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  darilyn's reads for 2011

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  Cataloging all my reads

  Rina started this discussion 1 year ago (edited). ( reply | permalink )

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  Rina (edited)

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  1. THE EPICURE'S LAMENT by Kate Christensen
  I picked it up on a whim because the opening passage is this, "All the lonely people indeed. Whoever they are, I've never been one of them. The lack of people is a balm. It's the absence of strain and stress. I understand monks and hermits, anyone who takes a vow of silence or lives in a far-flung cave." God, what is not to like about that as a beginning for a book and it just goes on from there. This is the story of a guy who is dying from Buerger's Disease and will not quit smoking. He lives alone in the family home on the Hudson and everyone comes back to live with him. His brother, his ex-wife and daughter, his old homo uncle. It's great. So, he keeps these notebooks, in which he writes his thoughts, "I understand that most men love their mothers with primal, unthinking loyalty and would defend them to the death. What i recall of mine makes me want to stab her ghost with an icepick." He meddles in their lives because they will not leave him alone and then writes all this great stuff about everything. It is completely sarcastic, irreverent and true.

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    CRBozeman 

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    Those quotes make me want to read it. Especially the one about the ghost and the icepick.

    posted 1 year ago. ( permalink )

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    Rina 

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    I laughed so hard when I read that and I know just how he feels :)

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  Rina (edited)

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  2. THE OUTLANDER by Gil Adamson
  It is the story of a young widow who is very ill-equipped for life; any life and ends up on the run from the twin brothers of her husband whom she has killed. The first part of the book is told with the feel of someone on the run; always looking over their shoulder and needing to move. She meets several strange and interesting characters who help her to stay alive, or teach her about love, or survival in the mountains. She makes a new life in a mining town and is quite happy there until a catastrophe occurs and the town disappears. All that is left are the survivors. "She took up needle and thread and willed her fingers still to sew the boy's wound closed, while he winced and whined like a dog, the skin rolling grossly away from the dull needle, like a worm from a hook until punctured with an audible pop. This is what the embroidery lessons were for." The brothers, don't forget the brothers because they have hired a tracker to find the widow. So their story weaves throughout the book as does the story of her life with her husband and why she killed him. The ending-another one with a delightful surprise.

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  Rina (edited)

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  These tiles are the best of the year for me:

  3. GALORE - Michael Crummey

  This book was populated with such interesting characters and an isolated life of a group of people on the Newfoundland coast that is defies description. The book starts out with a beached whale that the villagers are waiting on to die so they can harvest and when they do a man is born from the belly of the whale. Pale as alabaster with a shock of white hair and stinks of fish. He is pulled from the belly by
  Devine's Widow who was old when this started and lived longer yet. A witch some say. They argue over what to call him - Jonah or Judas and settle on Judah. Then, there is the priest who has been as outcast of the Catholic Church who administers to the faithful and sleeps with Virtue when he is in town and talks to the ghost of her dead husband who killed a man and cant seem to leave the place. There is King-me Sellers who owns most everything and and tries to own everyone, but fails.
  It is also a book about the things that pull people together and push them apart both big and small. The look or the lack of a word that sets a marriage on a path that does not change for 50 years.

  4. WE, THE DROWNED - Carsten Jensen

  "Sunlight shone right through this cloud, which was slowly approaching us, though there was still no wind. It seemed to pulsate, as if there was a whirlwind inside it, shaking the leaves of a dense forest. Then the cloud was upon us, and fleetingly we felt as though we were being showered with the withered leaves of an autumn forest. Then I realized it wasn't dead foliage, but living creatures whirling around us, fluttering silky yellow wings. We were in the center if a vast swarm of butterflies."
  The novel is a history of a sailing community and the lives of the sailors and those they leave behind. Those that come home and those that do not. It is beautifully written.

  5. DOC - Mary Doria Russell

  This novel covers the time before the Tombstone shootout. It begins in Georgia when John Holliday was a child and lived on a large plantation with his mother and cousins and follows how he developed into the man he became. How tuberculosis first came into his life and changed the course of his entire life. He would never have sought a drier warmer climate if it had not been for this disease and would not have met the Earps who became his brothers or Kate who became his on again off again life long partner. Most of the novel takes place in Dodge during the cattle driving lawless years. When brothels, gambling, and drink were all that Dodge was and fortunes could be made or lost on a hand of faro or poker.
  The way Doc speaks and the mannerisms that he uses are all clearly and beautifully described. He was educated to be a surgical dentist and had a practice in town along with fleecing cowboys at cards. He did hot deal from the bottom but could count the cards- which was not illegal at the time. Val Kilmer got him down to a tee. The saying, "Well isn't that a daisy." is used a couple of times. A description near the end of the book when Doc and Kate are walking to a party; "They strolled toward town, stopping now and then to let him catch his breath and to gaze upward, for the west Kansas sky is black velvet on clear, cool December nights, and the Milky Way is strung across it like the diamond necklace of a crooked banker's mistress." Highly Recommended.

  6. THE WAKE OF FORGIVENESS - Bruce Machart

  This book is about the things that divide us and keep us apart. The book begins with the death of the mother in childbirth and how the husband is hardened to life and his sons after that. He hitches them to the plow instead of the oxen and when they are grown their necks lean to the direction that they would pull. The only relief for the main character is racing is fathers prize horse in races in which money and land has been bet. One day a Spanish man and his daughters arrive in town looking for husbands and everything changes...
  7. ONCE ON A MOONLESS NIGHT - Dai Sijie

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  Rina (edited)

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  Alice Hoffman is one of my favorite authors. Her brand of magic realism is a joy to read.

  8. SEVENTH HEAVEN
  9. THE RED GARDEN
  10. GREEN WITHCH
  11. GREEN ANGEL

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  Rina (edited)

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  A genre that i enjoy is stories about the hollers and mountain people. However this year several of them have been violent and dark, instead of filled with mountain wisdom and magic.

  12. SWEETIE -Kathryn Magendie
  13. ROSEFLOWER CREEK -
  14. WINTER'S BONE - Daniel Woodrell
  15. KNOCKEMSTIFF - Donald Ray Pollock

  These stories are not filled with loving families helping each other through life or planning a night out at the symphony or a trip to Europe. No growth of spirit or great revelation about life occurs unless it is that life shitty and just becomes more so as we age and the best times are over before high school done. This book is brutal, raw, and unforgiving. The stories are filled with drug abuse, child abuse, incest, and depravity of all kinds. They take place in the holler of Knockemstiff, Ohio and the characters may appear in one story at sixteen and then again later in life when life has given them even more hard knocks and tragedy has dragged them down even further. "Del backed away and waited for the inevitable crash. It was like being at the Atomic Speedway on family night, hoping for someone to fuck up and die so the kids would have a good time." Having said this does not mean that the stories are not good because they are; but it's like watching a train wreck and not being able to turn away. No happy endings here. But God help me, I could not stop reading.

  16. THE BAYOU TRILOGY - Daniel Woodrell
  20. TOMATO RED - Daniel Woodrell

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    Halo 

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    How did you like Tomato Red? I’ve got that on the TBR pile...

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    Rina 

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    I liked WINTER'S BONE better, but I want to know what you think. Did you read WINTER'S BONE?

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    Halo 

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    No, I haven’t, I was planning on Tomato Red first. Maybe I’ll try Winter’s Bone to start with.

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  Rina (edited)

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  Everything else. Which is a potluck of titles, because i enjoy a lot of different works!

  17. THE ATLAS OF LOVE: A NOVEL
  18. BEST SERVED COLD
  19. NOT NICE AND OTHER UNDERSTATEMENTS
  21. OCEANSTORY - Leslie Marman Silk
  22. WEST OF HERE - Jonathan Evison
  23. ZORRO - Isabel Allende
  24. THE BIG OVER EASY - Jasper Fforde Humpty Dumpty is not who or what you think he is
  25. BORDER SONGS - Jim Lynch
  26. WAR HORSE - Michael Morpurgo
  27. TRESPASS: A NOVEL - Rose Tremain
  28. MADAME TUSSAUD: A NOVEL OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION - Michelle Moran
  29. VIOLA IN THE SPOTLIGHT - Adriana Trigiani
  30. VIOLA IN REEL LIFE - Adriana Trigiani
  31. TOUCH: A NOVEL - Alexi Zentner
  32. I'LL NEVER GET OUT OF THIS WORLD ALIVE - Steve Earle
  33. OLD FILTH - Jane Gardam
  34. BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP - S. J. Watson Did not care for it
  35. THE FEAST OF THE GOAT - Llosa I liked this telling of the Trujillo assassination
  36. BAG OF BONES - Stephen King Classic King novel. A long set up, then the evil gets set in motion and finally all hell breaks loose.
  37. THE TURQUOISE LEDGE - Leslie Marmon Silk

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  Rina (edited)

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  38. MAMA MAKES UP HER MIND - Bailey White
  A Delightful collection of essays/short stories set in Georgia.

  39. MUSE AND REVERIE - Charles de Lint
  This is his new collection of short stories set in Newford. Very good and which I liked very much.

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  Rina (edited)

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  40. THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME - Donald Ray Pollock
  
  This novel is again set in Knockemstiff, Ohio but is three intersecting stories. None of them end well. Murders, wayward ministers who cause suicides and avenging teenagers with a german Luger. I liked the short stories a little better, they were ever more bleak and violent than this novel.

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  Rina 

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  41. MOONLIGHT & VINES - Charles de Lint
  42. FORESTS OF THE HEART - Charles de Lint Since I read the newest collection first, I did not know any of the background stories. This book told the story about how Donal dies. Quite good, if not a little long winded in places. I think I've had my fill of Newford for awhile. But will return.

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  Rina 

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  43. TAPPING THE DREAM TREE Charles de Lint
  44. WINDDERSHINS Charles de Lint
  I think I may finally have my fill of fairae and urban fantasy for just a little while. But I know I'll go back.
  45. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T RUN

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  Rina (edited)

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  46. THE GIRL WITH GLASS FEET
  47. THE WOMAN WITH THE BOUQUET
  48. DUST
  49. CHILL
  This book completed my goal for the year!
  50. GRALL
  51. THE DOVEKEEPERS

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    Riddley 

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    Congratulations.

    posted 1 year ago. ( permalink )

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