They Came to Baghdad, Agatha Christie

I picked up They Came to Baghdad without knowing anything about it at a thrift store (how many of my book posts start this way?!). I've read (I think?) 3 other Agatha Christie books: one Marple, one Poirot, plus And Then There Were None -- and enjoyed them all to varying degrees. However, I admit I was a bit skeptical about They Came to Baghdad because it's a Cold War spy novel, set in the Middle East, not a detective novel and I just wasn't sure I trusted her with the genre. (I think I was afraid she would fall into the traps that Hitchcock fell into when he switched from murder mysteries to Cold War spy stories. And adding the Middle East locale had me concerned as well.) Anyway, while it did have a couple troublesome bits, it didn't do any of the things I feared it would do and I actually loved it. Mainly what I loved was the heroine, Victoria Jones, who manages to get herself into (and more importantly OUT OF) all kinds of trouble without having any particular skills beyond being able to fabricate stories convincingly. She reminded me a bit of my beloved Miss Fisher, except where Miss Fisher has a wide range of actual abilities, Victoria Jones just has a knack for faking it, which is almost more impressive. They share an impulsive, carefree quality coupled with unlikely (and largely unnoticed by others) good sense and quick-mindedness. Everyone underestimates Victoria and she plays that to her advantage incredibly well. This was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

The Marshal and the Madwoman, Blood Rain

I read back-to-back mystery novels set in Italy, so I'm writing about them together -- though that broad descriptor is about all they have in common. The Marshal and the Madwoman is set in Florence and features a Carabiniere from Sicily, while Blood Rain is set in Sicily and features a policeman from Venice. I was reading and enjoying the former when I found the latter in a thrift store, so I picked it up. My affection for Sicily was a factor in selecting it as well. I probably wouldn't have bought if it were set elsewhere in Italy -- which now that I write it, strikes me as a little odd, but certainly is true.

One idea that really struck me in The Marshal and the Madwoman was that each neighborhood in Florence is like a village. Everyone knows everything that goes on in their community, but another community just a few blocks away might as well be a distant town. Reading the book was like getting an intimate look at one of these tiny urban villages. When interviewed by the Carabiniere, the local bar owner says that his family has lived in this square of Florence for a notably long number of years (I forget exactly, but I think it was in the neighborhood of 180). Despite the close quarters, life in the city replicates life in the country. You get this village idea over again when at one point, the titular Marshal calls the local police and recognizes his interlocutor as a fellow Siracusan by his accent. When he realizes he's forgotten to get this officer's name, the Marshal asks his (also Siracusan) wife who knows exactly who the officer is and whom he is related to.

Blood Rain, by contrast, is about vast, overlapping conspiracies: the mafia, the government, the various police forces. It wasn't a particularly affectionate treatment of Sicily. The protagonist doesn't like Sicily, but I got the feeling that the author doesn't either. Valleta, Malta, where the protagonist spends some 24 hours mostly in a hotel room, is given about as much love as is Catania, where most of the book is set. (Unrelated: should I visit Malta?) Anyway, this book was an engaging. breezy read, but not much more.

Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie

I'll admit it: I'm selecting books I think will be quick reads to get in more books before the year is over. But I failed last week. I started reading The Talented Mr. Ripley and I had to stop. I often think about the fact that there are things I can handle in books but can't in movies (e.g., scariness), but I forget it goes the other way too. I've seen the 1999 movie of The Talented Mr. Ripley and, as I recall, I liked it. But at about 150 pages into the book, I thought: I can't manage another 200 pages of this tension. If it had been a movie, I would have only had another hour or so to endure, and that would have been fine. But 200 pages represents at least a few hours, and could stretch over days depending on my schedule, and I didn't feel up to it. To be fair, I had a rough week last week and it was on my commute home Friday evening that I decided I had to stop. Maybe if I had been in a better mood it would have been okay.

So, when I went out again after getting home Friday evening, I picked up a new book to read on my way. Something I thought would be safely distracting. In October I read and enjoyed Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, so last week I picked up the other two books in the trilogy and I started in on Ancillary Sword on Friday evening and finished it less than 48 hours later. I didn't like it quite as much as Ancillary Justice, but almost. I'll probably read the third book in the trilogy before the year is up.

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

Everyone is right: this book is great. I somehow knew (or certainly hoped) before picking it up that it would be just the kind of book I like to curl up with and read straight through, and that's pretty much what I did. I read it over two days when I was sick with a cold and it was just the right book for that. I think it would have been good under other circumstances too, but it was absolutely perfect for the circumstances I was in.

Having finished All the Light We Cannot See, I have nothing particular to say about it. I was contemplating, yesterday morning, what I might possibly write about it and I thought of my ex-husband who had a complaint about some books that I used to tease him about: he didn't like that he liked them. The only specific time I remember him voicing this complaint was while reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. A friend gave me a copy of the book and I devoured it then passed it along to my ex. Like me, he couldn't put it down, but it made him so mad! He felt like he was being emotionally manipulated (I suppose he was) and it drove him crazy. In the end, I think he would have said that he didn't like the book, because he didn't like what it did to him. I, on the other hand, love books that drag me in and don't let me go. All the Light We Cannot See wasn't an extreme example of this, but it was the kind of book I could throw myself into for two straight days without coming up for air.

Signs Preceding the End of the World, Yuri Herrera

I don't even remember how I first heard about Signs Preceding the End of the World except that it was when I was looking for Mexican books to read ahead of my trip to Mexico a little over a year ago. I added it to my PaperbackSwap wishlist, read 4 other Mexican novels, and forgot about it. Then a couple weeks ago it became available on PaperbackSwap so I ordered it, even though I was no longer actively seeking Mexican novels. It's a slim book about a young woman who is sent on an errand by her mother to travel across Mexico and over the U.S. border to bring her brother a message. Although the story is fairly straightforward, the tone of the narration is almost mythological. The style of narration gives the reader the opportunity to see the some of the strangeness of the U.S. through the eyes of an outsider. This is a lovely book.

The Fortress, Meša Selimović

I picked up The Fortress at a library sale over the summer. I had not heard of it, but the back cover said that Meša Selimović was "one of the most significant writers to emerge from Bosnia and Herzegovina," which was good enough reason for me to buy it. When I got home, I realized that I already had Selimović on my world books to read list, though the book I had noted down was Death and the Dervish. The Fortress is set in eighteenth century Sarajevo, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and was originally published in 1970. The narrator has returned to Sarajevo as the sole survivor from his military unit after serving in the war with Russia. The book follows his return to humanity, where he finds himself at the center of events that don't really have anything to do with him. He is shunned, accused of conspiracy, spied upon, but also finds love and friendship in places. He is left again and again to choose between two terrible options, or with no choice at all. I wish I knew more about Yugoslavia because I imagine the acts attributed to the local and Ottoman regimes in the book probably had parallels in then present day Yugoslavia. Even lacking that history, I found The Fortress interesting and moving.

The Story of a Child, Pierre Loti

I read The Story of a Child along with a short story, The Child in the House, by Walter Pater, for my reading around Proust book club. They were strikingly similar to one another - and also to Proust - in their approach to memory of childhood. As I tweeted while reading it, I would highly recommend the Loti to anyone who has considered reading Proust but would like to read roughly 150 pages rather than 4000+ pages. It doesn't have the descriptions of society, the cast of characters, the families across generations that you find in Proust. But Loti's descriptions of his memory of childhood is as evocative as Proust. Furthermore, Loti's narrative gives some examples of that idea of memoire involuntaire we think of as so Proustian. Of course we know that Proust didn't invent the idea of mnemonic associations, but it's striking because Loti's The Story of a Child was published some 15 years before Swann's Way. In conclusion, this is a lovely little book that made me want to visit all the locales in rural France described therein. It also made me want to try to reconstruct my own childhood in this manner. Perhaps this is a project for 2017.

Conveniently for anyone who wants to read it, The Story of a Child is available for free here.

The Blind Assassin, Ancillary Justice, In the Dutch Mountains

I'm killing three birds (books) with one stone (blog post) because I let myself get way behind.

The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
Somehow or other, I reached age 40 without having read Margaret Atwood. In my head, I lump her with some other generally well-regarded, contemporary women writers who probably have little in common except that I haven't read them. (Also on this in-my-head list is Barbara Kingsolver, who when you google her, suggests Atwood as the second "people also search for" person, so maybe it's not all in my head?) I never gave Atwood much thought either way until a respected acquaintance recommended Oryx and Crake to me a couple years back. Several months ago I found a copy of it at a thrift store, so I picked it up. Then shortly after that I found a copy of The Blind Assassin at a thrift store, so I picked it up too. I was probably swayed by the Booker Prize winner status of the latter when I chose to read it rather than the book that had been recommended to me. In the end, I really liked it, but I found stretches of it a bit of a slog. (Or maybe I should say I really liked the end but found stretches of it a slog.)

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
About 70 pages into reading Ancillary Justice, my purse was stolen and I lost it. After my drivers' license and passport, it was the first thing I replaced. (While listing the things I had lost, I recommended it to the woman who took down my insurance claim over the phone. I subsequently recommended it to my stepfather, who was stuck at home with two broken arms, and he read it then promptly went on to read the two additional books in the series, which I was very tempted to do when I finished it too.) I don't read a lot of Sci Fi and when I try to talk about it, I often feel like a little out of my depth: how do I know if something is novel? maybe there are common tropes in the genre but I just don't know? (Who am I kidding, definitely there are.) But ANYWAY, this book kind of blew my mind in a couple specific ways: (1) the AI with no center -- the idea of a mind shared among several entities; (2) the use of she/her gender pronouns regardless of gender (because the AI can't distinguish well), which affected how I visualized the worlds. In short, I really enjoyed this and I would like to read the other books in the series.

In the Dutch Mountains, Cees Nooteboom
I probably should have written about this right when I finished it because I'm already having a hard time remembering it. I read In the Dutch Mountains over 3 days while I was waiting for my replacement copy of Ancillary Justice to arrive. It's a short novel I picked up at a used bookstore in LA without knowing a thing about it in order to check the Netherlands off my list. The blurb described this as a fairy tale, and parts of it were definitely fairy-tale-ish. The book is set in a fictional south of the Netherlands, a Netherlands much larger than the actual Netherlands, and narrated by a Spanish writer/roadbuilder, making it a somewhat odd representative book for the Netherlands. Apart from telling the story, the narrator went off on a lot of long tangents about the process of telling the story, which were part fascinating and part annoying. However, without them, the story itself would have been quite light.