Opening Sentence of the Day: Massacred for Gold

"I listened on a hot July morning in 2003 as a Snake River jetboat captain, idling his boat in front of a cove known as Deep Creek, told two dozen tourists the story, or at least a story, of what happened there in 1887." -- Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon by R. Gregory Nokes This is going to be a good one! It is a historical expose of the murder of over 30 Chinese workers in eastern Oregon, written by one of Oregon's most talented writers.

Teaser Tuesday: Sarah's Key

His eyes were such a pale shade of blue they seemed transparent under thick pink lids. As the group of officers passed them by, the tall thin man reached out with an endless, gray-swathed arm, and tweaked Sarah's ear.

-- Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay Book Club is tomorrow. I have mixed feelings about this one. Like with any first novel, I admire the heck out of the author simply for getting the story written and published. I think it is worth reading, but it is a little clumsy. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

While running errands this weekend, I made a quick stop at one of my favorite hidey-hole library book shops. This one is tucked away in the corner of a strip mall branch library and they sell everything for 50 cents -- hardback, paperback, pristine, or trashed, it is 50 cents. Worth a stop when I find myself out on the urban edges. So for my whopping $2, here is my Mailbox Monday list: The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth (as I continue gathering the Roth bibliography) The Master and the Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (on the MLA's list of 30 Books Every Adult Should Read, among others, I'm sure) Sacred by Dennis Lehane (from his early Patrick Kenzie/Angela Gennaro mystery series) The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (which I have always meant to read but never got around to it)

Review of the Day: The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

How can I review a book that took me 30 years to read? This is not just a book, it is part of my life. I have been working on The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway longer than all my formal education, two marriages, and my law practice.

I read my first Hemingway short story -- "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" -- when I was a Freshman in high school. In fits and starts since then I have been working my way through the rest. There are some, such as “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” that I have read several times. Others, like all the bull fighting stories, maybe only feel like I read them over and over.

I know that I had to start this “Finca Vigia” edition several times, including reading the first half dozen or so stories out loud on road trips -- first with my practice husband and later with my keeper hubby. I made a concerted effort this year to finish this book and this project. Hemingway wrote all his short stories in a 38-year span – I did not want it to take me as long to read them. So I started again at the beginning and read the book all the way through. The Nick Adams stories were new to me, as were the boxing stories and the previously unpublished stories at the end of the book.

But I can’t review Hemingway, especially when my attitudes about his writing have changed over the decades. I was unquestionably awed as a teenager, snide as a college English major, a genuine fan as an adult, and now just a little weary. His writing is masterful. He was a genius with spare dialog and creating reality with only a few brush strokes. (Of course, because he taught Americans a new way of writing, reading the original does not pack the wallop it must have before everyone copied him.) What wore me out was the subject matter – the bull fights and the Spanish Civil War in particular. It just got to be a chore for me to get to the end.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll dip into the collection again in the future and have a completely new attitude about Hemingway. But for now, the book is going back on the shelf.


OTHER REVIEWS AND RELATED POSTS

(If you would like your review of this book or related posts about Hemingway or his books, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it here.)

List: James Tait Black Memorial Prize

First awarded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction is one of the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. The award is based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the winner is chosen by the Professor of English Literature at the University with the assistance of PhD students.

Those I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue. If you are also working on this list, and would like your related posts linked here, please leave a comment with links and I will list them below.

2018 Crudo by Olivia Lang

2017 Attrib. and Other Stories by Eley Williams

2016 The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride

2015 You Don’t Have to Live Like This by Benjamin Markovits

2014 In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman

2013 Harvest by Jim Crace

2012 The Deadman's Pedal by Alan Warner

2011 You and Me by Padgett Powell

2010 The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

2009 The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt

2008 The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (reviewed here)

2007 Our Horses in Egypt by Rosalind Belben

2006 The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2005 Saturday by Ian McEwan

2004 GB84 by David Peace

2003 Personality by Andrew O'Hagan

2002 The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen

2001 Something Like a House by Sid Smith

2000 White Teeth by Zadie Smith

1999 Renegade or Halo2 by Timothy Mo

1998 Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge

1997 Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller

1996 Last Orders by Graham Swift and Justine by Alice Thompson

1995 The Prestige by Christopher Priest (reviewed here)

1994 The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst

1993 Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips

1992 Sacred Country by Rose Tremain

1991 Downriver by Iain Sinclair

1990 Brazzeville Beach by William Boyd (reviewed here)

1989 A Disaffection by James Kelman

1988 A Season in the West by Piers Paul Read

1987 The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories by George Mackay Brown

1986 Persephone by Jenny Joseph

1985 Winter Garden by Robert Edric

1984 Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard and Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

1983 Allegro Postillions by Jonathan Keates

1982 On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin

1981 Midnight's Children (reviewed here) and The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux

1980 Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee

1979 Darkness Visible by William Golding

1978 Plumb by Maurice Gee

1977 The Honorable Schoolboy by John le Carre

1976 Doctor Copernicus by John Banville

1975 The Great Victorian Collection by Brian Moore

1974 Monsieur, or The Prince Of Darkness by Lawrence Durrell

1973 The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

1972 G by John Berger (reviewed here)

1971 A Guest of Honour by Nadine Gordimer

1970 The Bird of Paradise by Lily Powell

1969 Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen

1968 The Gasteropod by Maggie Ross

1967 Jerusalem the Golden by Margaret Drabble

1966 Such by Christine Brooke-Rose and Langrishe, Go Down by Aidan Higgins

1965 The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark (reviewed here)

1964 The Ice Saints by Frank Tuohy

1963 A Slanting Light by Gerda Charles

1962 Act of Destruction by Ronald Hardy

1961 The Ha-Ha by Jennifer Dawson

1960 Imperial Caesar by Rex Warner

1959 The Devil's Advocate by Morris West

1958 The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot by Angus Wilson

1957 At Lady Molly's by Anthony Powell

1956 The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley

1955 Mother and Son by Ivy Compton-Burnett

1954 The New Men and The Masters (in sequence) by C. P. Snow

1953 Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy

1952 Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh

1951 Father Goose by W. C. Chapman-Mortimer

1950 Along the Valley by Robert Henriquez (out of print)

1949 The Far Cry by Emma Smith

1948 The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

1947 Eustace and Hilda by L. P. Hartley

1946 Poor Man's Tapestry by G. Oliver Onions

1945 Travellers by L. A. G. Strong

1944 Young Tom by Forrest Reid

1943 Tales From Bective Bridge by Mary Lavin

1942 Monkey by Wu Ch'eng-en (translation by Arthur Whaley)

1941 A House of Children by Joyce Cary

1940 The Voyage by Charles Morgan

1939 After Many a Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley

1938 A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours by C. S. Forester

1937 Highland River by Neil M. Gunn

1936 South Riding by Winifred Holtby

1935 The Root and the Flower by L. H. Myers

1934 I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves

1933 England, Their England by A. G. Macdonell

1932 Boomerang by Helen Simpson

1931 Without My Cloak by Kate O'Brien

1930 Miss Mole by E. H. Young

1929 The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley

1928 Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon

1927 Portrait of Clare by Francis Brett Young

1926 Adam's Breed by Radclyffe Hall

1925 The Informer by Liam O'Flaherty

1924 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

1923 Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett

1922 Lady Into Fox by David Garnett

1921 Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare

1920 The Lost Girl by D. H. Lawrence

1919 The Secret City by Hugh Walpole

NOTE

List updated on December 31, 2018.

RELATED POSTS

Please leave comments with links to related posts -- progress reports, reviews, etc. -- and I will list them here.