Book Bingo: Six Lines Complete

Only three more squares to go on my Books on the Nightstand bingo card! My earlier book bingo posts are here (two lines) and here (four lines), in case you missed them.

Following are my comments on the books for the categories in the two vertical lines outlined above in orange.

WESTERN: Law of the Desert Born by Louis L'Amour et. al. [Graphic novel]

In the bottom panel,
the sole of his boot
comes right out at the
reader, and his hat
breaks into the panel
above, creating a nice
sense of motion.
(Click to make big.)

Thank you to Melwyk/Melanie over at The Indextrious Reader for recommending some westerns approached from a different slant (see the comments below my first book bingo post). I was tempted by Mary Doria Russell's Doc, but decided to save that for another time. Instead, I went with a classic that has been transformed into a graphic novel.
Writer Charles Santino and artist Thomas Yeates adapted Beau L'Amour and Katherine Nolan's audio script of Law of the Desert Born, which had already been adapted from a short story written in the mid-twentieth century by Beau's father, Louis L'Amour.
Designed with minimal text and an oversize page format, Yeates' realistic black and grey washed illustrations are a significant aspect of the narrative. I found them immediately appealing.
In an afterward, Beau writes, "One of the best aspects of the audio script was that there were no gunfighters, no hidden treasures, no girl who was the daughter of 'the richest man in the county.' It was just about working stiffs trying to keep their heads above water and doing a bad job of it." 
Yes! And the main characters are not clearly good guys or bad guys. I loved the ambiguity and the layers of loyalty and betrayal. It's very noir and I could not guess how it would end. It was excellent and I could not have been more surprised.
I could have slotted this into my THAT YOU THINK YOU WILL DISLIKE bingo category (if it hadn't already been taken) since I wasn't too fond of L'Amour's Hondo. I was as wrong about Law of the Desert Born as I was about disliking the book I did use for that category (Soccer In Sun and Shadow.) So, thank you to BOTNS book bingo for leading me to two books I never would have read otherwise!

HAS A PLACE-NAME IN THE TITLE: The Green Road by Anne Enright (Intersection with a previous line. See Book Bingo: Four Lines Complete.)

WITH A CHILD ON THE COVER: The Door: Poems by Margaret Atwood
The photo on the dust jacket is of Atwood as a child. (Awww!) Did anyone back then guess what a literary powerhouse she would grow up to become? I'm excited about her new stand-alone novel, The Heart Goes Last, coming out in September 2015. Meanwhile, I still find books of hers that are new to me. I spotted this poetry collection on a truck of recently-returned materials at the library. I've now read it through several times. So good! Wry, poignant, and relevant to contemporary life. I would recommend this to people who normally avoid poetry.

Owl and Pussycat, Some Years Later
"So here we are again, my dear,
on the same shore we set out from
years ago, when we were promising,
but minus - now - a lot of hair,
or fur or feathers, whatever.
I like the bifocals. They make you look
even more like an owl than you are.
[...]
But sing on, sing
on, someone may still be listening
besides me. The fish for instance.
Anyway, my dearest one,
we still have the moon." 

In my head, I can hear Atwood's distinctive voice and cadence as I read her poetry. She makes me smile.

AN AUDIOBOOK: Kindred by Octavia Butler [Recorded Books audiobook: 11 hr: read by Kim Staunton] (Intersection with a previous line. See Book Bingo: Two Lines Complete.)

WITH AN ANIMAL ON THE COVER: Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido [Graphic novel, translator unknown]
This is an outstanding collection of three stories in the style of 1950s hard-boiled detective noir, except with anthropomorphic characters. John Blacksad is a private eye with a muscular human body and the head of a black cat. I know this sounds weird, but it really works. I can also recommend another in the series: Amarillo. Readalikes: Grandville (Bryan Talbot); Britten and Brulightly (Hannah Berry); and Richard Stark's Parker series (Darwyn Cooke). Also, if you liked Mort(e) by Robert Repino, try Blacksad.

AN ACADEMIC/CAMPUS NOVEL: SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian Tamaki [Graphic novel]
It's a bit of a stretch to place it in this category, since it's more of a boarding school story, but whatever. Jillian Tamaki is brilliant and I love this anthology. The comics follow the lives of a group of students with magical abilities. My favourite characters include Marsha, who has a crush on fox-shapeshifter Wendy, and Frances, who is always staging feminist performance art. Check out some of it online here.

WITH A MYTHOLOGICAL CREATURE ON THE COVER: Nimona by Noelle Stevenson [Graphic novel] (Intersection with a previous line. See Book Bingo: Four Lines Complete.)

BY AN AUTHOR WITH AMERICAN INDIAN/FIRST NATIONS/INDIGENOUS HERITAGE: If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth [Listening Library audiobook: 10 hr 20 min: read by the author]
Louis Blake faces heartbreaking discrimination as the only Aboriginal student in his Grade 7 class in the 1970s. He is from a poor family on the Tuscarora Reservation, not far from the Canadian border in New York State. I picked this up because of a recommendation by Debbie Reese at American Indians in Children's Literature. It made me laugh and it made me cry.
Readalike: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (Sherman Alexie).

ROMANCE OR LOVE STORY: The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
(Intersection with a previous line. See Book Bingo: Two Lines Complete.)

SET IN EUROPE: Antennas Everywhere by Julie Delporte [Graphic novel, translation by Helge Dascher]
A fictional diary of a young woman in France who suffers a debilitating sensitivity to the electromagnetic radiation emitted by modern technology. I was immediately sucked in by this story and I love the impressionistic style of art and text, both of which are rendered in coloured crayon. Delporte now lives in Canada.
Readalike: The Voyeurs (Gabrielle Bell) for another graphic memoir with a melancholic atmosphere; Girl In the Dark: A Memoir (Anna Lyndsey) for another rare disorder connected to technology.

Coming up soon: Book Bingo Blackout!

Book Bingo, Second Card, Fifth Line

So much reading, so little blogging. I started my first Book Bingo card on the May long weekend and I've finished 84 books since then, so you would think that I'd have completed three cards by now. But the final four squares on this card just haven't matched what's been on my reading pile. The stumper categories have been: a banned book; sports-related; manga; and borrowed from a friend. Thanks to my dear friend Amy, I've completed another line.

YOUNG ADULT: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman [Listening Library audiobook: 18 hr, 10 min: narrated by Mandy Williams and W Morgan Sheppard].
(See previous Book Bingo post.)

THAT INVOLVES MAGIC: Uprooted by Naomi Novik [Books on Tape audiobook: 17 hr, 47 min: narrated by Julia Emelin].

Uprooted is an outstanding fantasy novel that combines elements of traditional Russian or Polish fairytales with the freshness of realistic characters. It's told in the voice of Agnieszka, who is not your average village maiden.

"Our Dragon doesn't eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travellers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that's not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he's still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we're grateful, but not that grateful."

I love that Novik doesn't ignore the reasons why people would choose to remain living in a place that isn't safe. She also reveals the origins of the situation - why it became dangerous in the first place. It's a compelling and satisfying tale.

WITH AN UGLY COVER: Switch by Douglas Davey (with honorable mention to Graffiti Knight by Karen Bass, which I used for the Historical category instead; see previous Book Bingo post.)

YA novels with ugly covers are one of my pet peeves. Even with a good pitch, it takes extra effort to convince a teen to read something with an unattractive cover. Without an advocate promoting them to readers, these books sit on library shelves unread for months and even years. It makes me sad when I'm performing collection maintenance tasks and find books that have never been borrowed. They are nearly always from Canadian publishers. Sigh.

Inside its unfortunate cover, I found Douglas Davey's Switch to be an enjoyable surprise. The title refers to an ambidextrous switch hitter, someone who "plays for both teams." It's a term that's had derogatory connotations for bisexuals, but the portrayal in this case is positive. Switch is a first-person account about a bisexual high school student, set in the 1980s. Circumstances have the protagonist Sheldon coming out to his entire school, an unusual experience for that era. Copious wry footnotes, written as if from a much older version of Sheldon, add a perspective that makes this novel particularly interesting for both teen and adult readers. Just ignore the cover.

I'm grateful to Red Deer Press for providing a review copy of Switch.

BY OR ABOUT A CELEBRITY: The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae [Simon and Schuster Audio: 5 hr, 50 min: read by author].
(See previous Book Bingo post.)

BORROWED FROM A FRIEND: Ariel: Poems by Sylvia Plath

Amy Willans (a headliner at the Edmonton Poetry Festival earlier this year) kindly loaned me her copy of Ariel. I've read it through several times and feel like I've barely begun to understand its layers. Poetry is such a potent form of language.

"The vivid tulips eat my oxygen." - Tulips

"I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms. / And in truth it is terrible, / multiplied in the eyes of the flies." - Totem

My feminist book group will be discussing Ariel next week. It's the first time we've done poetry, and that's only one of the reasons I'm excited. I want to talk about the foreword by Robert Lowell (from 1966) and how it got my back up, because of the way he writes about gender. I want to talk about the poems I loved from the very first reading, and about those that still have me puzzled after three or more readings. I want to talk about mental health. I want to compare the contents of the edition I borrowed (original copyright 1961 with Ted Hughes as editor) with differences in the edition some other book group members are reading, one that restores Plath's original selection and arrangement. It should be a great discussion!
______________________________________________

If you want to see all of my Book Bingo posts, click here.

Book Bingo: Four Lines Complete

My book bingo card is filling up! If you aren't a regular reader of my blog, there's more information in my initial book bingo post, where I wrote about completing the first two lines (marked with pink X's in the image above).

The audiobook I finished yesterday completed two intersecting lines, outlined in yellow on the image above. Starting with the fourth column and going down, then across the second row from the top, these are the categories, their corresponding titles, and my comments:

THAT YOU THINK YOU WILL DISLIKE: Soccer: In Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano
Chosen especially for the category, I was not sure if I would get far with it. Me and sports are not pals. (Aside from curling, which I play but do not watch.) Fortunately, I was wrong about this one. It's about the history of soccer and it's chock full of fun facts. I wrote about it at length a few days ago.

BY ANY BOOKTOPIA AUTHOR: The Wife, the Maid and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon [Books on Tape audiobook: 12 hr: read by Ann Marie Lee]
I had the pleasure of attending one of the Booktopia events in 2013. A list of all the Booktopia alumni on the Books on the Nightstand website made it easy to choose something for this category. The BOTNS podcast is where I heard about Lawhon's novel, which is inspired by a true historical event. A judge went missing in NYC in 1930 and his disappearance has never been solved. The three women closest to Justice Joseph Crater reveal a possible scenario in this compelling audiobook. There's a lot of dialogue and narrator Ann Marie Lee does a fine job of performing all the different voices.

ON A TOPIC CURRENTLY IN THE NEWS: Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty [Penguin audiobook: 16 hr: read by Caroline Lee]
What I had in mind for this category was nonfiction of some sort, maybe On Immunity by Eula Biss. At the same time, I was trying to find a spot on my bingo card for Big Little Lies, a book I picked up because I had previously enjoyed The Husband's Secret by Australian author Liane Moriarty. AN AUDIOBOOK was already taken, and so was SET IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. Then I realized that Moriarty's novel deals with family violence and bullying, topics that are often in the news. Sadly. Big Little Lies combines social commentary with suspense and humour. A drunken brawl erupts among the parents at a school fund-raising trivia night and someone dies; the narrative then backtracks to the events leading up to that point. It's cleverly done, very engaging, and Lee is an excellent narrator.

SET BEFORE 1800: My Guardian Angel by Sylvie Weil
(Intersection with a previous line: see my initial book bingo post.)

A NON-HUMAN MAIN CHARACTER: The Tusk that Did the Damage by Tania James
The Gravedigger, an elephant gone rogue, is one of the central characters in this atmospheric and layered novel set in southern India. I reviewed it here.

SET IN ANOTHER COUNTRY: God Help the Child by Toni Morrison [Random House audiobook: 5 hr 45 min: read by the author]
There are books used in other bingo categories that could have been used here instead. Novels set in Australia, England, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Ukraine and the USA are counted elsewhere on my card. One of my categories is "WITH A CHILD ON THE COVER" and I was tempted... but Morrison's title has "the child" not "a child." Aside from the audiobook category (which was already taken), I couldn't see any other place to fit God Help the Child, which is set in current-day USA. It is an outstanding novel, not to be missed. Morrison revisits the themes of her previous writings, The Bluest Eye in particular, and just keeps getting better as her work grows more spare. See also my reviews of Morrison's Home and A Mercy.

HAS A PLACE-NAME IN THE TITLE: The Green Road by Anne Enright
It may be a bit of a stretch to use this one here, but a road is a place, isn't it? And this road has a name as well as a role in the plot. My bingo card, my rules. The Green Road is a story-cycle, a novel composed of a series of interconnected short stories. Far-flung members of an Irish family reunite for Christmas when the matriarch decides to sell her home in County Clare. The dysfunctional, yet loving, relationships reminded me of Enright's earlier novel, The Gathering. See also my review of The Forgotten Waltz. I like everything she writes.

PART OF A SERIES: The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
(Intersection with a previous line: see my initial book bingo post.)

WITH A MYTHOLOGICAL CREATURE ON THE COVER: Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
Nimona is a shapeshifter, pictured with dragon wings on the cover of this smart, very funny, full-colour graphic novel. Stevenson (of Lumberjanes fame) initially created Nimona as a webcomic. Nimona is a kickass heroine, a sturdy, irrepressible girl who can turn herself into a mouse, a monster, a rhinoceros, or anything else. She is super-enthusiastic about her role as sidekick for supervillain Lord Ballister Blackheart, who may not be such a bad guy after all. You know it's all in good fun when the knights have names like Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin, Sir Coriander Cadaverish and Sir Mansley Girthrod.

There are just five more empty spaces on my card, and I've got titles in mind for each of them. Back to reading!

Book Bingo, Second Card, Black Out!

These are the final three categories on my second Books on the Nightstand Book Bingo card. The project, which started on the May long weekend and ended on Labour Day, was created by Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness and promoted on their delightful weekly BOTNS podcast. Links to all of my book bingo posts are here.

A BANNED BOOK: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel.

This multiple award-winning memoir has received much acclaim since it was first published in 2006. It has also been adapted into a Broadway musical that won five Tony awards in 2015. It's the story of a complex relationship between a closeted gay or bisexual father and his lesbian daughter. The main ingredients that have made it a target for censorship are its queer content and comics format, plus its wide popularity. That makes me sad. I love this book so much!

I've read it multiple times and each time I notice new things. This time, one of the scenes that caught my attention was related to the current adult colouring book craze. When Bechdel was a child, she had a "huge oversize colouring book of E.H. Shepard's illustrations for The Wind in the Willows."

"Dad had read me bits of the story from the real book. In one scene, the charming sociopath Mr. Toad purchases a gypsy caravan. I was filling this in one day with my favourite colour, midnight blue."
Alison's father says, "What are you doing? That's the canary-coloured caravan! Here. I'll do the rest in yellow, and your blue side will be in shadow. Look, by adding thin layers of goldenrod and yellow-orange, I get a richer colour." Alison, meanwhile, has wandered off. "It was a crayonic tour de force."

LAST BOOK OF AN AUTHOR BEFORE HE/SHE DIED: Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff.

This is Canadian gay humourist David Rakoff's only novel and it was published after he died. I reviewed it in 2013, and re-read it this year for the July meeting of the Jasper Place Library book club. Rakoff's skill as a wordsmith was widely praised. The format of the book provided us with almost as much to talk about as the content. There was near unanimous agreement in the contention that it was not a novel at all, but rather a collection of interlinked short stories. I was in the minority, finding that the short stories - told in rhyming couplets! - interlink individual lives over the course of the twentieth century and encompass a larger social commentary. That makes it a novel, as far as I can tell.

At the same meeting, the reasons people have for attending the library book club came up, including the broadening of one's reading horizons. This title is a good example, because participants said they never would have picked it up otherwise, yet were surprised by how much they enjoyed it. Stretching my book horizons is also the reason that I enjoy playing Book Bingo.

MANGA: Library Wars, vol. 1. Love and War. Story and art by Kiiro Yumi, original concept by Hiro Arikawa, translation by Kinami Watabe.

I read a lot of western-style graphic novels, but not many Japanese-style comics. Links to some of my earlier manga reviews are here.

The premise of Library Wars is pretty cool. In near future Japan, under the Media Betterment Act, the federal government creates a Media Betterment Committee that "seeks to exercise censorship over all media, including restricting offensive books." Armed units have been set up under local governments to fight censorship under the Library Freedom Act. "Working for the Library Defense Force is considered even more dangerous than being a police officer or in the army."

In the first volume of Library Wars, we meet a young Defense Force recruit, Iku Kasahara, whose parents think she is studying to be a librarian. Iku and her drill instructor, Atsushi Dojo, are obviously attracted to each other but they act like they can't stand each other. Their relationship drove me nuts.

What I did not take into account when I picked this up is that it's shojo manga. The target audience for shojo is teenage girls and there tends to be too much romance in the storylines for my taste. I won't be continuing with the series, even though the art is pretty and I've heard that the pace picks up after the first volume.

The English edition of Library Wars preserves the traditional right-to-left layout. Volume 14 is due to be published by Simon Schuster in October 2015. The full story is serialized over 15 parts in Japan, according to Wikipedia.

Book Bingo, Second Card, Third Row

HORROR: Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk [Recorded Books audiobook: 7.5 hr, narrated by Richard Poe].

I've been meaning to read something by Palahniuk for a long time. What I expected was dark satire and that's pretty much what I got with Lullaby. The premise is that a journalist investigating crib deaths discovers that there's a culling song in a book of collected poems from around the world. The song has the power to kill. The journalist has rage issues. Do you see where this is going?

There's also a realtor who flips haunted properties. "Blood running down your kitchen walls? Well, of course you shouldn't have to live with that." (Nor a severed head that bounces down a stairway at night, nor a biting phantom doberman, nor a severed hand that crawls out of the garbage disposal...)

The realtor's secretary is a flaky new-ager. Mona made a Hopi medicine bag using a design in a book called Traditional Tribal Hobby-Krafts. "The fun part about primitive crafts is they're so easy to make while you watch TV," Mona says, "And they put you in touch with all sorts of ancient energies and stuff."

I listened to the first 15 chapters in audio, but then switched to the print book for the rest. The first person narration in the crass voice of a boorish man - "she had a decent little pooper in tight jeans" - was a bit too full-on with the addition of audio's visceral quality to the reading experience. In the end, I was surprised by how much I liked the book.

HISTORICAL FICTION: Graffiti Knight by Karen Bass

Here's another book that surprised me, mostly because the cover doesn't do it justice. ("With an Ugly Cover" is actually one of my categories on this bingo card, but I found one that was even worse than this. Stay tuned.)

Canadian author Karen Bass set this realistic page-turner in post-WWII East Germany, where a 16-year-old boy dangerously rebels against the Soviet occupation in Leipzig. My YA book club will be discussing this soon, and I've heard positive feedback from other members already.

WRITTEN BEFORE 1700: The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare [Arkangel Complete Shakespeare audiobook: 3 hr, full cast recording].

The reason I chose to listen to this play in particular is because I saw that Jeanette Winterson's new book coming out in October, The Gap of Time, is a retelling of The Winter's Tale.

In Shakespeare's version, there's a king whose jealousy gets so out of hand that he imprisons his wife and orders their newborn daughter killed (because he believes she is a bastard). And another king who gets bent out of shape because his son has fallen for a shepherd's daughter (who is actually the baby princess, all grown up). The shepherd's daughter is so beautiful and so well-mannered because of course her royal breeding comes through. (Yeah, right.) Anyway, it's entertaining and even the tyrants get to live happily ever after.

Full cast audio recordings are the best, by the way. I felt like I was at the theatre, totally engrossed in the fancy language. Music between scenes was a nice touch.

A PARODY: Fun with Kirk and Spock by Robb Pearlman.
(See previous Book Bingo post.)

BY OR ABOUT A CELEBRITY: The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae [Simon and Schuster Audio: 5 hr, 50 min, narrated by the author].

Authors narrating their own memoirs are also the best, especially when they are like Issa Rae, who has oodles of comedic talent. Her essays in this book draw on her experiences growing up in the USA with an African American mother and Senegalese father. Check out her show on YouTube.

More book bingo posts can be found here.

Book Bingo, Second Card, Sixth Line

My book bingo card is now complete, but I'm going to separate the final two lines into two separate posts, just to keep it manageable. It took me so long to get the last few squares that I managed to read additional titles for several other categories in the meantime.

ABOUT A DISEASE: The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe [Books on Tape: 9 hr 37 min: narrated by Jeff Harding]. Bonus title: On Immunity by Eula Biss.
(Intersection. See previous book bingo post here.)

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS: A Bone to Pick: The Good and Bad News about Food, with Wisdom and Advice on Diets, Food Safety, GMOs, Farming, and More by Mark Bittman [Books on Tape: 8 hr 42 min: narrated by Robert Fass.

Social justice, public health and the environment are all addressed in Bittman's passion about food issues. This collection of about 60 short articles was originally written for his column in the New York Times. The subtitle is a good indication of the breadth of topics, as are the subheadings in the table of contents: Big Ag, Sustainability, and What's in Between; What's Wrong with Meat?; What Is Food? And What Is Not?; The Truth About Diet(s); The Broken Food Chain; and Legislating and Labeling. Thought-provoking and entertaining.

Bonus title: Selfish, Shallow and Self Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids, edited by Meghan Daum.

I already knew and loved Meghan Daum's writing and now I know that she's great at getting other writers to contribute to an anthology on a controversial topic. It is top notch! Here's just one example, from Geoff Dyer, in 'Over and Out':

"To be middle-aged and childless is to elicit one of two responses. The first: pity because you are unable to have kids. This is fine by me. I'm always on the lookout for pity, will accept it from anyone or, if no one is around, from myself. I crave pity the way other men crave admiration or respect. So if my wife or I are asked if we have kids, one of us will reply, 'No, we've not been blessed with children.' We do it totally deadpan, shaking our heads wistfully, looking as forlorn as a couple of empty beer glasses." (The second response is "horror, because by choosing not to have children, you are declining full membership in the human race.")

Selfish, Shallow and Self Absorbed would make an excellent book club choice, because there are many different views expressed and it's a hot-button topic.

SPORTS-RELATED: Lost Canyon by Nina Revoyr.

This was one of the three final categories that snagged my progress. I had it on my first card, where it also created a hindrance, until I read a great nonfiction book about soccer. It took me a while to realize that I could count Nina Revoyr's brand new novel, Lost Canyon, for this category. It's about four people who know each other only through their trainer at a Los Angeles gym, and their planned four-day backpacking trip through strenuous mountain terrain.

As it happens, I've had an advance electronic copy of it since mid-June, thanks to Akashic Books. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the pdf to open in the reading app on my iPod. Every time I wanted to read it, I had to scroll to the message in my email, open the pdf, and then advance page by page to my last stopping point. Quite a nuisance... until I came to a point in the narrative where the hiking adventure went completely sideways and the story switched gears into thriller mode. I didn't stop again until I was finished. (Format problem solved.)

The viewpoint in Lost Canyon rotates between the multi-ethnic cast of believable protagonists. If you are familiar with Revoyr's previous work, you won't be surprised that issues of race and class are explored within a compelling plot. Lost Canyon is her most adrenalin-fueled novel to date.

HISTORICAL FICTION: Graffiti Knight by Karen Bass.
(Intersection. See previous book bingo post here.)

AT LEAST 800 PAGES: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude - 880 pages [Blackstone Audio: 33 hr 34 min: narrated by Wanda McCaddon].

Audio is my favourite way to experience classic literature. Skillful audiobook narrators make complex sentence structure easy to understand. In the past three years, I've had the immense pleasure of listening to works by Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton, Jack Kerouac, Chinua Achebe, Beryl Markham, Ann Petry, E.M. Forster, P.G. Wodehouse, Wilkie Collins and George Eliot. Another great thing about audio is having someone else do the work of pronouncing unfamiliar names, of which there are plenty in Tolstoy.

My choice of this particular version of Anna Karenina was all about the voice narrator, Wanda McCaddon, and not about the translators. McCaddon, who also records under the names Donada Peters and Nadia May, is a sure bet. I did find some interesting articles online, however, that made me aware of the linguistic differences I would have encountered if I had listened to a different translation. (See examples in The Guardian and the New York Times.)

As with pretty much any novel that uses a person's name as the title, Anna Karenina is character-based. I didn't have a lot of patience for Anna. Her tragic romance bored me, although I felt some sympathy for the societal restrictions placed upon Tolstoy's women strictly because of their gender. My favourite character is definitely Konstantin Levin. I adored the descriptive passages about the Russian countryside and found the ideas about social, agricultural and educational reforms intellectually engaging.

One thing that still mystifies me is why the men would be so keen to shoot snipes rather than ducks. Are snipes so much tastier? Are they a more challenging target because they are smaller? If you know the answer, please tell me!

Bonus title: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson - 861 pages.

After I'd read (listened to) Anna Karenina, someone gave me a raised eyebrow about counting it for this category, since an audiobook technically has no pages at all. I still think it counts, and Ann and Michael of BOTNS concur, but since then I've read another long book, and this time it was proper paper door-stop.

Seveneves begins in the near-future, when something collides with Earth's moon and causes it to break up into seven large chunks. This in turn has a big effect on our planet. One of the most memorable points in the book is the line that begins: "Five thousand years later..." An impressive narrative leap! Some parts were a little too science-explainy but that didn't stop me from loving this overall.

Coming up next: Black Out! My final book bingo post for 2015.

Book Bingo: Two Lines Complete

Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness, podcasters extraordinaire over at Books on the Nightstand, created Book Bingo to encourage listeners to have fun while broadening our reading horizons. I generated my own card on May 22 and started playing immediately.

Even though I have been reading with my bingo categories in mind, most of them have been books I had planned to read anyway. It was just a matter of slotting them into a relevant square, sometimes juggling placement for stragegic coverage when one book fit more than one category. But, in the spirit of the game, there are other squares that present more of a challenge. The following list of books are from the two lines that I've completed so far. (Pink X's, left.)

I've linked to my reviews, where applicable, although I haven't felt much like reviewing lately. Too much gardening - while listening to audiobooks, naturally. In fact, seven out of the following nine are titles that I've read with my ears.

BORROWED FROM THE LIBRARY: Republic of Dirt by Susan Juby
Sequel to The Woefield Poultry Collective (called Home to Woefield in the USA). You don't need to have read the first to enjoy this hilarious tale of misfits making a go at farming on an unpromising bit of land on Vancouver Island, told in shifting points of view with adept characterization. Kaitlyn Vincent, a marketing representative at HarperCollins Canada, offered me a review copy of Republic of Dirt, but I turned it down because I prefer to read library copies whenever possible. There is just no space in my house for all the books I read. (Every one of the titles in this list is from the public library.)

PART OF A SERIES: The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein [Blackstone audiobook: 19 hr: read by Hillary Huber]

I liked this even better than My Brilliant Friend, which was the first in the series about a complicated friendship between two girls from a poor neighbourhood in Naples whose lives take different paths. The voice and characterization are so strong that I was totally immersed in southern Italy of the 1960s, where violence was inextricable from intimacy. As with the first book, this one ends on a precipice.

FREE SQUARE: Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny
The free square in the centre can be used for any category, so I chose this entertaining collection of short stories about women falling in love at the wrong time with the wrong men.

TRAVEL WRITING: Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World by Leigh Ann Henion [Books on Tape audiobook: 10 hr 40 min: read by Nicol Zanzarella]
This title was chosen especially for the bingo category. I read a lot of travel writing, so I scanned my TBR for something immediately available in downloadable audio. Phenomenal has been compared to Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love - but I didn't like it as well as either. The travel part was interesting, and I felt a vicarious awe as Henion witnessed various natural phenomena, but there was a little too much woo-woo and a self-congratulatory tone when she described personal insights.

HAS WATER ON THE COVER: Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya [Blackstone audiobook: 9 hr 36 min: read by Stefan Rudnicki]
An engaging novel composed of episodes in the lives of members of a contemporary extended Russian family. Some have immigrated to Brooklyn, some remain in Odessa, and they occasionally visit each other. Akhtiorskaya's warm, satirical style and ear for dialogue grabbed my attention from the opening lines: "The morning was ideal, a crime to waste it cooped up. They were off to the shore. That means you, too, Pasha - you need some colour, a dunk would do you good, so would a stroll. Aren't you curious to see Coney Island? Freud had been. Don't deliberate till it's too late. Strokes are known to make surprise appearances in the family. Who knows how long...? Now, get up off that couch!"

BY OR ABOUT A CELEBRITY: Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words in conversation with Malka Marom [Tantor audiobook: 7 hr 50 min: read by Carrington MacDuffie]
These interviews, which took place over four decades, are fascinating. Mitchell faced a lot of hardships in her early years, and in later years struggled with her mental health. One memorable anecdote (among many) credits a toy hurdy-gurdy that played 'London Bridge Is Falling Down' as her first musical influence: "I used to always play it backwards because backwards it rocked. It had a different rhythm. The melodic intervals were quite surprising. It was really entirely a different piece of music - almost African in its rhythm. Once I played it backwards, playing it forward was kind of corny." 

AN AUDIOBOOK: Kindred by Octavia Butler [Recorded Books audiobook: 11 hr: read by Kim Staunton]
One of my colleagues started a feminist book club (yay! I work with cool people!) and this was Amanda's inaugural selection. I thought that I had read it years ago, but when there weren't any spaceships in this one, I realized I was remembering an entirely different Butler novel. In Kindred, a Black woman time travels between 1976 and 19th-century Maryland. It's an exploration of the dynamics of power, gender and race that remains relevant, even though it was first published in 1979. Our next book club selection is my choice: Artful by Ali Smith. In addition to being a huge fan of Ali Smith, I'm pleased that I'll be able to count that one for the essay collection bingo category.

SET BEFORE 1800: My Guardian Angel by Sylvie Weil, translated by Gillian Rosner [Blackstone audiobook: 4.5 hr: read by Vanessa Benjamin]
Some parts of Kindred are set in the early 1800s, but that's not quite early enough for this category. I looked through my TBR and found one set in the 11th century. 12-year-old Elvina describes the threat Crusaders bring to the Jewish inhabitants of Troyes, in northeastern France, in the spring of 1096.

ROMANCE OR LOVE STORY: The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
At first, I thought I was going to have trouble finding a book to fit this square. The plot of a traditional romance has two people who initially dislike each other, and then get together at the end. It isn't a plot that appeals to me, whether the protagonists are gay or straight. Rebecca Schinsky over at Book Riot recommends Sarah MacLean to fans of literary fiction who want to give the romance genre a try. So I read A Rogue by Any Other Name. Nope, not for me. My mom recommended one of her favourites, Blue Dahlia by Nora Roberts. Nope. But never mind all that, because this bingo category is more broad. There are plenty of love stories in the books I read and this one by Nancy Mitford even has the word in the title!

I still have eight empty squares left. I've got titles in mind for all but one: Western. I feel like I gave traditional westerns a fair shake by reading Louis L'Amour three months ago. I don't feel up to facing another one like that. I can think of two nontraditional westerns I've loved: True Grit and The Sisters Brothers. Aside from rereading one of those, the only appealing book I can think of for this category is Lonesome Dove, which is on my TBR, but I already feel like whining about the page count (850+). A graphic novel might be what I need, come to think of it. I've already read Cow Boy by Nate Cosby, Pretty Deadly by Kelly Sue DeConnick et al, Bloody Chester by JT Petty, Daisy Kutter by Kazu Kibuishi, and lots of Lucky Luke comics. Does anyone have other suggestions?

Book Bingo: Second Card, Second Line

There are some tricky categories on these book bingo cards. Out of the following row of five, three required special effort to track down a suitable title. That's what makes this reading game an interesting challenge.

BY AN AUTHOR BORN THE SAME YEAR AS YOU: Resurrection by Wolf Haas, translated by Anne Janusch (see previous book bingo post).

THAT YOUR PARENTS DIDN'T/WOULDN'T HAVE LET YOU READ AS A KID: Exquisite Corpse by Penelope Bagieu, translated by Alexis Siegel.

I called my mom about this category because I couldn't think of a single book I had been denied as a kid. She confirmed this. She let us read anything we wanted, including novels from her bookshelves. I was about 11 when I read and loved Herman Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar.

Mom recalled an incident when I and two of my siblings told our youngest sister (who might have been in Grade 2) that The Wizard of Oz was too difficult for her. Mom said we quizzed her and then were satisfied that she had indeed not only read but understood the story.

I told Mom about the Sex Criminals comics by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky. (A librarian's orgasms stop time and she uses that power to rob banks--for a good cause. A lot of the funniest stuff is in the porn shop scenes.) Then I asked if she would have been comfortable having us read them when we were kids. She sounded a bit flabbergasted when she said, "I don't think they had books like that when you were kids."

The cute, cartoony style on the cover of Exquisite Corpse accurately reflects the sweet and funny story it is, but there is also a lot of nudity and sex inside. While it isn't quite as raunchy as Sex Criminals, I wouldn't recommend this for readers under 16. (I'm surprised that Edmonton Public Library has shelved it in the teen section.) A French woman on her lunch break from her trade show booth job meets a reclusive author when she asks to use his bathroom. It's lust at first sight. Her boorish boyfriend and his ex-wife be damned. Or not. This is a light-hearted look at the tension between the creative process and making a living.

BY OR ABOUT A MEMBER OF THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY: Adult Onset by Ann-Marie MacDonald.
Funny and devastating and healing. This is one of my two favourite books so far in 2015. I wrote at length about it here.

For me, the easiest categories on this bingo card are LGBTQ, Historical, Poetry, YA, Essays, and Involves Magic. Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness have been discussing individual bingo categories and making suggestions on their Books on the Nightstand podcast. Kingman was poised and gracious as she spoke about feedback, specifically about their episode that dealt with the LGBTQ category. She gently suggested that it wasn't necessary for people to write to let them know that the reason for unsubscribing from the podcast was because they didn't want to hear about LGBTQ books. If you haven't been listening to Books on the Nightstand, why not start?

A PARODY: Fun with Kirk and Spock by Robb Pearlman.

The nostalgic-style illustrations in muted primary colours evoke the original Fun with Dick and Jane series. This book warmly pokes fun at the costuming and plots of the original Star Trek episodes. For example, the way it's always a guy in a red shirt who doesn't make it back to the ship. There are so many passages that made me chuckle that it's hard to choose just a few.

"See Khan wake up. 

Khan is cranky. 

Khan wants to take over the Enterprise. 

Mine! Mine! Mine! 

Khan wants to take over the universe. 

Mine! Mine! Mine! 

Khan is not a morning person."

detail from Fun with Kirk and
Spock by Robb Pearlman.

"See the Gorn.
The Gorn is tall.
The Gorn is green.
The Gorn is wearing a one-piece sleeveless tunic with brocaded accents and matching gauntlets.
The Gorn is fashion-forward."

George Takei, the gay actor who played Mr. Sulu, gets a ribbing too:
"See Sulu's sword.
Sulu's sword sure is sharp!
Sulu's sword goes swish!
Swish swish swish!"

Some jokes will go right over kids' heads, but that doesn't stop me from recommending this for all ages.

"Go go go, Enterprise!
Go boldly!"

AN AUTHOR'S DEBUT: Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm [Books on Tape audiobook: 13.5 hr: narrated by Catherine Taber].

New voices add variety and spice to my reading diet, so I'm often excited by an author's debut novel. This one is a thriller about an art heist and the central protagonist is a young American woman who is living under an assumed name in Europe. I listened to the audiobook 6 weeks ago and the story has stuck with me, although I wasn't wild about it at the time. Haves and have-nots, envy, greed and deception. It reminded me of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and I felt similarly lukewarm about it when I was done. But both books made an impression, so there is that.

Scherm's opening lines sucked me in and I still find them compelling: "The first lie Grace had told Hanna was her name. 'Bonjour, je m'appelle Julie,' Grace had said. She'd been in Paris for only a month, and her French was still new and stiff. She'd chosen the name Julie because it was sweet and easy on the French tongue--much more so than Grace was. The best lies were the simplest and made the most sense, in the mind and in the mouth. These lies were the easiest to swallow."

If you liked The Goldfinch, then this is for you.