Tag: book lists

If I Gave the Award

~ whatmeread ~ 17 Comments

Since I just reviewed Western Lane, that finishes my reading of the shortlist for the 2023 Booker Prize. This means it’s time for my feature, where I decide whether the judges got it right.

Although I was indifferent to a few of the books on this list, there were two that I liked so much it will be difficult to choose between them, and this year, most of the others were very good. As I often do, I’ll lead up to the best ones. All of the books chosen this time were very well written.

The book that resonated with me the least was Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein. It was mostly a character study of a very particular woman, one who is completely obedient to her brother. I said I felt like I was being psychologically tortured when I read it.

Although darkly funny at times, I found If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery also a bit whiny. It’s about a Jamaican-American young man trying to figure out his own identity and community in Southern Florida, but he keeps making really bad decisions.

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo is about the grief of a family over the loss of their mother, which 11-year-old Gopi copes with by her success in playing squash. I found it touching and said it had floundering but sympathetic characters. So, here we are getting into more interesting territory.

I found the subject matter of This Other Eden by Paul Harding very interesting. The historical novel is based on a true event, when the State of Maine decided to evict several mixed-race families that had been living on an island since 1793. It’s no coincidence that this turn-of-the-20th-century event took place just after a Eugenics conference. Although I occasionally found Harding’s extended poetical metaphors annoying (and sometimes liked them), I found this novel to be touching. This is the first book in the shortlist that I read, way back in 2023, so unfortunately, I don’t remember it very well.

The last two novels each ended up on my Best of the Year lists in successive years that I read them. One is The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. It is a complex novel about the problems faced by a family. As it looks at the situations from each family member’s perspective in turn, family secrets are revealed. It’s hard to see from my description of this book just why I found it so good, but I was gripped from the start. I say that it is unexpectedly suspenseful in the last 50 pages and that the ending blew my mind (if only I could remember what it was).

I read Prophet Song by Paul Lynch a year earlier than The Bee Sting but remember it a little better. It’s the rare dystopian novel that I found absolutely gripping, about Ireland becoming a totalitarian state, which absolutely chimes in with current events. Prophet Song was the winner for this year. I’m thinking that for me, the choice between it and The Bee Sting is hard, as I describe both as gripping. I also say that Prophet Song has long, poetic sentences that create a sense of urgency. I guess it’s almost a tie for me between this book and The Bee Sting, but I’ll say that the judges got it right.

If I Gave the Award

~ whatmeread ~ 7 Comments

With my review of Telephone, I’ve finished the shortlist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize. Now it’s time for my feature where I decide if the judges got it right.

The Pulitzer is unusual, because there are usually only three or four books on the shortlist (although I prefer that to having lots and lots of books on the shortlist). For this year, there are three, a collection of short stories, most of them historical, a historical novel, and a contemporary novel, so they are hard to compare.

The winner was The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich, a novel based on her grandfather’s work to save the Turtle Mountain Chippewa from being “emancipated” by the U. S. Congress (another attempt to abrogate treaties and steal land from the indigenous peoples) all the while working full-time as a night watchman. I felt that this tale was engrossing and that otherwise the novel was filled with interesting characters and subplots.

A Registry of My Passage on the Earth by Daniel Mason is a collection of short stories, many of them historical and some of them quirky, mostly about scientific curiosity or the characters’ perceived or actual potential. I liked them very much. Most of them had an optimistic tenor and felt like they were miniature historical novels.

Percival Everett’s Telephone is about a man’s obsession with helping others as an expression of his own grief over his daughter’s fatal illness. This is a novel that famously has three different versions. I was frustrated by the main character’s tendency to go rushing off on his Quixotic expeditions, trying to gain some kind of control but leaving his poor wife to deal with their dying daughter by herself.

I liked Everett’s book the least of the three but have a harder time deciding between the other two. But I guess, from the interest of its subject matter, I pick Erdrich’s novel. That means the judges got it right!

WWW Wednesday

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I am reading now

Right now, I’m reading Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman for my Pulitzer Prize project. Somewhere I read that it is nearly autofiction. I’m not familiar with Goldman’s history, but my impression is that it is entirely autofiction. So far, although well written, it is going slowly for me, as the narrator loops in and out from a present that seems to be set in the early 2000s back through his childhood and adolescence.

What I just finished reading

I thought I’d revisit a Georgette Heyer book that I haven’t read in a long time, The Great Roxhythe. It is one of Heyer’s earliest historical novels, not really a romance (maybe a bromance!), about a courtier in Charles II’s court. It reads like an early, less polished book compared to her later ones.

What I will read next

What I read next is always subject to change, but right now, it looks like it will be a book by Donal Ryan, Heart. Be at Peace. I enjoyed The Spinning Heart some years ago and always meant to get back to Ryan. Finally, I will. Also, it’s a novella, which right now is a good thing.

What are you reading now? Leave a comment and let me know!

If I Gave the Award

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

With my review of These Days, I’ve finished the shortlist for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. So, it’s time for my feature in which I decide whether the judges got it right.

This time, the decision is difficult, because there are no books that stood out for me and also because it has been several years since I read some of the books. With the Walter Scott Prize, in particular, I often have to wait a while before the books become available in my library, if that ever happens. In this case, I finally was able to check out the last hold-out just recently.

Let’s start with the books I liked least. I am really not a fan of Simon Mawer. I always feel a great distance from his characters, plus I do not appreciate his apparent compulsion to mention certain female parts in every single book. This time, I found Ancestry, about his own ancestors, a little more interesting in subject matter, but I still noticed those same issues.

As for Adrian Duncan’s The Geometer Lobachevsky, about a Russian surveyor in 1950s Ireland who decides not to return to the Soviet Union, I acknowledged the book’s descriptive passages but said I felt meh about it. It doesn’t really have much of a plot but is more about day-to-day existence and the details of work.

I really didn’t like any of the characters in Robert Harris’s Act of Oblivion, about the hunt that begins after the Restoration for two men who signed the death warrant for Charles I. Harris’s recounting of brutal acts of war on both sides made me lose my usual preference for the Royalists. This book was interesting in its portrayal of the wildness of New England in the 17th century, though, as that’s where the two men go, with their pursuer behind them.

I found it hard to follow which narrator was speaking in I Am Not Your Eve by Devika Ponnanbalam. This book was about one of Paul Gauguin’s teenage Polynesian wives, not a very willing partner. Yes, I said one. Although I found some things in this book confusing and the viewpoint really foreign to me, it was more interesting to me than some of the others.

I think I liked the next two books about the same. They were both interesting and beautifully written. The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane is about a community searching for a lost boy in the 19th century Australian Outback. These Days by Lucy Caldwell is about a family caught up in the Belfast Blitz. It is the actual winner for 2023, and it’s a compelling read.

Although again, I didn’t think there were any stand-outs this year, the novel I liked best was The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry, about the grief and guilt of Thomas Hardy after the death of his wife. Hardy has been oblivious to his wife’s unhappiness until he discovers her diary after her death.

This novel just runs better with my own interests as an admirer of Hardy’s work. So, I pick The Chosen. Nevertheless, These Days was my second-to-best choice, so the judges were at least in the ballpark.

WWW Wednesday!

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I am reading now

I occasionally take a look at what Pushkin Press is offering. I’m not sure if I read about this book on someone’s blog or just found it on their lists. It’s The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb, a Hungarian writer, who published it originally in 1934. Although its title sounds suggestive of Arthurian legends, so far it seems to be a different Pendragon family. This novel is a spoof of English upper-class country life. Perhaps it’s part of the spoof that he would use such a name and the novel have nothing to do with what we expect!

What I just finished reading

I just finished the fifth installment of Ellis Peters’ Cadfael series, The Leper of Saint Giles. Although I have found this series interesting, I felt that this one was very familiar, the plot similar to two others in the series. It also didn’t have much of the historical background that I have been enjoying in the others. I plan to continue the series a bit farther but hope that Peters comes up with some new ideas.

What I will read next

This choice is always subject to change, but right now next in my stack is the second installment of Norah Lofts’ Suffolk Trilogy, The House at Old Vine. The first book ranged from 1401 to 1451, beginning with a serf who earns his freedom by escaping to a town and living there for a year. I see from a quick search that this next book begins in 1486.

WWW Wednesday!

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I am reading now

Right now, I am reading a book by one of my favorite cozy thriller authors (if that’s not an oxymoron), Catriona McPherson. I am not very far along, but it is already mysterious. McPherson is one of a few authors whose books I preorder as soon as I know they are coming out. This one is called The Dead Room, about a young widow who moves home to Scotland, where she has not been for years. Difficulties with family are hinted at, and there are intermittent sections in which she appears to be a prisoner.

What I just finished reading

My last book was just terrific, a historical novel set in far northern Sweden in the 19th century. It’s partially a mystery, but it features a famous pastor, a real person, who instigated a religious revival in the region. Most of the novel is narrated by the pastor’s Sami assistant, almost his son. It’s To Cook a Bear by Mikael Niemi.

What I will read next

I think I’ll be reading The Captain’s Daughter by Alexander Pushkin. I have read a small quantity of Pushkin’s poetry, but I feel I’ll get along better with prose. I found this novella when looking for ideas for Novellas in November. It’s an NYRB edition, and I usually find those to be good.

That’s me, but what have you been reading?