Bluestalking Reader, added January 9, 2007
I and a few of my book-obsessed friends embarked on a project to read all the Booker Prize longlist books back in the fall of 2006. Our intent was to read all of them quickly (about 15 or so books within the course of 4-6 weeks!), in advance of the notification of the shortlist, and to pit our wits against the Booker committee in order to try and guess which they'd pick for the shortlist. I'll admit it, I couldn't fit in all of the longlisted books, but I sure did give it a good effort. If I could have eliminated all non-essential tasks, like sleeping and eating, maybe I could have gotten closer to the mark. Live and learn!

I started out with David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, and here's what I posted about this one on my blog after I finished:

" The narrator is a wonderful, funny, intelligent young man and his voice is, as they say, "pitch-perfect." There's an air of mystery/intrigue to the book, in addition to the fabulously intelligent humor. Great stuff."

Black Swan Green lead me to Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn, a book most Americans likely haven't heard of but most definitely should have. It's a coming-of-age story along the lines of The Catcher in the Rye, just to give it a reference point, but this is no imitation of Salinger. Mother's Milk has a very unique voice, and at times it's also very funny. Though this one was a wonderful, wonderful read, I didn't think it would make the Booker cut. Still, that's not saying I don't recommend it. The caliber of all these books was just so high any little complaint against a book could easily eliminate it from contention.

From Mother's Milk I went on to The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson. Lawson's book is a Cain and Abel tale, set in rural Ontario, Canada. After reading this book I became convinced Mary Lawson is a name to watch. The Other Side of the Bridge is a gorgeous, gorgeous book, and it's so frustrating to me that Lawson's not better known than she is. I see her as the heir to Margaret Atwood, and if she keeps writing I can easily see her work enduring long into the future. I made a mental note to read her other book, Crow Lake, but still haven't gotten around to it.
From Mary Lawson it was on to M.J. Hyland, another female writer I'd never read but who really threw me for a loop. Here's how I summed up her book Carry Me Down:

" The focus of this book is on the brutality of childhood, as well as the huge impact parents play in forming the psyches of their children. Though not an abused child per se, John Egan is raised by somewhat unstable parents who don't always provide him with the emotional and financial stability he so desperately needs. He becomes a compulsive liar who's convinced he has a preternatural ability to detect lies in others, and as such he's somewhat an unreliable narrator. The reader can read between the lines and get a good general idea of the truth, by knowing the reactions of the other characters, so the occasional delusions of John are easily seen through. He is a liar, but not a sophisticated one. There's a lot of innocence in him, through it all, and this is what gets our sympathy. He's a child who needs a lot of love and who gets precious little, and that's what breaks the reader's heart more than anything. "

Carry Me Down lead me to the book I nominated here for one of the best written in 2006, Kate Grenville's The Secret River. I sang that book's praises everywhere I could after reading it. As much as the other books impressed me, The Secret River was the stand-out best. What made it so special was the fact it was not just a riveting story beautifully told, but it also made some very powerful social statements about mankind's propensity for violence that are, unfortunately, universal. Why it didn't win the Booker is beyond me, and I wound up not even reading the book that DID win (Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss), after all that effort!

Sigh.

Oh well, the whole experience was a lot of fun and I found several new authors to put on my "Must Read" list. It may be a blow to my vanity not having come anywhere near choosing the winner, but when the reading is this good I won't complain!

Too much.

By IggyMommy, 12/8/2006
Years ago I became interested in the Civil War due to two things...I became interested in genealogy and found a treasure trove of data on my family during those times (Southerners who were mostly Confederates but also a few Union soldiers) and the advent of the PBS Civil War series. I watched that series with complete absorption and bought the picture book based on it. This led me to Shelby Foote's massive historical works. Over the years I've read historical books about the Civil War, Civil War magazines, the politics of the Civil War, the Reconstruction, the effects it has had on the South to this day, Southern fiction, etc. The one-word "cause" of the Civil War is "slavery" and yet this one-word is only the top cherry on a mass of a reasons. But the one-word was easy to understand, easy to explain, easy to pass down, requiring no further explanations, no indepth study. Slavery was a horrible thing, it topped the list and it was an easy, one-word excuse but it was by no means as simple as most people think.

I read The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo and When In The Course of Human Events by Charles Adams and A Constitutional History of Secession by John Remington Graham. So I learned a lot about the complications, the depths, and the agony of this War. More people died in this War than all the other wars that America has been involved in COMBINED. Other than the Revolutionary War, no other war that we've been involved in has had longer lasting results to this country, even to modern times. I have also discovered modern Southern writers such as Ron Rash, Charles Frazier, etc. Ron Rash writes books based on his family experiences in the western NC mountains. His latest book, A World Made Straight, is great. Do a Google search on the Shelton Laurel Massacre and read that as background for the book. His other books and poetry are equally as good. Charles Frazier wrote Cold Mountain and 13 Moons. Cold Mountain was made into a famous movie.

A Single Star by Stan Barnett takes a modern set of circumstances that could bring about the Civil War, Part II, and shows you what happens when a federal government has too much control. Based on a real life incident in which former Governor Jim Hodges tried to stop the federal government from sending any more nuclear waste to SC, only this time, the Governor of SC doesn't back down. I've read books based in the South such as the Mitford Series by Jan Karon and the Miss Julia series by Ann Ross. Then there are the economics of the War and Reconstruction decades and the social upheaval of the Jim Crow and Civil Rights era. Harsh times that were more or less created by the War and left anger, resentment, poverty and devastation throughout the entire South for generations to come. In following this theme I have learned a lot, not only about an historical War but about history and life. I've learned that there are 2 sides to every story and there is rarely a single, uncomplicated, black and white issue...it's always more complicated, indepth, entangled and fascinating.


Talking on the Water: Conversations on Nature and Creativity
Edited by Jonathan White

This book is a collection of interviews with a vast array of writers, scholars, and environmentalists.

I read it at a time when I was just starting to become interested in the world at large. It brought me to so many new writers that I had yet to discover.

First it led me to Peter Matthiessen, who to this day is one of my favorite writers. His essay inspired me to pick up In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. A 688-page account of the 1975 shootout between FBI agents and Native Americans at Wounded Knee. After finishing that, I craved more history about Wounded Knee. This was history that I did not hear about in high school, so I picked up Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. Again, I felt like I was being told about the history of my country for the first time.

About that time I heard Gary Snyder on NPR talking about our connection to the places where we live. What happened on this land before our ancestors arrived from England, Germany, Holland, etc. I remembered him from Talking on the Water and picked up one of his poetry books No Nature.

To be continued...