RidgewayGirl Reads More Books in 2024, Part Three

With the neighborhood kids back in school startlingly early and my own youngest child starting his senior year of university, it seems a good time for a new thread. Also, my old thread was getting kind of long.

Welcome, friends. Expect an occasional kitten picture, but I will try to stick to books.





Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired



Reading Miscellany

Owned Books Read: 33

Library Books Read: 37

Audiobooks: 2

Netgalley: 14

Borrowed:

Books Acquired: 85

Rereads: 1

Abandoned with Prejudice: 1

Category One


Create Your Own Visited Countries Map



Global Reading

1. My Men by Victoria Kielland, translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls (Norway)
2. People from Bloomington by Budi Darma, translated from the Javanese by Tiffany Tsao (Indonesia)
3. Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder by Asako Yuzuki, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton (Japan)
4. Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, translated from the Croatian by Mima Simić (Croatia)
5. Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal, translated from the French by Jessica Moore (France)
6. The Road to the Country by Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria)
7. The Silence of the Rain by L. A. Garcia-Roza, translated from the Portuguese by Benjamin Moser (Brazil)
8. The Safekeep by Yael van der Wooden (Netherlands)

Category Two



Representation Matters: Diverse Books

1. Blackouts by Justin Torres
2. The Lost Journals of Sacajewea by Debra Magpie Earling
3. Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
4. Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
5. The Moon of Turning Leaves by Waubgeshig Rice
6. Memory Piece by Lisa Ko
7. My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland
8. Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez

Category Three



Immigrants, Expats, Works in Translation

1. The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino, translated from the Japanese by Giles Murray
2. Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
3. Absolution by Alice McDermott
4. The Wind Knows My Name by Isabelle Allende, translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle
5. Real Americans by Rachel Khong
6. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
7. Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Category Four



Shiny New Books: Books Published in 2024

1. Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon
2. One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall
3. The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
4. Trondheim by Cormac James
5. Wolf at the Table by Adam Rapp
6. Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
7. Shanghai by Joseph Kanon
8. Highway Thirteen: Stories by Fiona McFarlane

Category Five



Let's Keep Things Brief: Short Story Collections and Novellas

1. Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women by Mary Rechner
2. Half an Inch of Water by Percival Everett
3. So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan
4. In the Land of Dreamy Dreams by Ellen Gilchrist
5. The Disappeared: Stories by Andrew Porter
6. Green Frog: Stories by Gina Chung
7. You Like it Darker: Stories by Stephen King
8. Let's Go Let's Go Let's Go by Cleo Qian

Category Six



Tackling the TBR: Books off of My Own Shelves

1. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
2. S. by Doug Dorst
3. Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde edited by Bregje Gerritse
4. Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry by Christine Sneed
5. James by Percival Everett
6. Clear by Carys Davies
7. Liars by Sarah Mancuso

Category Seven



Talking About Books: Book Club Books

1. Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
2. Go as a River by Shelley Read
3. Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv
4. All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby
5. Evergreen by Naomi Hirahara
6. Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
7. The Plinko Bounce by Martin Clark
8. Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

Category Eight



Murders and Other Bad Things: Crime Novels, Noir, Horror

1. Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
2. The Hunter by Tana French
3. The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones
4. Hard Girls by J. Robert Lennon
5. The Torn Skirt by Rebecca Godfrey
6. Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott
7. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
8. Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

Category Nine



Long Live the Rooster: Longlisted, Shortlisted and Award Winners

1. Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel (Competitor, ToB 2024)
2. The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo (Competitor, ToB 2024)
3. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (Competitor, ToB 2024)
4. All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow (Longlisted, Booker Prize 2023)
5. American Mermaid by Julia Langbein (Competitor, ToB 2024)
6. Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan (Longlisted, Women's Prize for Fiction, 2024)
7. The Husbands by Holly Gramazio (ToB Summer Reading, 2024)

Category Ten



Books Read on my iPad

1. Cold People by Tom Rob Smith
2. From Lukov With Love by Mariana Zapata
3. The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas
4. We Were the Universe by Kimberly King Parsons
5. Don't You Forget About Me by Mhairi McFarlane
6. First Love: Essays on Friendship by Lilly Dancyger
7. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
8. The Wedding People by Alison Espach
9. The Wake-Up Call by Beth O'Leary

Category Eleven



Books with a Strong Sense of Place

1. Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine
2. Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
3. The Lower Quarter by Elise Blackwell
4. King Zeno by Nathaniel Rich
5. The Road from Belhaven by Margot Livesey
6. North Woods by Daniel Mason
7. Strange Attractors: The Ephrem Stories by Janice Deal

Just for fun and, in keeping with having no goals this year, here's the BingoDog.



1. Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder by Asako Yuzuki
2. My Men by Victoria Kielland
4. Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
5. Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez
6. Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon
7. Absolution by Alice McDermott
8. All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
10. First Love: Essays on Friendship by Lilly Dancyger
11. Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
12. Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel
14. Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women by Mary Rechner
15. James by Percival Everett
16. Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine
17. The Lower Quarter by Elise Blackwell
18. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
19. The Lost Journals of Sacajewea by Debra Magpie Earling
20. Go as a River by Shelley Read
21. Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
23. The Final Curtain by Keigo Higashino
24. Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
25. Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

Come on in, grab a cup of something and a comfortable chair and let's get reading.

Happy New Thread. I laughed at the comic in >8 RidgewayGirl: and thought that is not much of a threat.

Happy new thread!

>15 lowelibrary: I just finished reading The Husbands and this guy does make an appearance in that book. He does not last long.

>16 NinieB: Thanks, Ninie!

Happy New Thread Kay! As always I'm perusing your books on deck, and I was about to read A Game of Lies, but then I saw that it's the second book in a series beginning with The Last Party which I'm reading now and is pretty good, but perhaps a tad too long.

>18 lsh63: My husband brought home a copy of A Game of Lies for me, so I'm going to read out of order.

Happy New Thread! I always like someone's new thread as a chance to review the books they've read.

Continuing the conversation from the last thread . . . we used to be able to request ebooks before they were purchased through Tennessee Reads. That option is no longer available, and I really hate that it isn't.

>20 dudes22: Likewise. I keep finding books I want to read, but then they're already on my wishlist.

>21 thornton37814: Ebooks here are through an Illinois-wide system, which certainly gives me a larger number of books to choose from. I don't know if I can request an ebook. If it's something I want to read, it's usually faster to request a physical copy and I've only requested those so far. I still prefer paper.

>22 RidgewayGirl: You can request to “notify me” in Libby for books that aren’t available, but I’ve only done that for older books, and they’ve never become available.

Happy new thread! I love the images, especially the Poe comic and the tweet about 19th-century love interests.

>23 Charon07: Retired acquistions department librarian here! Clicking that "notify me" button in Libby will put the book on a list that your library's e-book purchaser will see, so they'll know there's interest. But if a book's been out for a few years without any of the library's users expressing any interest, the library may not think it cost-effective to buy a copy that's likely to circulate only once, to the person now requesting it after all those years. And e-books are usually a lot more expensive than print books, making it even less likely that the library will purchase a copy for a single user. The "notify me" button is far more effective for newly released/pre-publication titles.

Given that libraries do not technically own the e-books in their collection, it seems unlikely that anyone is working very hard on technology that would allow libraries to lend e-books to users from other libraries in the way that the ILL system allows print books to be shipped from one library to another. For older books that your library does not own, you are probably better off requesting a print copy via ILL than hoping that your library will be an e-copy.

(Multiple "notify me" requests will, of course, carry more weight than a single request, and one could, I suppose, game the system by asking one's friends to "notify me" the book in which one was interested; I leave it as an exercise for the individual library user to contemplate the ethical implications of such action.)

As always when I spout off on such topics, these comments are my own opinions and should not be interpreted as reflecting the policies or procedures of my former employer.

>25 KeithChaffee: Thanks for that info! I wasn’t sure that anyone saw those requests. I figured it wasn’t likely that older books would be acquired, but I think it’s still worth letting the library know there’s interest. I can usually find the books I want in the actual print book collection, or else in Hoopla or at the local university library. But how on earth can ebooks cost the library more than print books?!

>26 Charon07: I'm sure Keith can answer more thoroughly, but the short answer is that because publishers are able to control how many times an ebook is circulated, and because, unlike physical copies, libraries can't just buy the ebooks on the open market, they have jacked up the prices for library copies and control how many times a book can be checked out before the library loses that ebook and has to buy another.

https://apnews.com/article/libraries-ebooks-publishers-expensive-laws-5d494dbaee...

>26 Charon07: Because that's how the publishers price them. Your library is, in many cases, paying 2-3 times as much for an e-book as they are for the same book in print. And they aren't actually buying the book for that price; they are buying the right to loan the book for a specific time period or for a specific number of loans. After the six months are up, or after the book's been borrowed 26 times, they will have to "buy" another copy.

Libraries and librarians have been working to change that system, and there was a small bit of progress last week, when the Independent Publishers Group reached a deal that will allow libraries to actually purchase e-books. This isn't going to affect most library users, because it's a small group of publishers and titles (and not many bestsellers among them), and access will be through a specific platform (not Libby) that most libraries don't use. But it's a first step in the right direction.

It was hard to articulate the point at which we switched from wanting to get older to feeling like we could stand to be a little bit younger. Perhaps there had never been a point when we really felt like we wanted to be older, only to have the things we thought being older entailed: freedom, money, privacy, love. But it had always been true that if we were a little bit younger, a little bit fresher, then we'd be a little bit better.

Let's Go Let's Go Let's Go is Cleo Qian's debut short story collection and it's a banger. Qian writes about young women who are trying to find their way in life, who are figuring things out or just trying to figure out what's going on. These women are Chinese or Japanese or Chinese American and they live in China, or are traveling in Japan or are living in California. It's the variety of settings and of experiences that make this collection so interesting. Sometimes the stories have a supernatural flavor and sometimes it's just about a young woman working in a call center and living with her Mom. It's an interesting collection that introduces a new writer who is worth watching.

Happy new thread! I enjoyed revisiting your categories, particularly the memes :)

I've settled in and I am looking forward to both books and cats!

Happy new thread! I love reading lists of books. I'm just trying to decide on my favourite graphic, but I think Edgar Allan Poe at #4 gets my vote!

Just stopping by to catch up after a long hiatus. I always enjoy your reviews!

Happy New Thread!

Thanks, Jackie, Judy, Vivienne and Barb.

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio is such a wonderful and thought-provoking book, I'd rather just tell you to skip the reviews and go read it yourself. But if you want more information, the novel follows Lauren, who comes home half drunk from a great night out with a close friend to find a strange man in the hallway, attempting to get her upstairs. He claims to be her husband, but Lauren isn't married. It's all terrifying, and then more so when she sees that she's been texting with this man in a way that suggests that they are married and her apartment is different, the walls are painted differently, there are some of her things, but also things she doesn't recognize. Her phone is full of photos of them together and the downstairs neighbors act as though he's lived there for years.

And then this man goes up to the attic and a different husband emerges.

And Lauren, caught in this endless husband supply (not all of them good, from the man who likes to stick his head between her and the book she is reading to tell her to spend time with him instead, to a man full of barely contained anger) has to figure out what is going on and what she should do with it.

Gramazio writes so well and with such ease, it's surprising to know this is her first published novel. Lauren is a great character to follow. She's resourceful and resilient and, placed into an odd and unique situation, tries to make the best of things, while learning a lot about herself and what matters most to her. This was a lot of fun to read and I am already ready for her next book.

>35 RidgewayGirl: I had this on my Libby hold list forever and finally cancelled the hold. Reading your review makes me want to revisit that decision. Maybe the list won't be as long now!

>36 beebeereads: This book surprised me with how good it was.

>35 RidgewayGirl: Taking a BB for this one. It sounds interesting.

Happy new thread! It was nice to re-read your CATegories again!

Happy new thread, Kay. I love to see those memes...

>38 lowelibrary: I was in Chicago this weekend with a friend and we could not stop bringing up The Husbands, although we talked about a lot of books.

>39 Tess_W: & >40 MissWatson: Thanks, can you believe it's almost autumn?

This weekend I went up to Chicago for the Printers Row Lit Fest, which was fantastic, with perfect weather and so many excellent authors. The stand-out was Luis Alberto Urrea, who is a natural story-teller, and Phillip B. Williams, who wrote Ours. All of the panels were interesting, even the one my friend dragged me to. We also visited my favorite bookstore, Exile in Bookville, which is in an old building where there is still a man operating the elevator, and which has a ton of books in translation and from small presses.

In any case, a red haze descended, putting me in a fog of war-type situation, and in two days, I ended up with this enormous stack of books. I regret nothing, but will have to find room on the shelves.

>41 RidgewayGirl: What a great haul, and what a fun trip!

>42 Charon07: So much fun! I told one of the owners of Exile in Bookville about how much I loved her bookstore and she gave me an ARC of The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, which mentions the shop.

>41 RidgewayGirl: LOL at the fog of war! Enjoy your haul!

>41 RidgewayGirl: That sounds like you had tons of fun. I am surprised you bought only these...

>44 christina_reads: Thanks, Christina, I will!

>45 MissWatson: Well, we are heading down to St. Louis today to see their excellent art museum (my favorite is the room filled with Max Beckmann's dreariest works) and there's a convenient bookstore nearby.

>41 RidgewayGirl: LOL to the fog of war--described well!

I collect bookstores as many of us probably do, so I think I must have a copy of The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore.

>47 Tess_W: What's worse, is that after Chicago, we drove down to St. Louis to see their excellent art museum, SLAM. And as I was looking at a book in the gift shop, a woman noted that the price for that book was very good. That's how I discovered they were selling their gorgeous exhibition catalogs for $5 and I bought four more books.

>48 clue: I was delighted with the gift and quickly noted that Exile in Bookville is mentioned in the book.

>49 RidgewayGirl: Wow! It's hard to find a good price on some of those exhibition catalogs.

>50 thornton37814: The only place I've found inexpensive art exhibition catalogs is at large booksales if I get there early. It was great to find new copies. The used Max Beckmann retrospective had the previous owner's assessments of each art work. There were penciled comments in the margins next to the color plates saying things like, "good," or "too much pink."

The stories in Highway Thirteen: Stories by Fiona McFarlane all center on a notorious Australian serial killer who murdered hitchhikers and backpackers in New South Wales some thirty years ago. These aren't horror stories or detective tales, instead each story centers on someone with a connection to the crimes, some very tangential, like the first story about a man whose co-worker is fascinated by the crimes; some closer, like a politician running for office who shares his last name, or an actor taking a role in a film.

The serial killer Noah's playing is--was--a real man. Noah had heard of him before he took the part, of course. Every Australian has heard of him. Most Americans haven't. Wylie hadn't. Noah tried to explain: This is like playing Ted Bundy. This is like playing Jack the Ripper. Wylie said, Good! A complex, brave, meaty part! He knows she considers Australia, and everything in it, smaller than anything in the US or Europe. Unconsciously, of course. Smaller serial killers, smaller murders, smaller grief.

But while the stories center on the serial killer, they often don't mention him at all, or in passing. People, even people affected by his actions, still lead complex lives of their own. So in The Wake, the spouse of a detective who worked on the task force finds out the killer has died, but the character and the story are more focused on an unsettling change to her morning routine.

I've read other short story collections that use a single person or event to tie the stories together and when they are well done, the result is a collection that is varied and also cohesive. McFarlane's collection was wonderful -- she hardly needed the connective tissue as each story stood fully on its own feet, but there was so much variety in the stories collected here, that the connections, however faint, did give added force to their impact.

>52 RidgewayGirl: Ivan Milat!

>53 pamelad: Yes! She changed the names of everyone involved and changed some of the details, but it's clear what she's referring to.

In Anita de Monte Laughs Last, Xochitl Gonzalez takes the true story of Ana Mendieta, the Cuban-American artist who was allegedly pushed from the 34th floor apartment by her husband, the artist Carl Andre, in 1985 and changes the names and some details and creates a vivid reimagining of the artist's life and adds a supernatural element. Next to this story, which has been the subject of some controversy, sits another story, this time set a decade later, about an art history student who is working on her thesis when she discovers Anita de Monte's work. Raquel is Nuyorican, a fish out of water on the well-heeled grounds of Brown University, falling in love with an art major and figuring out how her blue collar roots fit into her new world.

Usually, a novel using two time lines, means that one of the storylines will be far more interesting than the other. Gonzalez manages to make Raquel's story as fascinating as Anita's. We know how Anita's story ends, for the most part, but Raquel's story has the element of surprise. Gonzalez's writing is assured and she keeps both stories moving along in tandem so that they enhance each other. While the ending denied Raquel the opportunity to choose her own path forward and leaned towards the supernatural in a way that took away from both women's stories, I still found this to be an extraordinary book.

Inspector Espinoza of the Rio de Janeiro police department would far rather be browsing bookstore shelves than doing his job, but when he's assigned the case of a man shot in his own car in a parking garage, he reluctantly gets to work. The case in L. A. García-Roza's The Silence of the Rain ends up far more complicated and far-reaching than he expected and, given the corruption in the police force, there are very few people he can trust; a younger colleague and an old friend who is working as an investigator for the insurance company that holds a policy on the dead man. The case takes him through a bunch of suspects and women he is attracted to, from the wife of the victim, to the secretary of the dead man who has disappeared, to a petty street criminal.

This was an interesting but often slow-paced book, as the detective protagonist far prefers rearranging the stacks of books in his apartment or reading his latest acquisition to active investigation. Still, he is dogged and thorough and sharp and I found the setting and unusual viewpoint of the detective refreshing and I will definitely keep an eye out for other books in this Brazilian series.

>56 RidgewayGirl: Sounds like an interesting setting!

>57 thornton37814: I really like books set somewhere I don't know that much about.