dchaikin part 5 - stepping recklessly into time

I have been completely Booker obsessed since the longlist annoucement on July 30. But now eye is wandering more, back to my plans, and to other things too. The thread name comes from The White Book by Han Kang, a book I didn't know existed until after she won the Nobel last week, and now have read - to a degree.

The full quote:

"Each moment is a leap forward from the brink of an invisible cliff, where time's keen edges are constantly renewed. We lift our foot from the solid ground of all our life lived thus far and take that perilous step out into the empty air. Not because we can claim any particular courage, but because there is no other way. Now, in this moment, I feel that vertiginous thrill course through me. As I step recklessly into time I have not yet lived, into this book I have not yet written."

Currently Reading


Currently Listening to

My themes through the years

2012 - old testament
2013 - old testament and Toni Morrison
2014 - old testament
2015 - old testament, Toni Morrison & Cormac McCarthy
2016 - Homer, Greek mythology, Greek drama, & Thomas Pynchon
2017 - Virgil, Ovid & Thomas Pynchon
2018 - Apocrypha, New Testament & Gabriel García Márquez
2019 - Rome to the Renaissance & James Baldwin & Willa Cather and Shakespeare
2020 – Dante, Nabokov, Willa Cather, Shakespeare
2021 - Petrarch, Vladimir Nabokov, Willa Cather, Shakespeare, the Booker longlists - added Edith Wharton
2022 – Boccaccio, Robert Musil, Wharton, Shakespeare, Anniversaries, the Booker longlists
2023 – Chaucer, Richard Wright, Wharton, Booker longlists, Naturalisty
2024 – Chaucer and medieval stuff, Faulkner, Wharton, Booker longlists

A quilt of books read I've read this year

books listened to this year

Read in 2024

Part 1 books - links go to the review on my part 1 thread

1. **** Soldiers' Pay by William Faulkner (1926) (read Jan 1-7, theme: Faulkner)
2. *** Taft by Ann Patchett, read by J. D. Jackson (listened Dec 18 – Jan 10, theme: random audio)
3. **** How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (read Jan 7-14, theme: Booker 2023)
4. **** The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis, read by Sarah Mollo-Christensen (listened Jan 18-22, theme: random audio)
5. **** Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante (read Jan 14-28, theme: TBR)
6. **** Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan, translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim, read by Cindy Kay (listened Jan 17 – Feb 1, theme: random audio)
7. ***½ Mosquitoes by William Faulkner (read Jan 21 – Feb 7, theme: Faulkner)

Part 2 books - links go to the review on my part 2 thread

8. **** The Mother’s Recompense by Edith Wharton (read Feb 7-19, theme: Wharton)
9. **** Pearl by Siân Hughes (read Feb 14-22, theme: Booker 2023)
10. **** Hemingway and Faulkner in Their Time edited by Earl Rovit and Arthur Waldhorn (read Feb 18-25, theme: Faulkner)
11. ***** White Teeth by Zadie Smith, read by Lenny Henry, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ray Panthaki & Arya Sagar (listened Feb 1-26, theme: random audio)
12. ***½ Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time by Penelope Lively (read Feb 23-29; theme: TBR)
13. **** The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge (read Mar 9, theme: Wharton)
14. **** Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner (read Mar 1-15, theme: Faulkner)
15. ****½ How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair, read by the author (listened Feb 26 – Mar 21, theme: random audio)
16. ***½ A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare (read Mar 23-26, theme: Booker 2024)
17. **** The Details by Ia Genberg (read Mar 29-30, theme: Booker 2024)
18. **** Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton (read Mar 16 – Apr 3, theme: Wharton)
19. **** Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, read by Lisa Flanagan (listened Mar 21 – Apr 5, theme: Booker 2024)
20. ***** Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (read Mar 30 – Apr 6, theme: Booker 2023)
21. ***½ The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov (read Apr 7-13, theme: Booker 2024)
22. ***½ A Brief History of Japan: Samurai, Shogun and Zen: The Extraordinary Story of the Land of the Rising Sun by Jonathan Clements, read by Julian Elfer (listened Apr 7-16, theme: random audio)
23. **** Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior (read Apr 13-19, theme: Booker 2024)

Part 3 books - links go to the review on my part 3 thread

24. ***** The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (read Dec 30, 2023 – Apr 27, 2024, theme: Chaucer)
25. ***** The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (read Apr 20-29, theme: Faulkner)
26. ***½ Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo, read by Carlotta Brentan (listened Apr 24-30, theme: Booker 2024)
27. ***** Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (read Apr 29 – May 3, theme: Booker 2023)
28. **** Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener (read May 5-8, theme: Booker 2024)
29. *** The Children by Edith Wharton (read Apr 21 – May 14, theme: Wharton)
30. ****½ A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing by Hilary Mantel, narrated by a cast (listened Apr 16 - May 15, Theme: random audio)
31. **** Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance by Heldris de Cornuälle, translated by Sarah Roche-Mahdi (read May 1-17, theme: Chaucer)
32. **** Asphodel by H.D. (read May 3-23, theme: TBR)
33. ****¼ The Years by Annie Ernaux (read May 17-25, theme: TBR)
34. ***** As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (read May 25-27, theme: Faulkner)
35. *** Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie (read May 27-31, theme: none)
36. ***** The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald, preface by Hermione Lee, Introduction by Candia McWilliam (read Jun 1-5, theme: Booker)
37. *** Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange (read Jun 5-14, theme: none)
38. **** Pearl : A New Verse Translation by Marie Borroff (read Jun 2-15, theme: Chaucer)
39. **** Eric by Terry Pratchett (read Jun 14-16, theme: TBR)
40. **** Sanctuary by William Faulkner (read Jun 16-23, theme: Faulkner)
41. ***½ Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (read Jun 24-29, theme: none)
42. **** Not a River by Selva Almada (read Jun 29-30, theme: Booker 2024)

Part 4 books - links go to the review on my part 4 thread

43. **** Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation by Simon Armitage (read Jun 16 – Jul 3, theme: Chaucer)
44. **** Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness by Kathryn Schulz (read Jul 4-19)
45. *** The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, narrated by Allen Lewis Rickman & Gilli Messer (listened May 16 – Jul 26)
46. **½ Above Ground by Clint Smith (read Jul 19-28, theme: TRB)
47. ***** Possession by A. S. Byatt (read Jun 30 – Jul 31, theme: TBR)
48. *** The Control of Nature by John McPhee (read May 16, 2023 – Aug 4, 2024, theme: TBR)
49. **** Light in August by William Faulkner (read Jul 20 – Aug 8)
50. ***½ The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien, read by Juliet Stevenson (listened Jul 31 – Aug 12, theme: random audio)
51. **** This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud (read Aug 3-17, theme: Booker 2024)
52. **** Ahead of All Parting : The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell (read Aug 6, 2023 – Aug 21, 2024, theme: poetry)
53. **** Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, read by Elijah Wood (listened Aug 12-22, Theme: Booker 2024)
54. **** My Friends by Hisham Matar (read Aug 17-24, theme: Booker 2024)
55. **** Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton (read Aug 5-28, theme: Wharton)
56. ***½ Enlightenment by Sarah Perry (read Aug 25-31, theme: Booker 2024)
57. *NR* The Blue Swallows by Howard Nemerov (read Aug 22 – Sep 3, theme: poetry)
58. ****½ Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (read Aug 31 – Sep 4, theme: Booker 2024)
59. ***½ Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (read Sep 4-10, theme: Booker 2024)
60. ***½ The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (read Sep 11-14, theme: Booker 2024)
61. ***** James by Percival Everett (read Sep 14-18, theme: Booker 2024)
62. ***** Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench & Brendan O'Hea, read by the authors and Barbara Flynn (listened Aug 23 – Sep 19, theme: random audio)
63. ****½ A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold (read Sep 5-21, theme: TBR)
64. **** Orbital by Samantha Harvey (read Sep 18-22, theme: Booker 2024)
65. ****½ Held by Anne Michaels (read Sep 23-28, theme: Booker 2024)
66. **** Pylon by William Faulkner (read Sep 22 – Oct 2, theme: Faulkner)
67. ***** The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen edited by C. Day Lewis (read Sep 4 – Oct 5, theme: poetry)

Part 5 books - links go to the review on this thread

68. **** The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War by Michael Gorra, read by Joe Barrett (listened Sep 19 – Oct 8, theme: Faulkner)
69. ****½ The Vegetarian by Han Kang (read Oct 12-14, theme: 2024 Nobel)
70. **** The White Book by Kang Han (read Oct 15-16, theme: 2024 Nobel)
71. **** Human Acts by Han Kang (read Oct 17-20, theme: 2024 Nobel)
72. **** Greek Lessons by Han Kang (read Oct 20-26, theme: 2024 Nobel)
73. **** Playground by Richard Powers (read Oct 3-11, 26-31, theme: Booker 2024)
74. **** The Gods Arrive by Edith Wharton (read Sep 3 – Oct 31, theme: Wharton)
75. **½ The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934 (Volume 1) by Carl Rollyson, read by Philip J. Rodrigue (listened Oct 8 – Nov 2, theme: Faulkner)
76. ***** Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson (read Oct 6 – Nov 3, theme: poetry)
77. ****½ Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph by Lucasta Miller (read Oct 26 – Nov 12, theme: poetry)
78. **** Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia, read by the author (listened Nov 4-15, theme: random audio)
79. **** Wild Houses by Colin Barrett (read Nov 10-16, theme: Booker 2024)
80. ****½ Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald (read Nov 18-25, theme: none)
81. **** Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (read Nov 26 – Dec 7, theme: Faulkner)
82. ***½ Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (read Dec 7-11, theme: Booker 2024)
83. **** Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai (read Dec 11-17, theme: Booker backlist)
84. **** The Unvanquished by William Faulkner (read Dec 17-23, theme: Faulkner)
85. ****½ Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark (read Dec 24-25, theme: TBR and Booker backlist)
86. *** Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal, read by Carolina Hoyos (listened Nov 18 – Dec 26, theme: random audio)

Read in 2024, listed by year published - part 1: Medieval to 2019
(links are touchstones)

~1250 Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance by Heldris de Cornuälle
~1390
Pearl
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
1400 The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
1884 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
1886 Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson
1918 The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
1922 Ahead of All Parting : The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke
1925 The Mother’s Recompense by Edith Wharton
1926
Soldiers' Pay by William Faulkner
Asphodel by H.D. (published 1992)
1927
Mosquitoes by William Faulkner
Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton
1928 The Children by Edith Wharton
1929
Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner (complete version: 1973)
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton
1930 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
1931 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
1932
Light in August by William Faulkner
The Gods Arrive by Edith Wharton
1935 Pylon by William Faulkner
1936 Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
1938 The Unvanquished by William Faulkner
1949 A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold
1957 Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante
1967 The Blue Swallows by Howard Nemerov
1981 Loitering With Intent by Muriel Spark
1983 The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis
1986 Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald
1989 The Control of Nature by John McPhee
1990
Eric by Terry Pratchett
Possession by A. S. Byatt
1994 Taft by Ann Patchett
1995 The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
1999 Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai
2000 White Teeth by Zadie Smith
2004 Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan
2005 Hemingway and Faulkner in Their Time edited by Earl Rovit and Arthur Waldhorn
2007 The Vegetarian by Han Kang
2008 The Years by Annie Ernaux
2010 The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
2011 Greek Lessons by Han Kang
2013 Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time by Penelope Lively
2014
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
Human Acts by Han Kang
2015 The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien
2016 The White Book by Kang Han
2017 A Brief History of Japan by Jonathan Clements
2018 Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior

Read in 2024, listed by year published - Part 2: the 2020's
(links are touchstones)

2020
The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov
Not a River by Selva Almada
The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War by Michael Gorra
The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934 (Volume 1) by Carl Rollyson
2021
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck
Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener
Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph by Lucasta Miller
2022
A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare
The Details by Ia Genberg
Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo
Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness by Kathryn Schulz
2023
How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney
Pearl by Siân Hughes
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing by Hilary Mantel
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips
Above Ground by Clint Smith
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Held by Anne Michaels
2024
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud
My Friends by Hisham Matar
Enlightenment by Sarah Perry
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
James by Percival Everett
Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench & Brendan O'Hea
Playground by Richard Powers
Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia
Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal

Some stats:

2024
Books read: 86
Pages: 18,767 ( 665 hrs )
Audio time: 233 hrs
Formats: paperback 31; hardcover 29; audio 17; ebooks 9;
Subjects in brief: Novels 59; Booker Prize listed 33; Classic 23; Non-fiction 18; Poetry 9; Memoir 8; On Literature and Books 7; Essays 6; History 6; Autofiction 5; Biography 4; Religion/Mythology/Philosophy 3; Nature 2; Science 2; Journalism 2; Young Adult 1; Mystery 1; Short Stories 1; Fantasy 1; Thriller 1; Interviews 1; Anthology 1;
Nationalities: United States 36; England 17; South Korea 5; Ireland 3; India 3; Italy 2; France 2; Canada 2; Jamaica 1; Albania 1; Sweden 1; Germany 1; Ukraine 1; Brazil 1; Peru 1; Argentina 1; Poland 1; Austria 1; Libya 1; Australia 1; Netherlands 1; Scotland 1;
Books in translation: 20
Genders, m/f: 33/49; unknown 3; mixed 1;
Owner: books I own 69; Library books 14; audible loan 3;
Re-reads: 1
Year Published: 2020’s 36; 2010’s 9; 2000’s 5; 1990’s 5; 1980’s 4; 1960’s 1; 1950’s 1; 1940’s 1; 1930’s 7; 1920’s 10; 1910’s 1; 1800’s 2; 1400’s 1; 1300’s 2; 1200’s 1;
TBR numbers: +3 (acquired 70, read from tbr 67)

All stats - since I started keeping track in December of 1990
Books read: 1406
Formats: Paperback 710; Hardcover 299; Audio 230; ebooks 130; Lit magazines 38
Subjects in brief: Non-fiction 531; Novels 492; Biographies/Memoirs 236; Classics 229; History 201; Religion/Mythology/Philosophy 141; Booker Prize listed 132; Poetry 110; Journalism 100; Science 98; Ancient 76; On Literature and Books 76; Speculative Fiction 70; Nature 70; Essay Collections 58; Short Story Collections 51; Drama 48; Anthologies 48; Graphic 46; Juvenile/YA 35; Visual Arts 28; Mystery/Thriller 17; Interviews 16
Nationalities: US 774; Other English-language countries: 320; Other: 305
Books in translation: 244
Genders, m/f: 857/445
Owner: Books I owned 1023; Library books 299; Books I borrowed 73; Online 10;
Re-reads: 28
Year Published: 2020’s 102; 2010's 285; 2000's 295; 1990's 187; 1980's 127; 1970's 62; 1960's 56; 1950's 36; 1900-1949 103; 19th century 23; 16th-18th centuries 38; 13th-15th centuries 17; 0-1199 21; BCE 55
TBR: 657

Recent milestone:
- 1400 books read
- I’ve read more books, over more time, covering more pages in 2024 than in any previous year (previous highs were 84 books, 660 hours, 15,800 pagers)
- 100 books of journalism – a term I defined for myself as nonfiction books written in what I consider a journalists form
- 100 book published in the 2020’s

links to all my old threads:

2009 Part 1, 2009 Part 2, 2010 Part 1, 2010 Part 2, 2011 Part 1, 2011 Part 2, 2012 Part 1, 2012 Part 2, 2013 Part 1, 2013 Part 2, 2013 Part 3, 2014 Part 1, 2014 Part 2, 2014 Part 3, 2015 Part 1, 2015 Part 2, 2015 Part 3, 2016 Part 1, 2016 Part 2, 2016 Part 3, 2017 Part 1, 2017 Part 2, 2018 part 1, 2018 part 2, 2019 part 1, 2019 part 2, 2019 part 3, 2020 part 1, 2020 part 2, 2020 part 3, 2021 part 1, 2021 part 2, 2021 part 3, 2022 part 1, 2022 part 2, 2022 part 3, 2022 part 4, 2023 part 1, 2023 part 2, 2023 part 3, 2023 part 4, 2024 part 1, 2024 part 2, 2024 part 3, 2024 part 4

68. The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War by Michael Gorra
reader: Joe Barrett
OPD: 2020
format: 14:43 audible audiobook (448 pages in hardcover)
acquired: September 19 listened: Sep 19 – Oct 8
rating: 4
genre/style: biography theme: Faulkner
locations: Oxford, MS and various Civil War battle sights
about the author: An American professor of English and literature at Smith College. He was born in New London, Connecticut (1957)

This is nice insightful look at Faulkner and his writing through the central thing Faulkner writes around, but largely leaves unsaid. William Faulkner had a habit of skipping the main event in his novels. Instead, we get the story around it, the lead-up and fall-out. Because of Faulkner's sustained focus on his fictional Yoknapatawpha County through several novels and stories, we can pursue themes that link the whole saga. Gorra focuses on Faulkner's largely unwritten obsession with the mythology of the Civil War within the southern world. This is the world Faulkner grew up in. Mississippi was a slave state, and the second state the join the southern Confederacy. Faulkner's great grandfather fought in the war and acquired his own mythology. Then his family lived through the post-war reconstruction, KKK rise, and southern closed society that embraced the confederate identity as a noble lineage, and also embraced its racial boundaries. When Faulkner was writing his first novels in the 1920's, the KKK was having a major resurgence.

Faulkner was not a member of these different levels of clan and Klan, but he was influenced and shaped by them. When it comes to race, he was infamously moderate. Open enough to receive death threats, racist enough to look ugly in our contemporary perspectives. As an educated, if weirdly educated, person, Faulkner was aware the basic problems of the racist nature of his society, and somewhat of his general acceptance of it. His private life hovered in the middle. He was plainly and painfully racist in any modern sense. But let's not overstate this. Faulkner liked his black world deeply, embracing his family servants, affectionate to blacks he encountered and who stayed within their social constructs. I think he understood that race is social construct, but he clearly understood that southern society was deeply racist. And he liked his world. He didn't exactly want it to change in any radical ways. Publicly Faulkner professed a desire for a slow change, the type that really means no change. But in a novel this would not do.

A major thesis here is that Faulkner the writer was far better a person than Faulker the actual person. As an author, Faulkner poked into the dark recesses. He wanted to write about the stuff people didn't want to have written. He dug into cultural closets and made literature out of them. That means he not only saw and wrote about Confederate heroes, but he both celebrated and undermined them, brash and foolish and lethally contradictory. These dark recesses included race relations. He was very interested in mixed race because its existence implied the crimes he doesn't have to specify. We can probably assume enslaved rape, unless we have reason to think otherwise. But Faulkner humanized all his characters equally. His writing is more driven by his internal logic, then his sentiments. All this means that while the writer has race problems, and this does color his writing, the works tend to be better than the writer.

It's striking to see the problem Faulkner was and is, and also the power he had. It oddly makes his work richer. The worse Faulkner, the more powerful his work.

The book itself has a few odd aspects. Gorra was interested in trying to understand Southern culture. He was struck by the rise of the tea-party republicans in 2010 and saw it as resurgence of the American Civil War's unhealed scars. He tries to use Faulkner as a way to illustrate the contemporary Southern world, which I find interesting, but a little strained. Another odd aspect is that he seemed to me to spend a lot of time on the actual Civil War. I think most of his readers probably are mainly interested in Faulkner. And, finally, he goes off on tangents. He will go deeply into an aspect of Faulkner or his novels, without always clearly linking into why he's writing on this particular subject. Sometimes I would forget the specific theme.

But the writing itself is good quality, and reads nicely. And the Faulkner analysis is always interesting, often excellent. He leaves a lot to think about.

Happy new one, Dan. Have a wonderful weekend ahead.

Happy new thread~ I now have to read this : The White Book by Han Kang another BB thanks

another BB from you, the white book Hard to find a decently priced book but I take it the prices went up with the Nobel. but its on Kindlle and I can use it next year for the RTT theme colors!

happy new thread!

A bit random but I’m reading some Emily Dickinson for the 1st time. I crossed with theaelizabet on facebook and she pointed me to this lovely site on Dickinson, The Prowling Bee : https://bloggingdickinson.blogspot.com

>11 Ameise1: thank you!

>12 cindydavid4: >13 cindydavid4: The White Book is like prose poetry. Enjoy! I got a library copy. (It was an International Booker longlist book)

>15 dchaikin: Why am I not surprised?

>17 dchaikin: that is was longlisted? Interesting that Human Acts was not longlisted. It's very good, halfway through.

69. The Vegetarian by Han Kang
translation: from Korean by Deborah Smith (2015)
OPD: 2007
format: 178-page hardcover
acquired: Library loan read: Oct 12-14 time reading: 5:31, 1.9 mpp
rating: 4½
genre/style: contemporary fiction theme: Nobel 2024/Booker backlist
locations: contemporary Seoul, South Korea
about the author: A South Korean writer and the 2024 Nobel Prize winner. She was born in Gwangju, South Korea (1970). Her father Han Seung-won, older brother Han Dong-rim and younger brother Han Kang-in are all novelists.

About an hour after Han Kang won the Nobel, I requested all her books at my library - four novels, no waiting list. There is, of course, now a waiting list. These are short books. I'm planning to read them all, and this was first.

Han Kang seems focused on the Gwangju uprising. Like William Faulkner writing about the Civil War by not writing about it, she seems to be writing about this here, with only one throwaway-line obscurely mentioning "the May massacre".

From what I understand, the Gwangju uprising on May 18, 1980, was a response to a military coup in South Korea on May 17. The military came in and massacred student and factory-worker protesters (these latter mostly women), killing something like 1000 or 2000 people. There are no reliable official numbers. Han grew up in Gwangju and had recently moved Seoul when the massacre took place. She was nine.

But we don't know this might be on topic when we open this up. All we know is that a pathetic, unambitious husband is having a fit because his reliable and unloved wife has thrown out all the meat in the apartment and turned herself and the apartment vegetarian. When he asks her why, she says she had a dream. In desperation he calls her family. It's funny to witness. We don't like him, and the more frustrated he gets, the more fun for the reader. But it turns darker.

There are several strange aspects of this wife's turn to vegetarianism. She is not making a nutritional or moral decision. She doesn't get healthier, she gets sickly. She turns from her husband. She never elaborates on what she's doing, but stays mostly silent, with a simple announcement. Her confused husband thinks, "The very idea that there should be this other side of her, one where she selfishly did as she pleased, was astonishing." Is she protesting? Is she rebelling against her role, the unloving pathetic husband, or lack of prospects, the full unsatisfying confined female life? Does she fear something? Has she become connected with the animals? We get glimpses of this dream that are unclear, but gory, with lots of blood, like a massacre in a horror movie, too shadowy to make anything out.

That's just the opening section. The most surprising part of it, to me, was how fun it was. But the book has much more say as we meet the wife's family, the Kim's, and we see many of the family's problems, and irreconcilable issues. And our wife, Yeong-hye, doesn't do what we might expect. She has quiet affections, and odd sexual attractions, and ultimately leaves us mystified. We never get her view. But we do get her sister's view, and it undermines most of what we might have expected here. It does leave us wondering about what the strains of life can do to us, and what may underly theirs - both sisters

I found this book puzzling. More fun than I expected early, and very opaque late. And, as it's in translation, I think something of the communication within the language itself, with the prose, is lost. Or it felt so me, staring at texting thinking that there must be something there, but I'm definitely not going to find it in English. But it left me thinking, having followed none of my expectations at any point. And I've been thinking even more about it since I finished. Recommended.

>18 dchaikin: I’m going to give The Vegetarian another go.

>18 dchaikin: yay! I hope the second try goes better. I think it will. (ETA - I'm claiming this is not an AI response. 😉 )

70. The White Book by Kang Han
translation: from Korean by Deborah Smith (2017)
OPD: 2016
format: 147-page hardcover
acquired: Library loan read: Oct 15-16 time reading: 1:58, 0.8 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: ?? theme: Nobel 2024/Booker backlist
locations: South Korea and Poland
about the author: A South Korean writer and the 2024 Nobel Prize winner. She was born in Gwangju, South Korea (1970). Her father Han Seung-won, older brother Han Dong-rim and younger brother Han Kang-in are all novelists.

This reads like a collection of prose poetry. Han Kang, or our narrator, made a list of things white, apparently while in Warsaw, Poland. Then she writes a page, or a few pages, on each, except that the list of topics don't follow her original list. Most are less than a page. They are in English prose, but leave the thought impressions of poem. I'm reading Emily Dickinson, and Han's book is very much in tune with Dickinson. What makes these sketches tie together is the narrator's focus on her mother's first baby, who only lived a couple hours in an isolated rural area in South Korea. This theme gets mentioned several times, and also mixed with snow and the WWII scars in winter Warsaw and many other white things. A blizzard is characterized by "this oppressive weight of beauty", a handkerchief is falling "like a soul tentatively sounding out the place it might alight". Very interesting, if generally mystifying to me.

>18 dchaikin: I thought The Vegetarian might not be for me, but your post made me change my mind, as apparently it did to >19 kjuliff:

>18 dchaikin: About an hour after Han Kang won the Nobel, I requested all her books at my library - four novels, no waiting list. There is, of course, now a waiting list.
That's pretty much what I did. Except, there already was a waiting list for The Vegetarian (which is now out of circulation - someone must have damaged it - which is too bad since I now want to read it). Off to write a post on Impossibles adieux/We Do Not Part on my thread...
These are short books. I'm planning to read them all, and this was first.
I admire your "completist" drive.

>18 dchaikin: While Human Acts is my favorite of her novels, The Vegetarian is the first I read and it blew my socks off.

>22 Dilara86: two great readers nudged! That's about the best I can ask for in a review. I think you will take to The Vegetarian, if you can find a copy.

>23 RidgewayGirl: I just finished Human Acts earlier today. Still processing it. It's direct, way direct. Whereas the Vegetarian is so mysterious. Yeah, TV has kind of blown my socks off too.

>18 dchaikin: Just catching up on your thread, and what a great review of The Vegetarian. I've seen quite a few negative reviews, and I'm glad to see a slightly different take as well. Looking forward to reading this.

I am way behind on following fellow readers' threads, so your new thread is just what I was needing for a fresh start! Happy new thread!
With so much good reviews about Han Kang, I feel I should not wait too long before starting to read her!

>25 rv1988: negative reviews on the Vegetarian? Hmm. Ignore them. :) It's a fun and interesting and dark work. Lots to like

>26 raton-liseur: I need some short new threads too. I'm way behind everywhere. Han Kang is interesting. Not exactly a wow-I-need-to-read-more type. But deep-thinking and thought-provoking. The Vegetarian is terrific.

71. Human Acts by Han Kang
translation: from Korean by Deborah Smith (2016)
OPD: 2014
format: 212
acquired: Library loan read: Oct 17-20 time reading: 6:37, 1.9 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Novel theme: Nobel 2024
locations: Gwangju, South Korea, 1980
about the author: A South Korean writer and the 2024 Nobel Prize winner. She was born in Gwangju, South Korea (1970). Her father Han Seung-won, older brother Han Dong-rim and younger brother Han Kang-in are all novelists.

We open with bodies, recently dead corpses attended by teenagers. Here Han goes directly into the Gwangju massacre. No sly or subtle references. Dong-ho, age 15, comes looking for the body of his friend and finds himself helping care for all a collection of corpses on a university campus. Welcome to Han Kang's South Korea. This is dark gory stuff. Han, just getting started, pursues this over many different layers - it's duration in time, and the sequences of events; and how the arrested are treated - the torture and abuse; and the impact on families. Everyone is aware these are Korea troops killing Korean students and factory-worker protesters. In wake of the May 17, 1980 coup, the protest rose up, and the crackdown was intentionally cruel. Soldiers, many veterans from the Vietnam war, were instructed to be cruel and rewarded for it. The massacre was then downplayed and covered up.

Han Kang was born in Gwangju. Her family moved away a year before the massacre, which happened when she was nine. She grew up hearing whispers, many of the dead were family to her family's friends. No conclusion here. It's one of those events that defies that, instead it just hangs around in various inconclusive ways.

My 3rd by Han Kang. The simplest and most direct of the now four novels that I have read. In some ways this is more powerful than her other books. Certainly, there a feeling of necessity behind it. But in other ways it lingers less than the impact of The Vegetarian, where I'm still thinking over the role this same massacre quietly plays in that book.

72. Greek Lessons by Han Kang
translation: from Korean by Deborah Smith & Emily Yae Won (2023)
OPD: 2011
format: 173-page hardcover
acquired: Library loan read: Oct 20-26 time reading: 5:34, 1.9 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Novel theme: Nobel 2024
locations: contemporary South Korea (2011)
about the author: A South Korean writer and the 2024 Nobel Prize winner. She was born in Gwangju, South Korea (1970). Her father Han Seung-won, older brother Han Dong-rim and younger brother Han Kang-in are all novelists.

In many ways this is a beautiful little book. A Korean woman nearing 40 has become mute and no one can figure out why. She has lost her husband, teaching job, and custody of her 8-yr-old son. Lost herself, she takes a course in Ancient Greek taught by an instructor about her age who is losing his sight. This Ancient Greek is a dead elaborate language the instructor is infatuated with. What we readers get is a pair of self-explorations, and an exploration of language and being and how they relate.

I found myself into the prose. It's translated, but it comes across smart and thought-provoking to scan through. But mainly when we look at the woman. Somehow a gentle warm story comes out of this, layered onto of darker histories and life pains.

I've now read Han Kang's four available English-translated books. Han Kang thinks things through deeply and writes thought-provoking novels, but they are serious and overall leave me looking around for something to re-light the literary fire. This one stands out from her other English-translated works as the most interesting on the sentence level. But it's quiet and I'm not sure what will stick. I enjoyed it.

Great reviews, Dan.

Great overview of Han Kang, or at least what is available in English. I need to read some. Like others, I had read so-so reviews of The Vegetarian and more positive reviews of Human Acts.

I've enjoyed your reviews of the Han Kang books. I might have to try and get hold of some of the others. I read The Vegetarian three months ago when I found it in the library on a shelf of books in danger of being withdrawn from circulation due to not having been borrowed in a long time. I wonder if the Nobel will have any effect on that.

>30 kidzdoc: thanks Darryl

>31 labfs39: I was hoping to provide a brief overview. Glad that worked. The Vegetarian is a really good novel. Not sure why readers are mixed on it.

>32 valkyrdeath: Did you review The Vegetarian? I'm behind on threads. I'll see if I can find it. I was able to get all four books from the library because I woke up, got notifications about the award through social media, and immediately requested them. But within 24 hours there were waitlists. I'm sure your library readers have some interest now. :)

>33 dchaikin: The Vegetarian is a really good novel. Not sure why readers are mixed on it.

I found it unsavory, and I don’t mean the food. There was too much blood early on.

It made me feel queasy as I did with At Night all Blood is Black.

I suppose I’m just a fussy eater.

>33 dchaikin: I did put The Vegetarian on my thread but it was only a couple of lines of vague comments. I'm only just catching up on people's threads going back months but I'm way behind on my own thread too and a lot of the books I've reached have been so long ago that I can't remember enough details to write about them properly. I did like it though.

Across the libraries where I am, there's only a single copy of The Vegetarian in print available and one digital copy of Greek Lessons on Overdrive. There's no wait list on either of them. I think I'm not in the most literary of areas and the libraries here just don't get enough use.

>34 kjuliff: it definitely touches on the disgusting. But I didn't think it went too far. But, yeah, don't mix with food.

>35 valkyrdeath: perhaps you're an isolated lantern in the darkness. Glad you liked The Vegetarian.

73. Playground by Richard Powers
OPD: 2023
format: 381-page hardcover
acquired: September 24 read: Oct 3-11, 26-31 time reading: 14:33, 2.3 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Contemporary fiction theme: Booker 2024
locations: Chicago, Urbana, Illinois and Makatea in French Polynesia
about the author: An American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. He was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1957.

My 11th from the Booker longlist, of 13.

We are initially swept up in the oceans. Todd Keene talks about his childhood book on the ocean, the one he got for beating his father in backgammon. Separately we see the isolated Pacific island of Makatea, destroyed by phosphate mining, but still surrounded by oceans, and a reef. And fifty pages in we meet Evelyne Beaulieu, a fictional pioneer female diver, and we are allowed to experience the initial scuba discovery of the undersea magical world. If you’re like me, you will be swept up on oceanic romance, the cacophony of life, especially in our 4 billion year old Pacific Ocean. And, knowing Richard Powers, you will be waiting for the environmental hammer to fall.

Actually several different interacting stories build this up. The best is Evelyne's, the pioneer diver barging into the male scientific world. (And I appreciated her nods toward Rachel Carson's oddly brilliant book, The Sea Around Us.) But we also have our main narrator, Todd Keane, and his social media empire, Playground, partially inspired by his childhood friend from the other side of Chicago, black Southsider Rafi Young, and partially inspired by Rafi's college girlfriend, Pacific Island-born Ina Aroita. Todd tells us their history. Meanwhile some drama is occurring on the Pacific Island of Makatea, a real Pacific Island destroyed by Phosphate mining, and the new home of Rafi and Ina and their children.

The book wanders in more and less interesting propulsions. I put it down for two weeks halfway through, without missing it, and without needing a refresher when I picked it back up. It grabs, and lags, or did for me until the last hundred pages when it seems to fire along.

So, what is this book doing? What is this book doing to me? (The Booker committee's mantra)

------ Major Spoiler Warning ----


This book, it turns out, is not actually about the ocean. It’s not even about the destruction of the ocean. The book concedes to the destruction of the ocean. We’re in 2027 and its destroyed. This book is actually about AI. This ocean isn’t real. This Makatea isn’t real. This Evelyne might not be real. Todd, I assume, is real, well, fictionally. The rest is self-generated programming. Todd Keane codes the foundation of his monster while at the University of Illinois. He improves this over time in several generations of code. But everything comes from there. Now he’s alone with a brain disease, losing his mind. So he talks about, Rafi and Ari. But we don’t actually know if either of them are real. (And it’s worth a moment to wonder that Powers writes minorities only through the protective shield of blaming it on AI.)

So large parts of this book are not real, nor are they written by Todd, but by Todd's AI machine, now in its 3rd generation. Once we figure this out, and we only do at the end, the reader has to rethink everything. We have to work through a number of confusing questions. What's real and what's AI? I mean - what is real in a fictional novel where nothing is real, but still it's real? And if AI did this thing, what did AI actually do? Write a novel? Create world? Did Richard Powers write AI for AI? Is that self-defeating of all purposes?

What are these gimmicks worth? Do I reread the book and rethink all the subtle indications of these possible fictional realities? Does it change the book's strengths and weaknesses? But the real earth is really getting destroyed. Maybe I should put the book down and move on. Or ask AI?

----- end of spoiler stuff ----

This is my second book by Powers. His fiction is both awkward and artistic. He understands elements of fiction and wonder and how to get the reader to care. He understands the power of magic. In one section, a character's dementia has him imagining an undersea paradise in his room. It's as riveting as any ocean narrative I have read. That is beautiful. It’s also Powers playing games with his method and fiction in a most playful way. Readers should be bothered and amused by this. Powers is not, however, that agile with prose and rhythms and overall structure. He can do all these things, but only in certain ways and exploring too far would be beyond the purpose of his fiction. This book has all these aspects of him. Not fictional genius, not subtle, but thought provoking and moving.

I'm hesitant to give this a blind recommendation on this because I'm not personally sure how I feel about everything Powers has done here - to me. I feel a little emotionally mixed. But for readers willing to take a risk on that kind of uncertain feeling, this is an easy recommendation.

my bad sorry, go to the introduction thread pls

tell us on a different thread, please. Not here. 🙂

>37 dchaikin: Thanks for the review. I'm not a fan of the author, and the AI angle has me certain that this one's not for me.

>41 RidgewayGirl: have you read Bewilderment? It’s the only other by Powers that I’ve read. I loved it. But, also, glad i could help.

>42 dchaikin: No, I've read Orfeo, which I thought was ok, and The Overstory which I thought started strong but I couldn't get over how he writes women, especially that Manic Pixie Tree Girl who existed only to support the mediocre guy. So if he writes a book that really leans into things I'm interested in, I might pick it up, but otherwise Mr. Powers and I have parted ways.

>43 RidgewayGirl: sounds like a happy parting. 🙂

>my fav is the time of our singing starts in NYC when a black woman singer meets a german jew ish scientist during Marian Andersens perfomance and fall in love. that coupling follows along with the civil rights movement. Its also about the change of music. really oustanding work

>45 cindydavid4: thanks Cindy! That’s a Powers novel that I haven’t heard of

😞

>47 dchaikin: I am guessing the sad face is about the US elections? If so, my condolences. Not that things are much better in France at the moment... This is such a stressful time.

>47 dchaikin: With you on that. Take care.

😢

😢

>48 Dilara86: >49 RidgewayGirl: >50 kjuliff: >51 SqueakyChu: thanks. Hugs all

74. The Gods Arrive by Edith Wharton
OPD: 1932
format: 400-page ebook
acquired: September 28 read: Sep 30 – Oct 31 time reading: 14:13, 2.2 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic fiction theme: Wharton
locations: then contemporary Spain, France, London, Illinois, Wisconsin and New York
about the author: 1862-1937. Born Edith Newbold Jones on West 23rd Street, New York City. Relocated permanently to France after 1911.

The title comes from a Ralph Waldo Emerson poem, Give All to Love. ( https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50464/give-all-to-love ) The poem is about constant love, staying true to a loved one, while allowing them freedom.

"Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:"

It's not the sentiment we might expect from Edith Wharton. But there were always two sides to her. One was furiously independent, and interested in characters of this bent that went against the cultural grain. The other was fairly conservative and loyal this this culture she was raised in. Personally I'm left with some questions as to what her overall intent was here, with this theme. I don't have a good answer. This was to be Wharton's last completed novel. But not because she was slowing down. Her writing was still pouring out of her pen.

The novel is part 2, a sequel. Part One, Hudson River Bracketed, follows suburban Illinois born and raised Vance Weston on his track from sterile Illinois to becoming a major New York author. It follows his lessons, inspirations, and personal life and catastrophes, some of his own causing through terrible judgment, some chance. But he was relatable, a sympathetic character. Here we are distant, seeing Vance through his lover, Halo. And we learn Vance is a pretty terrible person, selfish and thoughtless, if not actually ever intending to be bad. Halo was Vance's literary muse in Hudson River Bracketed. Here she is freed from her marriage, links up with the newly widowered Vance. They take off to Europe, except Halo isn't divorced yet. As Vance stumbled through his creative and personal adventures, which are linked, Halo gets neglected. She adjusts herself to tolerate him, following Emerson's poem, and, disturbingly, to serve him.

Halo was Wharton's best character in both books. We lose her to a bad marriage in book one. And, here, we, readers, lose her to this self-centered waveringly productive artist.

The long arc of this story brings us many different elements of this relationship. Wharton has us wondering what Halo should do. And wondering whether Vance is worth it, to her or even to the reading public. We spend time Spain, and different cultural sides of the French Riviera, and Paris and London and, well, some other interesting places and aspects.

I never had trouble reading this. I could read it at night, sleepy and exhausted. It just flows nicely, the paragraphs leading me, they go down easy and I found myself constantly wondering what was next. On the other hand, I didn't reflect on it that much. I wasn't in a rush to pick it up, and didn't exactly look forward to it, although I was never hesitant to pick up. I don't mean it was mental floss, or flippery. I just mean it read well but wasn't doing that much for me overall.

This is probably one for Wharton completists, after you have read Hudson River Bracketed.

Looking back at October, and forward to November (yes, already 9 terrible days in)

October was my Han Kang month. I read all her available English language novels over a two-week, one library checkout, span. The Vegetarian was my favorite, but they were all good. The other three are The White Book, Human Acts and Greek Lessons. I finished eight books in October, with 58 hours of reading. I started the month finishing Pylon by William Faulkner and a collection of Wilfred Owen's poetry, but these were mostly read in September. So, outside Han Kang, my month was Playground by Richard Powers & The Gods Arrive by Edith Wharton

November will see the Booker Award given - Tuesday, November 12. My planned books are two I'm currently reading, Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph by Lucasta Miller, Molokai by O. A. Bushnell, and one I finished, a small selection of Poems by Emily Dickinson. I started reading about John Keats, because both Wilfred Owen and Emily Dickinson has often called Keatsean. Well, I'm learning I love Keats. Miller's book is terrific. I'm not so crazy about Molokai. It wasn't on my November plan, but I have cracked open Piers Plowman. Finally, November has a group read of Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald planned - on Facebook.

If I could merely double my November reading, I would add Wild Houses by Colin Barrett, Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel, Fasting Feasting by Anita Desai, The Unvanquished by William Faulkner and Passing On by Penelope Lively, in that order.

75. The Life of William Faulkner: The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934 (Volume 1) by Carl Rollyson
reader: Philip J. Rodrigue
OPD: 2020
format: 20:26 audible audiobook (512 pages in paper format)
acquired: October 8 listened: Oct 8 – Nov 2
rating: 2½
genre/style: biography theme: Faulkner
locations: Mississippi, New Orleans, Hollywood and other places
about the author: American biographer and professor of journalism at Baruch College, City University of New York since 1987. He was born in Miami, FL in 1948

This just isn't very good.

Carl Rollyson's own webpage quotes someone calling him "a biographer's biographer", which is to say he's a good source of information, but not someone who is going to challenge anything any biographer will write theirself. He's an awkward writer. The prose is full of factual information presented in an organized fashion, and at its best, zooms along in mindless interesting litany. But he also brings commentary from references out of nowhere, with no context, throwing this reader's mindset way off. And he writes literary criticism the same way. He does a great job of summing up Faulkner's own contemporary critics, but his thorough book reports capture much detail, probably too much, but often miss key elements and issues of Faulkner's writing without a mention. One example that bothered me was how he casually mentions that Nazi Germany translated Faulkner, but censored Hemmingway, because they found Faulkner's take on race more palatable. But he does not follow up on the complex story of racism within Faulkner's work - one of the most important things to discuss in his work. He also never addresses Faulkner's unwillingness to write woman from 1st person, even as he writes a lot of first person. These are, I think, huge oversights

But here are some valuable things I learned: Faulkner's New Orleans days were a huge part of literary development. He took to New Orleans and its different race relations, and its openness to sexual orientation. Faulkner spent a lot of time in the male homosexual world. He apparently was not gay, but he had long literary friendships with many gay men within the literary scene, and he was comfortable around them, especially in New Orleans. Faulkner was viewed affectionately as kind of a tramp in the 1920's before he got married. He dressed down, often in a large overcoat full of personal belongings and corn liquor. Often without shoes. He was seen as endearing in this way.

Faulkner was always a gentleman, always reserved but respectful. He struck everyone as polite and honorable. I have read so many criticisms of his alcoholism, his lying and his mistresses (the only mistress I know of, however, shows up after the timeline here). But acquaintances really liked him. I don't feel many of them knew him, because he hid behind this exterior gentleman, and largely was not willing to share what was behind his novels. (Although apparently he did so with his French translator - interesting side note. He knew French to a degree). The passion in his writing was possibly not shared in person, but something he kept private. He was a gentleman through and through and reliably so. And everyone seems to have appreciated this, even as he gave out strong opinions and many lies and tall tales passed off as true, and even as he drank so heavily. Also, I learned here, his wife Estelle was both an author and an alcoholic. The biographer looked for issues in their relationship, but also admires that they clearly had strengths.

I kind of knew what I was getting into. I was hungry for some biographical background on Faulkner and this book provided that. But, oye. I recommend it to absolutely no one.

>55 dchaikin: Too bad it wasn't your cup of tea. I can understand your thoughts and considerations. I think to myself that it is fundamentally difficult to read a good biography, as the thoughts and affections of an author always rub off. But you're right, basically a reflection/information should be linear and finished.

>56 Ameise1: I tend to love biographies and autobiographies. But, well, you know, i want them well written. 🙂

76. Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson
editor: Debra Fried
OPD: 1993
format: 89-page Tor Classic paperback
acquired: 2009 read: Oct 6 – Nov 3 time reading: 4:19, 2.9 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: Classic Poetry theme: Poetry
about the author: American poet (1830-1886). She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family. She published ten poems during her lifetime, and left 1800 poems behind, asking that they be burned.

This was a truly great and special, if too brief, experience for me. I have never read Emily Dickinson. And her poems are short, their meanings slightly hidden, their power in a lingering aspect that takes some time to pick up on. It was when a poem wouldn't leave me alone, that I finally started to see this.

So my reading experience was very much about adapting, and learning. My reading itself got slower as I started to attune and hang around these poems longer. Then theaelizabet introduced me to The Prowling Bee, a blog on Dickinson*, and everything got much richer. The Blog is terrific, and the comments are often by readers really deeply in tune with Dickinson. So, sometimes I read a poem a day, and it was wonderful. And now I miss them, having finished this little selection, and a terrific little endnote bio by editor Debra Fried. Dickinson was, of course, unknown as a poet during her lifetime, living quietly, and unmarried, in her white dresses.

I lost a World - the other day!

Has Anybody found?

You'll know it by the Row of Stars

Around its forehead bound.



A Rich man – might not notice it – 

Yet – to my frugal Eye,

Of more Esteem than Ducats – 

Oh find it – Sir – for me!

-----
*The Prowling Bee is here: https://bloggingdickinson.blogspot.com/

>58 dchaikin: A lovely review. And poem.

>59 kjuliff: Thanks Kate!

I'm so curious how you approached reading these. I always think I want to read poetry, but I know need a different approach because they need to be read slowly or multiple times and they need as much thought as reading time. So if I'm sitting down to read, poetry doesn't work for me because I want to read for an hour. When in your day did you read these?

>61 japaul22: i do actually have a method. I don’t read poetry like a book. And I’m forgiving because i often I have no clue what the point was of what i just read. But in the morning i make my coffee, walk the dog, take the coffee and set it down for ten minutes to cool. That’s my poetry window. I read for ten minutes, or until i feel done. It makes it easy on me.

>62 dchaikin: perfect. When I feel inspired to try poetry again, I’ll try to find a window of time like this.

>55 dchaikin: I hope you’ll want to read the Blottner biography eventually. It’s long, yes, but a delight to read on all counts.

>64 dianelouise100: I still may want to. Blottner left white lies, not writing on family secrets, but I imagine he has better things to say about Faulkner's work.

77. Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph by Lucasta Miller
OPD: 2021
format: 321-page hardcover
acquired: Library Loan read: Oct 26 – Nov 12 time reading: 13:43, 2.6 mpp
rating: 4½
genre/style: biography and literary analysis theme: Poetry
locations: England
about the author: English writer and literary journalist raised in London, born 1966

This is an accessible, enjoyable, and beautiful introduction to Keats. I read it because when I read about Emily Dickinson and Wilfred Owen, I kept seeing aspects of them described as Keatsian. I wanted to know what that meant, but I have never read Keats. Miller takes a single poem and writes a biographical essay around it. The goes to the next poem. It was a perfect take for me. I've now read his most famous stuff and read about them. It's rich. I learned Keats was a beautiful, a special writer who managed to put things down on paper that are so hard to describe (even for Miller), or pin down. This aspect leaves us only thinking about them more, and wondering about them more, and wondering about the spirit behind them. I'm not convinced there is another way to read these (I slightly exaggerate). He was also a prolific letter writer, who was free and playful and experimental and remarkably open in his letters. Apparently Regency era letter writing was a freer thing than letter writing at other times. And from his letters comes the concept and term 'negative capability' - which is merely an idea he wrote down once, briefly in a letter, and only once, this idea he mastered and that so many of our poets and creative writers strive to capture.

I think I knew before that Keats died young. He was born in 1795, never settled down, and tied of tuberculosis in 1821 (in Rome), age 26. All of his world changing writing happened roughly in 1818 to 1820, three years. He also was trained in medicine (and understood as well as anyone what his tuberculosis meant, both medically, and by having watched a brother die of it).

For those curious, the nine poems are "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (which has rebellious aspect I wasn't aware of), the 4000 line "Endymion", which opens "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever", "Isabella; or the Pot of Basil", "The Eve of St. Agnes", "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode to a Grecian Urn", "To Autumn", and "Bright Star" (this last is also the name of a movie about him that Miller more or less shreds)

I adored this and I'm so happy to have it. I can't think about Keats without a sense of joy shining now. I highly recommend this to anyone not already a Keats scholar. A thing of beauty is a joy for ever, and Keats matches his line.

78. Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia
reader: the author
OPD: 2024
format: 9:25 audible audiobook (304 pages)
acquired: November 2 listened: Nov 4-15
rating: 4
genre/style: journalism theme: random audio
locations: global
about the author: The AI editor at the Financial Times (UK), she grew up in Mumbai (born ~1988)

So, for a while, a long while, I was not impressed. Murgia presents journalist stories - she goes out interviews people on an element of the AI spectrum and reports on these interviews, with a few summary elements. It's anecdotal, heart-string tugging, and not particularly meaningful to anyone who wants to understand anything about AI. I wasn't at all excited for Chapter 8, titled "Your rights". But that's where the book got good, actually it got excellent. It's where she begins to bring in the different ways AI is used, and she begins to make use of all her previous stories. Here, when she tells us that this AI data begins with human input and is dependent on that, we can revisit in our heads her story on African employees labeling trees and cars...suffering from labeling rape, or other gory violence, all so programs like Facebook can try to filter them out.

The rest of the book, the last two hours of nine on audio, is terrific. She talks about Chinese universal surveillance, and the encoded apparently intentional arbitrariness of their enforcement to prevent rebellion. It's all very impersonal, the impact of incarcerating innocent people flagged by the algorithm having wide impact. Her biggest concern through on AI is not the technology, but the lack of openness around it. If the code and conditions are explained, public and professionals can use it in productive ways. But when these are hidden, we simply can't tell what it's doing. It's random and becomes far more sinister and dangerous.

And she talks about the predictive nature of ChatGPT, how it predicts language patterns in very powerful and useful ways. But we should understand the nature of this tool if we use it. It's not a search engine. ChatGPT makes things up, conjures facts that have no basis in actual facts, including titles of books, or names of court cases that don't exist. Because its predicting language patters, not fact checking. So, essentially it lies. I was interested in her late interview of author Ted Chiang, who had a lot of interesting things to say about the differences between AI technology and human minds. Namely that the technology has no ethical sense, or moral sense or feeling, or drive to do better. It's just code.

As someone interested in AI, and where it's going, and how dangerous it might be, this was a title that appealed to me and eventually provided truly two excellent knowledgeable hours on AI technology. I probably could have skipped the first 7 hours. I recommend the good part to everyone.

79. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
OPD: 2024
format: 255-page hardcover
acquired: August read: Nov 10-16 time reading: 6:48, 1.6 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: contemporary fiction theme: Booker 2024
locations: contemporary Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland
about the author: Born in Fort McMurray, Canada (1982), grew up in Toronto, then, from age four, in Knockmore, County Mayo, Ireland. This is his debut novel.

My 12th from the Booker longlist. One more to go.

A sensitive thriller? It was not quite as fast-paced as I expected. This a marketed as a thriller, a low-level violent drug-deal abduction, but the book is very interested in the nature of its characters. Dev, a giant man with an isolated house used for the abduction, recently lost his mother and hasn't processed through this. He ponders infinity and suicide while getting bitten by his biblical goat. Doll, the abducted teenager, oozes innocence, and some toughness. But it's his teenage girlfriend, Nicky, who we spend a great deal of our time with and can't help but like. Drugs, alcohol, and general hygienic disasters are everywhere.

I'm not sure what I was looking for other than that Irish voice. It has it, to a degree. But it's also a thriller, if not in the normal sense. The pacing is careful but controlled. When we want it to move on, it holds its course. Be patient dear reader.

A fun Booker listed novel.

>66 dchaikin: This sounds like a format I would like to discover poetry through. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

>66 dchaikin: That sounds great! Are the poems included? Even the 4000 line one?

>67 dchaikin: This one also sounds interesting, and if I’m bored by the interview chapters I could skip to the interesting part…

>70 FlorenceArt: Not Keats’s Endymion. 🙂 Miller only includes a few stanzas. But i think the rest are. Most are a page or a couple pages. I think two poems run 20 pages.

>69 japaul22: it was like the perfect format for me. I need an Emily Dickinson version. 🙂

>66 dchaikin: This sounds very good, I'm adding it to my book list. I haven't read any Keats in years! Looking forward to getting back in.

>67 dchaikin: I saw Code Dependent get a lot of buzz. Thanks for this great review, and I'll look out for the parts you mentioned.

>68 dchaikin: I was looking forward to your thoughts on Wild Houses. A very well-paced book, I agree! Great review.

>73 rv1988: Thanks about Wild Houses. I'm thinking about a discussion post for the fb Booker group, but haven't settled on any direction yet. And, I hope you get to more Keats. Lucasta Miller is a terrific way to visit him.

Dickinson is such an interesting figure. If you want more background on her life I really enjoyed Lives Like Loaded Guns by Lyndall Gordon.

Taking an immediate book bullet on the Keats book, it sounds like just what I need, so I'll start it after my current fiction read. Plus I really enjoyed Miller's book L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated "Female Byron" so nice to already feel assured about the author!

>75 mabith: ok, i’m noting both these books

>66 dchaikin: I love your review of Keats, thank you. I haven't read any of his poetry and that bugs me; this looks like a good way in.

>77 rachbxl: oh, you will be rewarded by Miller on Keats. I hope you get there. Thank you for the comment

So - Absalom, Absalom! makes for some brutal reading. Here’s a sample, a great quote, if you can follow. A big if! Don’t feel compelled to try. Just for fun

…which is drawing honor a little fine even for the shadowy paragons which are our ancestors born in the South and come to man- and womanhood about eighteen sixty or sixty one. It's just incredible. It just does not explain. Or perhaps that's it: they dont explain and we are not supposed to know. We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which sound to us like Sanskrit or Chocktaw; we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence, impervious to time and inexplicable—Yes, Judith, Bon, Henry, Sutpen: all of them. They are there, yet something is missing; they are like a chemical formula exhumed along with the letters from that forgotten chest, carefully, the paper old and faded and falling to pieces, the writing faded, almost indecipherable, yet meaningful, familiar in shape and sense, the name and presence of volatile and sentient forces; you bring them together in the proportions called for, but nothing happens; you re-read, tedious and intent, poring, making sure that you have forgotten nothing, made no miscalculation; you bring them together again and again nothing happens: just the words, the symbols, the shapes themselves, shadowy inscrutable and serene, against that turgid background of a horrible and bloody mischancing of human affairs.

>79 dchaikin: Trying to place where you are in the novel from this passage, but no luck. I don’t remember it at all….it sounds like it could be Quentin’s father speaking in one of their conversations???

>80 dianelouise100: in my 311 page edition, it’s page 80. Chapter 4. Yes, it’s Mr. Compson speaking to his son, Quentin, a bit after we learn about Bon’s New Orleans family.

Each time you begin a new Faulkner novel, I think, ‘I need to read that one again,’ and Absalom is my favorite. Enjoy!
(I am actually reading As I Lay Dying now—it’s getting me reading again after what’s proved a difficult month for concentrating.)

>82 dianelouise100: I'm so glad you’re reading again. I’m wrestling with Absalom, Absalom! It’s very difficult to read. Although it’s gotten a touch easier with Shreve talking.

>83 dchaikin: It’s a book that for me demanded more than one reread. And I still reread it, but find it much more rewarding now. The plot is so complicated, and the writing is….well, see post # 79.

Absalom, Absalom is my favorite Faulkner-I've read it three times. Maybe one more time if I'm lucky.

>82 dianelouise100:
(I am actually reading As I Lay Dying now—it’s getting me reading again after what’s proved a difficult month for concentrating.)
My introduction to Faulkner last year - brilliant, and straight into my favourites' list. A far, far easier read than I expected with one of the great punchlines. Looks like it gets tougher from here though!

>86 Willoyd: Tougher, but well worth it re Absalom.

>87 dianelouise100: i'm struggling in my response to Absalom. I found it interesting, but missed whatever amazing thing is supposed to be there. For me it's just an interesting, if long, telling of a messed-up patriarch, the messed-up situation he finds himself in, and the messed-up way he resolves it. I did appreciate the way the telling has a sibylline quality, and the way Sherman's march (I think it was Sherman's march) and confederate loss works on the three main men. But, I'm not sure what I'm missing. I'm directing to you, hoping you can help (if, and whenever, you read this). But I'm open to anyone's answers.

>88 dchaikin: I sent you a private message, Dan, not to spoil for someone who hasn’t read. Don’t know if it will help.

80. Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald
preface : Hermione Lee (2013), introduction : Julian Barnes (2013),
OPD: 1986
format: 352??-page paperback
acquired: August read: Nov18-25 time reading: 11:01, 1.9 mpp
rating: 4½
genre/style: Not quite contemporary fiction theme: random
about the author: 1916 –2000: A Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. She was the daughter of Edmund Knox, later an editor of Punch, and Christina, née Hicks, daughter of Edward Hicks, Bishop of Lincoln, and one of the first women students at Oxford. She was a niece of the theologian and crime writer Ronald Knox, the cryptographer Dillwyn Knox, the Bible scholar Wilfred Knox, and the novelist and biographer Winifred Peck.

-----

I'm new to Penelope Fitzgerald. I didn't know she was a genius author, or how she hid away until she became a widow. I didn't know how distinct and clever and funny she is, how she lies along that line of absurd for her own purposes. Much like American writers in the 1980's pulled from the Beat generation to be ridiculous and fun, she pulls from her own sense of the absurd - but for pointed affect. It works. The whole book turns on some her lines. I'm reading, trying to understand why I like this, how does it work? And, she gently notes about our groom that, "As a favorite son, he had been obliged to receive a quite unjust amount of his mother's traditional wisdom"

Salvatore is a most inauspicious potential husband. He's thirty, whereas our innocent Chiara, his fiancé, is merely 17! He's a cold useless doctor of neuralgia. Careful, he's not a neurologist. He denies all emotions. We are, I should note, in Florence in the 1950's. Chiara's dad is a count with an ancient Florentine lineage and little money, and little ability to make money. His brother, Cesare, so short spoken no one knows what he thinks, runs the family winery that happens to lay outside the Chianti designation, severely cheapening the value of his product. They need money. A rich doctor would nice. Salvatore is economically self-sufficient, but not much else.

So, when Salvatore courts, he thinks like this:

"It was his rule to never waste time. He believed, indeed, that as a rational man, he had trained himself to a point where it was impossible to waste any. The amount of time, therefore, that he spent thinking about Chiari Ridolfi since his his visit to the Teatro della Pergola in the spring of 1955 must, he thought, be in some way biologically useful."

Chiara is smitten. She has her doubts, and brings her frank English school friend to evaluate him, this friend tells her he's crazy. Alas, Chiara carries on.

What possessed Fitzgerald write this novel? What possessed her to spend time in this somewhat faded 1950's Florence with this terrible marriage coming? And why does it work? Why do I care? Why is Salvatore, so full of repressed strong emotions and yet so cold in his speech, so entertaining? I would ask Cesare, as he seems to know everything, but he doesn't speak. Instead, he specifically allows this novel to gather its greatest tension.

This is my second novel by Fitzgerald this year. She does brilliant stuff, and it's all so hidden. As a reader, I have no idea how it works. She's writes humbly, at a distance, softly, and it comes across in flashes of striking lines that first make you smile. Her characters are flawed and lovable, almost always. They're ridiculous extremes, and we want to embrace them all, or I do. If, when we read, we are looking for inspiration to read more fiction, this book does that. It bewilders and inspires.

>90 dchaikin: What a fantastic review! I have one of her books on my tbr and you have me fired up to read it immediately.

>90 dchaikin: I don't know exactly why, but your reviews always make me want to read the books.

>90 dchaikin: Great review, Dan!

>91 RidgewayGirl:, >92 JoeB1934:, >93 kidzdoc: thanks all. This review had me tied up and stalled. I appreciate the comments. And anything that encourages more reading of Fitzgerald is good, I think. I just bought her novel The Beginning of Spring

November thoughts, December plans and, wells 2025 plans

Six books book finished in November. Two were audio and only four read, but good ones. I also abandoned one book. The four winner books were my rewarding introduction to Emily Dickinson - a short selection of poetry, my perfect introduction to John Keates - Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph by Lucasta Miller, Penelope Fitzgerald's Innocence (reviewed just above) and, a little more on the regular plane of regular good books, the thoughtful and striking Wild Houses by Canadian-born Irish author Colin Barrett. I spent a lot of time with Molokai by O. A. Bushnell (abandoned), Absalom, Absalom! (finished in December), and Piers Plowman (I'm nowhere near done). That was almost 56 hours of reading. Also I got in 18 hours of listening, finishing the decent Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia who reads it herself

But only four books off my lists is a little hard on my plans. December plans are full of stuff I haven't gotten to yet. I finished Absalom, Absalom!, read the short Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (completing the Booker longlist). I'm reading Fasting Feasting by Anita Desai, which is fantastic so far. I'm hoping to get to The Unvanquished by William Faulkner, Passing On by Penelope Lively, and The Wild Palms by William Faulkner.

And I've been planning 2025. Faulkner is a theme again. But I've also moving on from Chaucer to Spenser, but in my own way, filling in a few gaps. I'll eventually finish Piers Plowman, then I bought a biography of Thomas Wyatt, I have a Norton on Spenser, and I bought Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell. Otherwise, more Wharton, more Booker books, past and future, and a Woolf. I have plans for The Children's Book with a group in January, and for Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse in February. I'm also hoping to finally read A Month in the Country, Never Let Me Go, Disgrace and Midnight's Children. And Penelope's The Beginning of Spring.

>90 dchaikin: I was a great fan of Penelope Fitzgerald’s works in the 1980s. That was before I moved to America. Back then English and Australian literature predominated my reading. I don’t remember reading Innocence and so will have to find a copy as it sounds quite brilliant.

Books by women writers Germaine Greer Doris Lessing, A S Byatt and Iris Murdoch and Janet Turner Hospital filled my shelves. It’s interesting to look back and see how our literary tastes have evolved.

I will definitely have to revisit Fitzgerald and specifically her Innocence

>96 kjuliff: all authors I need to read. I’m not familiar with Greer or Hospital

>97 dchaikin: I actually meant to write Helen Garner rather than Greer. Greer is more a feminist commentator and non-fiction writer. She’s more relevant historically now, though she’d kill me if she heard me voicing this. She’s best known for The Female Eunich (1970) which openly voiced the till-then silent views of many Australian women.

There’s a book by Helen Garner called The First Stone: Some questions about sex and power which would be interesting to read along with Disgrace. I recently wrote some notes on Garner’s This House of Grief . She is a writer-journalist who inserts her own views into her books.

>90 dchaikin: Loved this review. Every time I see a Penelope Fitzgerald book reviewed, I wonder why I'm not reading her. Maybe I just don't stumble over them in the stores I frequent - I'll have to look harder.

>95 dchaikin: That's quite a list. Your reviews will be prompting lots more books to consider, I'm sure.

>96 kjuliff: If I could find any books by Janette Turner Hospital I don't have already, she'd still be filling my shelves.

Hmm, I'm feeling left out by the admiration fest. I read The Bookshop by Lively and gave it three stars. I read Orpheus Lost by JTH and, likewise, three stars. What am I missing?

>99 SassyLassy: I think Fitzgerald is one you have to seek out in stores (like Muriel Spark). Thanks

>100 labfs39: well, I haven’t read The Bookshop or Hospital, so i don’t have a good sense of what you experienced. The Bookshop is popular though. There’s a cinematic or series thing out there on it.

>100 labfs39: Orpheus Lost was one I did like a lot. However, you could try Due Preparations for the Plague, or one of her short story collections like North of Nowhere, South of Loss.

I like her ability to be succinct and yet create the particular sense of atmosphere the narrative requires.

>102 SassyLassy: My copy of Orpheus Lost is tagged as a recommendation from you. Unfortunately I didn't write a review, so I don't remember my impressions. It was a while ago. I bought the book in 2014 from Powell's.

>66 dchaikin: I remember becoming interested in Keats through Dan Simmons's SF series in which he appears (which includes books titled Hyperion and Endymion). I resolved to investigate Keats a bit but always found other things to do first. This seems like a very timely nudge, and resource, to get me to finally do it.

>45 cindydavid4: Thanks for the mention of The Time of Our Singing. I mostly enjoyed The Overstory and was wondering if I might want to try another. This sounds like a promising candidate.

>90 dchaikin: I'm not familiar with Fitzgerald, but this review makes me think I'd like to be. Another book for next year. Thank you.

>90 dchaikin: Glad you are getting into Penelope Fitzgerald — Innocence struck me in a similar way, a lovely book but in a slightly puzzling way. She always did her own thing, somehow, although there are certainly bits of Muriel Spark and of Where angels fear to tread in there somewhere.

>104 Jim53: keats… lucinda miller … nudge nudge 🙂 Fitzgerald is terrific. As Mark put it in >105 thorold:, in a slightly puzzling way. I can never tell how it works.

>105 thorold: I haven’t read Where Angels Fear to Thread (although I might live there). Noting. And that’s to me a spot-on description of Penny (err, Penelope)

>105 thorold: >106 dchaikin: *Lucasta Miller ☺️

>90 dchaikin: A super review, I agree - and I'm looking forward to reading this.

>108 rv1988: thanks! I would love to see Penelope show up in our group more.

>90 dchaikin: >100 labfs39:
Fantastic review. Innocence is one of the few books of one of my favourite authors that I haven't read, so another moved up the list! I can also recommend Hermione Lee's biography of Fitzgerald (I own the first copy ever sold apparently, from when Lee attended the Ilkley Literature Festival a few weeks before publication date!).

Of the Fitzgeralds I have read, The Bookshop is the one I perhaps enjoyed the least (a toss-up with Human Voices). Think I gave it 3 stars too. She is a bit of an acquired taste too, very British (like Spark), even English (unlike Spark!). She reminds me of Spark (another personal favourite ): I can totally get why either, or even both, might not appeal.

Thanks for all that, Will. I love Spark. I’m very interested in that Hermione Lee biography of Fitzgerald (and also her biography of Edith Wharton). That’s cool you have a pre-release copy!

81. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
OPD: 1936
format: 311-page paperback
acquired: April read: Nov 26 – Dec 7 time reading: 19:52, 3.8 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: classic theme: Faulkner
locations: Mississippi, Massachusetts, and somewhere behind Sherman’s Civil War advance line
about the author: 1897-1962. American Noble Laureate who was born in New Albany, MS, and lived most of his life in Oxford, MS.

"Why do you hate the South?"

"I don't hate it," Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately, "I don't hate it," he said. I don't hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I don't. I don't! I don't hate it! I don't hate it!

Well, at four minutes a page, I found this hard. This is my twelfth Faulkner novel as I work through his fiction. So, I don't say that randomly, this is hard for Faulkner.

Many serious critics and fans consider this his best work. He apparently thought so himself, delivering it to his publisher with the comment that he wrote the great American novel. It's The South, captured in the story of Colonel Thomas Sutpen. Sutpen arrived in Mississippi in 1833 with no known past, and acquired 100 acres of prime land from a Choctaw outside of fictional Jefferson, the Sutpen 100. Then he acquired respectability by marrying a woman in town, Ellen Coldfield, daughter of a devout shop owner. That is not say he wasn't considered wild or immoral. He came to town with 8 French-speaking slaves (illegally imported), fathered a child by one. He was arrested for the manner in which is acquired the material to furnish his house. He was crazy, but he acquired his respectability, had a son and daughter. And when the Civil War came, joined the Confederate army, as did his son. But at the end of the war, Sutpen now a widower, an odd sequence of events happened. His son shot his daughter's fiancé and his own best friend, a kind of dandy from New Orleans, and then this son disappeared. Sutpen's daughter, widowed before marriage, would never marry. Sutpen lost his name and lineage.

But we are not told this story in any direct manner. It's relayed through storytelling voices. First through Rosa Coldfield, the younger sister of Ellen. As an old lady, nearing her own death, she relays this story to a family friend, young Quentin Compson, about to leave for school at Harvard, in faraway northern Massachusetts. Her monotonous voice she relays this Quentin, in the hot Mississippi summer, in the stuffy indoors with aged dust motes, in long endless sentences. Quentin, puzzled, is taken in. That's the first section, the first telling. In the remaining length of the book Quentin sits with his roommate, Canadian student Shreve. Together they continue the story, partially through a letter from Quentin's father, and egged on continuously by a curiously shirtless Shreve in the freezing Massachusetts winter. At points Shreve is reading Quentin's father's letter to Quentin, the version of the story that was relayed to Quentin's father by Quentin's grandfather. Who is speaking, what is the source, how reliable is any of this, what is factual and what is conjecture.

Whatever it is, the weird story is not the point, it's what's under the story, the why. The story gets farther and farther out there, but never far enough to motivate these deranged characters. They are always worse than that.

One of the interesting aspects of the story, and also what makes it so difficult, is the way it's relayed. Whether Rosa Coldfield, Quentin, his father, Shreve, or at times, Quentin and Shreve in unison, to story is relayed in monotone, relentlessly, a dispassionate voice, except when Shreve cries, "Wait!", and Quentin never does wait. There is a possession. Like Virgil's Sibyl, this a Sibylline telling, and incantation, sometimes coming in two parallel voices. Sentences and paragraphs go on for pages, the voice carrying over, circling in on itself, making it very hard to keep track. I had to keep backtracking to figure out where I was (hence my four-minutes a page.)

In a backhanded criticism, I was never really bored. I was always interested, although often mentally exhausted. It has its own propelling force to carry you along. But in a more direct criticism, it's not my favorite Faulkner. The overall point simplifies down too much for me, by which I mean once I finished, I felt done. I don't spend time wondering on it, like I do most of Faulkner's other books. It wraps itself up. I've dug in while reading, and I'm leaving those holes as they are, incomplete, equipment derelict, nothing cleaned up, just lumps with scattered junk (perhaps in the Mississippi mud, and perhaps only there till the next heavy rain).

82. Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
OPD: 2024
format: 207-page hardcover
acquired: August 2 read: Dec 7-11 time reading: 5:16, 1.5 mpp
rating: 3½
genre/style: contemporary sports fiction theme: Booker 2024
locations: Reno, Nevada, 20XX
about the author: American author and creative writing professor at the University of San Francisco. She was born in 1988 in California (I think Redwood City, but I can’t find my original source). This is her debut novel

A girl's under-18 boxing championship is the medium, an event with eight girls who fight over two days in front of a dozen spectators, mostly family or ignored coaches, in a drab, uninspiring, under-cooled arena in Reno Nevada. But it's not what this book is about, or what it's doing. And the book isn't really telling you want it's doing. Perhaps the Roman references provide a hint, these girls our unappreciated gladiators.

But what is it about? What is it doing? We learn about these 8 girls, eight different teenage mentalities, eight metaphysically or cosmologically different mindsets. Worlds clash. We learn about the girls through disconnected snippets. The narrative jump around continuously with what one person in my Booker club called snapshot fiction. Disconnected looks at personal history, futures, elements of their world's, touches on strategy and their own way of scouting. The snapshots circle back on themselves, referencing earlier snapshots. Each girl has different values around her boxing. Each is sure she will win. And when one begins to lose, the malleable mind adapts in its own way. Their still kids, still defining themselves. Their lives aren't going to be about boxing. Time to think about another things.

I found a lot of interesting aspects to the book. Despite the eight unique mindsets, the book provides a limited pallet. Race, religion, and, of course, boys (or sex) play minimal or nonexistent roles. I say, of course, for the boys, because this is a feminist work, eight girls focused on winning. They are neglected in practically every way, some even by families. Their coaches are men, and they don't listen these coaches anyway, because they don't have anything to offer. They're just filling in a role with an empty body. The terrible judges are largely ignored too. The girls are focused on the fight.

I found the timelines curious. The book moves around in time, including forward, at least 50 years forward. Is she writing about today? Is she looking 50 years into the future? Or is she writing about 50 years ago - 1970? Social media is another thing missing.

So these 8 divergent cosmologies clash and yet also become very similar to each other, 8 very focused girls imaging winning, and mostly processing defeat in a way that isn’t defeat, just another step or misstep down the road. While not the best book I've ever read, it's an interesting work, an interesting construction that left me with a lot to think about.

So that completes the 2024 Booker longlist for me.

Some thoughts: Not my favorite Booker list. Four terrific books. And three others that I found rewarding reading. But that leaves six of thirteen that didn't really work for me. Seems like a lot. What was unique this year is that last September I joined the Booker Prize Book Club on Facebook and got really involved. So I had a different and much higher level of excitement around the list than ever before. That was rewarding.

Here's my breakdown, a personal list

My top two:
- Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
- James by Percival Everett

Other books I really took to and that are really well done:
- Orbital by Samantha Harvey
- Held by Anne Michaels

The book that was just too cautious to be great
-My Friends by Hisham Matar

The imperfect but with terrific elements
-Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
-Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

The interesting ones that didn't quite work for me
-Playground by Richard Powers
-Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

The book that never quite took off and overcame itself
-This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

The ones that I didn't like (although I can talk about some of their strengths)
-The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
-Enlightenment by Sarah Perry
-Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

Great job finishing and reviewing this year's Booker Prize longlist, Dan. Unfortunately for me that award has progressively lost its luster over the years, and although I'll pay attention to it I'll only read the books that sound particularly interesting or possibly are highly recommended by you and others whose opinions I highly respect. Of the three longlisted books that stood for me Orbital was the only one I may not have chosen to read, as I would have read James and My Friends based on those authors' previous works.

>115 kidzdoc: i love the Booker Award. I’m sorry you’re down on it. No (or minimal) national limitations. The judges change annually. Every year is different. Every year is flawed. And there’s nothing else like it. 2023 was an amazing list. So was 2019.

Beautiful review of Absalom! Although it didn’t really grab you, I think you’ve really grasped it and given us a very clear and fair picture of your response. I’m hoping you’ll have a ranked list of Faulkner novels when you finish them to share with us, as in #114. I also enjoyed your review of Headshot, which I think I liked a little more than you did, probably because I like books about young women focused on “being the best.”

>116 dchaikin: Thanks for the hint for the 2019 list—I had not started paying attention to the prize at that point.

>116 dchaikin: 2023 was an amazing list. So was 2019.
I've only read odd books off each list, with mixed results, so would welcome any specific recommendations for others on lists. Brief opinions so far (including 2024 for comparison - I've got James and SYD on shelves to read):
2024
Orbital - loved - perhaps favourite fiction of the year (read before it won) 6*
The Safekeep - unlike you, I really rated this - intense, interesting twists. Not quite up with Harvey, but an impressive debut; 5*
Creation Lake - obviously a good writer, but left wondering why even on longlist. Disappointingly damp squib, 3*
2019
Girl, Woman, Other - my favourite fiction of that year too; 6*.
10 Mins 38 Secs - another book where rather mystified even longlisted. First half OK, but disintegrated in second 2*
My Sister the Serial Killer - underwhelmed again, although enjoyed more (need to find notes I took when read 4 years ago) 3*
The Man Who Saw Everything - only just discovered Levy - a revelation - and am really looking forward to this.
2023
Prophet Song - doesn't help that I don't often enjoy dystopian - and I didn't here, not finishing it. Heavy-handed, over-written, and, despite claims, unoriginal 2*
The Bee Sting - on my shelf to read, dipped in (I do that!), and looks promising!
If I Survive You - enjoyed: vivid and lively streaked through with humanity; would be ideal for book group - loads to discuss 4*
Pearl - not quite the book I expected from blurb, low on mystery, high on grief handling, but full of insight and character depth. Not normally a fan of this type of book, but it worked. 4*

>116 dchaikin: For me the Booker Prize became far less compelling after the terrible decision to make American authors eligible for the award, which significantly diluted the quality of it as fewer novels by writers from the Caribbean, Africa and Asia were chosen. I haven't figured out exactly why, but there are very few contemporary American novelists who I'm fond of, and they seem to lack the originality of writers from other parts of the world. OTOH I'm very fond of many American non-fiction books, including several I've read this year.

ETA: Having said that I am absolutely loving The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, but I consider it an Indian novel, not an American one.

>120 kidzdoc: I. Completely agree. It’s more an American prize now.

>121 kjuliff: Exactly, Kate.

>117 dianelouise100: love your responses to my Faulkner posts. I’m always grateful. Thank you. My current Faulkner list would be (1) The Sound & the Fury (2) As I Lay dying (3) something else. I’m reading The Unvanquished now. I’m leaning Faulkner wrote some easy to read stuff. Enjoying the break

I did like Headshot. I hope that came through. As for the Booker, I think it’s 2016 that has many fans.

>119 Willoyd: some we align and some diverge. We align with levy. She’s a special writer. I think you’ll enjoy SYD. The Bee Sting wasn’t my favorite - and I actually didn’t like the 1st 2/3. But the last 1/3 was pretty fantastic for me (and most readers). You’ll know right away whether you will like the 1st 2/3 or not.

>120 kidzdoc: >121 kjuliff: I only started following the Prize because it includes American lit. I want the best American and British and Caribbean/Nigerian/Australian/Malaysian/Indian/Sri Lankan/Canadian/Irish books too. The Dublin Award does this but they don’t have a digestible longlist and their winners are iffy (not bad though). The Booker dozen makes a soft winner palatable. So obviously i’m quite content with the American intrusion.

I don’t want the award to be American dominated. 2024 was too American for me - the longlist. The shortlist was fine though.

But the other things you mention, Darryl, the soft American lit - that bothers me a lot too. I feel it. Americans just don’t have the prose (except when they obsess over it). The Irish prose is far superior, as is the British variations. It’s an odd thing. But i feel it’s a real issue. James and Playground are two American books that really don’t worry about the prose. They’re doing other things. And i’m ok with that. Creation Lake too, maybe. But - that the state of the American (and less so, Canadian) lit. Paul Harding and Sarah Bernstein, two recent prose specialists are that - prose specialists. They front the prose. But Irish authors can have fantastic prose without fronting it. Obviously my sense based on limited reading … and my aesthetic sense, which is personal

>116 dchaikin: Yes, those are the amazing strengths of the Booker. If one year's list doesn't appeal, the next year's might be exactly what you want. I thought this was an interesting selection this year, although I was disappointed James didn't win.

>125 dchaikin: Oh Dan, you are American to the core; and I had such high hopes
😉

>126 RidgewayGirl: I’m content with Orbital winning. But i did like James more.

>127 kjuliff: afraid you have me pinned. I might not be proud of that.

>120 kidzdoc: For me the Booker Prize became far less compelling after the terrible decision to make American authors eligible for the award, which significantly diluted the quality of it as fewer novels by writers from the Caribbean, Africa and Asia were chosen.
>121 kjuliff: I completely agree. It’s more an American prize now.

I also completely agree with >120 kidzdoc: - a terrible decision taken almost entirely on commercial grounds. I gather, as well, that American publishers were pushing for inclusion (but can't quote chapter and verse). In spite of what >121 kjuliff: says, it has not quite yet become more of 'an American prize': of the 66 shortlisted books since American books were allowed in in 2014, just over one-third (24) have been from the USA - just 2 winners - although that is still the largest single country representation. My concern, which I think is showing in the figures, is not that British writers are underrepresented (about 19 shortlisters, second largest representation), but that writers from the other countries are. Only 2 Australians, 0 NZ, 1 Caribbean (admittedly a winner!) in that time for instance. South Asia just 5, Africa just 6.

>125 dchaikin: I only started following the Prize because it includes American lit. I want the best American and British and Caribbean/Nigerian/Australian/Malaysian/Indian/Sri Lankan/Canadian/Irish books too. I don’t want the award to be American dominated.
If I want the best American, I can go to the National Book Awards and the Pulitzer, and do. Sadly, the Booker is now inevitably dominated by the Americans, even if it's not quite an American prize, and other countries do suffer - the American publishing industry is too big a juggernaut for it to be otherwise. It has certainly become a far less interesting award since 2014. Which is why I don't read the complete shortlist, let alone the longlist - it would occupy too large a proportion of my reading (around 60-70 books, 40 or so fiction, per year), given the effective narrowing down of its range (ironic that!). Actually, I'm increasingly finding the International Booker far more interesting.

>129 Willoyd: Actually, I'm increasingly finding the International Booker far more interesting. Me too

>129 Willoyd: appreciate your passionate response. I think it’s important to keep in mind that the Booker is nonprofit. Not that isolates it from pressures but it does help with regards to market pressures

The NBA and Pulitzer are entirely American. So there’s no international comparison like the what the Booker attempts. The book circle critics award, or whatever the correct weird name for that award is, is a us-based international award - international since the 1990’s when they awarded Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower - embarrassingly overlooked by the Booker committee. But the Booker is a unique thing, and i like it far better.

>129 Willoyd: I agree completely. Now that I'm reading far less than half the books I was when I didn't have to care for my mother full time I have to be far more judicious in which books I read, so wasting my time on mediocre American literature is something I will no longer do.

>130 labfs39: Yes. The International Booker Prize is a far more interesting award to me, and my attention will focus far more on those longlisted books from now on.

>131 dchaikin:
Sorry - more passion!

The NBA and Pulitzer are entirely American
Exactly - so they can go into some depth and provide a good range of American lit to explore, whilst providing American writers with awards to go for. The Booker used to do that for the other Anglophones, but that's now been significantly narrowed down, so the Americans gain, and the rest lose out They aren't the only ones - the overlap with the American awards, means that us readers get less as a consequence too.

So there’s no international comparison like what the Booker attempts.
I can do that for myself!

Having said that, it did enable The Safekeep to feature too - that would have been ineligible in the past. But that's a rare exception as there haven't been any other previously ineligible non-USAs to date, in spite of what the Booker committee maintained. And it does nothing to compensate for the loss of opportunity/exposure for so many others, mostly from countries that struggle to get exposure outside their own. It's reduced diversity, not increased it.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that the Booker is nonprofit.
Yes, sorry, 'commercial' was probably the wrong word. The Booker committee said that they were doing it in order to retain the award's "global status".

“I can do that for myself!”

The judges read some 170 books. Something like six books a week. I think i cannot do this myself ☺️ But, on a more serious note, I want a qualified comparison. Booker is the closest we get to including the US while not getting overwhelmed by the US. There is nothing else that is able to that as well. (Dublin award and Critics Circle certainly try - both lack a digestible longlist, and one is thoroughly American)

>134 dchaikin: I think for people who want a "qualified comparison", perhaps the Booker serves the purpose (although with American authors being supported by the massive US publishing powerhouse, I'm not sure you are actually comparing apples with apples). But for those of us who want to support lesser known authors from a wide range of countries, the Booker is failing us.

>135 labfs39: only partially true. i think the Booker is about discovery, or at least that’s an important element of it. It certainly captures lesser known authors. So I can’t agree to that analysis.

Your second point is the main one - also Will’s point - that for every American selection, something else has to go. In theory it should make the award more selective. In practice it hides these unselected books and alters the selection process. But that is the cost/benefit of expanding the selection. When you broaden what you can select from, you lessen the representation from what was available before.

>136 dchaikin: The second point is easily solvable though - they can release a “honorable mentions” or something like that list which contains the dozen works that did not make the long list but were close enough. That will serve both kinds of readers - the ones who do mourn the addition of the Americans will get more curated titles to look at and the ones who look for new authors will have even more options.

Of course, that will dilute the power of being a Booker nominee (most publishers outside of the English speaking world does not bother with the short/long list distinction anyway) but will still get the whole process a bit less American-centric. And if the result is a dozen more American novels - that also tells us something about the judges and the process of nothing else.

>137 AnnieMod: interesting that the prize has expanded what is listed

From 1969 to 2000 - (32 years) shortlist only. Six books almost every year. Two years had seven. One year had two

2001 - 1st longlist. 24 books!
2002 - 20 book longlist
2003 - 23 book longlist
2004 - 22 book longlist
2005 - 17 book longlist
2006 - 19 book longlist
2007 - 2024 - booker dozen (13 books)
2014 - open to all originally English books published in the UK

So, 30 years of six book lists. 18 years of the Booker dozen, and 11 of those 18 years included expansion beyond the Commonwealth. But also seven years between with large commonwealth-only longlists.

>134 dchaikin: >136 dchaikin:
You'd be very much a voice in the wilderness in any of my book groups! The only commentary in favour I've seen on this side of the pond was from Kazuo Ishiguro. Although it does enable some American writers to get exposure here - Percival Everett was pretty much unheard of before The Trees featured on the shortlist. Which is, of course, why there was so much pressure from American publishers.

On the comparison front, if that's what you want to do, you wouldn't travel through all the submissions anyway, so that figure is a bit of an exaggeration!. Just take the respective long/shortlists, or even the winners. The Booker shortlist plus National Book and Pulitzer finalists would give a reasonable long list to base any comparison on.

Also Rita Bullwinkel, Jonathan Escoffery, Leila Mottley, Nathan Harris, Brandon Tayor (now a somewhat influenced critic) and 2025 judge Kiley Reid - all little known American authors highlighted by the Booker lists for their debut novels.

I was really thinking of Everett as an established author who really broke through into reading consciousness over here because of the Booker. Of the rest, Escoffery certainly gained some traction last year (good book!), and Bullwinkel this, but I had to look the other four up. But then, I suspect most British US readers would have to look up a fair number of writers I'm enjoying!

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. I, amongst a large number of readers, writers and publishers over here, see this move as a significantly bad move - and I know at least some of those interested in the States agree. You, amongst perhaps as many (I suspect predominantly on your side of the pond) see it as positive! Good to get an alternative view. In the meantime, for good or ill, it is what it is!

>141 Willoyd: yeah, we have sustained disagreement. 🙂 I hope that’s ok. I definitely appreciate different literary viewpoints, including yours and Lisa’s and Darryl’s.

>142 dchaikin:
Of course it is! I I reckon I learn most from people when we do disagree (the best book group meetings are when that happens)! I really appreciate your viewpoint - invaluable.

>114 dchaikin: I've really enjoyed reading your Booker reviews. A terrific and generous assessment of the contents of the list.

>143 Willoyd: >137 AnnieMod: >135 labfs39: >132 kidzdoc: after our conversation i want to add this to >114 dchaikin: - consider it an addendum:

I felt like the longlist was way too American. 6 of 13 were fully American authors. I like including US books, but every American book added means one from another country is dropped. They better be good, or fantastic. These all weren’t fantastic. The shortlist was better - just two Americans (and all my four favorites! Yay)

Dan, I'll join you in thinking that opening up the Booker has been a good move. It's good to have a prize that celebrates all the books published in the Anglophone world. My knee-jerk opinion when the Booker first opened to American writers was outrage, but the reality has been good, for getting eyes on interesting and under appreciated American writers in the UK (Percival Everett as the obvious example here), and increasing interest from American readers.

One thing that has expanded my reading is in following book prizes from other countries. Often, recognition by the country a book was initially published in means that the work is then translated into English and hunting down those books is rewarding. The International Booker is fantastic and I discover new books every year with the release of the longlist, but it's fun seeing if I can get a book that made the Epigram Prize shortlist, for example, although it isn't going to be a topic of bookish conversation in the way a book that wins the International Booker is.

>146 RidgewayGirl:
An American reader is glad to see American authors getting more exposure in the UK? Of course, just as many Brits would be happy to see the Pulitzer admitting non-Americans (I wouldn't!) but it comes at a cost: of writers from countries with far less exposure, and I find that cost a far greater negative. American culture gets more than enough exposure over here already, and there's plenty enough for American writers to aspire to without this.

I wish Commonwealth Writers' Prize/Commonwealth Book Prize still existed.

>148 ELiz_M: Agreed. I would say the same for the Man Asian Literary Award.

I wish you and your loved ones a happy and blessed festive season.

>149 kidzdoc: >148 ELiz_M:
Agree both!

Debating with myself about starting a new thread with a week to go... I think "no" won

83. Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai
OPD: 1999
format: 228-page paperback (looks like a 2000 publication from London)
acquired: 2022 read: Dec 11-dd time reading: 7:4, 1.9 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: somewhat contemporary fiction theme: TBR
locations: Then contemporary India (I think just east of Delhi), and Massachusetts
about the author: Indian novelist and professor of humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was born in 1937 in Mussoorie, India, to a German immigrant mother and a Bengali father (they met in Berlin). She grew up in New Delhi. As a child she spoke Hindu, German, Bengali, Urdu and English. English has always been her “literary language”.

My first by Anita Desai, at one-time considered a Nobel contender. She released a short book earlier this year. This novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999, and was singled out as the second choice, something almost never acknowledged. The winner was Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee.

My first thought on finishing was this was a curious novel. But before that, while in it, I was struck by how alive the text is in the opening pages. We're in India. We never told exactly where, but you can eventually figure out it must be a village northeast of, and with the sphere of, New Dehli. Desai tosses several very different characters at the reader along with a variety of cultural stuff - western and traditional stuff awkwardly, selectively mixed. I was fascinated by a lot of this. Although, stepping back and thinking about it, it felt like the cultural influences were badly mixed. It’s sort of losses all around. I clung to Uma, the main character, the unmarried possibly simple daughter, and my hero throughout. Then…the energy fades. Yes, Uma has experiences, but the dynamism of the book pales out. Then later in the book the scene shifts to Arun in America and this is a very different book there.

If you have read US immigrant experiences, this section on Arun, Uma's brother, is familiar. He’s a student, but he's lost, and unable to do anything correctly (except school). He can’t help anyone. He can see, but he can’t respond. Ultimately he does manage to help in a weird passive way. But, all these lost immigrant experiences make for dull reading. It’s easy to shred America, and not particularly enlightening. And it’s hard to watch someone lost without the mental context to resolve their issue. A fish out of water.

The point of the two settings seems to be a kind of compare and contrast. Two family pictures, Uma and Arun's in India, and Arun's host family in Massachusetts, each in completely different circumstances, yet comparable, each financially making do, failing in that quest for happiness, in the mental health, albeit in their own ways. I guess that’s the point. Fasting (India) or Feasting (America), it’s still hard. And you can still go crazy. But… i’m not really sure on the point. I felt oddly left in the middle of a road to nowhere.

But I've forgotten that lost feeling. What I think about it the 1st 100 pages. I adored the opening section, and almost the 1ast half the book. This section lives. It’s dynamic and vibrant and made for fantastic reading and made the rest of the book well worth it to me.

84. The Unvanquished by William Faulkner
OPD: 1938
format: 260-page paperback
acquired: March (from Faulkner House in New Orleans) read: Dec 17-23 time reading: 8:40, 2.0 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic short stories theme: Faulkner
locations: Yoknapatawpha, county, Mississippi
about the author: 1897-1962. American Noble Laureate who was born in New Albany, MS, and lived most of his life in Oxford, MS.

My 13th book by Faulkner, and by far the easiest to read. It’s kind of like a break. It’s more a boy’s story, and it has a touch of a Huck Finn quality, with a black and white bond boy bond. The race aspect has serious issues but also has a warmth and intimacy within a not very warm environment.

Within Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha books, this is the story of the first Bayard Sartoris, who came of age during the American Civil War. Too young to fight, he stays home with his grandmother and their house slaves, while his father goes off to fight. But when the book opens, the Union troops are into Mississippi. During the first story Bayard and his black childhood friend Ringo, a slave, work together to shoot down a Union scout. They kill only a horse, and the Union soldiers are gentle about it. But so begins this complicated view of the war from the losing home front.

The prose is simple, always in Bayard's own voice, but stories are nicely worked out, wandering and paced, and they address a lot of interesting aspects of the war - the Union burning of towns and fine houses, the freed slaves wandering en masse towards who knows where, the sense of loyalty in some slaves, like Ringo, and the sense of injustice in others. Also Women confederate soldiers, and a sense of the outlaw violence as the war ends. Biographers say it's hard to know Faulkner's sources or accuracy of this era that he happens to bring to life. It's not clear how much is imagined or might have come from local lore. But it's an interesting picture regardless.

These are also nicely plotted stories, with the penultimate story capitalizing on everything before and ramping up the tension and sustaining it. This book is, perhaps, a good introduction to Faulkner.

Two great reviews, Dan. I do want to start tackling Faulkner at some point, and I'll remember your recommendation about starting with The Unvanquished.

Fasting, Feasting sounds very good.

Fasting, Feasting is excellent. I don't have any clue what you will make of Faulkner, Darry. I'll look forward to your take.

>156 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. I own the complete six volume edition of William Faulkner's novels, and I intend to read one volume per year, although I don't know if 2025 is the year I'll start this journey or not. I did read As I Lay Dying several years ago, and I liked it.

Hi Dan, and a wish for good holidays to you and your family.

Reading through this very interesting conversation (finally—way behind on everyone's threads), I find I don't have strong opinions on opening up the Booker... the anti-snob in me says yes, widen the field, maybe raise the bar for American writers. On the other hand, in the sense that all prizes have some sort of identity, the retooling of that one felt (and I guess still feels) like a bit of American publisher pandering. Discovery is great, and anything that gets more Americans reading more widely is a good thing—and maybe what it takes is a prize with some name recognition beyond the National Book Awards. I don't know, though. I've read My Friends, James, and Orbital and thought they were all really good, not one a waste of my time.

Oh, and to answer your question from your previous thread, I did get onto the Booker Prize FB thread. I'm just not that active on FB in general.

>153 dchaikin: Ive read many of these experiences esp via books by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and others. After a while, I found them too much alike. Will have to check this one out!

>157 kidzdoc:
I own the complete six volume edition of William Faulkner's novels,
Is that Library of America (the only one I know of), or is there another complete set? Is LoA a complete set? I have several sets/volumes of LoAs, although they can be a bit trickier to get here, especially since they themselves stopped shipping abroad, but worth it.

>160 Willoyd: The Library of America collection is the one I own, Will. I'm all but certain that I purchased them from Book Culture, a bookshop affiliated with Columbia University in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It sold new LoA editions at a discount, and I may have bought them on one of their New Year's Day sales when everything in the store, new or old, was discounted by 25 or 30%. I went there one New Year's Day with Rebecca (rebeccanyc), the beloved late member of Club Read who was the administrator of the group for several years, and it may have during that visit together that I purchased those six Faulkner volumes.

I own several Library of America volumes, including Albert Murray: Collected Essays & Memoirs, which I'll start reading on or before January 1st, beginning with his acclaimed book The Omni-Americans.

>161 kidzdoc:
Thank you for all that. Discounted too! I will have to pursue. I have sets of Steinbeck, Cather, Wharton, Fenimore Cooper and Wendell Berry, plus a few individual books, mostly from UK dealers, and, as I say, love them. I used to collect Folio Society volumes, but they changed direction a few years ago away from the sort of books I'm interested in (hiking their prices massively too), and LoA have proved a useful (better!) alternative for US literature - which I wanted to explore more anyway! Faulkner is one of several authors who I want to follow-up from first time experiences whilst doing my tour of the States- a bit of an eye-opener!