December 2010 Books

Let's start with the Non-Fiction.

Robin McKie's The Face of Britain is an excellent exploration of the DNA make-up of the UK. It looks to try and find out where we all came from originally. He thinks that now is the last time anyone can do what he has been, and is, doing because there will soon be too many 'foreign' genes in the mix by the time the next generation comes along. Borrow this book from the library or, if you are feeling wealthy, buy it and read it from cover to cover at least twice. It's really interesting and does throw light on our history that documents normally can't. Will Kaufman's Woody Guthrie: American Radical explores his life through his attitudes to the rest of  society and how these changed throughout his life. A good read with plenty of excerpts from his songs and some pretty good black and white photos.
 

                               Woody Guthrie, American Radical

                                Will Kaufman

                                University of Illinois Press

                                2011

Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia and the greatly exaggerated achievements of the new communist regime in the mid-late 1920s, people around the world admired Communism. Communist Parties sprang up around the world, including in the USA.  They attracted people who wanted to improve their living and working conditions. In the USA a number of newspapers and radio stations developed which were sympathetic to communism. Many also expressed this by joining the International Brigades on the side of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939).

            In the late 1930s Woody Guthrie had a live radio show in Los Angeles in which he composed and sang left wing songs, He also had a regular column, called Woody Sez, in a left wing newspaper.

            As part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, several large building programmes were undertaken to employ the unemployed. One such project was The Grand Coulee Dam which started in 1933 and was completed in 1941. Towards the end of the construction period a film was made which showed what had been achieved. Guthrie was commissioned to compose and sing songs for the sound track. While the film was never completed, Guthrie revised and recorded several of the songs in 1944 and 1947.

            In 1940 Guthrie, Pete Seeger and others performed at a benefit concert in New York for John Steinbeck. This is said to have been the spark leading to the revival of American folk song. Up to now Guthrie’s songs had been strongly anti-capitalist. Like many anti-capitalists he revised his views of communism following the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1940.

            Alan Lomax promoted the work of several ringers in the 1940s. As a result, Guthrie  won a commercial radio contract which paid well. But, after only a month, he left New York to return to Los Angeles.

            During 1941 Guthrie was heavily involved with a group of singers called The Almanacs. They formed the hub of an American folk revival. Guthrie was concerned to stop their songs becoming too wordy and sermonising. At the same time he wrote some very strong anti-Hitler songs that were very popular.  The group quickly won influential left-wing cultural followers in large measure because some of their songs supported trade unions.

Following Pearl Harbour in December 1941, Almanac found a new audience with their songs which bolstered the anti-fascist/anti-Japanese war effort. They were catapulted into the national spotlight when they became the resident musicians on the programme called This is War. They also won a recording contract with Decca and a management contract. Because of the strong political content of some of their songs, people began reporting them to the House Un-American Activities Committee. They said the songs were seditious. As a result they lost their recording and broadcasting contracts.

During 1942 Guthrie began to focus on pro-USA, anti-fascist songs and, at the same time, began a large scale rewriting of his songs. By late 1942 he had about 60 songs which went under the title of War Songs are Work Songs. He poured hate and violence into them. The opening of a second front against Germany became an obsession for Guthrie. As a result, he joined the Merchant Martine.  Between June 1943 and June 1944 he completed three tours across the Atlantic.  His ship was torpedoed twice, on the first and third voyages. Because of the amount of free time on board ship he was able to do a huge amount of writing and singing. Between the second and third voyages he wrote a ballad-opera called The Martins and the Coys. He was unable to find a producer in the USA, but the BBC in London broadcast it.

            After his third voyage he won a prestigious slot on New York’s WNEW radio station. His first broadcast was on 3^rd December 1944. Guthrie openly back Roosevelt’s campaign for a fourth Presidential term.  The losers began to single out communism as a scare tactic. Guthrie was considered too left-wing and so lost his radio programme in February 1945. His seaman’s papers were withdrawn following an unsubstantiated accusation of belonging to the Communist Party. Shortly after, he was drafted into the army.

            Following the dropping of the Atom Bombs on Japan in August 1945, Guthrie became an anti-war, anti-A-bomb activist.

            During 1946 the trade unions became extremely militant and several held long-lasting strikes.  Guthrie fought for the cause of non-unionised singers who were paid pittances. He was particularly interested in securing proper payment for radical singers like himself. Pete Seeger also fought for this cause. They and others formed People Songs. They wrote and sang songs of labour and encouraged people to send them similar songs that they had heard. As a result a library of about 20,000 songs was created. The trade unions weren’t interested in their activities but the FBI were. By the end of 1946 militant trade unions were damned for communist interference in their affairs. Guthrie was disillusioned by the crumbling of the militant labour movement. By late 1947 the House Committee of Un-American Affairs was revived.

            During the late 1930s Guthrie was sensitised by racism. Between then and the end of the war he learned how much the development of white songs owed to Negro singing. He memorialised racist miscarriages of justice in song and championed anti-racism. It is in this context that his album of 12 songs about the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti on trumped up charges in 1927 was written. Guthrie thought it was one of the best albums he had ever written but it was not released until 1964 because of its attitude to authority.

            In 1949 Paul Robeson was due to perform at an outdoor concert but was unable to because of police tactics. Shortly after he managed to perform at Peekskill. Guthrie was there and witnessed the police tactics personally. In the months following he wrote 21 songs. The following year he supported the integrationist presidential campaign of Stetson Kennedy. In 1951 he and his family spent time at Kennedy’s house in Florida. Kennedy was forced to go to London by the Ku Klux Klan which burned his house.

            By 1952 the entire radical wing of American folk music was under siege by the anti-communist movement. But Guthrie was increasingly debilitated by advancing Huntington’s disease. In September he bought a plot of land in Topanga, California for his family to live on. He was unable to play but could still write music. In 1951-2 Jack Eliot had become a virtual member of Guthrie’s household and learned to sing Guthrie’s songs exactly like Guthrie. He went to Europe between 1955 and 1961 where he raised people’s consciousness of Guthrie’s music through live performances and influential recordings.

            In March 1956 there was a tribute concert for Woody Guthrie in New York. Two months later he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in New York. People continued to write and meet him.

            The folk revival of 1963-4 spread his music worldwide. His achievements were widely acknowledged and his music was played on TV and radio shows.

            He was celebrated for his musical achievements but damned for his radicalism. In the course of his life he wrote about 3,000 songs of which only a limited number are vigorous protest songs.

            This book is well worth reading to explore the radical background to Guthrie’s music.

Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Teheran is a fascinating account of how a group of educated Iranian women managed to keep their interests in English Literature going in spite of the Iranian mullahs.

Now for the Historical Fiction.

The incomparable CJ Sansom's Sovereign fell to my eyes this month. He is a remarkable writer and provides you with all the tiny details of Henry VIII's London and wherever the latest case takes his lawyer/detective Matthew Shardlake If you haven't read any of his books before, you have a treat in store..

Solving murders is the task of the heroes in David Hewson's Death in Seville and in Minette Walters's Disordered Minds. And then, of course, there is the amazing work of Elizabeth Salander in Stieg Larsson's The girl with the dragon tattoo.

Normal novels are down to one this month: Peter Stamm's Seven Years.

                         Seven Years

                         Peter Stamm

                         Translated from German to English by Michael Hofmann

                          Pub in Germany 2009

                          Other Press, NY, 2010; iv + 264

This story, set in Munich, concerns an architect couple, their daughter and the wife’s aunt as well as a Polish woman. It is told large measure as a series of flashbacks which fit smoothly into the present.

            Sonia and the narrator meet as architecture students at university. They spend the next year working as interns for different architecture practices. He is in Munich and she is in Marseilles where she lives with her aunt.  He visits her and, in time realises that she loves him. Rather more than he loves her. Nevertheless, they marry and, in time, found their own architecture practice which flourishes. However hard they try, they are unable to have children.

            In parallel to this story is that of the relationship between the narrator and a Polish girl called Ivona. She is desperately in love with him, even when he is a student. However hard he tries she refuses to let him have penetrative sex with her but she will do anything else for him, however humiliating.

            Once he and Sonia are married and working, he loses contact with Ivona for seven years. Then she finds him again and they continue their affair. Eventually he forces her to have penetrative sex. In consequence, she becomes pregnant. As a staunch Roman Catholic she refuses to countenance abortion. The very difficult solution, involving a meeting between Ivona and Sonia, is for her to let Sonia and the narrator to adopt the baby on the day of its birth, Ivona is to be allowed a very short time with the baby before handing it over. When the baby arrives it is a girl who Sonia and the narrator name Sophia.  He has agreed to have nothing further to do with Ivona.

            Sonia fell in love with the baby and is soon back at work with a nanny caring for Sophia. Their practice flourishes and all seems well. Then comes the disaster of 2007. The firm struggles and eventually goes bankrupt. An adviser helps them slowly regain solvency. Sophia goes and works for six months for the Marseilles practice to earn regular money. The narrator oversees the conclusion of a building project in Munich. Living with Sophia, the narrator starts to drink heavily and tries to find Ivona again. Eventually he traces her to an apartment she shares with another Polish woman. But he never meets her.

            He and Sonia work extremely hard, no job being too small for them. After three years they manage to clear all their debts. The novel ends shortly after this, perhaps predictably, but it is still a surprise when it comes.

            This is a tightly written novel with very few spare words and no superfluous action at all. The translation is in beautiful English which makes the story unputdownable. It is well worth reading not just for the story but also for the complex relationships between the characters.

And Jack Mapanje's extraordinary poetry collection Beats of Nalunga.

March 2011 Books

This month has seen me reading quite a mixture of books.  So let's start with the non-fiction stuff.

The absolutely best was Memory Ireland: History and Modernity edited by Ooona Frawley. It draws on the ways memory has been used to write histories of Ireland from the 16th century onwards. Most of these histories were written by English historians using official documents and some memories. Like the 12th century account of Ireland by Gerald of Wales. The first true history of Ireland was written in the 17th century by a priest in the western reaches of the country. His history was written in Gaelic. This is as much about politics (English attitudes to Ireland) as it is about memory. But an important book, nevertheless.

Memory Ireland

Volume one: History and Modernity

Edited by Oona Frawley

Syracus University Press, 2010; xxiv + 255

ISBN: 978-0-8156-3250-4

This is the first of four volumes exploring the place of memory  in Ireland’s history, literature and politics. This one is specifically concerned with the place of memory in Ireland’s history. The succeeding three volumes will focus on increasingly restricted aspects of memory. The second will explore Irish cultural memory in the diaspora (USA, England, Canada and New Zealand). The third will focus on the Famine and the Troubles, and the fourth on the writings of James Joyce and how cultural memory is embedded in his work.

            The point is well made in the Introduction that memory tends to mythologise the past whereas history tries to be objective. But in oppressed nations memory can supply aspects of oppressed history. While individual memory can’t be separated from the imagination, collective memory depends on lived history rather than learned history. Recent history has expanded to explore cultural, economic and social structures as well as collective mentalities; the distinction between history and memory thus becomes blurred. History and memory can now be seen as interdependent.

            Ireland has two histories. One is that of the English colonisers who ruled the country from the Norman Conquest into the 20^th century. Much of the formally documented history has been recorded by the English through their administrative systems. The other is that of the Irish people who were ruled by the English. This has no formal documentation and depends on cultural memories.

            English histories of Ireland written in the 16^th and 17^th centuries are heavily indebted to Gerald of Wales’s account written in 1200. The Irish are there described as wild and inhospitable. They also live like beasts. These Elizabethan histories include as Irish those English Settlers from the Norman Conquest whose families had intermingled and intermarried with the native Irish. Stanihurst’s text for Holinshed in 1577 identifies a long-standing Irish hatred for the English Old Settlers living in their pale around Dublin.

            In contrast to the English histories, in 1634 Geoffrey Keating, a Catholic priest in East Munster, wrote an Irish history in Gaelic.  It described the unfairness of the English Settlement and rule since 1200. The important thing is that it draws on the collective memory of the Gaelic Irish and the Old English descendants and acts to counterbalance contemporary English histories.

            One study in the book explores memory of the 1798 rebellion in centennial celebrations in 1898. Over the country there was an overwhelming display of Irish nationalist solidarity. Analysis, however, shows that there were three different types of memory of the event. In eastern Ireland there was a mainly public memory. In the west, folk memory preserved details not included in the official public writings. In Northern Ireland, however, there had been strong support for the 1798 rising, but amnesia struck very quickly. Within two years the Protestant communities were realigning themselves en masse with Unionism and Orangeism.

            In the 1840s, while disease and famine affected the poor, Irish Antiquarians began to study prehistoric and other archaeological remains. It may be that this was  an attempt to replace narratives of poverty and sudden death with accounts of the past glory of Ireland attached to ancient places. The exigencies of the time led farmers to destroy monuments while antiquarians called for their protection. Many had been protected in the past by traditional fairy or giant stories. Preserving the monuments meant preserving these narratives. As the monuments were properly investigated, the idea grew that the Irish past had never before been accurately documented. This work gave rise to debates on concepts of Irish identity and nationalist politics and cultural identity. At the same time antiquarians collected threatened or forgotten histories of ‘Celtic’ Ireland through the preservation and dissemination of Irish texts. This process continued up to the 1916 Rising. Eamonn deValera, the most important political figure in 20^th century Ireland, was fascinated by Irish history and great figures from the past. He used history to shape contemporary Ireland and influence the goals and values of the new State. He played down the troubles and miseries of the past in favour of romantic, nostalgic and inspirational stories. By the 1960s he, himself, formed part of Ireland’s historical memory.

            Recently there has been a major investigation into how children were abused by various institutions of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, it did not include the Magdalene Laundries. Usually they were run by Nuns and were used to hold girls who were deemed to be at risk in one way or another. Families could sign their own children in independently of the courts. The only way they could be released was with the consent of a male family member. Inside the Laundries the nuns were often very cruel. What is amazing is that the last of these institutions only closed in 1996.  The stories of child abuse are needed to correct ‘official’ historical narratives. This will need the records of Religious Orders to be made freely available so that history can be objectified and matched with thee memories of the girls who were held in the Laundries.

            The Irish language outside the Republic can cause problems for those using it. The language is often associated with illicit activity, violence and irrationality. During the 20^th century Irish was often associated with militant nationalists. In Northern Ireland the language was suspect and despised as a cipher for treason and Catholicism and is still a source of deep cultural division.

            In 1800Ireland was almost completely Irish speaking. By 1900 it was almost completely English speaking. In the 1930s, Irish was the language of the older generation but was not passed on. Many of these Irish speakers held a huge library of stories about the traditional past in their heads. As they died and the next generation abandoned Irish as their main language, so many of these stories (memories) were lost.

            This was part of a broader process during which Irish culture got buried under huge quantities of Victorian and Edwardian garbage ‘and we concocted a version of ourselves that was more devastating and destructive than that of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.’

            Buy this book, read it carefully and consider the consequences of English rule on the people of Ireland over most of the past millennium. I look forward with great anticipation to the succeeding 

Then there was Derek Wilson's magnificent biography of Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's spy-master. This is a good book to read to learn about how her court worked as well as about how he kept in touch with what was happening both in England and on the Continent. What got to me was that while Wilson does use footnotes, they are way off being of academic standard. His select biography, however, is useful.

Now for the historical fiction. I love this type of writing. Always have. In fact, I was brought up on GA Henty and company. Kipling, too. But then,  I was born and brought up in the Union of South Africa where Kipling's Just So Stories had a relevance beyond mere fantasy. To start with the earliest novel. Revenger, by Rory Clements, is a murder mystery set in York during King Henry VIII's time. The King and court all arrive on a progress of the country to stay a few days there. In the process the hero of the story sees Catherine Howard and one of her lovers being more than indiscreet. After many people have been felled, a truth of sorts emerges and everyone goes home happily. Susanna Gregory's Blood on the Strand involves her lawyer Chaloner on the fringes of Charles II's court to solve several more murders satisfactorily. The King's Mistress, Barbara Castlemaine comes in for a lot of stick in this novel. But then, if she did the things she is said to have done here, she deserved all the criticism she gets. The Somme Stations by Andrew Martin is set in World War I and shows how a pals battalion from York Station are used to build and operate narrow-gauge railways to serve the artillery stations on the Western Front. Beneath this is the unreasoned hunt by an MP to prove an officer to be the killer of one of the battalion. Someone else was.

                               The Somme Stations

                               Andrew Martin

                               Faber and Faber, March 2011; x + 245pp

                               ISBN: 978-0-571-24960-2

Not another novel about the Great War! you might say. Yes. It does have mud, horses, men and machines sunk deep in the mud.  And bodies, gas and tanks. But this one is very different.

            The story starts in York Station in 1914 shortly before the war begins, which provides us with introductions to the characters we will be following through the rest of the book. Nice move, I thought.  Once war breaks out, the drivers, firemen, porters, office clerks, signalmen, and policemen hesitate to join up because of their responsibilities to keep the trains running. Then their way to join up is cleared through the creation of a railway ‘pals’ battalion. When Det Sgt Jim Stringer joins up, he knows nearly everybody in the battalion. And their domestic histories and police records.

            After initial training they are sent to build a railway the length of Spurn Head. Once the line is completed, they unload ships at the far end of the point. One night, thanks to the kindness of an officer, they all get blind drunk. Next morning, a man who was sent up to join them the evening before is found drowned beside the track. An MP investigates and is convinced that one of the company has murdered him. Only he can’t work out who it is. After some time he suspects Jim Stringer, but he can’t prove anything.

            Shortly afterwards they go to France and forget about the murdered man and the investigation. They are shocked by their experiences when they are employed as trench diggers. Soon after, when an officer discovers that they are all railwaymen, they are redeployed to build and operate narrow-gauge railways supplying ammunition to artillery batteries. Supplies are brought in to them on standard gauge railways. They unload and store the supplies until they are needed. Part of their work is laying narrow-gauge (2 foot) lines to the batteries. These change every few days as the military situation changes.

            At one point, Stringer and a fireman are driving their engine and train towards a battery. The signalman indicates that it is safe to progress. Hardly have they moved forward than a German shell lands more or less on top of them. The fireman is killed and Jim Stringer is badly wounded by shrapnel. He is found holding a German rifle which he reached when he was blown up. The fireman was killed by a German bullet. The MP again investigates the accident and decides that Stringer is a murderer. It turns out, however, that the signalman had disobeyed instructions from further up the line. He should not have allowed them to progress. The signalman is the older brother of a pair of twins in the battalion who only talk to each other.

            When Jim is in hospital in Yorkshire he slowly recovers from his wounds. The MP comes to visit him and arranges to meet him on the moors. Before the MP can shoot Jim, he is shot by the older brother of the twins.

            This is a really good read which is difficult to put down.

Charlotte Bingham's Goodnight Sweetheart is a story set in World War  II. Without giving the game away, this whole novel is about appearances being deceptive and hiding true heroism.

Other novels include Kit Marlowe's The Big Splash. Well, it's really a novella.

                          The Big Splash

                           Kit Marlowe

                           Noble Romance Publishing, NY, 2010; 44pp

                           ISBN: 978-1-60592-132-3

The story is set in 1920s London when Flappers and the Charleston were the rage. Constance Wynne-Hare is a wealthy, single woman who lives in her own house and loves the good time. You could say she lives for it. Her mother is determined to get her married to a respectable, wealthy banker. (Money begets money.) Only Constance is quite happy with her current lover, commoner Mr Wood.

            At a dinner given by her mother, she sits beside Mr Garfield, a staid banker whose conversation is restricted to banking. Which Constance, predictably,  finds very boring indeed. She persuades him to leave the house with her after dessert to go to a night club. There they have a whale of a time and, just as dawn is breaking, join in an enormous tug-of-war across Leicester Square which the police break up.

            A few days later, while she is entertaining Mr Wood in the living room, Mr Garfield arrives. The maid shows him into the parlour. After some shuttle diplomacy in which the maid is crucial, Mr Garfield almost proposes to Constance. Fortunately for her, Mr Wood has followed her into the parlour and, as all Knights In Shining Armour do, carries her off with his own marriage proposal.

            As the maid rightly says, many things can happen between an Engagement and the making of Wedding Vows.

            This is a well-structured, eminently readable short story. It is a pity it isn’t any longer.

And that ancient book that-you-should-have read-when-you-were-a-teenager-but-didn't, Samuel Beckett's More Pricks than Kicks. William Lychack's The Architect of Flowers is a lovely, comforting collection of short stories about human relationships.

And to end the month, I read Jim Christy's collection of amazing poetry called Marimba Forever .

                      Marimba Forever

                      Jim Christy

                       Guernica Editions Ltd, 2010; vi + 123

                       Essential Poets Series 170

                       ISBN:

This is an intriguing collection of poems, many of which need to run over onto a second page to say what they have to say. Christy’s poetic world is a wide one with many problems. Nevertheless, he wears his social conscience lightly. In part, because of that, I feel that this is an important collection.

            The title Jiminy Cricket implies a cartoon character. Instead you come up against two beggars who were once brilliant musicians earning lorry loads of money. A combination of the high life and drugs caught them and brought them down to their present lowly position in society.

            3 am in No Man’s Land is not about battle. It explores how people frequently live in the past in their minds. Perhaps making sense of the present through their pasts. Something which we all do to a greater or lesser degree. Christy defines the past through 78rpm blues and jazz records of the 1930s and 1940s. While you might disagree with the type of music, his point about music or pieces of music being an important part of memory – highlighting  individual events – is a good one.

            Rollerboard Blues sounds as though it ought to be played by a 1920s or 1930s New Orleans band. Or sung with a haunting voice to the accompaniment of a slightly out of tune guitar. And that is just what it is about. With the wry twist that the singer is a paralysed Vietnam? Veteran on a wheeled board singing for cash on the sidewalk.

            Democratic Vistas tells us that here is a hospital opposite the Walt Whitman Mausoleum. The neighbourhood is druggy and socially deprived. Is this the democracy Whitman dreamed of?

            Saigon Joe  is about silent collateral damage from the Vietnam War. Joe is a street sweeper in Saigon whose Vietnamese mother was a prostitute visited by some 3,500 US soldiers.

            Toronto Story is a frightening possible reality. Two 14-year-old boys dream about being hardmen or gangsters, as does another 16-year-old boy. The younger pair, pretending to shoot each other, were shot in reality by the older boy. He in turn was shot by a policeman. The cop is the only one in the poem who is not living in a dream world.

            Final Drive follows the poet all over North and South America searching for the answer to:

‘why death owned the roadhouses

And why the time of my life was speeding

Past, faster than the cacti headed the other way.’

There is, of course, no answer.

            In For me and my gal the poet intends writing about a time he worked on a ranch. But he finds himself holding a Halloween pencil decorated with all sorts of strange and ghoulish decorations. He comments:

‘Everyone looks

Like they’re glad to be dead.’

alloween pencil decorated wirth all sorts of strange and ghoulish figures. He comments:

            You expect Pnom Penh Blues to be about vets revisiting old haunts from their time in the Vietnam War. But it is about no such thing. It’s about how you can have sex with younger girls here than in Saigon.

            Mary Kathleen is  long poem about a troubled relationship wwith his mother. He came back to see her when she was dying. She accused him of always being a nigger lover:

‘        It’s

Disgusting. Niggers! They

Want the things like what we got.

……

               You

Always liked them, the niggers!

Finally, one moment, silent look

Of disgust, before

Dismissing me from her life.’

            Dead or Otherwise is a poem addressed to a friend who has been dead for three months. He remembers things they did together.

‘Is there indeed anything,

Dead or otherwise,

Where you are? Where

Are you? Let me know Philguy, friend

Of thirty-four years, please, and

Forthwith.’

            An Oldie but a Goody is a radio DJ’s chat leading up to broadcasting a song. He starts with:

‘Its five AM and this one’s

Going out to all those who just

Kicked off the dark blanket

Of a night that tried to smother them.’

Then comes a list of dedicatees and requesters, which ends:

‘To everybody waiting

For the early edition to reach

The corner boxes.’

Finally, the title is revealed:

‘                       It’s a little

Thing called “You an Bet Your Ass,

Things Ain’t Never

Gonna Change.!

I hope you like it.’

The final poem questions Why We’re in Afghanistan. It starts by describing wounds and amputates. One stanza peculates on who or what owns a leg and what they do with it once it’s been blown off a soldier.

‘..they’ll wake up some morning

A score and a half years from now

And wonder what the hell was

Going on in that godforssaken place

Over there when they were young’

I hope this review has given you a taste of the range of Jim Christy’s social conscience and the quality of his poetry. This is a collection well worth investing in.

                                                                                                     

What this blog is about

I am forever listing all the books I read and have done so for twenty or more years. More recently, through LibraryThing and NetGalley, I have had opportunities to review books. So my intention here is to list the books I have read each month and, when I have written a review about one or more of them, I will include that. You will have the chance to agree or disagree with me through your Comments. Or tell me what I SHOULD have read.