"Lotus Moon" by Rengetsu *****

• Poetry
• Japanese author, a Buddhist nun, born in 1791
• This translated collection was originally published in 1994
• #7 in "The Journey Series"
• Introduction by John Stevens:
• p.9..."Rengetsu was born in the pleasure quarters of Kyoto in 1791, the illegitimate offspring of a high-ranking samurai and a young geisha."....pleasure quarters....
• p.11..."...she once likened herself to 'a drifting cloud blown by a fierce wind.'"
• p.14..."A reader  'waka' is also expected to augment the sentiments expressed in a poem with his or her own experiences."
• Afterword:  Hermitage Heart by Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei:
• "Rengetsu lived what could have easily become a tragic life."
• p.120...."One pleasure of discovering the lives and teachings of the rare women we find in the history f Buddhism is seeing how they take up the tragedies in their lives and transform them.  They remind us of the freedom that no circumstance can take from us.."
• p.123..."At dawn she sees snow blanketing the hills and knows that there must have been a fierce storm in the night.  She kindles the fire.  In its thusness, it is just thus."
• Notes:
• produced 50,000 pieces of art
• an artist, a Buddhist practitioner, and an emancipated woman
• p.35..."Am I a man dreaming I am a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I am a man?"
• Review:  Oh!  How incredibly lovely!  This is a collection of "waka",  a form of Japanese poetry, written by a Buddhist nun named Rengetsu.  The poems are organized by season and are stunning!  The Introduction and Afterword are excellent accompaniments in terms of the biography of the poet and the offering of insights into Buddhist practice and symbolism.  This is a collection which I will keep close at hand to enjoy throughout the year.

"Small: Life and Death on the Front Lines of Pediatric Surgery" by Catherine Musemeche, M.D. *****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Non-Fiction
• US author
• Originally published 2014
• Epigraph:
• "conch
  
  Hold a baby to your ear, As you would a shell: Sounds of centuries you hear, New centuries foretell.
  Who can break a baby's code? And which is the older--, The listener or his small load? The held or the holder?"
  
  ---E.B.White
• Quotes:
• p.3..."There is no such thing as a routine operation in a baby."
• p.66..."Whether a patient's demise is predictable, expected, or unavoidable, losing a patient is personal to a surgeon.  He has reached inside his patient's body, manipulated those human organs, and made changes that last a lifetime.  Surgeon and patient are forever linked by the outcome of such an intimate endeavor: both of them must live with the consequences."
• p.68..."Adult human lungs measure ten to fourteen inches in height and four to six inches across, about the size of a baseball glove.  Within the two spongy masses are a total of 300 to 500 million alveoli within 750 square feet of compressed surface area, the size of one side of a tennis court."....Absolutely amazing!
• Review:  From the perspective a a lay person who has long been fascinated by all things medical, this was an absolutely fascinating read.  I have taken for granted the notion of the existence of such a thing as a pediatric surgeon, yet had no idea that it is a relatively recent development, in fact, still coming into it's own.  The book presents case studies which in and of themselves are amazing, but the cases serve as the platform to the truly engrossing brief history of pediatric surgery, the differences between a child's body and an adult's (significantly more than just size}, the hurdles in the way of creating instruments and devices for use in these tiny bodies, the ethics and politics in this field of endeavor, and above all, the heroic ingenuity, courage, and determination of the innovators in this field.  This is a book which is definitely accessible to the lay person and it is also a riveting education for anyone who is interested in the medical aspects of fetuses, preemies, and children in general.  Excellent read! 

"A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking ***

• Book Club selection for January 2015
• English author
• Originally published in 1987
• Review:  Let's just get this part out of the way.  I am the epitome of the lay person when it comes to physics.  I could understand the book's introduction, general statements, and conclusion.  That's about it.  So, for what it's worth, my take away is that humans continue to be driven to make meaning of their existence and scientists do so by trying to find absolutes.  

"The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell *****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Originally published in 2014
• English author
• 1984
• Miner's strike...socialist movement
• Holly Sykes.....Ed Brubeck
• Daymares...Miss Constantin
• Dr Marinus/Horologists  v.  Pfenniger/Anchorites
• Rhymes
• Esther Little, 
• "asylum"..  hide in a body
• Vocabulary:
• coracle:  a small, round, or very broad boat made of wickerwork or interwoven laths covered with a waterproof layer of animal skin, canvas, tar covered or oiled cloth, or the like: used in Wales, Ireland, and parts of western England.
• Cathar: (in medieval Europe) a member of any of several rigorously ascetic Christian sects maintaining a dualistic theology.
• psychosoteric:  created by author
• epiphyte:  a plant that grows above the ground supported non-parasitically by another plant or object, deriving its nutrients from rain, air, dust....from air
• chatoyant:   reflecting a single streak of light when cut in a cabochon.
• Quotes:
• p34..."What if...what if Heaven is real, but only in moments?  Like a glass of water on a hot day when your dying of thirst, r when someone's nice to you for no reason, or...".
• p.41...."Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices."
• p.52..."Life's a matter of Who Dares Wins."
• p.58..."....his voice is like the wind swerving through a weird day."....referring to Bob Dylan
• p.100..."Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed.  Power is a visitor to,, not a possession of, those it empowers.  The mad tend to crave it, many of the sane crave it, but the wise worry about its long term side effects.  Power is crack cocaine for your ego and battery acid for your soul.........The empowered may serve justice, remodel the Earth, transform lush nations into smoking battlefields an bring down skyscrapers, but power itself is amoral."....Immaculee Constantin
• p.126..."You, Hugo.....are a sordid, low-budget French film.  The sort you'd stumble across on TV at night.  You know you'll regret it in the morning but you keep watching anyway."....LOL...Holly to Hugo Lamb
• p.135..."...for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good."
• p.150..."Love is the anesthetic applied by Nature to extract babies."
• p.151..."Love wants love in return, and I right, Olly?  Like drugs, the highs look divine, and I envy the users.  But when the side-effects kick in --jealousy, the rages, grief, I think count me out.  Elizabethans equated romantic love with insanity.  Buddhists view it as a brat throwing a tantrum at the picnic of the calm mind."
• p.157..."here's the truth:  who is spared love is spared grief
• p.161..."Racial differences I'be always found to have an aphrodisiac effect on me, but class difference is sexuality's Berlin Wall."....Hugo
• p.263..."A journalist marries the news, Seymour.  She's capricious, cruel and jealous.  She demands you follow her to wherever on Earth life is cheapest, where she'll stay a day or two, then jet off.  You, your safety, your family are nothing."...Ed Brubeck
• p.325..."I riff on notions of the soul as a karmic report card; as a spiritual memory-stick in search of a corporeal hard-drive; and as a placebo we generate to cure our dread of mortality."
• p.387..."Adverbs are cholesterol in the veins of prose.".....LOL
• p.427..."One cannot cross the same river twice."...i like that
• p.565..."There's a link between bigotry and bad spelling.  I've met it before."
• p.565..."...if you could reason with religious people, there wouldn't be any religiou people."
• p.597..."Civilization's like the economy, or Tinkerbell:  If people stop believing it's real, it dies."
• Notes:
• References to Orwell's "Animal Farm"
• Horologists/Atemporals refer to the body as "bone clocks", when the body dies they go to "the dusk" for 49 days then "awake" in a child's body (p.449)
• Anchorites move into another's body and do not physically age, "a girl who lived like a hermit in a cell, but in the wall of a church.  a living human sacrifice, in a way."(p.436), they fuel their atemporality on engifted souls
• The two groups are referred to as Carnivores and Herbivores
• Capitalism metaphors
• Iceland fares well post "Endarkenment"........connection to "enlightenment"?
• Doubt is the chink in the armor of the Anchorites....to beat them one must take advantage of it
• Anchorites stay at twelve......disciples?
• Frequent use of the phrase "it is Scripted"....like Jews..."It is written"...lending a statement weight.....fatalism?
• Anchorites...all white...racist white power
• Review:  David Mitchell has done it again.  He has written a cross-genre, mind-twisting, thought-provoking novel.  Mitchell's use of language is marvelous.  His characters, particularly the protagonist, Holly Sykes, and Marinus are vividly memorable.  The plot is complex and multi-layered and then winds down into a singularly profound statement about the power of the will to survive and continuity over time.  Meanwhile, Mitchell is somehow also able to make clear and pointed statements about the state of our social-political irresponsibility, our climate busting, Dark Ages inducing behavior as a species and the soul destroying properties of power. If that isn't enough, this is just a gripping story full of mystery, imagination, and plot twists. Outstanding! Moral of the story?  "Civilization's like the economy, or Tinkerbell:  If people stop believing it's real, it dies."

Link to 2015 Reading Journal

my2015readingjournal.blogspot.com

"Blood Memory" by Greg Iles ****

◆  Audiobook
◆  Originally published in 2005
◆  German author

Review:  Greg Iles definitely knows how to tell a multi-layered story very well.  As is often true with his novels, the protagonist becomes a vehicle for the exploration of a human experience via the examination of its psychological, social, and physical perspectives.  Iles has demonstrated the consistent ability to describe the macro and micro of complex issues, in this case incest/sexual abuse.  Set in New Orleans, the protagonist moves from confusion to complicity to clarity in a manner that strikes this reader as realistic and very human.  Nice twists and turns as well, which are de rigeur for a good serial killer mystery.

"The Time Regulation Institute" by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar *****

• Book Club selection for November 2014
• Turkish author
• Originally published in translation in 2014
• Originally published in 1962
• Author lived from 1901-1962, going through the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the secularized, Western style society envisioned by Ataturk.
• Review:  An absolutely brilliant satire of capitalism and bureaucracy set during the transition period in Istanbul under the rule of Ataturk. The forced adoption of Western priorities did not sit too well with traditionalists of Istanbul and this novel is one of the results! I laughed out loud multiple times reading this.  The writing is somewhere in the vicinity of Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Just imagine all the time lost by adding up the minutes misplaced by clocks set to the wrong time?  I know...mind boggling......right?  Well some bureaucrat at the Time Regulation Institute figured it out.  Way too funny!  

"Snow Hunters" by Paul Yoon *****

• Book Club selection for December 2014
• US author
• Originally published 2013
• Review:  This debut novel is absolutely exquisite!  Paul Yoon is a phenomenal writer.  His prose is poetic and profound, yet simple.  This is a tale of tragic loss and the transformative power of kindness.  In a short novel with minimal dialogue, the protagonist is a veritable phoenix, surmounting unimaginable loss, yet retaining kindness, compassion, and love.  A meditative, touching tale.  A must read!!!

"The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells" by Andrew Sean Greer. **

◆  Audiobook
◆  Originally published in 2013
◆  US author
◆  Review:  Another time travel novel.  In this novel time travel is induced by electroshock treatments which lead the protagonist to repeated visits to parallel lives. Bland.

"Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck. *****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 1945
• Review:  I love John Steinbeck's prose! Meet a marvelous cast of characters who reside on Cannery Row and come to life at night. Exquisite! Enough said!

"The Child: An Audible Drama" by Sebastian Fitzek ***

• Audiobook only
• German author
• Originally published in 2014
• Review:  This was a story translated from the original German and only available performed as a combination narrated/dramatic production by Audible.  Listening to it was like listening to an old time radio program with sound effects and the intensification of the emotion of the story.  The rhythm of the story was occasionally disrupted by the switching from narrator to performers and back.  The story itself is the suspenseful, dark, and poignant tale of loss, the search for love, the acceptance of the existence of both good and evil, and acceptance.  Not bad at all.

"Winter Journal" by Paul Auster ***

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published 2011
• Review:  Auster's second memoir was interesting, if a bit weird.  Who writes a memoir in second person?  I am sure, knowing the profound nature of his novels, that Auster has a reason, but it was distracting to me.  Frankly, the last third was the most interesting.  Auster compares writing to dance, and both of them to expressions of the heart rhythm.  Love that part of it!  Auster is one of my favorite authors, but this fell short of my expectations.

"The Painted Girls" by Cathy Marie Buchanan ****

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 2012
• Setting:  1878 Paris, a ballet school 
• Review:  Yes, I know....another bit of fiction built around famous artwork.  Ho hum!  Wait a minute!  This novel apparently is closely tied to historical fact and is actually quite well done. The writing is straightforward, which I found to be true for this author's previous work.  The characters are young, impoverished women who aspire to a better life found via the ballet, in particular, three sisters from a very poor family.  Only one has real talent, and the other two try but fall into what was , apparently, a common path.  Seeking to survive they model for artists, in this case, Degas, and must tolerate some really disgusting men, who nonetheless help them to provide sustenance to their family.  The family of three really did exist, and the model for the Degas statuette referred to frequently was actually one of the sisters.  Not a happy tale, and unfortunately quite realistic.  Well done!

"The Breast" by Philip Roth ****

• US author
• Originally published in 1972
• Review:  Only Philip Roth could tell this story of a middle aged man who metamorphoses into a 155 pound breast.  Yes, you read that right.  This is unlike any other novel I have read by Roth due to its Kafkaesque nature.  What does it mean to change from a person to an object?  Roth is somehow able to do the question justice with wit and psychological depth.  Wonderful novella!

"The Cat's Table" by Michael Ondaatje ****

• October 2014 Book Club selection
• Sri Lankin author
• Originally published in 2011
• Setting:  aboard the Oronsay from Ceylon to England via Aden, the Suez Canal
• Epigraph:  "And this is how I see the East...I see it always from a small boat - not a light, not a stir, not a sound.  We conversed in low whispers, as if afraid to wake up the land... t is all in that moment when I opened my young eyes on it.  I came  upon it from a tussle with the sea." - Joseph Conrad, "Youth"
• Vocabulary:
• coelacanth:  a crossopterygian fish, Latimeria chalumnae, thought to have been extinct since the Cretaceous Period but found in 1938 off the coast of southern Africa.  
• mangosteen:  the juicy, edible fruit of an East Indian tree
• Characters:l
• Michael:  age 11, narrator, nickname on board was "Mynah"
• Cassius:  his buddy, became an artist
• Ramadhin:  his buddy, gentle soul, died young
• Mr. Mazappa:  played with the ship's orchestra
• Mr. Nevil:  ship dismantler
• Emily de Saram:  distant cousin
• Miss Lasqueti:  ?
• Flavia Prins:  ?
• Mysterious prisoner:  murdered a judge?
• Massoumeh/Massi:  Ramadhin's sister, eventually wife of Michael, then divorced
• Larry Daniels:  botanist
• Narayan: family manservant
• Gunepala:  family cook
• Mr. Fonseca:  travelling to England to be a teacher, smoked hemp
• Sir Hector de Silva:  cursed to die by dog bite
• Vocabulary:
• Quotes:
• p.4..."He could hear singing and imagined the slow and then eager parting of families taking place in the thrilling night air."
• p.4..."I try to imagine who the boy on the ship was.  Perhaps a sense of self is not even there in his nervous stillness in the narrow bunk, in this green grasshopper or little cricket, as if he has been smuggled away accidentally, with no knowledge of the act, into the future."
• p.10..."So by the end of our first day, we discovered we could become curious together."
• p.21..."Silent as corpses we looked at the stars.  We felt we were swimming in the sea, rather than a walled-in pool in the middle of the ocean."
• p.25..."Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet."
• p.29..."Who realizes how contented feral children are?"
• p.32..."It was easy to fool the three of us, who were naked with innocence."
• p.33..."There was something extraterrestrial and indelible about the verse Mazappa sang on that afternoon, whatever the words meant."
• p.37..."Thinking backwards I could remember the comfort of being curious and alone."
• p.55..."We released all the breath from our bodies and sank to the bottom and stood there waving our arms softly like Mr Daniels's palm trees, wishing he could see us."
• p.64...But he had a serenity that came with the choice of the life he wanted to live.  And this serenity and certainty I have seen only among those who have the armour of books close by."
• p.81..."What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power."
• p.85...Michael describes the three of them as "freed mercury"
• p.135..."Who hath desired the sea?  Her excellent loneliness rather / Than the forecourts of kings."...Rudyard Kipling...Mr. Fonseca recited it at the sea funeral for de Silva
• p.138..."We had crossed open seas at twenty-two knots, and now we moved as if hobbled, at the speed of a slow bicycle, as if within the gradual unrolling of a scroll."
• p.139..."So we came to understand that small and important thing, that our lives could be large with interesting strangers who would pass us without any personal involvement."...during Suez Canal passage
• p.157..."We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to loosen and untie."
• p.158..."My shipboard nickname was 'Mynah'.  Almost my name but with a step into the air and a glimpse of some extra thing, like the slight swivel in their walk all birds have when they travel by land.  Also, it is an unofficial bird, and unreliable, its voice not fully trustworthy in spite of the range.."
• Notes:
• Title:  "the least privileged place"
• Trying to smoke the entire cane chair before the end of the cruise had ended
• p.60..Narayan made Michael listen to the insects in Bullock shit
• description of going through the Suez canal was wonderful
• Cassius' paintings of Suez experience....dare I say, rite of passage?
• Review:  This is a story full of a kaleidoscope of characters, full of the antics of three boys on an ocean liner from Ceylon to England, and an amazing array of events, and that is only one part of the novel.  Unfortunately, the other portion did not work well for me, and that was the portion about adulthood.  Although the parts written about the events on board the ship were wonderful, it did not blend well with the other portion.  Ondaatje's prose was at times the lyrical, magical prose which I love, and fell flat at other times.  Now, in the interest of full disclosure, my real life book club discussion did raise my awareness that it may be that the contrast was deliberate, but I am not sure.  It was a very good read, just not my favorite Ondaatje.

"Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands" by Chris Bohjalian ***

• Audiobook
• Narrator is author's adolescent daughter, interview with them at the end
• Originally published
• US author
• Originally published in 2014
• Review:  This was my least favorite Bohjalian novel to date.  I am not a huge fan of post-apocalyptic tales. which in desire to provide full disclosure, should be included in my review.  This was an unengaging tale of a young girl and the trials of life not only as a survivor, but as a survivor whose parents both died, both worked at the nuclear plant that melted down, and whose father was being held at least partially responsible for the disaster.  Okay....not an easy burden to bear, but I think the author went overboard and had her experience every possible horrible consequence and it just did not come off as believable to me.  Oh well....I like his other books?

"Humboldt's Gift" by Saul Bellow *

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published in 1973
• Review:  Humboldt's Gift...not going to happen. There is something so ludicrously intellectual and detached in this writing. I get angry and then just quit.

"A Song for Issy Bradley" by Carys Bray ****

• An Early Review edition for LibraryThing.com
• English author
• Debut novel
• Originally published August 2014
• Epigraph:  "For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart; yea, the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me, and it shall be answered with a blessing upon their heads.".....(Doctrine and Covenants 25:12)
• Quotes:
• p.20..."Maybe that's how repentance works, a sort of gradual baptism of skin and tissue, the shedding of the old self and the cultivation of the new."
• p.33..."It always feels weird when ordinary people come round; the picture of Jesus in the hall seems to double in size and Al feels like an outsider, someone who has grown up in the country of the house without managing to learn its language."
• p.35..."It's as if Dad lives in the overlapping bit of one of those Venn diagrams, straddling both worlds.  Other people adapt, they step from circle A to circle B, they act normal in real life and accessorise their Sunday clothes with holy words and best manners, but Dad is unchanging.  He exists in a perfect egg of divine assurance."
• p.94..."Never is a word that doesn't always mean not-on-your-nelly and absolutely-no-way.  Sometimes never means not yet."
• Notes:
• Oldest daughter, Zippy, is reading old classics like "Persuasion", "Jane Eyre", etc.  
• Review:  This is the story of a family in a crisis of faith after the loss of a loved one.  The fact that the family are Mormon adds a dimension to my reading because the author, who was herself raised as a Mormon, shares details which are informative about some of the Mormon traditions.  However, I think this test of faith can occur for any person and that is what makes this novel so meaningful.  I particularly like the treatment of all the children and the way this questioning takes developmentally accurate forms.  The author subtly and tastefully calls into question some of the practices while never crossing into disrespect.  I am not Mormon.  I think this book can be understood in different ways, and I think that the reader's belief system prior to reading it will largely determine how they will walk away from it.  I hope it was the author's intention for that to happen.  Excellent debut!

"Mr. Tall: A Novella and Stories" by Tony Earley ****

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• Novella and short stories
• Originally published August 2014
• Epigraph:  "What luck did ye have this time, Jack?"  "Why, King, I didn't see no unicorn." - Richard Chase, "The Jack Tales"
• No page numbers
• "Haunted Castles of the Barrier Islands":  First night empty nesters
• p.17..."Find me a Hardee's.  Find me a room.  Stay with me until I die.  It was all the same thing, really."
• p.30...."Well, since you're so damn curious, let me tell you the secret to a long marriage.  If you want to stay together; then don't leave."
• p.35..."It was the only way he knew to make a life, the transfigurative ordering of event into story, something he could not do without Cheryl."
• "Mr. Tall":  Misunderstanding leads to lonely isolation for two people in the mountains
• p.41..."She felt as if she had been granted admission into some benevolent, secret society to which almost everyone belonged but of which hardly anyone ever spoke."...marriage
• "The Cryptozoologist":  chasing the mysterious skunk ape, and an understanding of her late spouse
• "Yard Art";  All lives have value, whether famous or not....art is beautiful to whomever sees the beauty
• "Have You Seen the Stolen Girl?":  Lonely old woman, isolation, misunderstanding
• "Just Married":  Three couples who remain faithful during difficult times find themselves crossing paths at a pivotal moment
• "Jack and the Mad Dog":  What happens to characters when a story ends?
• Review:  First night empty nesters, the misunderstood Mr. Tall, the widow of her misunderstood artist husband, Jack of the beanstalk and what happens when we close a book.  Are you interested yet?  I absolutely loved "Jim The Boy", and Tony Earley once again demonstrates his wonderful storytelling skill in this wonderful collection.  Each story is a metaphor about life.  Sounds trite, I know, but in this case not so!!

"Police" by Jo Nesbo *****

• Audiobook
• #10 in the Harry Hole series
• Norwegian author
• Mystery/Suspense
• Review:  So...normally I do not give mystery/suspense novels a 5 star rating, but this installment of the Harry Hole series was great!  The author manipulated me so well.  At several points I was holding my breath only to be taken by surprise at what came next.  I think this series is best read in order, but this particular one was just a great read!  As always, Nesbo is able to force the reader to hold the best and worst in the palm of the hand at the same time, just as life does!

"The Prime Minister" by Anthony Trollope *****

• Audiobook
• #5 in 6 novel Palliser series
• English author
• Originally published in 1876
• Review:  I just love the Palliser series!  This installment returns to a focus on the Duke who has become Prime Minister.  The reader is also introduced to the tragically nefarious, narcissistic Ferdinand Lopez and the target of his plots, the Wharton family.  Plotting, broken hearts, outwitting the fiend, and renewal of lost love.  Ah yes!  Of course, Trollope wouldn't be Trollope without a dash of social commentary, and in this story it is the maneuvering of the Members of Parliament, their concern for their image, and the way gossip impacts their decisions.  Additionally we find Lady Palliser becoming caught up in the love of power and trying desperately to maintain her status through her husband's status.  In fact, that is the primary theme here.  Miss Wharton and Lady Palliser struggle with the definition of self through spouse throughout the drama.  You will have to read it yourself to find out the results!

"The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax" by Dorothy Gilman. ***

• Audiobook
• US author
• 1st in series
• Originally published in 1986
• Review:  A fun read even if the plot is a bit thin. I could envision Maggie Smith as Mrs. Pollifax!

"The Lobster Kings" by Alexi Zentner ***

• Early Reviewer edition for LibraryThing.com
• US author
• Originally published in 2014
• Setting:  Loosewood Island, claimed by both Canada and the US
• Characters:  Cordelia Kings (narrator, eldest of four children, works a lobster boat with her father), Brumfitt Kings (her grandfather, founded the community on the island, legendary, painter)
• Review:  This novel was interesting in terms of the clash of the "old" school with modern issues of competition, over fishing, and the intrusion of the drug trade.  Somehow, although there is plenty of character development, the writing was, to me, okay.  I would describe this novel as good, but not great.

"I Am A Cat" by Soseki Natsume *****

• Summer read with Beth
• Japanese author
• Originally published 1905
• Setting: Meiji era in Japan
• From Preface:  "Such problems usually lead translators to beg the indulgence of their readers: but forgive them not, for they know what they do."
• Cat characters:  Narrator (unnamed), Rickshaw Blacky,
• Human characters:  Mr. Sneaze (narrators owner), Waverhouse (indecisive), Coldmoon (in love with Goldfield girl, studying "A Discussion of the Stability of Acorns in Relation to the Movements of Heavenly Bodies."), Mrs. Goldfield (snob, big nose), Mrs. Sneaze ("such quintessence of the common approximates to the unique"), Beauchamp Blowlamp, Singleman Kidd (Zen fanatic who lives in insane asylum)
• Vocabulary:
• cachinnation: to laugh loudly or immoderately.
• tarrydiddles:  a trifling lie
• ulterioity: lying beyond or outside of some specified or understood boundary;more remote
• jobbernowl:  blockhead
• pansophic:  universal wisdom or knowledge
• nescience:  lack of knowledge
• skint:  having no money; penniless
• unpetrine:  not similar to Saint Peter
• jactitate:  to stir about violently
• clobber:  to denounce or criticize vigorously
• teratoid:  resembling a monster
• archaiomelesidonophrunicherata:  sweet old time Sidono-Phrynician
• jeremiad:  a prolonged lamentation or mournful complaint
• usufruct: the right of enjoying all the advantages derivable from the use ofsomething that belongs to another, as far as is compatible with the substance of the thing not being destroyed or injured.
• usucaption: the acquisition of property through long, undisturbed possession
• diaskenast:  someone who revises a literary text, editor
• eldritch:  eerie; weird; spooky
• sempeternal:  everlasting; eternal
• atrabilious:  gloomy; morose; melancholy; morbid

• Quotes:  Volume I
• p.6..."Miss Blanche, having given through her tears a complete account of this event, assured me that, to maintain our own parental love and to enjoy our beautiful family life, we, the cat-race, must engage in total war upon all humans.  We have no choice but to exterminate them.  I think it is a very reasonable proposition." (Owner drowned her kittens)
• p.7..."For surely even human beings will not flourish forever.  I think it is best to wait in patience for the Day of the Cats."
• p.9..."Unless some creatures more powerful than humans arrive on earth to bully them, there's just no knowing to what dire lengths their fool presumptuousness will eventually carry them."
• p.14..."And men who accept the burdens of regret, whether in  respect of watercolors or of anything else, are not the stuff that men of the world are made of."
• p.34..."I understand that she's the thirteenth Shogun's widowed wife's private secretary's younger sister's husband's mother's nephew's daughter."...false pride
• p.42..."I calmly  let him go on stroking me, justifying my compliance with the reflection that so small a weakness is permissible when there are those in the world who admit to thinking themselves under loving observation by persons who merely happen to be cross-eyed."
• p.70..."The more that humans show me sympathy, the more I am inclined to forget that I am a cat.  Feeling that I am now closer to humans than to cats, the idea of rallying my own race in an effort to wrest supremacy from the bipeds no longer has the least appeal.
• p.101..."Concentrated in the tip of my tail there is sufficient of the spirit of chivalry for me to take it upon myself to venture upon knight-errantry."
• p.102..."If my feet get muddy and stamp plum blossom patterns on the veranda, O-San may be narked but that won't worry me.  For I have come to the superlatively courageous, firm decision that I will not put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today."
• p.103...."However, by virtue of felinity, I can, better than all such bookmen, .  To do what no one else can do, make myself invisible, is of itself, delightful."
• p.104..."Cat's paws are as if they do not exist.  Wheresoever they may go, they never make clumsy noises.  Cats walk as if on air, as if they trod the clouds, as quietly as a stone going light-tapped under water, as an ancient Chinese harp touched in a sunken cave.  The waling of a cat is the instinctive realization of all that is most delicate."
• p.104..."They say that every toad carries in its forehead a gem that in the darkness utters light, but packed within my tail I carry not only the power of God, Buddha, Confucius, Love, and even Death, but also an infallible panacea for all ills that could bewitch the entire human race.  I can as easily move unnoticed through the corridors of Goldfield's awful mansion as a giant god of stone could squash a milk-blancmange."
• p.105...."But still my tail eludes me.  Being a thing so sacred, containing as it does the entire universe in its three inch length, my tail is inevitably beyond my power to control.  I spun round in pursuit of it seven and a half times, but, feeling quite exhausted, I finally gave up.  I feel a trifle giddy.  For a moment I lose all sense of where I am, and deciding that my whereabouts are totally unimportant, I start to walk about at random."
• p.106..."If whiskers establish sauciness, every cat is impudent."
• Quotes/Volume II:
• p.119..."I won't expand upon the meaning of my use of 'usual', which is merely a word expressing the square of 'often'.
• p.122..."For anything to be regular suggests that the thing's all right, but regularity can be so utterly regular as to become, by its very ulteriority, mediocre and of no account, which is extremely pitiable."....LOL
• p.135..."For money, believe you me, is a hard mistress and none of her lovers are let off lightly."
• p.149..."As the saying goes, the dragon's head of his opening remarks has dwindled down to a snake's tail of an ending."
• p.155...."In my opinion, there is nothing more unbecoming in the human type than its indecent habit of sleeping with the mouth left open."
• p.176..."A lion at home, a wood louse in the open!"
• p.178..."It's a waste of effort to try and force those incapable of seeing more than outer forms to understand the inner brilliance of their own souls.  It is like pressing a shaven priest to do his hair in a bun, like asking a tunny-fish to deliver a lecture."
• p.187..."...the weather was so intolerably hot that there was nothing left for it but to take off his skin and sit about in his bones."
• p.187...""Since it seems not to shame them to be indebted to sheep, to be dependent on silkworms, and even to accept the charity of cotton shrubs, one could almost assert that their extravagance is an admission of incompetence
• p.208..."Just the other day I was reading one of de Musset's plays in which some character quoted Ovid to the effect that, lighter than a feather is dust; than dust, wind; than wind, woman; but than woman, nothing.  A very penetrating observation, isn't it?  Women are indeed the dreaded end."...ugh
• p.211..."Women today, on their way to and from schools, at concerts, at charity parties and at garden parties, are, in effect, already selling themselves."
• p.226..."The world's evaluation s of an individual's social worth, like the slits in my eyeballs, change with time and circumstance.  In point of fact my pupil-slits vary but modestly between broad and narrow, but mankind's value judgments turn somersaults and cartwheels for no conceivable reason."
• p.255..."My master loves being ill, but he would very much hate to die."
• p.257..."Those who do not know how to look while not looking must give up any hope of ever eating good fish."
• Quotes/Volume III:
• p.272..."What's more, those endowed with the least intelligence and those least sure of themselves are precisely those who seize upon the slightest opportunity to demonstrate their entitlement to some sort of certificate of prowess."
• p.277..."Just as coal is indispensable to a steamship, so to poets are rushes of blood to the head."
• p.287..."The truth is that by the infinite flexibility of interpretation one can get away with anything."
• p.306..."The progressive positivism of Western civilization has certainly produced some notable results, but, in the end, it is no more than a civilization of the inherently dissatisfied, a culture for unhappy peoples.  The traditional civilization of Japan does not look for satisfaction by some change in the condition of others but in that of the self."
• p.325..."Something unignorable lurks in whatever passes our understanding, and there is something inherently noble in that which we cannot measure."
• p.335..."Since truth does not change, perhaps that very lack of variance at which you sneer is, in fact, a point in favor of his theories."  (Singleman Kidd's theories)
• p.347..."For a little while my master sat in worried silence, straining his wits about what strains his wits could bear." 
• p.349..."The plain face remains that when, apparently sleeping on a human lap, I gently rub my fur against his tummy, a beam of electricity is thereby generated, and down that beam into my mind's eye every detail of his innermost reflections is reflected."...cat mind reading of humans
• p.351..."There's a popular song which asks, 'How can a fellow shunned by both his parents and his brothers possibly be loved by some tart who's a perfect stranger?'".
• p.363..."It is painfully easy to define human beings.  They are beings who, for no good reason at all, create their own unnecessary suffering."
• p.366..."Even boys at the middle school level, influenced by such conduct, get the idea that only by such means can they expect to make their way in the world.  Indeed they seem to think that they can only become fine gentlemen by the successful perpetration of acts of which they ought, in truth, to be thoroughly ashamed."
• p.377..."My heart is shaped like a triangle in the center of which, like a bull's eye pierced by a blowgun dart, is Cupid's arrow stuck!"...middle school boy's love letter
• p.389..."Thus, though human beings are always enormously pleased with themselves, they usually lack that self-perception which, and which alone, might justify their seeing themselves, and their boasting of it wherever they go, as the lords of all creation."
• p.431..."Just concentrate, as all the Zen masters advise, on the pure, white cow which stands there in the alley.  Desire will drop away from you and, as enlightenment occurs, you'll find you alread know how soundless music can be played.  And because you';ll already know you'll have no need to learn."
• p.431..."If you can take a bow in your hands and feel that it is your own soul that you're holding, then you will have achieved that same spiritual condition which transfuses a samurai when he unsheathes gus wgute-honed blade and dotes upon it in the failing light of autumn."
• p.441..."Modern man is jittery and sneaky.  Morning, noon, and night he sneaks and jitters and knows no peace.  Not one single moment's peace until the cold grave takes him  That's the condition to which our so-called civilization has brought us.  And what a mess it is."
• Notes:
• p. 30...wonderful incident when narrator gets a rice cake stuck in his mouth...LOLOL!
• p.30-31....four truths revealed during the rice cake incident.....
• "...golden opportunity makes all animals venture to do even those things they do not want to do."
• "...all animals can tell by instinct what is or is not good for them."
• "...that in conditions of exceptional danger one can surpass one's normal level of achievement."
• "...all comfort is achieved through hardship."
• p.58...discussion of the history of hanging, after one of the group had gone to the traditional hanging spot, but someone was already there hanging.  First account in literature of hanging as a punishment in "The Odyssey"...true?
• p.188...discussion of strangeness of "hairstyles"
• p.188...silly humans not using all four available legs
• p.198...Coldmoon's dissertation: "The Effects of Ultraviolet Rays upon Galvanic Action in the Eyeball of the Frog"....working on grinding glass balls....may take 10 or 20 years
• p.209...little girls for sale in panniers?
• p.214...Coldmoon's conception of a "haiku-play"
• p.219...author references himself,
• p.228...cat exercises: 
• jumping onto children's backs (penalty is head stuffed in paper bag, so only indulges occasionally)
•  hunting the praying mantis (based on "the classic Chinese methods of Kung Mung, that military marvel of the Shu Kingdom in the third century, who, seven times in succession, first caught, then freed, his enemy.")
• hunting crickets ("For judging them by their readiness to be led, and their mindless passion for conformity ofr conduct, these chatterboxes are no less imbecile than men.")
• pine sliding:  climbing a pine tree then sliding down
• going around the fence: walking on top of fences as long as possible
• The School of Descending Cloud...LOL
• Prediction of the future of suicides, seeking peace, p.446
• p.448....poem about small birds being unable to understand the minds of greater birds
• p. 459...quotes from philosophers denigrating women
• Review:  Reviewing this book is complicated for me because I had a fairly wide variety of reactions to it.  First of all, I can best describe it as a Japanese version of "Waiting For Godot" although the play is fairly brief and this is a 470 page novel.  It also is reminiscent of "La Nausee" by Albert Camus.  It is a narration of the absolute absurdity of human beings, as perceived by the narrator, who is a cat without a name.  It is filled with Dickensian characters such as Beauchamp Blowlamp, the Goldfields (wealthy snobs), and Mr. Sneaze (a self-absorbed hypochondriac and owner of the unnamed cat), just to name a few.  I laughed out loud more times than I can count and sent a list of favorite quotes about cats to my feline loving brother.  Witty, existential, uncomfortable, confusing, and profound.  Originally published in installments, I can see how the length was irrelevant at the time of the original publication.  And frankly, I cannot say what I would cut!! I thought about giving it four stars because it dragged at times, but I ended up giving it five stars because it is unique, because it is thought-provoking around the meaning of existence, because of the marvelous characters and lastly,  because I do not often laugh out loud when reading, but the humor in this novel is marvelous and drew me through the slower parts quickly in anticipation of whatever would come next.  Tough ending, but it worked.

"Tu" by Patricia Grace *****

• Audiobook
• New Zealand author
• Originally published in 2005
• Link to info on Maori Battalion:   http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_Battalion
• Review:  I know, I know.....another war novel.  No it is not.  This is a story set during WWII, featuring the Maori Battalion of New Zealand.  This is more than a war story.  This story is told via the protagonist's journal kept during the war and afterwards.  This is the story of brothers and cousins bound together by blood and culture.  This is the story of loves found and lost.  This is the story of the cost of war.  This is the story of a culture which was used and manipulated.  This is the story of a proud culture with rich, joyful traditions.  This story is about being a Maori warrior, a Maori man, a lover, a son, a brother, a cousin, an uncle, and ultimately about being a human being whose life is battered and broken and then tries to heal
• 
  
• The author's prose is lyrical, joyful and profoundly moving.  The narrator for the audiobook was fantastic!!  I learned a lot and loved Tu's courage, joy, and attitude.  READ THIS!

"Dead Or Alive" by Tom Clancy ****

• Audiobook
• #13 in Jack Ryan Series, #2 in Jack Ryan Jr. series
• US author
• Narrator:  Lou Diamond Phillips
• Originally published in 2010
• Review:  This was very good.  The quick pace was engaging, the plot was just the right blend of technical and character driven story, and I have a real soft spot for Ding Chavez and John Clark.  I am becoming fonder of Jack Ryan, Jr. as well.