The TBR 200 Challenge

I spotted this little challenge going around the blogosphere recently thanks to FanFiction celebrating her 200th TBR post. Any opportunity to tackle my out of control TBR piles is a good thing. So here we go!

My TBR: The first thing I quickly discovered (besides that thing about acknowledging that I have a serious problem!) is that I haven't updated my Mount TBR page this year. Uh-oh!

Photo by Eugenio Mazzone on Unsplash

Definition: My TBR pile consists mostly of paper books. A large number of these are ARC or gratis copies that I have received via work. Most of these get taken back to work once read, for one of my colleagues to have a go at.

Total: 689

I'll just let that stupendous number sit there in all it's glory...

...and ponder the problem I have.

Target: This process has made me realise that there are a number of books on the list that have passed their used by date. They came into my possession thanks to work ARC's, they sounded interesting, I thought I would like to read them, but they got lost on the bottom of the pile and now they've been and gone off our shelves at work and my interest has waned. Time for them to go back to work - that's 10 book problems solved straight up!

Breakdown:

• Australian books - 115 books
• Other English language books - 125
• Classics - 211
• Books in translations - 70
• Non-Fiction books - 81
• Kids books - 8
• ebooks - 79

Format: all but 79 of the 689 are the real deal paper books stacked up under my bed, in my cupboards and by my desk.
This does not include the books I have already read and loved, that are shelved neatly on their bookshelves. These books have usually been read multiple times, or I plan to reread them one day.
Every other book gets passed onto family and friends once I have read it, or returned to work. This is the majority of the books that pass through my hands.

The Oldest:

• On The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin is one of my lovely Folio Society books purchased prior to my first house (my subscription to Folio books was one of the things I gave up when I decided it was time to go into debt to buy my first property)! This neatly dates the book coming into my possession to the year 2000.

The Newest:

• No Friend But the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani

WINNER OF THE VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY PRIZE FOR LITERATURE AND FOR NON-FICTION 2019

Where have I come from? From the land of rivers, the land of waterfalls, the land of ancient chants, the land of mountains...
In 2013, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani was illegally detained on Manus Island. He has been there ever since.
People would run to the mountains to escape the warplanes and found asylum within their chestnut forests...
This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi. It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait through five years of incarceration and exile.
Do Kurds have any friends other than the mountains?

WINNER OF THE NSW PREMIER'S AWARD 2019
WINNER OF THE ABIA GENERAL NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019

ARC's:

• The Old Lie by Claire G. Coleman (September release)

A thrilling and ambitious new novel from the author of the bestselling and prize-winning Terra Nullius.
Shane Daniels and Romany Zetz have been drawn into a war that is not their own. Lives will be destroyed, families will be torn apart. Trust will be broken.
When the war is over, some will return to a changed world. Will they discover that glory is a lie?
Claire G. Coleman's new novel takes us to a familiar world to again ask us what we have learned from the past. The Old Lie might not be quite what you expect.

• The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith (now)

The Electric Hotel winds through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey--America's first movie town--and on the battlefields of Belgium during World War I. A sweeping work of historical fiction, it shimmers between past and present as it tells the story of the rise and fall of a prodigious film studio and one man's doomed obsession with all that passes in front of the viewfinder.

• Fortune by Lenny Bartulin (July) 

In 1806 Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Prussia. Beginning on the very day he leads his triumphant Grande Armee into Berlin through the Brandenburg Gate, Fortune traces the fates of a handful of souls whose lives briefly touch on that momentous day and then diverge across the globe.

Spanning more than a century, the novel moves from the Napoleonic Wars to South America, and from the early penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land to the cannons of the First World War, mapping the reverberations of history on ordinary people. Some lives are willed into action and others are merely endured, but all are subject to the unpredictable whims of chance. Fortune is a historical novel like no other, a perfect jewel of epic and intense brilliance.

200th Book:

• The Rules of Engagement by Anita Brookner

The Books I Most Want to Read & Can't Understand Why I Just Don't Do It:

• No Friend But the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani
• Benang by Kim Scott
• The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein
• The Virgin in the Garden by A S Byatt
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
• The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Other TBR 200 participants:

• FanFiction 
• Books Please
• Booker Talk
• NancyElin

Time to stop typing and time to start reading!

Twenty-Four Things

I'm constantly looking for ways to highlight the books on my TBR pile.
It's a great way of reminding me of what's actually there; to bring long forgotten books lingering on the bottom of the pile to the front of my mind again.

Twenty-Four Things was a meme that traversed the blog-o-sphere a couple of years ago.
I've adapted it into a TBR post.
Please feel free to join in.

Photo by Dustin Lee on Unsplash

4 Books On My Desk

+ The Real Jane Austen by Paula Byrne
Three-quarters read.
I'm loving this book but I only seem to be able to read it for Austen in August.
Hopefully I will finish it this August!

+ Why Read Moby Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick
I'm planning on hosting a Moby Dick readalong around August/September.

This is part of my prep.
Are you ready to have a whale of a time?

+ The Feel Good Guide to Menopause by Dr Nicola Gates
I'm almost there (the menopause part not necessarily the feel good part) and wondering what I still have to look forward to!!

+ Rice Noodle Fish by Matt Goulding
Purchased last year when we got back from our trip to Japan.
Have been meaning to dive into it ever since.

4 Books On The Bottom Of The Pile

+ Rites of Passage by William Golding
This award winning book has been sitting on the bottom of my pile for about five years now.
I enjoy 'nautical, relational novels', especially ones that fit in a visit to Australia, which this one apparently does.
It would also help me with my Nobel Prize and Booker Prize reading challenge.

+ The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
This book made it's way onto my pile prior to 2016.
It has stayed on my TBR thanks to my 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die challenge.

+ G by John Berger
Another Booker Prize winner & 1001 Book challenge book, that is patiently waiting for me to be in the right mood to read an 'experimental, non-linear novel'!

+ The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
I've been meaning to read a book by Pamuk for years and years, but they're all so thick and never seem to make it to the top of the pile!

This would count towards my Nobel Prize reading challenge if I ever get around to it.

4 Books New To The TBR

+ Memories of the Future by Siri Hustvedt
An ARC recently acquired via work (lucky me!)
I adored What I Loved and have been keen to read another book by Hustvedt ever since.
Now to just find time to fit it in....

+ The New Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
An ambitious purchase as I still haven't read Frankopan's earlier book, The Silk Roads.

+ The Master by Colm Toibin
A stylish new edition has just been published by Picador.
This will no doubt sit on my pile until I come over feeling all Henry James-ish!

+ The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

This one comes highly recommended by my colleague who knows of my love for a good cosy crime wrapped up in historical fiction.

4 Books That Won Awards

+ The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Winner of the 2004 Pulitzer prize for fiction and the International Dublin Literary Award.

+ The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Non-Fiction prize.

+ Milkman by Anna Burns
Winner of last year's Booker prize.

+ Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

Winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2018.

4 Books I'm Keen To Read ASAP

+ Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak
Twenty years in the making, hopefully not twenty years lurking on my TBR pile!

+ Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia edited by Anita Heiss 
I've been reading good things about this book & would prefer to get to it before it's 'old news'.

+ Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
Two of my colleagues have read this - one loved it and one was 'meh'.
I'm the tie-breaker :-)

+ The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein
This keeps garnering shortlist nominations and winning awards.
Given my fascination with the themes of death and grief in literature, I really should have read this when it first came out, but some of what I've heard about the trauma side of this book, makes me feel squeamish.

4 Books I'm Thinking Of Discarding Unread 

+ Every Third Thought by Robert McCrum

'In 1995, at the age of 42, Robert McCrum suffered a dramatic and near-fatal stroke, the subject of his acclaimed memoir My Year Off. 

Ever since that life-changing event, McCrum has lived in the shadow of death, unavoidably aware of his own mortality. 

And now, 21 years on, he is noticing a change: his friends are joining him there. 

Death has become his contemporaries' every third thought. 

The question is no longer "Who am I?" but "How long have I got?" and "What happens next?" 

This book takes us on a journey through a year and towards death itself. 

As he acknowledges his own and his friends' aging, McCrum confronts an existential question: in a world where we have learnt to live well at all costs, can we make peace with what Freud calls "the necessity of dying?" 

Searching for answers leads him to others for advice and wisdom, and this book is populated by the voices of brain surgeons, psychologists, cancer patients, hospice workers, writers and poets. 

Witty, lucid and provocative, this book is an enthralling exploration of what it means to approach the "end game," and begin to recognize, perhaps reluctantly, that we are not immortal.'

+ Weatherland by Alexandra Harris

'In a sweeping panorama, Weatherland allows us to witness England’s cultural climates across the centuries. 

Before the Norman Conquest, Anglo-Saxons living in a wintry world wrote about the coldness of exile or the shelters they had to defend against enemies outside. 

The Middle Ages brought the warmth of spring; the new lyrics were sung in praise of blossoms and cuckoos. 

Descriptions of a rainy night are rare before 1700, but by the end of the eighteenth century the Romantics had adopted the squall as a fit subject for their most probing thoughts.

The weather is vast and yet we experience it intimately, and Alexandra Harris builds her remarkable story from small evocative details. 

There is the drawing of a twelfth-century man in February, warming bare toes by the fire. 

There is the tiny glass left behind from the Frost Fair of 1684, and the Sunspan house in Angmering that embodies the bright ambitions of the 1930s. 

Harris catches the distinct voices of compelling individuals. 

“Bloody cold,” says Jonathan Swift in the “slobbery” January of 1713. 

Percy Shelley wants to become a cloud and John Ruskin wants to bottle one. 

Weatherland is a celebration of English air and a life story of those who have lived in it.'

+ White Mountain by Robert Twigger

'Home to mythical kingdoms, wars and expeditions, and strange and magical beasts, the Himalayas have always loomed tall in our imagination. 

These mountains, home to Buddhists, Bonpos, Jains, Muslims, Hindus, shamans and animists, to name only a few, are a place of pilgrimage and dreams, revelation and war, massacre and invasion, but also peace and unutterable calm. 

They are a central hub of the world’s religion, as well as a climber’s challenge and a traveler’s dream. 

In an exploration of the region's seismic history, Robert Twigger, author of Red Nile and Angry White Pyjamas, unravels some of these seemingly disparate journeys and the unexpected links between them. 

Following a winding path across the Himalayas to its physical end in Nagaland on the Indian-Burmese border, Twigger encounters incredible stories from a unique cast of mountaineers and mystics, pundits and prophets. 

The result is a sweeping, enthralling and surprising journey through the history of the world's greatest mountain range.'

+ Being a Beast by Charles Foster

'How can we ever be sure that we really know the other? 

To test the limits of our ability to inhabit lives that are not our own, Charles Foster set out to know the ultimate other: the non-humans, the beasts. 

And to do that, he tried to be like them, choosing a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer, and a swift. 

He lived alongside badgers for weeks, sleeping in a sett in a Welsh hillside and eating earthworms, learning to sense the landscape through his nose rather than his eyes. 

He caught fish in his teeth while swimming like an otter; rooted through London garbage cans as an urban fox; was hunted by bloodhounds as a red deer, nearly dying in the snow. 

And he followed the swifts on their migration route over the Strait of Gibraltar, discovering himself to be strangely connected to the birds.

A lyrical, intimate, and completely radical look at the life of animals—human and other—Being a Beast mingles neuroscience and psychology, nature writing and memoir to cross the boundaries separating the species. 

It is an extraordinary journey full of thrills and surprises, humor and joy. 

And, ultimately, it is an inquiry into the human experience in our world, carried out by exploring the full range of the life around us.'

Should I read or discard?
#24Things

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

During the planning stages of my trip to Japan I asked around and checked on Goodreads for the best books set in Japan. At the top of nearly every list I came across was Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.

When it was first published in 1997, and later when the movie was released in 2005, I avoided it at all costs. My impression was that it would be some kind of tacky white American male wish fulfilment fantasy story. Not at all my cup of tea, green or otherwise!

However I succumbed to popular opinion and packed it in my travel bag with many reservations. At best, I thought it would be a good book for the plane when I needed something light and easy to consume.

As it turned out serendipity was on my side.

I also took Murakami's Kafka on the Shore to Japan. In fact, I had started reading it a few days before departure. My review for it will turn up here soon. I finished it, about halfway through our time in Japan, as luck would have it, on our first night in Kyoto.

Starting Memoirs of a Geisha in Kyoto was an inspired thing to do. We stayed in the Higashiyama area, just a handful a streets away from Gion, the main geisha area in Kyoto and where the book was set.

I knew about the controversy surrounding the author and whether or not he had permission to name the geisha who provided him with a lot of the information for the book. From this I had assumed that the book was based on her life story. It wasn't until I finished the book and read Golden's acknowledgements page that I realised this assumption was not entirely correct.

Although the character of Sayuri and her story are completely invented, the historical facts of a geisha's day-to-day life in the 1930's and 1940's are not....Mineko Iwasaki, one of Gion's top geisha in the 1960's and 1970's, opened her Kyoto home to me during May 1992, and corrected my every misconception about the life of a geisha.

 A quick check on the internet, showed that Golden had been sued for breach of contract and defamation of character by Iwasaki who claimed that Golden had agreed to protect her anonymity. Golden claimed otherwise, saying he had tapes and notes to the contrary. They eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum of money. Iwasaki then went on to write (with Rande Gail Brown) an autobiography titled Geisha of Gion (2002) which claimed to tell the real story.

Both books were best sellers and both books have been loved and hated in equal measure on Goodreads. Golden for paternalistic inaccuracies and Iwasaki for grandiose, emotionless boasting.

From what I have been able to ascertain (and please correct me if I'm wrong) there were various levels or ranks of being a geisha. The highest ranking geisha were from the Gion, Pontocho and Kamishichiken districts. A lower rank of geisha were the so-called onsen geisha, or hot spring geisha, who worked in towns famous for their hot spring baths. Lower still were the ones who worked in a jorou-ya (brothel). A maiko was a junior or apprentice geisha.

Geiko Tomeko 1930's

Another controversy surrounded the mizuage ceremony as described by Golden in his book. This is the process by which a maiko became a fully fledged geisha (or geiko as geisha were called in Kyoto). Golden describes his character's virginity being sold off to the highest bidder. It was a pretty ghastly moment in the story and I wondered at the time just how true it was.

Initially I was relieved when a google search indicated that Iwasaki strongly refuted that this ever happened to her and that no such custom ever existed. However further reading seems to indicate that it was in fact a common practice, even for the higher ranking geiko (Sayo Masuda and Liza Dalby). 1959 is the key date here though, as this is when mizuage was made illegal along with other acts of prostitution.

Mizuage still exists as a form of initiation from maiko to senior maiko, but without the sex. The ceremony now focuses on the change of hairstyle and 'turning of the collar' on the kimono. According to her autobiography, Iwasaki became a maiko at age 15, in 1964, five years after the change in law.

So after all that, did I actually enjoy the book?

Yes, I did.

I read it as historical fiction, not as a memoir, and thoroughly enjoyed the glimpse into another world in another time. It was a quick, easy read. The romantic element felt unbelievable, rather Cinderellish really. For me it let down the historical aspects that I enjoyed learning about. It also happily mentioned the names of streets, buildings and streams that I was able to walk down, through and around, imagining what it must have looked like 70 years ago.

I could do nothing but step into my shoes and follow her up the alleyway to a street running beside the narrow Shirakawa Stream (that's a tautology by the by - kawa and gawa means river or stream). 

FYI: Hitler adopted the swastika from an ancient Hindu, Buddhist symbol denoting a temple.
It is still used in Japan (& other Asian countries) to indicate the site of a Buddhist temple.
Confronting to the Western eye, but true.

Back in those days, the streets and alleys in Gion were still paved beautifully with stone. We walked along in the moonlight for a block or so, beside the weeping cherry trees that drooped down over the black water, and finally across a wooden bridge arching over into a section of Gion I'd never seen before. The embankment of the stream was stone, most of it covered with patches of moss. Along its top, the backs of the teahouses and okiya connected to form a wall. Reed screens over the windows sliced the yellow light into tiny strips.

My Blog's Name in Books

In the past few weeks I've been spotting this meme everywhere. 

Create by Lynne @Fictionophile, the rules are simple:  Spell out your blog’s name in letters.

Find a book on your TBR shelf that begins with each letter.

(Note you cannot ADD to your TBR to complete this challenge – the books must already be on your Goodread’s TBR) or in my case my Mount TBR page and my Classics Club List #1 and #2 pages.

Have fun looking through your shelves to find matching titles.

Having just returned from an amazing three week trip to Japan, I should be writing reviews for the books I read whilst travelling.
But I'm still in holiday mode and couldn't be bothered!

I'd rather be planning which temple/shrine/castle/park to see next than planning a book response.

The best I can do right now is to play with my #MountTBR piles and hopefully work out what I'd like to read next.

B

Basil by Wilkie Collins

R 

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon 

O 

O Pioneers by Willa Cather 

N 

Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler 

A 

After the Circus by Patrick Modiano 

S 

Shallows by Tim Winton 

B 

Book of Fairy Tales by Angela Carter 

O 

Old New York by Edith Wharton 

O 

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin 

K 

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset 

S 

Seldom Seen by Sarah Ridgard 

 Sadly, this was way too easy. 

Not even three O's could stump me!

Have you read of my TBR books?

Which one should I read next?

I Spy Book Challenge

As many of you already know, I have a TBR problem. Throughout the year, I have been looking for various ways to highlight my plight and focus on these books in the hope of reducing these staggering numbers. Every meme, every book tag that makes me go through my piles searching for books that fit the criteria is another reminder of 1. just how how many unread books I have and 2. a reminder of exactly which books I have gathering dust around the house.

I first spotted this tag at Joseph’s The Once Lost Wanderer, then Fanda @Classic Lit picked it up. It seemed like something I'd enjoy playing along with too.

The I Spy Book Challenge is pretty simple. Find a book on your TBR pile that contains either imagery or words that portray each subject. A separate book for all 20 please.


All my books are about the word.

1. Food

2. Transportation

3. Weapon

I had to stretch the friendship on this one a little.

I don't read a lot of crime so the best weapon I could find was an ancient curse!

4. Animal

5. Number

6. Something you read

7. Body of water

8. Product of fire

9. Royalty

10. Architecture

11. Item of clothing

12. Family member

13. Time of Day

14. Music

15. Paranormal Being

16. Occupation

17. Season

18. Colour

19. Celestial Body

20. Something that grows

One day I promise to read you all!

Have you read any of these books?
Which one should a read next?
If you've made it all the way to the end of this post, consider yourself tagged. Proceed at your leisure.

The Green Road by Anne Enright

I finally got around to reading The Green Road thanks to Cathy's #ReadIreland Month. It has been sitting on my TBR pile since 2016.

Over my years of blogging, I've come to realise that writing a rave review about a book I really enjoyed, if not loved and adored, is actually harder to do, than writing about those books that are fine reads but didn't quite reach the heights of ecstasy or move me into speechlessness.

The Green Road was such a wonderful, engaging, poignant read after a bout of books that were fine stories mostly which had failed to move me or delight me. I wonder if it was a coincidence that this bout of books were all written by men? By the end of the Winton, I felt an overwhelming sense of desperation to read a book written by a woman. Either way, I'm left feeling rather bemused about how to write an adequate response that does this glorious book justice.

The story of the Madigan family is a slight story in someway. There is no major crisis or earth shattering family secret. The Madigan's are just a regular family with the usual (in Irish terms) problems, misconceptions and issues.

We start with a series of stories seen from the perspective of each of the four children, Constance, Dan, Emmet and Hanna. We see the fall out of Dan choosing to leave home (for the priesthood, which causes his mother to take to her bed for a week!) via the baby sister's eyes. Ten years later we see him again in New York - a failed priest still coming to terms with his sexuality. The other brother makes his way to Africa as a UNICEF field worker whilst the eldest daughter has stayed in Ireland, married well, had a clutch of children and is battling with her weight. We cycle back to see Hanna, now all grown up, not quite making it as an actor, with a baby of her own and an alcohol problem.

Each of these chapters could almost be a story in their own right. Enright has the ability to weave a sense of place into each chapter so thoroughly, that shifting onto the next one is a little jarring at the start. Ardeevin, County Clare is vividly drawn, as too is AIDS ravaged New York and the hardships of Segou, Mali. Each sibling has attempted to find their own place in the world, their own sense of purpose, all the while their mother's voice and their childhood angst rings in their ears.

Their tale is the usual family tale of coming to terms with the image of your mother as you experienced her as a child, against the mother you wished she had been with the woman she really is. Rosaleen is annoying, at times manipulative and perhaps not quite grown up and at peace with her childhood. In other words, she's a regular woman trying to deal (or not) with her own issues as she brings up a family.

Enright writes with compassion, humour and insight. Like real life, nothing is wrapped up in a tidy bow, for the simple reason that the story goes on. One way or another, we always go on.

The second half of the book centres around Christmas 2005, when all the siblings come home together for the first time in a very long time. The catalyst? Their mother has just declared she is ready to sell the family home. And the Green Road of the title? It's a local road that leads through the fields of County Clare to the beach,

Fanore, Burren, County Clare

This road turned into the green road that went across the Burren, high above the beach at Fanore, and this was the most beautiful road in the world, bar none, her granny said -famed in song and story - the rocks gathering briefly into walls before lapsing back into field, the little stony pastures whose flowers were sweet and rare.

The Green Road was shortlisted for the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the Costa Book Award.
Enright won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award for 2016.

#ReadIreland18

#Begorrathon18