Bookmarks Magazine

This is what looks interesting in the March/April 2016 Bookmarks.

Rightful Heritage: FDR and the Land of America by Douglas Brinkley NF
The State We're In: Maine Stories by Ann Beattie
Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood
The Frangipani Hotel by Violet Kupersmith (short stories = SS)
Voices of the Night by Steven Millhauser (SS)
The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot by  Blaine Harden NF
The Expatriates by  Janice Y. K. Lee
Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta
The Past by Tessa Hadley
The Improbabiity of Love by Hannah Rothschild
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
City of Thorns: 9 Lives in the Worlds Largest Refugee Camp by Ben Rawlence NF
The Road to Wanting by Wendy Law-Yone
Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish
Together Tea by Marjan Kamali
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

Best of 2015
A Little Life by Hanya Yangihara
The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
Purity by Jonathan Franzen
Sellout by Paul Beatty
A Manual for Cleaning by Lucia Berlin SS
A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk
The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams SS
Our Souls At Night by Kent Haruf
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Honeydew by Edith Pearlman
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie
Outline by Rachel Cusk
The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector
You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman
Get in Trouble by Kelly Link
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

Bookmarks Magazine

This is what looked interesting in the Nov/Dec and Jan/Feb issues.

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson (author of Orphan Master)
Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick de Witt (author of Sisters Brothers)
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
Speak by Louisa Hall
Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman (Pissarro in STT)
The Yacoubian Building by Alaa A; Aswany
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
The Chimes by Anna Smaill
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan NF

In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri NF
Us Conductors by Sean Michaels (about theremin inventor)
Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks
Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss
Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins
Planetfall by Emma Newman SF
Pacific by Simon Winchester NF

Bookmarks Magazine

This what looked interesting in the July/August and Sept/Oct. Bookmarks Magazine.

Two Years, Eight Months by Salmon Rushdie
Slade House by David Mitchell
Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
World Order by Henry Kissinger NF
Quincunx by Charles Palliser
Lempriere's Dictionary by Lawrence Norfolk
Henry James' Midnight Song by Carol de Chellis Hill
The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson SF
The Millionaire and the Bard by Andrea Mays NF
The Edge of the World by Michael Pye NF 
Armada by Ernest Cline SF
Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet NF
Voices in the Night by Steven Millhauser
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes
Little Black Lies by Sharon Bolton
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross
Three Moments of an Explosion by China Mieville 
Infamy by Richards Reeves NF

Bookmarks Magazine

Here's what looked interesting in the Nov./Dec. 2014, Jan/Feb 2015, Mar/ April 2015.

Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson
Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
Humans by Matt Haig
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle
Pow! by Mo Yan
Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke
The Bees by Laline Paull
How to be Both by Ali Smith
Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes
Min Kamp by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Skylight by Jose Saramago
Dublinesque by Enrique-Matas
The Truth About Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker
The Laughing Monsters by Denis Johnson 
Murder in Marais by Cara Black  
something by Nuruddin Farah a Somali author
something by Brian Doyle from Portland OR
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber SF
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu SF
White Plague by James Abe SF
Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun SF
The Peripheral by William Gibson SF 
World Order by Henry Kissinger NF
This Book is Overdue by Marilyn Johnson NF
Without You, There is No Us by Suki Kim NF
Double Cross or Operation Mincemeat or Agent Zigzag by Ben MacIntyre NF
Coctail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness and
Leaving Before the Rains Come by Alexandra Fuller Memoir
The Chimp and the River by David Quammen NF
In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by Margaret Atwood NF 
The Innovators by Walter Isaacson or the Soul of the New Machine by Tracy Kidder or Fie in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger NF

July/August and September/October Bookmarks Magazine

This is what looked interesting in the July/August and September/October 2014, January February 2015 Bookmarks Magazine.

My Real Children by Jo Walton
Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen
The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz
Sea of Fertility Tetralogy by Yukio Mishima
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
The Storied Life of  A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August SF
Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson
The Three by Sarah Lotz SF
Age of Ambition by Evan Osnos NF re China
Tibetan Peach Pie by Tom Robbins NF

Bookmarks Magazine

This is what looked interesting in the March/April and  May/June Bookmarks Magazine.

Cloud Splitter - Russel Banks, interesting to read with Good Lord Bird
Blood & Ice - Robert Masello (Antarctica)
1222 - Anne Holt
The Final Bet - Abdelilah Hamdouchi
The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino
The Eye of Jade - Diane Wei Liang
Thursday Night Widows - Claudia Pineiro
Orfeo-Richard Powers
On Such a Full Sea - Chang-rae Lee
Americanah-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi, read Mr. Fox first
An Unnecessary Woman - Rabih Alameddine
The Wind is Not a River - Brian Payton
The Accident - Chris Pavone
What the Dead Know - Laura Lippman
The Sea - John Banville
Middlemarch - George Elliot
A Highly Unlikely Hero - Rachel Cantor (SF)
Flappers - Judith Mackrell (NF)
Astoria - Peter Stark (NF)
The Oregon Trail - Peter Stark (NF)

Once Upon A Time VIII

It is time once again for Carl's Once Upon A Time VIII!  For information on the event go here, and for the review site go here.  Having looked at my prior OUAT lists I note that there are books, like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke which are in my list every year and I still haven't read.  So this year I am going for a fresh perspective and consider more books that have not been on my list in prior years.  I also stuck in a couple of re-reads because, at the moment Weaveworld and the Talisman are what I am in the mood for and I couldn't come up with anything else similar and I haven't read them in decades. 

So I am signing up for the Journey, because I like the flexibility and will also be sticking in some short stories. And I will actually be watching A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Although I say that every year, I couldn't find my dvd last year but I am ready this year as it is recorded on my dvr now.  So I guess technically I am signing up for Quest the Third and Short Story Quest.  

         
Enchanted Night-Steven Millhauser
Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute - Jonathan L. Howard
Hang Wire - Adam Christopher
Life After Life - Kate Atkinson
Garden Spells - Sarah Addison Allen 
Of Blood and Honey - Stina Leicht
The Scar -China Miéville
Sensation - Nick Mamatas
Palimpsest - Catherynne M. Valente
The Golden Age - Michal Ajvaz
The Baron in the Trees - Italo Calvino
Jagannath - Karin Tidbeck
The Weird - The VanderMeers
Jorge Borges short stories

Re-reads
Weaveworld - Clive Barker
The Talisman - Stephen King 

2014 Tournament of Books

As always, I enjoyed following the Tournament of Books this year.  The contenders were:   

    * At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón
    * The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
    * The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto
    * The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
    * How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid
    * The Dinner by Herman Koch
    * The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
    * Long Division by Kiese Laymon
    * The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
    * Hill William by Scott McClanahan
    * The Son by Philipp Meyer
    * A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
    * Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell 
    * The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt  Reading
    * The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
    * Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

And the winner was The Good Lord Bird. 

This year I managed to read before the Tournament started The Turner of Silences, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, Long Division, A Tale for the Time Being, Goldfinch and am still reading The People in the Trees.  The Goldfinch I would have read with or without the TOBs because I just loved Donna Tartt’s Secret History but the others weren’t on my radar.

I enjoyed the Goldfinch but not nearly as much as Secret History.  I actually listened to it and the narrator did such an amazing job with Boris that he was by far my favorite part of the book.  Of these TOB books A Tale for the Time Being was certainly my favorite which I never would have read based upon its description.  I loved both story lines of the writer Ruth in the Pacific Northwest and teenager Nao and her family in Japan and simply couldn’t put it down.  I don’t normally re-read books but I will definitely be re-reading this one.  My second favorite was Long Division, not because I thought it was particularly well crafted, but because it was so unique.  I found the time travel bits and alternate versions of the main characters a bit forced, but nonetheless I just loved the unique voice of City and his friends.  I don’t think it is going to win any prizes and I probably won’t be recommending it to anyone to read as I am not sure it appeals to a wide audience, but I certainly will read whatever this writer publishes next.  That being said, it is interesting that Kevin and John compared it to Colson Whitehead's first novel The Intuitionist, which I also loved because ironically I haven’t enjoyed any of Colson Whitehead’s other books anywhere near as much as his first.  Long Division is the one book that has stuck with me the most even though it was the very first one that I read for the TOBs.  I enjoyed both How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and Turner of Silences and thought they were well done but they both struck me as books that I have read before.  I will have to reserve judgment on The People in the Trees as I am not that far into it. 

Having now followed all of the match ups, judging and commentary I definitely intend to read the winner, The Good Lord Bird.  I also intend to read Life After Life and possibly The Luminaries and The Son.  I thoroughly enjoyed the TOBs and was able to read far more of the books before the Tournament started than I had in the past, which made it even more interesting.  But enough of "literary" fiction, it is time to move onto Carl’s Once Upon A Time Challenge reading fantasy, folklore, fairy tales or mythology.