot much. Good thing I created these summaries to refresh my memory.

As the book hit its final stride to the end I stopped writing my own summary as I was eager to reach the end and see the conclusion of all the relationships. So for the final part I leave you with an online summary.

Also, there were no notable quotes to mark down in the end as Eliot focused on finishing the book.

FULL SPOILERS BELOW
Source: Sparknotes
Dorothea asks Farebrother if it would be possible to approach Lydgate about the scandal and offer help. Lydgate deduces that Bulstrode loaned him the money to bind him through a strong obligation in the event that Raffles disclosed any damaging details about his past. The townspeople avoid him, and he begins losing clients. He resolves to stay in Middlemarch and face the worst, but the thought of Rosamond's reaction pains him deeply.

Mrs. Bulstrode suspects something terrible when Lydgate accompanies her husband home from the meeting. Neither Lydgate nor her friends will give her a straight answer, so she goes to her brother, Mr. Vincy. He sorrowfully tells her the whole sad story, but he is careful to let her know that no one blames her. He tells her that he will stand by her no matter what she chooses to do. She dresses herself in mourning clothing and goes to see him. A wave of compassion hits her when she sees his shrunken frame. His confession and her resolve to stick with him are unspoken.

Happy to be free of debt, Rosamond sends out invitations to a dinner party. She is bored in Middlemarch and misses Will Ladislaw's company. She feels jealous of his admiration for Dorothea. He writes to tell her that he will visit Middlemarch soon. She still hopes to convince Lydgate to leave Middlemarch.

All the invitations to Rosamond's dinner party are declined. She visits her parents. They tell her everything and say that Lydgate will probably have to leave town. Lydgate perceives that she knows of the scandal, but to his disappointment, she does not express the belief that he is innocent.

Dorothea summons Lydgate to discuss her involvement in the hospital. He tells her not to depend on him to manage the hospital, as he may have to leave town. Dorothea states her belief in his innocence and says that she wants to clear his name. Her support touches Lydgate deeply. He tells her that he must consider Rosamond's happiness, so he is disposed to leave Middlemarch. She offers to speak with Rosamond to show her that they are not completely abandoned.

Dorothea decides to take over Lydgate's debt to Bulstrode. She sets out to visit Rosamond with a check for one thousand pounds. She encounters Will Ladislaw clasping Rosamond's hands. Rosamond has been crying. Dorothea recalls all the gossip concerning Will's relationship with Rosamond, so she departs abruptly. She considers Lydgate's marriage troubles under a new light, and she is ready more than ever to be his champion.

Will knows exactly what Dorothea thinks. He is shattered at the loss of her good opinion. Rosamond tries to touch his coat sleeve, but he angrily shakes her off. She sarcastically tells him to go after Dorothea. They quarrel, and Will leaves her home in a huff. Later, Rosamond collapses sobbing into Lydgate's arms. He doesn't know the cause of her depression.

Will returns to the Lydgate home later. Lydgate informs him that Rosamond is ill. He tells Ladislaw that his own name is included in the present scandal. Will says that he wouldn't be surprised if everyone thought he conspired with Raffles to kill Bulstrode. He doesn't tell Lydgate that he refused Bulstrode's money, because Lydgate is under suspicion for accepting it.

Dorothea's anger and disappointment dissipate. She resolves to see Rosamond again. Lydgate consents to allow Dorothea to take over his debt from Bulstrode. Dorothea tells Rosamond that she, Farebrother, Sir James, and Mr. Brooke all support Lydgate wholeheartedly. Rosamond bursts into hysterical crying. Dorothea comforts her and counsels her to cling to her husband. Rosamond tells Dorothea that she is wrong to think badly of Ladislaw. She tells her that Will has done nothing wrong. She hints that Will loves another woman. Lydgate and Rosamond reach an uneasy peace.

Rosamond informs Will that she has cleared his name with Dorothea. He engages Miss Noble to speak to Dorothea on his behalf. The kind little woman asks Dorothea if she will consent to speak to Will. She consents. Will tells her that Bulstrode offered him money, but that he refused. However, he still must suffer the gossip about his parentage. People say that he is the grandson of a thieving Jewish pawnbroker. They kiss, but Will declares sorrowfully that they can never be married. Dorothea replies that she cares nothing for her wealth and that her heart will break if they must part. She has a sufficient income from her deceased parents and Mr. Brooke. They become engaged. Sir James reacts with anger, partly because he dislikes Ladislaw and partly because he wants his son to inherit both Tipton and Freshitt. Dorothea decides to go to London and live with Will Ladislaw.

Bulstrode prepares to leave Middlemarch. He doesn't want to sell Stone Court. He asks his wife if there is anything she would like him to do. She asks him to do something for Lydgate and Rosamond, but Bulstrode tells her that Lydgate has refused any further service from him. He tells her that Garth once planned to manage Stone Court in order to place Fred there. Since Garth declined to do business with him, he tells his wife to ask Garth to enter into an agreement with her.

Garth approaches Mary to see if she still wants to marry Fred considering the scandal concerning his uncle Bulstrode and his brother-in-law, Lydgate. She says that she still loves Fred, and that there has been no change in her plans. He tells her of the offer he has received from Mrs. Bulstrode. Fred is delighted at the news. He and Mary plan to marry shortly after he settles into Stone Court.

Fred and Mary settle into a solidly happy marriage and have three sons. They never become rich, but they manage comfortably. Lydgate leaves Middlemarch and sets up a successful practice elsewhere. He still considers himself a failure and dies at fifty. His marriage never becomes a peaceful or wholly happy arrangement. He never has anything but praise for Dorothea, which continually arouses Rosamond's jealousy. Rosamond later marries a wealthy physician. Will Ladislaw becomes an ardent public man working for reforms. Dorothea remains happy in her position as wife and mother.

Middlemarch: Finale

While I mentioned that there no real memorable quotes to mark down from the end of Middlemarch, the first few paragraphs of the finale I found quite striking. While there is nothing particularly spoiler-esque in the below passage, anyone who prefers to know absolutely nothing about a book before reading it should skip it.

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic—the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.

Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each other and the world.

I liked these passages because it shows how stories often just tell you a part of a life or moment. And Middlemarch is indeed a prime example of that. Although we spend 900+ pages with these characters as a reader as they go through some pivotal moments in their lives, it is still in fact just a moment in their lives, and we are not granted the privilege to follow the rest of their lives in the amount of detail we have just been allowed. A life is full of moments and its rare that every person nearby is privy to be there as you go through those moments.

I just thought that these passages really portrayed the spirit of this book.

>51 lilisin: Wonderful recap, Lilisin. I enjoyed Middlemarch when I revisited it last year. I remain saddened that Lydgate doesn't have a happier ending. I would have loved to see him and Dorothea together. Their temperaments and interests seem much better suited.

>52 labfs39:

I also liked the Lydgate character but it does makes sense though that he doesn't get the happy ending. One of the major themes of the book is pushing against people trying for modernity and progress, and Lydgate was a clear cut representation of that and had to be taken down. To be honest I don't know who I see Dorothea with; neither Will nor Lydgate seemed appropriate to me although Lydgate was certainly the better candidate. The Lydgate/Rosamond pairing truly proved to be a disaster but that was foreseeable.

>53 lilisin: I suppose. I was rooting for Lydgate though. I was disappointed that Dorothea chose Will in the end. He was too wishy-washy for me. Fred's character development was the most dramatic. Mr. Bulstrode turned out to be a more interesting character than I suspected.

>50 lilisin: I read Middlemarch in college, and I remember enjoying it. Unfortunately, it was what we were reading when my grandmother died, and now the book is forever tied to that in my mind. I still have my copy, though, and someday, I'd like to read it again.

5) Wilkie Collins : The Moonstone

Plot as written by wikipedia:
Rachel Verinder, a young English woman, inherits a large Indian diamond on her eighteenth birthday. It is a legacy from her uncle, a corrupt British army officer who served in India. The diamond is of great religious significance and extremely valuable, and three Hindu priests have dedicated their lives to recovering it. Rachel's eighteenth birthday is celebrated with a large party at which the guests include her cousin Franklin Blake. She wears the Moonstone on her dress that evening for all to see, including some Indian jugglers who have called at the house. Later that night the diamond is stolen from Rachel's bedroom, and a period of turmoil, unhappiness, misunderstandings and ill luck ensues. Told by a series of narratives from some of the main characters, the complex plot traces the subsequent efforts to explain the theft, identify the thief, trace the stone and recover it.

This was my second Wilkie Collins to read and what a very different vibe it is to The Woman in White. This book is so funny! And I was definitely fooled by the mystery! Granted a seasoned mystery reader could probably easily guess the solution but I generally don't try to solve books as I read them. In any case I really enjoyed reading this one but I do prefer White. White has more tension, suspense, a sense of real danger and dread. The Moonstone is much more humorous, follows a more obvious path and doesn't have the stakes that White has. I wonder which book to read next.

Quotes I enjoyed (page numbers from Project Gutenberg pdf version):
pg 84
Here I (Betteredge) should have protested again. But my daughter (Penelope) had got the hair-brush by this time, and the whole strength of her feelings had passed into that. If you are bald, you will understand how she sacrificed me. If you are not, skip this bit, and thank God you have got something in the way of a defence between your hair-brush and your head.

pg 201
People in high life have all the luxuries to themselves among others, the luxury of indulging their feelings. People in low life have no such privilege. Necessity, which spares our betters, has no pity on us. We learn to put our feelings back into ourselves, and to jog on with our duties as patiently as may be. I (Betteredge) don't complain of this -- only notice it.

pg 282
Once self-supported by conscience, once embarked on a career of manifest usefulness, the true Christian never yields. Neither public nor private influences produce the slightest effect on us, when we have once got our mission. Taxation may be the consequence of a mission; riots may be the consequence of a mission; wars may be the consequence of a mission: we go on with our work, irrespective of every human consideration which moves the world outside us. We are above reason; we are beyond ridicule; we see with nobody's eyes, we hear with nobody's ears, we feel with nobody's hearts, but our own. Glorious, glorious privilege! And how is it earned? Ah, my friends, you may spare yourselves the useless inquiry! We are the only people who can earn it -- or we are the only people who are always right.

MAJOR SPOILER
pg 383
And, on the unanswerable evidence of the paint-stain, I (Franklin) had discovered Myself as the Thief.

4) Jon Krakauer : Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town

Another Krakauer. He's just such a good page-turning writer and I like the variety of subjects he tackles. This one is exactly as the subtitle suggests, a look at the proliferation of rape in the college town of Missoula and the justice system that is supposed to tackle these rape cases.

The book doesn't really provide anything new, because unfortunately, in so many senses of the word, none of what is written about is in any way new information. Anyone who is against the abhorrent act of rape will be perfectly aware of not only the injustice of rape in itself, but also the injustice of how many rapes are prosecuted, or rather, not prosecuted. It's a crime where the victim is often declared more guilty than the perpetrator and as the book states, a major shift in perspective and empathy and basic education (ie. knowing that rape is very rarely done by unknown assailants in dark alleys and is rather more often done by people close to us) is required to make any progress in the area.

Krakauer chooses to focus on accounts of rape on women (he makes the reader aware that rape of men is indeed another part of rape that needs awareness) and particularly on rape cases on college campuses due to the interesting difference in prosecution in police departments versus college disciplinary committtees. He also decides to focus on rapes committed by members of the college football team to show the pedestal that athletes are put on by coaches, local communities, and college deans, which means forgiving them and ignoring their crimes to allow for a continuing winning season.

Again, nothing new but Krakauer is able to present an easily readable narrative that allows the reader to focus on the topic at hand. It's so easily readable that I would highly recommend pulling chapters of the book and have them taught to high school students during health class to help abate this horrible problem. Starting freshman year and showing all the sides of rape through all four years of (American) high school would help create safter campuses for all.

Because rape should not be a controversial subject. Consent should be understandable and young men AND WOMEN! need to stop playing games when it comes to sex.

I got back from a week long swimming/reading vacation in the Philippines about two weeks ago and it's time to report my reading while I wait for the repair guy at work.

7) Kayleen Schaefer : But You're Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood

This is a memoir plus that my sister-in-law wrote which looks at the concept of adulthood and how us 30-somethings are challenging the standard conventions expected of a 30 year old. It looks at the five stereotypical markers of 'adulthood': completing school, financial indepedence, leaving home, marriage, and having children. She uses her personal experience (which includes a lot about my brother) and the experience of her friends as they reflect on the idea of failing at adulthood and what it means to 'complete' adulthood.

While Kayleen could have beneftting from going beyond her own social circle, it was a pretty simple read that I think young 20 somethings (yes, 20, not 30) could benefit from reading so that the lead up to their 30s doesn't seem as intimidating, formidable, or perhaps even disappointing if they don't complete these milestones before they hit the age of 30.

Now I can discuss this book with her next I see her.

8) David Grann : Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

My favorite read of the trip, this was a gripping and page turning read looking at the numerous poisonings and murders happening within the Osage people at the peak of their wealth due to oil money. David Grann creates a readable and gripping linear timeline of the happenings as we discover the mystery behind all the deaths. A truly gripping look at white men's audacity at placing themselves at the center of the universe.

My only gripe is the trend I keep seeing where male nonfiction writers can't seem to stop themselves from putting themselves into their work. Grann writes a stellar book using all the evidence provided and the detectives' notes and proceedings to present us the Osage County murder timeline, and then spends the last third of the book trying to solve more unsolved cases to ... stroke his own ego?

It reminds of Ghosts of the Tsunami where Richard Lloyd Parry writes a lovely but harrowing book about an elementary school during the Japan Fukushima tsunami, then adds a whole chapter about his own feelings and supernatural beliefs.

There are definitely more examples of this phenomenon but does anyone else see what I mean?

9) Ranpo Edogawa : La bête aveugle (Moju: The Blind Beast)

My first Edogawa Ranpo, surprisingly enough. What an eerie read. The book is exactly Patrick Suskind's Perfume where if the murderer in Perfume uses the scent of a woman as the motivation to murder, Ranpo's blind murderer is driven by the touch of a woman.

Simple story, but still gripping and quite frightening at times. It would have been truly frightening at the time it came out. I'll definitely seek out more Ranpo.

10) J.-M. Machado de Assis : L'Aliéniste

This book unfortunately I was most looking forward to and ended up being the most disappointed by. I struggled to finish this book and it's only 97 pages long AND it starts on page 25 due to the long introduction! The plot is so good though!

Bacamarte receives permission to open a mental asylum to aid in his research of the mental condition. Initially he takes only obviously mentally ill patients in but little by little he starts to see insanity in everyone and eventually the majority of the town of Itagaui is boarded. The local barber starts a revolution to upheave Bacamarte which succeeds but in the meantime Bacamarte has flipped his views. He realizes that to be mentally ill is the actual real majority of the human condition and to be normal is actually abnormal so instead he starts to bring in the mentally well into his clinic to bring out their insanity. Once he 'cures' these mentally well people, he discovers himself to the be the only single mentally well person which in itself means he's mentally unwell so he ends up locking himself up as his one and unique patient.

Fascinating! And yet I dragged through every page and word. Perhaps if the book had been fleshed out into a meatier book I could have enjoyed it? Or maybe it wasn't the right book for a beach read? Or maybe I was tired of reading by that point and needed something lighter? I wish I knew! I'm still so surprised at having struggled with this read!

11) Victor Hugo : Lucrèce Borgia

The final book I read was a play by Victor Hugo.
It is a story about revenge, incest, betrayal, family, and power, as our young orphan protagonist is about to discover his ties to the royal house. There is nothing surprising about the plot once you are introduced to the all the characters; it's really a straightforward plot. But it's easy reading rhythm written in verse leads still for a dramatic play with a dramatic finish. Gripping and fun till the end.

But I must say I'm surprised Victor Hugo wrote this. It's so... simple compared to his long fiction works! If his name hadn't been on the title page I would never have guessed this was him!

Overally though, a fun, fast-paced, easy to predict, easy to read drama, that continues my look at French plays.

>58 lilisin: I felt exactly the same way about Killers of the Flower Moon. I loved the book, and then I got to the end where he tries to solve a crime himself. What? Perhaps its the difference between a book written by a historian and a book by a journalist?

The annual summer book sale at the biggest foreign books store in Tokyo is going on right now where books are at 60% off. This is a major event for me as often I can get books cheaper than I would than if I bought them in the US or France. This year, while I skipped the French sale as I already have a significant French reading TBR pile, I scored a major haul in the English section.

Margaret Mitchell : Gone with the Wind
Ngugi wa Thiong'o : Petals of Blood
H. Rider Haggard : King Solomon's Mines
D. H. Lawrence : The Rainbow
Alessandro Manzoni : The Betrothed
Leo Tolstoy : Resurrection
Sei Shonagon : The Pillow Book
Aldous Huxley : Brave New World
Pierre Boulle : The Bridge on the River Kwai
Yukio Mishima : Thirst for Love
Osamu Dazai : The Setting Sun
Edogawa Rampo : Beast in the Shadows
Junichiro Tanizaki : Quicksand
Sayaka Murata : Life Ceremony: Stories
Mieko Kawakami : All the Lovers in the Night

As you can see I stocked up on some classics. The books on sale are of course books that have suffered a little bit of damage but as Penguin classics always almost immediately get those white scuff marks upon reading, that was not a factor I worried about here. The only really damaged book in my haul is Gone in the Wind with its folded back cover but at the end of the day, time is money, and time not spent trying to make more money to buy a pristine edition is time actually spent reading the book in question. I was happy to pick up classics I'm aware of as it's good to have some staples, but was also happy to get some books I was less familiar with. Also extremely happy with my score of The Pillow Book (especially as someone had to put it back in the box for me to find it as it wasn't there on first pass-through) as I realize I've never read the full book, only exerpts.

Being a Tokyo book store of course there were plenty of Japanese writers available for purchase. I'm guessing these were on sale due to either overstock or perhaps newer editions are coming out soon as none of these had any discernible damage. The Dazai I bought for two reasons: 1) I've read it before but I've forgotten the story entirely, and 2) my copy was damaged by a spilled drink and had to be thrown away. So I've now replaced the damaged French edition with the English translation.

I've always wanted to read (and watch) the River Kwai book and was happy to find it, although I was surprised to find out it is originally a French book. Oh well, I'll read it in English. I don't think there were will be too much loss in translation as it's such a contemporary read.

In the end I got these 15 books for the grand total of 17000 yen which would be the equivalent to 170 US dollars for me, but to take advantage of the extreme exchange rate at the moment I paid with my American card and got the whole pile for just 107 dollars! And, when you buy more than 8000 yen in books at the store they deliver the books to your home for free so I didn't have to lug all these books home either. A huge bonus as I was already carrying my violin on my shoulder!

Anyway, excited with these purchases!

>60 lilisin: Wonderful haul, Lilisin! I was in NYC this past weekend, and did a little book shopping myself. First at the Tenement Museum bookshop, which has a wonderful selection of books related to lower Manhattan and race relations in the US. Then I went to BookOff, which as you probably know, started as a Japanese company. This store had a wonderful selection. As I had limited time, I only browsed the history and historical fiction sections, but came away with several books I had been wanting. Finally I went to Kinokuniya to buy a gift for my daughter who loves Studio Ghibli.

>60 lilisin: What a solid haul of books! I'm thinking of how excited I would have been to have found a sale like this while living in Germany -- there was one charity booksale of English books in an inconvenient suburb that I discovered my final year in Germany and it was such fun to root through the books.

>61 labfs39:

Oo, that also sounds like a wonderful time book shopping! BookOff is my kyrptonite and I'm forbidden to go in this year less I buy more manga or books in Japanese. Fortunately I've been very good about this and the few times I've gone it has been to shop for/with a friend only and I avoided purchasing anything for myself.

PS. I've been thinking a lot about your historian vs. journalist comment. It's changed my perspective on quite a few things and it's something I will be actively looking out for in future reads.

>62 RidgewayGirl:

I hate when you find something good only at the end of your stay somewhere! Ugh!

I go to this booksale every year but last year I was only able to go towards the end so there were only Dan Koontz style books left so I purchased nothing. This time around I went this first weekend (out of two) and there was so much selection. It was also a ravenous crowd. A few of us loaded up our baskets with any title that seemed intriguing then went off into a corner to actually sit and debate our selections. I ended up putting back Vanity Fair as a result and some other titles as I already had such a good pile. Getting War and Peace was so tempting though!

I was not expecting to be having such a crazy summer book shopping spree. I went back to France for two and a half weeks for summer vacation and I was actually not going to buy books for so many reasons: had only read 11 books so far this year, haven't been reading in French, just bought a bunch of English books, am already stocked up on Zola and Jules Verne books. I really thought there was nothing left for me to buy! Then in Paris I went into Gilbert Joseph and that store is the most dangerous store ever. It has so many floors of deliciousness, excellently organized and laid out with so many tables giving a clear view of the selection instead of having to tilt your head sideways to read titles on a shelf. So I ended up with way more than I expected.

Jung Chang : Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
- I've been planning to buy this for about a decade now but always waited for a nice edition and used copy; this isn't my favorite edition but for like new and only 7 euro (cheaper than buying used in the US) I thought now is finally my moment

James Baldwin : The Fire Next Time
- this nonfiction looks full of passion and anger and is right up my alley in my current American nonfiction interests

Sylvia Plath : The Bell Jar
- my mom was reading this (and not enjoying herself) so passed it on to me; I've never had a desire to read this book but now that I actually own it it finally has a higher chance of being read

Joaquim Maria Machado De Assis : Quincas Borba: A Novel
- bought this book for my mom last year with the caveat that I get it when she's done and she really liked it so it's my turn to read it now

Paulo Coelho : The Alchemist
- I was not in the mood for reading French (picked up 5 books while there and put them all down after 10 pages) but needed a read for the train ride to Paris and this was lying about; my mom has no idea where it came from and she hasn't read it either but it was short enough to make it perfect for the train (btw, I kinda hated this book)

Jean Racine : Andromaque
Molière : Le Malade imaginaire
Victor Hugo : Ruy Blas
Victor Hugo : Hernani
Molière : Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
Beaumarchais : Mariage de Figaro
- picked up lots of plays to continue my foray into French theatre which I've been enjoying immensely

Amélie Nothomb : Le Livre des soeurs
- I try to read one Nothomb per year, which is her writing pace but I've fallen behind

Pierre Boulle : La planète des singes
- just bought The Bridge on the River Kwai in my English haul not realizing the author was French; lo and behold I stumble on him again and lo and behold he wrote this famous science fiction work; instant pickup!

Yasmina Khadra : Dieu n'habite pas La Havane
Laila Ibrahim : Le Crocus jaune
Yann Bécu : Les Bras de Morphée
- because I bought so many plays from the same publisher, I was allowed to choose three books for free as promotion; I immediately removed the originally-in-English books and some romancy books I wasn't interested in and ended up with these three although the Crocus book turns out to be a translation from English; none of these books particularly interest me as I definitely wouldn't have bought them but they might be good beach reads someday; I actually was able to select two more books for promotion but the choices were so bad I instead opted for the free tote bag

Alexandre Dumas : Dame de Monsoreau
Alexandre Dumas : Reine Margot
Alexandre Dumas : Les Quarante-Cinq
- I've chosen my next French saga; I've actually read Reine Margot before in 2012 but I remember nothing and I have yet to read the rest of the Valois romance series

Annette Wieviorka : Mes années chinoises
- interesting looking memoir about a woman regretting her choice to live in China when she thought Communism was the better government

Cédric Gras : Alpinistes de Staline
- I really liked his Alpinistes de Mao and thought I'd read his debut book

Françoise Sagan : Dans un mois, dans un an
- another spur of the moment pick up as it was lying around the house and I've never read Sagan before despite her fame and acclaim; I thought this book was just ok and left it behind at the house in France

Paulo Coelho : The Alchemist
- I was not in the mood for reading French (picked up 5 books while there and put them all down after 10 pages) but needed a read for the train ride to Paris and this was lying about; ...... (btw, I kinda hated this book)

At the start of this, my reaction was "don't buy that", so I was laughing when I got to the end of the paragraph.

>64 lilisin: I read Wild Swans this year and was impressed at how well she melded memoir and history. Fascinating. I wasn't sure from your post whether you had already read it and wanted to own a copy.

Great haul!

>65 ELiz_M:
Fortunately I didn't waste my money on it but I'm certainly not happy to have read it! lol

>66 labfs39:
I have not read it actually! I've read all of Jung Chang's other books first and own her latest book but stlll haven't read her most famous work Wild Swans. A good haul, I agree. But quite the megahaul considering my current reading pace. At least plays are sweet and short.

I finished the fourth book in the recommended reading order for Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle. I'm going to need to pick up the pace in reading this series. To be honest with this book, I wasn't enamored with it at first and found myself a little lost in all the stocks financial lingo. There are also many more characters than usual so it took a while to settle on all the different side stories going on. But I had a mood change and the second half was as enjoyable as I usually find from Zola. Sometimes we just need to step away from a book and come back to it once we've been refreshed.

*FULL SPOILERS BELOW COPY PASTED FROM WIKIPEDIA*
15) Emile Zola : L'argent

The novel takes place in 1864–1869, beginning a few months after the death of Saccard's second wife Renée (see La curée). Saccard is bankrupt and an outcast among the Bourse financiers. Searching for a way to reestablish himself, Saccard is struck by plans developed by his upstairs neighbor, the engineer Georges Hamelin, who dreams of restoring Christianity to the Middle East through great public works: rail lines linking important cities, improved roads and transportation, renovated eastern Mediterranean ports, and fleets of modern ships to move goods around the world.

Saccard decides to institute a financial establishment to fund these projects. He is motivated primarily by the potential to make incredible amounts of money and reestablish himself on the Bourse. In addition, Saccard has an intense rivalry with his brother Eugène Rougon, a powerful Cabinet minister who refuses to help him after his bankruptcy and who is promoting a more liberal, less Catholic agenda for the Empire. Furthermore, Saccard, an intense anti-Semite, sees the enterprise as a strike against the Jewish bankers who dominate the Bourse. From the beginning, Saccard's Banque Universelle stands on shaky ground. In order to manipulate the price of the stock, Saccard and his confreres on the syndicate he has set up to jumpstart the enterprise buy their own stock and hide the proceeds of this illegal practice in a dummy account fronted by a straw man.

While Hamelin travels to Constantinople to lay the groundwork for their enterprise, the Banque Universelle goes from strength to strength. Stock prices soar, going from 500 francs a share to more than 3,000 francs in three years. Furthermore, Saccard buys several newspapers which serve to maintain the illusion of legitimacy, promote the Banque, excite the public, and attack Rougon.

The novel follows the fortunes of about 20 characters, cutting across all social strata, showing the effects of stock market speculation on rich and poor. The financial events of the novel are played against Saccard's personal life. Hamelin lives with his sister Caroline, who, against her better judgment, invests in the Banque Universelle and later becomes Saccard's mistress. Caroline learns that Saccard fathered a son, Victor, during his first days in Paris. She rescues Victor from his life of abject poverty, placing him in a charitable institution. But Victor is completely unredeemable, given over to greed, laziness, and thievery. After he rapes one of the women at the institution, he disappears into the streets, never to be seen again.

Eventually, the Banque Universelle cannot sustain itself. Saccard's principal rival on the Bourse, the Jewish financier Gundermann, learns about Saccard's financial trickery and attacks, loosing stock upon the market, devaluing its price, and forcing Saccard to buy millions of shares to keep the price up. At the final collapse, the Banque holds one-fourth of its own shares worth 200 million francs. The fall of the Banque is felt across the entire financial world. Indeed, all of France feels the force of its collapse. The effects on the characters of L'argent are disastrous, including complete ruin, suicide, and exile, though some of Saccard's syndicate members escape and Gundermann experiences a windfall. Saccard and Hamelin are sentenced to five years in prison. Through the intervention of Saccard's brother Eugène Rougon, who doesn't want a brother in jail, their sentences are commuted and they are forced to leave France. Saccard goes to Belgium, and the novel ends with Caroline preparing to follow her brother to Rome.

---

I'm curious to see if Saccard or his bastard son Victor show up again in future books.

16) Kanji Hanawa : Backlight

This book was given to me by wanderingstar upon a book swap and she seemed a bit indifferent to it. And at just 50 pages there isn't really much to say about the story itself. The blurb is as follows:

This thought-provoking and intriguing tale, by the Akutagawa Prize-nominated master short story writer Kanji Hanawa, revolves around the extraordinary real story of the seven-year-old boy who went missing in the bear-inhabited forests of northern Japan for six whole days in 2016, after his parents had apparently abandoned him as a punishment.

In Backlight, translated by Richard Nathan, a child is left alone at the side of a road in the mountains of Hokkaido in northern Japan by his parents. When they return moments later, the boy is gone. Ishida, a Professor of Psychology is enlisted as part of the search team.

As days pass, the search goes on and the number of people involved reaches more than a thousand. Ishida and his colleagues assess, analyse and discuss taking them on their own journey from theories concerning the whereabouts of the child, to the very heart of the Japanese psyche.

A complex and challenging look at an unfolding emergency, a culture and a country.

I would almost say the blurb is longer than the short story itself. Now, Alex Pearl, author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds, writes beautifully what I wish I could write:

‘The universal and timeless theme of this thought-provoking and intriguing story is one of identity and self-worth. It cleverly touches on the realms of family dynamics, child psychology and even the influence of legends and fairytales on the collective consciousness – whether inside or outside Japan. And as the story closes we come to fully understand our protagonist’s initial cynicism and reluctance to take part in the search for the missing boy in the first place, as this perfectly structured tale comes full circle.’

Now, the reason I wrote "I wish" is because why I also read all of the same things that Alex Pearl did, I didn't have the same feeling of emotion towards the story. It was almost too straightforward, had too much of a 'let's throw in some meaning into this incident and try to make connections to Japanese values because we can' type of vibe to it. So in the end I read the story with quite a straight face, no movement or indication of any sort of empathy towards the situation. I was... indifferent.

However, I think the idea of the short story, or rather, the idea of this new press to be interesting and worth following. It's desire to 'bring the works of some of Japan’s finest authors to a wider international public, while at the same time building their international reputations'. Where 'each of the books is a first edition written specifically for the series and is being published in English first.'
https://www.redcircleauthors.com/

13) Francoise Sagan : Dans un moi, dans un an (Those without Shadows)

My first foray into Sagan and I've had a change in feeling towards the book since I read it a month ago in that the book is sitting much better with me than when I read it. Because I am so terrible at blurbs here is a copy and paste from the English translation.

The story is set in the French countryside, where a wealthy couple, Philippe and Paule, live a seemingly perfect life. However, their marriage is not as happy as it appears, and they both have secrets they keep from each other.Their lives are disrupted when a young and charming couple, Simon and Laura, arrive in town and become their neighbors. Philippe becomes infatuated with Laura, while Paule is drawn to Simon. As their relationships become more complicated, secrets are revealed, and the characters are forced to confront their true desires and emotions.

When I read it, considering the time period in which it was written, I got serious Great Gatsby vibes in terms of simplicity in story and feeling, even if the plots don't match at all. In fact, the Great Gatsby vibes might be totally off -- considering I read the book 20 years ago -- but that at least, is what I was feeling.

This also means that I felt much annoyance at the plot. I felt like Sagan's expert writing was being wasted on men and women having affairs with each other behind their spouses's backs. But she writes it so well and I now feel the book to be greater than when I read it because I'm left now with just the feeling of her writing craft and her expertise at relating so many emotions. I also thought the balance in which she handled all the various characters was just spot on. There was no extraneous link at any point of this short 184 page story.

I also think the French title is just so on point, especially as Sagan includes it so beautifully into the novel. The French title translates to "In a month, In a year" and I wish the English translation hadn't changed the title to something so generic and without any meaning.

---
Quotes:
pg. 20
Dans un mois, dans un an, comment souffrirons-nous.

pg. 142
« Vous le saurez, monsieur. Pour une femme, l'heure c'est souvent l'heure. Après l'heure c'est quelquefois encore l'heure. Mais avant l'heure, ce n'est jamais l'heure. »

pg. 184
« Un jour vous ne l'aimerez plus, dit-il doucement et un jour je ne vous aimerai sans doute plus non plus. Et nous serons à nouveau seuls et ce sera pareil. Et il y aura une autre année de passée...
— Je le sais », dit-elle.

>69 lilisin: Someday, when I have finished my current reading project about China, I want to delve more into Japan as well. I am bookmarking Red Circle Authors for that day.

>70 lilisin: I'm always stymied, and sometimes confused, when publishers in different countries give works different titles. To me it is as bad as renaming foreign geography. Why not respect the original author and publisher's decision? I know, the publisher wants to make a book sell, but still...

P.S. I am thinking of reading the first Zola book in September as part of the group read. I bought the Oxford edition some time ago at SassyLassy's prompting, but then got distracted by other things.

>71 labfs39:

I can see changing a title when the translation struggles to convey the same meaning as the original or if it's a title with less of a one-to-one translation possible. But this example was incredibly unecessary and lost a lot of the poetic nature of the original title. It just doesn't make any sense and again, so generic!

>72 labfs39:

I'm actually looking forward to what you all with Oxford editions will say about these books. My editions are from the 60s and they don't even have blurbs let alone introductions, supplemental essays, and footnotes! I just take the story as is and accept my lack of knowledge in certain areas. Although at times I do read the Wikipedia plot before reading the book just to get a picture of the book before I start. (I don't mind spoilers in Zola books as Zola isn't exactly throwing plot twists in.)

I have only read Germinal, which I loved, and Nana, both in old editions, so I'll be curious too.

17) Jules Verne : Deux ans de vacances (Two Year's Vacation)

My 14th Verne. Another book, like the Zola, where I wasn't feeling the book in the first half and then once I took a step back from it and returned, it suddently became enjoyable again. This is the story of 15 young boys, no older than 14, who are marooned after a storm detaches their ship from port and breaks against the coast of an unmanned island. They must learn to survive on this island as their boat is unrepairable and no ship seems to be passing by. Will they finally make it off the island and back to their families?

This is Verne's answer to Robinson Crusoe, whom he references a lot in the book. (This year I also read another book that often mentioned Treasure Island: Moonstone. Love to see authors lauding other authors.) As typical of Verne we get amazing descriptions of the island and the boys activities for survival: hunting, foraging, scouting, mapping, creating order out of a difficult situation. But the story remains fun and unbogged down by the descriptions and he puts much character into the older boys of the group.

All in all, another succesful Verne.

6) Pingru Rao : Our Story: A Memoir of Love and Life in China

A memoir written and illustrated by Pingru about his relationship with his wife during Communist China, this book is quite stunning physically. It is truly just a beautiful bindup.

Illustration examples here and excellent wrapup

And it's a simple story. It is simply the story about how he came to meet his wife, the simple and common way they came to be together, the daily moments they shared, and the years they spent apart, writing letters back and forth. We get to see Pingru come back from the war, we see them raise their children, and we see the love and support they have for each other until her death.

While Mao's China roars in the background, Pingru makes no focus on it other than his mention of his role in the war, and he makes no political statement of any sort. I think Pingru's own words best describe what you'll find in his memoir:

For ordinary people like us, life is made up of numbers of small details that stay with us for no particular reason and, with the passing of time, turn into treasured memories.
pg. 174

So that is what this memoir is. Just moments. Mundane moments that accumulate and create a life, a life he shared with his wife in a turbulent time that they pulled through and managed together.

>76 lilisin: Oh wow, this sounds amazing! Wishlisting.

>76 lilisin: Beautiful! A must read for my China theme.

Since I've begun a traditional French plays journey, I wanted to create a TBR guide to help me on my journey. I have only just started to dip my toes so there is much to read and go through.

Read:
Victor Hugo : Lucrèce Borgia
Pierre Corneille : Le Cid
Molière : Dom Juan
Molière : Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
Edmond Rostand : Cyrano de Bergerac

TBR:
Jean Racine : Andromaque
Victor Hugo : Ruy Blas
Victor Hugo : Hernani
Molière : Le Malade imaginaire
Beaumarchais : Mariage de Figaro

I truly have been making no effort whatsoever to keep up with writing reviews.

28) Molière : Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman)
My second Moliere, and my fifth French play, as I continue on this new journey into French theatre. To copy from Wikipedia:

Le bourgeois is a five-act comédie-ballet, written in prose, intermingled with music, dance and singing. It satirizes attempts at social climbing and the bourgeois personality, poking fun both at the vulgar, pretentious middle-class and the vain, snobbish aristocracy. The title is meant as an oxymoron: in Molière's France, a "gentleman" was by definition nobly born, and thus there could be no such thing as a bourgeois gentleman.

The play takes place at Mr. Jourdain's house in Paris. Jourdain is a middle-aged "bourgeois" whose father grew rich as a cloth merchant. The foolish Jourdain now has one aim in life, which is to rise above this middle-class background and be accepted as an aristocrat. To this end, he orders splendid new clothes and is very happy when the tailor's boy mockingly addresses him as "my Lord". He applies himself to learning the gentlemanly arts of fencing, dancing, music and philosophy, despite his age; in doing so he continually manages to make a fool of himself, to the disgust of his hired teachers.

We follow other characters: Dorante, who promises Jourdain to help him seduce Dorimene, whom he is secretly woeing himself; his wife, Madame Jourdain, who suspects Jourdain is up to something unseemly and only wishes him to confirm his daughter's engagement.

Not a strong or particularly memorable play but had moments of humor worth reading and that made the read at least enjoyable.

29) 今村 夏子 : あひる (The Duck)

An emergency purchase as I needing a book for the train after leaving my current read at home. This is the author of The Woman in the Purple Skirt, Imamura Natsuko, and while I initially intended on buying the original Japanese of the new English translation This is Amiko, Do you copy?, The Duck stood out to me more as a good train read due to how easy it looked to read. (With its huge font and simple plots, this was extremely ease to get through.)

This is actually a collection of three short stories, the last two very much connected but the one, the title story, could arguably be in the same 'universe'.

a) あひる (The Duck)
b) おばあちゃんの家 (Grandma's house)
c) 森の兄妹 (The Siblings in the Forest)

All the stories shared Imamura's now signature writing where she transforms a real world situation into an unsettling environment. The Duck is narrated by our protagonist, a young girl studying for her med school exams, who looks down through her window at the strange situation her parents seems to have gotten themselves into. You see, her father has brought home a duck, adopted from a former colleague, and the neighborhood kids have all fallen in love with and visit it every day. But when the duck gets sick, the father brings the duck to the vet and when he comes home, the duck seems very different. When the duck gets sick again, once again, the father comes home and once again, the duck seems different. What are the parents truly hiding? What is turly replaceable? The more you think about this strange story, the more horrified you get.

With the second story, Imamura once again finds a way to unsettle her reader with what seemed like just a typical story about a failing grandmother's health. But when we revisit the same grandmother but from a different point of view in the third story we realize that something is truly off and our perspective gets abruptly altered.

Imamura truly takes a strange turn of events with her works and I'm quite curious as to how her brain hurts. While when I first finished the stories, I was confused as to what to think, the more I look back at it all, the more I feel manipulated by Imamura. I can't help but feel helpless for falling into her trap.

Three books in the thriller-esque genre so let's review these together.

18) 秋吉理香子 : 暗黒女子 (The Dark Maidens)

This is a book if the girls from the movie Mean Girls had killed Regina George, minus the comedy.

It's a book that definitely belongs in the Dark Academia trope that is quite popular in the English language young adult sector. Basically the plot revolves around a group of girls who are part of an exclusive gothic-feeling book club at their high school. We open the book to the girls having gathered for their weekly meeting and this week's topic is Who killed the Club President? Each girl must read their version of what happened and who they think killed the president, and as each girl shares her story and reveals a new motive -- and new suspect -- we realize something strange is afoot.

I read this book because I had really enjoyed the author's book 聖母 (Holy Mother; which I would say is worth translating), but this book was too young adult for me and while I read till the end, I wasn't as caught up with the plot as I had been with 聖母. The author again pulls out an exciting twist but the journey there wasn't as fun.

22) 乙一 : 死にぞこないの青 (Death-Defying Blue)

Every once in a while I like to pull out a book by Otsuichi to guarantee thrilling fun. Plus he's super easy to read and acts as a great standard to gauge my reading progress over the years. In this one, Otsuichi takes us away from his typical horror fare, and pushes us closer to an emotional thriller. It's a simple plot, a young boy Masao is getting bullied at school by his teacher and there is no one to support him as, and being a bit of an outcast at the getgo, he is struggling to understand what is going on. He spents most of the book trying to convince himself he deserves the behavior, that he has indeed something wrong, that his behavior isn't normal. Until Ao shows up; a young boy created from his trauma who appears to him, in a straightjacket and mouth sealed closed, when he is at his most anxious.

As our young Masao grapples with the situation and decides to take action, Otsuichi gives us a look at the extremism behind Japan's social expectations, at all ages. While I picked up this book to get some horror-esque action, I ended up with a bleak look into the Japanese school systems and the rampant bullying.

And the end was unexpected but quite remarkable. So, a different fare from Otsuichi but one I actually quite ended up enjoying.

23) 志駕 晃 : スマホを落としただけなのに (All I did was drop my cellphone)

Wanted to keep a hold on the momentum I had built up reading Japanese, I decided to stay in the thriller genre to make sure I kept turning those Japanese pages, and I must say that I had a lot of fun with this one.

Asami calls her boyfriend's phone to find out that someone else has picked it up. She sets a time and place to pick up the cell phone and upon a retrieval she sighs in relief at the nice man who helped her retrieve her boyfriend's phone. However, it turns out that the 'nice man' has become infatuated with Asami, and in his desire for her, he decides to rip her and her boyfriend apart.

The book is told by flipping through three timelines: Asami's, the 'nice man's, and the two detectives who have just found several bodies in the forest of women who match Asami's description. It's a race against time as the nice man hacks through all of Asami and her boyfriend's socials to manipulate every aspect of their life.

Again, this was fun. The pace was perfect, the traps being set were just as fun to watch as it was fun to anticipate Asami's reaction to the traps. There was a real sense of danger the entire time and it'll make you change all your passwords when you're done reading.

As the book features Facebook heavily, this book will become quickly dated, and the ending with the villain was a bit too 'Japanese tv melodrama' for me, I really had fun. This book has turned into about a four or five book series (that has just ended) but I'm satisfied with having read just the one. It stands very well on its own.

I have to note that although the book will become dated quickly due to the technology, the book gives a great look at dating/marriage society and expectations in Japan. There were quite a few scenes with women talking about their expectations in their relationships and it was a significant insight that confirmed many of my suspicions. So definitely interesting.

Really enjoyed catching up here. Nice to see some of my favourite authors and books, but also good to see so many other books of interest. You have me wanting to go back to my Dumas books again.

25) Robert Louis Stevenson : Kidnapped
27) Robert Louis Stevenson : Catriona

I read Kidnapped for the Montly Authors Group read as they were focusing on Robert Louis Stevenson and I figured that'd be perfect for my next PDF read. Then I read Catriona as it turns out that book immediately continues the story from Kidnapped.

My thoughts on these two books is that Kidnapped should have been prolonged to include the trial, and that all the romance part of Catriona should have just been cut entirely. I only meagerly enjoyed Kidnapped and then trudged through Catriona, completely losing track of the plot several times. I could have sworn Ms. Grant and Catriona were the same character, and often confused James Drummond and James Stewart. Lo and behold my surprise when James was back from the dead after having just been hung!

I just really couldn't get into these books. While I obviously preferred Kidnapped of the two, it just didn't have the sense of danger that Treasure Island had, which I thoroughly enjoyed last year. It alwas felt like something was missing, and despite reading up on the history of the time, none of it felt significant. Alas.

>80 lilisin: Le bourgeois gentilhomme would probably be a great illustration for Bourdieu’s argument in La distinction, which I’m supposed to be reading (well, I read the introduction anyway).

I saw an excellent movie adaptation of the play with Michel Galabru, back in… gasp, was it 1982?