text:
It’s my seventh month in a row doing Six Degrees. This time (see Kate’s introductory post) we all start with How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, about time and mindfulness. I’ve not read this 2019 release, but its premise reminds me of two books I reviewed a couple of years ago for this Los Angeles Review of Books article on the benefits of “wasting time.”
#1 One of those books was The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl. The book blends memoir with travel and biographical information about some of Hampl’s exemplars of solitary, introspective living. Her book wanders along with her mind, in keeping with her definition of memoir as “lyrical quest literature,” where meaning always hovers above the basics of plot.
#2 The hot air balloon on the cover takes me to Enduring Love by Ian McEwan. It opens, famously, with a fatal ballooning accident that leaves the witnesses guiltily wondering whether they could have done more. Freelance science journalist Joe Rose – on a picnic with his partner, Keats scholar Clarissa – rushed to help, as did Jed Parry, a young Christian zealot who fixates on Joe. I recently borrowed a DVD of the film from a neighbor and it somehow felt even darker and creepier. (Strangely, the two main characters’ jobs were changed to philosophy professor and sculptor – were those considered easier to show on film?)
#3 A quote from McEwan on the cover convinced my book club to read the mediocre She’s Not There by Tamsin Grey. (I think the author was also a friend of a friend of someone in the group.) One morning, nine-year-old Jonah wakes up to find the front door of the house open and his mum gone. It takes just a week for the household to descend into chaos as Jonah becomes sole carer for his foul-mouthed little brother, six-year-old Raff. In this vivid London community, children are the stars and grown-ups, only sketchily drawn, continually fail them.
#4 The readalike that came to mind when reading Grey’s novel was Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman, set on a similarly rough London estate. It was on the notorious 2011 Man Booker Prize shortlist (a judge spoke of looking for books that “zip along”; the right author won – Julian Barnes – but for a book I did not particularly enjoy, The Sense of an Ending). The novel is narrated by eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku, who is newly arrived in England from Ghana and turns sleuth when one of his young acquaintances is found murdered.
#5 According to my Goodreads library, the only other book I’ve read with “pigeon” in the title is Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons by Gerald Durrell. I love his animal-collecting adventure books, although this one set on Mauritius did not particularly stand out.
#6 The Mauritius location, plus a return to the “pigeon/pidgin” pun of the Kelman title, leads me to my final book, Genie and Paul by Natasha Soobramanien, about a brother and sister pair who left Mauritius for London as children and still speak Creole when joking. I reviewed this postcolonial response to Paul et Virginie (1788), the classic novel by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, for Wasafiri literary magazine in 2013. It was among my first professional book reviews, and I’ve enjoyed reviewing occasionally for Wasafiri since then – it gives me access to small-press books and BAME authors, which I otherwise don’t read often enough.
Join us for #6Degrees of Separation if you haven’t already! Next month’s starting book will be Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld (see my review).
Have you read any of my selections?
Are you tempted by any you didn’t know before?
I call it serendipitous when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something pretty bizarre in common. Because I have so many books on the go at once (usually around 20), I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents than some. I also list these occasional reading coincidences on Twitter. The following are in rough chronological order. (January to March appeared in this post.)
- Characters named Sonny in Pew by Catherine Lacey, My Father’s Wake by Kevin Toolis, and Sacred Country by Rose Tremain.
- A double dose via Greenery via Tim Dee – while reading it I was also reading Other People’s Countries by Patrick McGuinness, whom he visits in Belgium; and A Cold Spring by Elizabeth Bishop, referenced in a footnote.
- A red thread is worn as a bracelet for its emotional or spiritual significance in The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd and Plan B by Anne Lamott.
- The Library of Alexandria features in Footprints by David Farrier and The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd.
- The Artist’s Way is mentioned in At Hawthorn Time by Melissa Harrison and Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott.
- Characters sleep in a church in Pew by Catherine Lacey and Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout. (And both novels have characters named Hilda.)
- Coins being flung away among some trees in In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill and The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd (literally the biblical 30 pieces of silver in the Kidd, which is then used as a metaphor in the Hill).
- Rabbit-breeding projects in When the Lights Go Out by Carys Bray and Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.
- Mentions of the Great Barrier Reef in When the Lights Go Out by Carys Bray and Footprints by David Farrier.
- The same very specific fact – that Seamus Heaney’s last words, in a text to his wife, were “Noli timere” – was mentioned in Curlew Moon by Mary Colwell and Greenery by Tim Dee.
- Klondike ice cream bars appeared in both Small Victories by Anne Lamott and The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg.
- The metaphor of a rising flood only the parent or the child will survive is used in both Exit West by Mohsin Hamid and What We Carry by Maya Lang.
- The necessity of turning right to save oneself in a concentration camp setting is mentioned in both Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels.
- An English child is raised in North Africa in Oleander, Jacaranda by Penelope Lively and The Child in Time by Ian McEwan.
- The Bristol Stool Chart appeared in both Gulp by Mary Roach and The Bad Doctor by Ian Williams.
- A Greek island setting in both Exit West by Mohsin Hamid and Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (plus, earlier, in A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson).
- Both Writers & Lovers by Lily King and Mother: A Memoir by Nicholas Royle mention Talking Heads within the first 20 pages.
- A trip to North Berwick in the early pages of Mother: A Memoir by Nicholas Royle, and hunting for cowrie shells on the beach – so familiar from Evie Wyld’s The Bass Rock, read the previous month. (Later, more collecting of cowrie shells in Oleander, Jacaranda by Penelope Lively.)
- Children’s authors are main characters in The Crow Road by Iain Banks and The Child in Time by Ian McEwan.
- A character is killed by a lightning strike in The Crow Road by Iain Banks and Writers & Lovers by Lily King.
- Characters named Ash in The Crow Road by Iain Banks and The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg.
- A brother steals the main character’s object of affection in The Crow Road by Iain Banks and Sacred Country by Rose Tremain.
- A minor character in Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler is called Richard Rohr … meanwhile, I was reading a book by Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ.
- A maternity ward setting in The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue and The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting.
- A love triangle is a central element in Writers & Lovers by Lily King and The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting.
- Reading a book by a Galloway (The Trick Is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway) and a book about Galloway (Native: Life in a Vanishing Landscape by Patrick Laurie) simultaneously.
- Attending college in L.A. in The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama.
- Two books that reference the same Darwin quote: Into the Tangled Bank by Lev Parikian, and “The Entangled Bank” is the title of the final poem in Red Gloves by Rebecca Watts.
- Characters with the surname Savage in The Box Garden by Carol Shields and Islands of Mercy by Rose Tremain.
- A character is taught how to eat oysters in The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.
- A Louisiana setting in The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Property by Valerie Martin.
- Characters named Stella in The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and The Group by Lara Feigel.
- The last line of the book has a character saying “Come in” in Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ankomst by Gøhril Gabrielsen.
- Currently reading four books with mixed-race narrators: (Black/white) The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow, Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama, Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey; and (Japanese/white) My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki.
- Currently reading two novels in which a pair of orphaned sisters are taken in by relatives (Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau and Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen). Plus two more novels with orphan characters: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky and My Year of Meats.
- In two of these four (not telling which, though you can safely assume it’s not the Victorian novel!), they are orphans because both parents were killed in a car accident. I feel like this is a fictional setup that I encounter all the time (cf. All the Beautiful Girls, The Monsters of Templeton, Saint Maybe) that can’t be that common in real life?
- Vassar as an alma mater in Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain and The Group by Mary McCarthy.
- Punahou School (Honolulu, Hawaii) is the author’s alma mater in The Noonday Demon by Kathleen Norris and Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
I’ve grouped these three prize-winning novels from the late 1980s and 1990s together because they all left me scratching my head, wondering whether they were jumbles of random elements and events or if there was indeed a satisfyingly coherent story. While there were aspects I admired, there were also moments when I thought it indulgent of the authors to pursue poetic prose or plot tangents and not consider the reader’s limited patience. I had to think for ages about how to rate these, but eventually arrived at the same rating for each, reflecting my enjoyment but also my hesitation.
The Child in Time by Ian McEwan (1987)
[Whitbread Prize for Fiction (now Costa Novel Award)]
This is the second-earliest of the 13 McEwan books I’ve read. It’s something of a strange muddle (from the protagonist’s hobbies of Arabic and tennis lessons plus drinking onwards), yet everything clusters around the title’s announced themes of children and time.
Stephen Lewis’s three-year-old daughter, Kate, was abducted from a supermarket three years ago. The incident is recalled early in the book, as if the remainder will be about solving the mystery of what happened to Kate. But such is not the case. Her disappearance is an unalterable fact of Stephen’s life that drove him and his wife apart, but apart from one excruciating scene later in the book when he mistakes a little girl on a school playground for Kate and interrogates the principal about her, the missing child is just subtext.
Instead, the tokens of childhood are political and fanciful. Stephen, a writer whose novels accidentally got categorized as children’s books, is on a government committee producing a report on childcare. On a visit to Suffolk, he learns that his publisher, Charles Darke, who later became an MP, has reverted to childhood, wearing shorts and serving lemonade up in a treehouse.
Meanwhile, Charles’s wife, Thelma, is a physicist researching the nature of time. For Charles, returning to childhood is a way of recapturing timelessness. There’s also an odd shared memory that Stephen and his mother had four decades apart. Even tiny details add on to the time theme, like Stephen’s parents meeting when his father returned a defective clock to the department store where his mother worked.
This is McEwan, so you know there’s going to be a contrived but very funny scene. Here that comes in Chapter 5, when Stephen is behind a flipped lorry and goes to help the driver. He agrees to take down a series of (increasingly outrageous) dictated letters but gets exasperated at about the same time it becomes clear the young man is not approaching death. Instead, he helps him out of the cab and they celebrate by drinking two bottles of champagne. This doesn’t seem to have much bearing on the rest of the book, but is the scene I’m most likely to remember.
Other noteworthy elements: Stephen has a couple of run-ins with the Prime Minister; though this is clearly Margaret Thatcher, McEwan takes pains to neither name nor so much as reveal the gender of the PM (in fear of libel claims?). Homeless people and gypsies show up multiple times, making Stephen uncomfortable but also drawing his attention. I assumed this was a political point about Thatcher’s influence, with the homeless serving as additional stand-ins for children in a paternalistic society, representing vulnerability and (misplaced) trust.
This is a book club read for our third monthly Zoom meeting, coming up in the first week of June. While it’s odd and not entirely successful, I think it should give us a lot to talk about: the good and bad aspects of reverting to childhood, whether it matters if Kate ever comes back, the caginess about Thatcher, and so on.
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (1996)
[Orange Prize (now Women’s Prize for Fiction)]
“One can look deeply for meaning or one can invent it.”
Poland, Greece, Canada; geology, poetry, meteorology. At times it felt like Michaels had picked her settings and topics out of a hat and flung them together. Especially in the early pages, the dreamy prose is so close to poetry that I had trouble figuring out what was actually happening, but gradually I was drawn into the story of Jakob Beer, a Jewish boy rescued like a bog body or golem from the ruins of his Polish village. Raised on a Greek island and in Toronto by his adoptive father, a geologist named Athos who’s determined to combat the Nazi falsifying of archaeological history, Jakob becomes a poet and translator. Though he marries twice, he remains a lonely genius haunted by the loss of his whole family – especially his sister, Bella, who played the piano. Survivor’s guilt never goes away. “To survive was to escape fate. But if you escape your fate, whose life do you then step into?”
The final third of the novel, set after Jakob’s death, shifts into another first-person voice. Ben is a student of literature and meteorological history. His parents are concentration camp survivors, so he relates to the themes of loss and longing in Jakob’s poetry. Taking a break from his troubled marriage, Ben offers to go back to the Greek island where Jakob last lived to retrieve his notebooks – which presumably contain all that’s come before. Ben often addresses Jakob directly in the second person, as if to reassure him that he has been remembered. Ultimately, I wasn’t sure what this section was meant to add, but Ben’s narration is more fluent than Jakob’s, so it was at least pleasant to read.
Although this is undoubtedly overwritten in places, too often resorting to weighty one-liners, I found myself entranced by the stylish writing most of the time. I particularly enjoyed the puns, palindromes and rhyming slang that Jakob shares with Athos while learning English, and with his first wife. If I could change one thing, I would boost the presence of the female characters. I was reminded of other books I’ve read about the interpretation of history and memory, Everything Is Illuminated and Moon Tiger, as well as of other works by Canadian women, A Student of Weather and Fall on Your Knees. This won’t be a book for everyone, but if you’ve enjoyed one or more of my readalikes, you might consider giving it a try.
Sacred Country by Rose Tremain (1992)
[James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Prix Fémina Etranger]
In 1952, on the day a two-minute silence is held for the dead king, six-year-old Mary Ward has a distinct thought: “I am not Mary. That is a mistake. I am not a girl. I’m a boy.” Growing up on a Suffolk farm with a violent father and a mentally ill mother, Mary asks to be called Martin and binds her breasts with bandages. Kicked out at age 15, she lives with her retired teacher and then starts to pursue a life on her own terms in London. While working for a literary magazine and dating women, she consults a doctor and psychologist to explore the hormonal and surgical options for becoming the man she believes she’s always been.
Meanwhile, a hometown acquaintance with whom she once shared a dentist’s waiting room, Walter Loomis, gives up his family’s butcher shop to pursue his passion for country music. Both he and Mary/Martin are sexually fluid and, dissatisfied with the existence they were born into, resolve to search for something more. The outsiders’ journeys take them to Tennessee, of all places. But when Martin joins Walter there, it’s an anticlimax. You’d expect their new lives to dovetail together, but instead they remain separate strivers.
At a bare summary, this seems like a simple plot, but Tremain complicates it with many minor characters and subplots. The story line stretches to 1980: nearly three decades’ worth of historical and social upheaval. The third person narration shifts perspective often to show a whole breadth of experience in this small English village, while occasional first-person passages from Mary and from her mother, Estelle, who’s in and out of a mental hospital, lend intimacy. Otherwise, the minor characters feel flat, more like symbols or mouthpieces.
To give a flavor of the book’s many random elements, here’s a decoding of the extraordinary cover on the copy I picked up from the free bookshop:
Crimson background and oval shape = female anatomy, menstruation
Central figure in a medieval painting style, with royal blue cloth = Mary
Masculine muscle structure plus yin-yang at top = blended sexuality
Airplane = Estelle’s mother died in a glider accident
Confederate flag = Tennessee
Cards = fate/chance, conjuring tricks Mary learns at school, fortune teller Walter visits
Cleaver = the Loomis butcher shop
Cricket bat = Edward Harker’s woodcraft; he employs and then marries Estelle’s friend Irene
Guitar = Walter’s country music ambitions
Oyster shell with pearl = Irene’s daughter Pearl, whom young Mary loves so much she takes her (then a baby) in to school for show-and-tell
Cutout torso = the search for the title land (both inward and outer), a place beyond duality
Tremain must have been ahead of the times in writing a trans character. She acknowledged that the premise was inspired by Conundrum by Jan Morris (who, born James, knew he was really a girl from the age of five). I recall that Sacred Country turned up often in the footnotes of Tremain’s recent memoir, Rosie, so I expect it has little autobiographical resonances and is a work she’s particularly proud of. I read this in advance of writing a profile of Tremain for Bookmarks magazine. It feels very different from her other books I’ve read; while it’s not as straightforwardly readable as The Road Home, I’d call it my second favorite from her. The writing is somewhat reminiscent of Kate Atkinson, early A.S. Byatt and Shena Mackay, and it’s a memorable exploration of hidden identity and the parts of life that remain a mystery.
It’s hard to believe the Not the Wellcome Prize blog tour is over already! It has been a good two weeks of showcasing some of the best medicine- and health-themed books published in 2019. We had some kind messages of thanks from the authors, and good engagement on Twitter, including from publishers and employees of the Wellcome Trust. Thanks to the bloggers involved in the tour, and others who have helped us with comments and retweets.
This weekend we as the shadow panel (Annabel of Annabookbel, Clare of A Little Blog of Books, Laura of Dr. Laura Tisdall, Paul of Halfman, Halfbook and I) have the tough job of choosing a shortlist of six books, which we will announce on Monday morning. I plan to set up a Twitter poll to run all through next week. The shadow panel members will vote to choose a winner, with the results of the Twitter poll serving as one additional vote. The winner will be announced a week later, on Monday the 11th.
First, here’s a recap of the 19 terrific books we’ve featured, in chronological blog tour order. In fiction we’ve got: novels about child development, memory loss, and disturbed mental states; science fiction about AI and human identity; and a graphic novel set at a small-town medical practice. In nonfiction the topics included: anatomy, cancer, chronic pain, circadian rhythms, consciousness, disability, gender inequality, genetic engineering, premature birth, sleep, and surgery in war zones. I’ve also appended positive review coverage I’ve come across elsewhere, and noted any other awards these books have won or been nominated for. (And see this post for a reminder of the other 56 books we considered this year through our mega-longlist.)
Notes Made While Falling by Jenn Ashworth & The Remarkable Life of the Skin by Monty Lyman: Simon’s reviews
*Monty Lyman was shortlisted for the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize.
[Bookish Beck review of the Ashworth]
[Halfman, Halfbook review of the Lyman]
Exhalation by Ted Chiang & A Good Enough Mother by Bev Thomas: Laura’s reviews
Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson & War Doctor by David Nott: Jackie’s reviews
*Sinéad Gleeson was shortlisted for the 2020 Rathbones Folio Prize.
[Rebecca’s Goodreads review of the Gleeson]
[Kate Vane’s review of the Gleeson]
[Lonesome Reader review of the Gleeson]
[Rebecca’s Shiny New Books review of the Nott]
Vagina: A Re-education by Lynn Enright: Hayley’s Shiny New Books review
Galileo’s Error by Philip Goff: Peter’s Shiny New Books review
Mother Ship by Francesca Segal & The Lady Doctor by Ian Williams: Rebecca’s reviews
[A Little Blog of Books review of the Segal]
[Annabookbel review of the Williams]
Chasing the Sun by Linda Geddes & The Nocturnal Brain by Guy Leschziner: Paul’s reviews
[Bookish Beck review of the Geddes]
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Pérez: Katie’s review
*Caroline Criado-Pérez won the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize.
The Faculty of Dreams by Sara Stridsberg: Kate’s review
Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan: Kate’s review
Hacking Darwin by Jamie Metzl & The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa: Annabel’s reviews
*Yoko Ogawa is shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize.
[Lonesome Reader review of the Ogawa]
The Body by Bill Bryson & The World I Fell Out Of by Melanie Reid: Clare’s reviews
[Bookish Beck review of the Bryson]
[Rebecca’s Goodreads review of the Reid]
And there we have it: the Not the Wellcome Prize longlist. I hope you’ve enjoyed following along with the reviews. Look out for the shortlist, and your chance to vote for the winner, here and via Twitter on Monday.
Which book(s) are you rooting for?
A week from today, on the 14th (my birthday, as well as Susan’s – be sure to wish her a happy one!), this year’s Booker Prize will be announced. The Prize’s longlist didn’t contain much that piqued my interest this time around; I read one book from it and didn’t get on with it well at all, and I also DNFed another three.
Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson
Winterson does her darndest to write like Ali Smith here (no speech marks, short chapters and sections, random pop culture references). Cross Smith’s Seasons quartet with the vague aims of the Hogarth Shakespeare project and Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last and you get this odd jumble of a novel that tries to combine the themes and composition of Frankenstein with the modern possibilities of transcending bodily limitations. Her contemporary narrator is Ry Shelley, a transgender doctor sponsored by the Wellcome Trust who supplies researcher Victor Stein with body parts for his experiments in Manchester. In Memphis for a tech expo, Ry meets Ron Lord, a tactless purveyor of sexbots.
Their interactions alternate with chapters narrated by Mary Shelley in the 1810s; I found this strand much more engaging and original, perhaps because I haven’t read that much about Shelley and her milieu, whereas it feels like I’ve read a lot about machine intelligence and transhumanism recently (To Be a Machine, Murmur, Machines Like Me). I think Winterson’s aim was to link the two time periods through notions of hybridness and resistance to death. It never really came together for me.
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry – I read the first 76 pages. The other week two grizzled Welsh guys came to deliver my new fridge. Their barely comprehensible banter reminded me of that between Maurice and Charlie, two ageing Irish gangsters. The long first chapter is terrific. At first these fellas seem like harmless drunks, but gradually you come to realize just how dangerous they are. Maurice’s daughter Dilly is missing, and they’ll do whatever is necessary to find her. Threatening to decapitate someone’s dog is just the beginning – and you know they could do it. “I don’t know if you’re getting the sense of this yet, Ben. But you’re dealing with truly dreadful fucken men here,” Charlie warns at one point. I loved the voices; if this was just a short story it would have gotten a top rating, but I found I had no interest in the backstory of how these men got involved in heroin smuggling.
The Wall by John Lanchester – I lost interest in it and wasn’t drawn in by the first pages.
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy – I read the first 35 pages. There’s a lot of repetition; random details seem deliberately placed as clues. I’m sure there’s a clever story in here somewhere, but apart from a few intriguing anachronisms (in 1988 a smartphone is just “A small, flat, rectangular object … lying in the road. … The object was speaking. There was definitely a voice inside it”) there is not much plot or character to latch onto. I suspect there will be many readers who, like me, can’t be bothered to follow Saul Adler from London’s Abbey Road, where he’s hit by a car in the first paragraph, to East Berlin.
There’s only one title from the Booker shortlist that I’m interested in reading: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. I’ll be reviewing it later this month as part of a blog tour celebrating the Aké Book Festival, but as a copy hasn’t yet arrived from either the publisher or the library I won’t have gotten far into it before the Prize announcement.
As for the other five on the shortlist…
- I’m a conscientious objector to Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. I haven’t appreciated her previous dystopian sequels, and I’ve never really understood all the hype around The Handmaid’s Tale.
- I don’t plan on reading Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport – unless some enterprising soul produces an abridged version of no more than 250 pages.*
- I didn’t rate The Fishermen highly enough to give Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities a try.
- I forced myself through Midnight’s Children some years back. What a pointless slog! Lukewarm reviews of his recent work mean I’m now doubly determined to avoid Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte.
- Although the setup appeals to me (a prostitute’s whole life spooling out in front of her in the moments before her death) and I enjoyed her previous novel well enough, I’ve not heard enough good things to pick up Elif Shafak’s 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World.
*However, I was delighted to find a copy of her 1991 novel, Varying Degrees of Hopelessness (just 182 pages, with short chapters often no longer than a paragraph and pithy sentences) in a 3-for-£1 sale at our local charity warehouse. Isabel, a 31-year-old virgin whose ideas of love come straight from the romance novels of ‘Babs Cartwheel’, hopes to find Mr. Right while studying art history at the Catafalque Institute in London (a thinly veiled Courtauld, where Ellmann studied). She’s immediately taken with one of her professors, Lionel Syms, whom she dubs “The Splendid Young Man.” Isabel’s desperately unsexy description of him had me snorting into my tea:
He had a masculinity.
His broad shoulders and narrow hips gave him a distinctive physique.
He held seminars and wore red socks.
To hold seminars seemed to indicate a wish to develop a rapport with his students.
The red socks seemed to indicate testosterone.
I swooned in admiration of him.
Unfortunately, the Splendid Young Man is more interested in Isabel’s portly flatmate, Pol. There’s a screwball charm to this campus novel full of love triangles and preposterous minor characters. I laughed at many of Ellmann’s deadpan lines, and would recommend this to fans of David Lodge’s academic comedies. But if you wish to, you could read this as a cautionary tale about the dangers of romantic fantasies. Ellmann even offers two alternate endings, one melodramatic and one more prosaic but believable. I’ll seek out the rest of her back catalogue – so thanks to the Booker for putting her on my radar.
In the meantime, I did a bit better with the “Not the Booker Prize” (administered by the Guardian) shortlist, reading three out of their six:
Flames by Robbie Arnott
This strange and somewhat entrancing debut novel is set in Arnott’s native Tasmania. The women of the McAllister family are known to return to life – even after a cremation, as happened briefly with Charlotte and Levi’s mother. Levi is determined to stop this from happening again, and decides to have a coffin built to ensure his 23-year-old sister can’t ever come back from the flames once she’s dead. The letters that pass between him and the ill-tempered woodworker he hires to do the job were my favorite part of the book. In other strands, we see Charlotte traveling down to work at a wombat farm in Melaleuca, a female investigator lighting out after her, and Karl forming a close relationship with a seal. This reminded me somewhat of The Bus on Thursday by Shirley Barrett and Orkney by Amy Sackville. At times I had trouble following the POV and setting shifts involved in this work of magic realism, though Arnott’s writing is certainly striking.
A favorite passage:
“The Midlands droned on, denuded hill after denuded hill, until I rolled into sprawling suburbs around noon. Here’s a list of the places I’d choose to visit before the capital: hell, anywhere tropical, the Mariana Trench, a deeper pit of hell, my mother’s house.”
My thanks to Atlantic Books for the free paperback copy for review.
See Susan’s review for a more enthusiastic response.
The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas by Daniel James: A twisty, clever meta novel about “Daniel James” trying to write a biography of Ezra Maas, an enigmatic artist who grew up a child prodigy in Oxford and attracted a cult following in 1960s New York City, where he was a friend of Warhol et al. (See my full review.)
Supper Club by Lara Williams: A great debut novel with strong themes of female friendship and food. The Supper Club Roberta and Stevie create is performance art, but it’s also about creating personal meaning when family and romance have failed you. (See my full review.)
The other three books on the shortlist are:
- Skin by Liam Brown: A dystopian novel in which people become allergic to human contact. I think I’ll pass on this one.
- Please Read This Leaflet Carefully by Karen Havelin: A debut novel by a Norwegian author that proceeds backwards to examine the life of a woman struggling with endometriosis and raising a young daughter. I’m very keen to read this one.
- Spring by Ali Smith: I’ve basically given up on Ali Smith – and certainly on the Seasons quartet, after DNFing Winter.
(The Not the Booker Prize will be announced on the Guardian website this Friday the 11th.)
Have you read something from the (Not the) Booker shortlist(s)? Any predictions for next week?
Only two months since my last Book Serendipity entry, and already another 17 occurrences! I post these occasional reading coincidences on Twitter and/or Instagram. I call it serendipitous when two or more books that I’m reading at the same time or in quick succession have something pretty bizarre in common. Because I have so many books on the go at once – usually between 10 and 20 – I guess I’m more prone to such incidents. What’s the weirdest one you’ve had lately? (The following are in rough chronological order.)
- Characters with lupus in The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff and Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid [I also read about one who features in Lost and Wanted by Nell Freudenberger] PLUS I then read Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor, who died of lupus
- Daisy’s declaration of “I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story” in Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid reminded me of Lee Miller’s attitude in The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer
- Mentions of old ladies’ habit of keeping tissues balled up in their sleeves in The Girls by Lori Lansens and Growing Pains by Mike Shooter
- (A sad one, this) The stillbirth of a child is an element in three memoirs I’ve read within a few months, Notes to Self by Emilie Pine, Threads by William Henry Searle, and The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
- A character’s parents both died in a car accident in The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff and Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler
- Two books open on New Year’s Eve 2008 and comment on President Obama’s election: Ordinary People by Diana Evans and Rabbits for Food by Binnie Kirshenbaum
- Three novels in which both romantic partners are artists and find themselves (at least subconsciously) in competition: The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey, The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer and Stanley and Elsie by Nicola Upson
- There’s a Czech father (or father figure) in The Florist’s Daughter by Patricia Hampl and The Girls by Lori Lansens
- I’d never heard of 4chan before, but then encountered it twice in quick succession, first in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson and then in The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas by Daniel James
- (Another sad one) Descriptions of the awful sound someone makes when they learn a partner or child has died in Hard Pushed by Leah Hazard and Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson
- Alan Turing is a character in Murmur by Will Eaves and Machines Like You by Ian McEwan
- Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (a pioneer of microscopy) is mentioned in Machines Like You by Ian McEwan and The Making of You by Katharina Vestre
- A woman is described as smelling like hay in Memoirs of a Book Thief by Alessandro Tota and Pierre Van Hove and The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
- An inside look at the anti-abortion movement in Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood and Crazy for God by Frank Schaeffer
- The attempted adoption of a four-year-old boy who’s been in foster care is an element in The Ginger Child by Patrick Flanery and Machines Like You by Ian McEwan
- The loss of a difficult father who was an architect is an element in All the Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth and The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch (and in last year’s Implosion by Elizabeth Garber)
- The improv mantra “Yes, and…” is mentioned in No Happy Endings: A Memoir by Nora McInerny by Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come: An Introvert’s Year of Living Dangerously by Jessica Pan
The past two years I’ve done biannual roundups of the 30 or so new releases I’m most interested in reading in that half of the year. I’m a bit behind on this year’s preview, so in the interest of not missing my moment I’m giving it in pictorial format, and cheating a bit by not including in the 30 these books that I already own in print.
For a complete list of my 30 most anticipated titles, from which you can access full publication details by clicking on any cover image or title, see my dedicated Goodreads shelf.
Not pictured below but well worth mentioning are new novels from Elizabeth McCracken and Ian McEwan. THE book I’m most looking forward to, after so loving The Invisible Bridge over the summer, is Julie Orringer’s Flight Portfolio, another doorstopper that brings Holocaust history to life (coming from Knopf on May 7th).
Beyond these, I have another nearly 100 titles on my radar for the first half of 2019!
Other lists of enticing 2019 releases that might give you some ideas:
Guardian (UK, nonfiction and fiction)
Which 2019 books are you looking forward to? Do any of my choices interest you?
It’s a tradition now in its third and last year: I spend one day at the New Networks for Nature conference with my husband, and then (to save money, and because I’ve usually had my fill of stimulating speakers by then) wander around Stamford and haunt the public library on the other day.
This past Saturday I browsed the charity shops and found a short story collection I’ve been interested in reading, but otherwise just spent hours in Stamford’s library looking through recent issues of the Times Literary Supplement and The Bookseller and reading from the stack of novellas I’d brought with me. I read four in one sitting because all were shorter than 50 pages long: two obscure classics and two nature books.
The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono (1953)
[Translated from the French by Barbara Bray; 46 pages]
Trees have been a surprise recurring theme in my 2018 reading. This spare allegory from a Provençal author is all about the difference one person can make. The narrator meets a shepherd and beekeeper named Elzéard Bouffier who plants as many acorns as he can; “it struck him that this part of the country was dying for lack of trees, and having nothing much else to do he decided to put things right.” Decades pass and two world wars do their worst, but very little changes in the countryside. Old Bouffier has led an unassuming but worthwhile life.
There’s not very much to this story, though I appreciated the message about doing good even if you won’t get any recognition or even live to see the fruits of your labor. What’s most interesting about it is the publication history: it was commissioned by Reader’s Digest for a series on “The Most Extraordinary Character I Ever Met,” and though the magazine accepted it with rapture, there was belated outrage when they realized it was fiction. It was later included in a German anthology of biography, too! No one recognized it as a fable; this became a sort of literary in-joke, as Giono’s daughter Aline reveals in a short afterword.
Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville (1853)
[40 pages from my Penguin Classics copy of Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories]
You probably know the basic plot even if you’ve never read the story. Hired as the fourth scrivener in a Wall Street office of law-copyists, Bartleby seems quietly efficient until one day he mildly refuses to do the work requested of him. “I prefer not to” becomes his refrain. First he stops proofreading his copies, and then he declines to do any writing at all. (More and more these days, I find I have the same can’t-be-bothered attitude as Bartleby!) As the employer/narrator writes, “a certain unconscious air … of pallid haughtiness … positively awed me into my tame compliance with his eccentricities.” Farce ensues as he finds himself incapable of getting rid of Bartleby, even after he goes to the extreme of changing the premises of his office. Three times he even denies knowing Bartleby, but still the man is a thorn in his flesh, a nuisance turned inescapable responsibility. A glance at the introduction by Harold Beaver tells me I’m not the first to make such Christian parallels. (This was the first Melville I’ve read since an aborted attempt on Moby-Dick during college.)
The Company of Swans by Jim Crumley (1997)
[Illustrated by Harry Brockway, who also did the wood engravings for the Giono; 39 pages]
Crumley is an underappreciated Scottish nature writer. Here he tells the tale of a pair of mute swans on a loch in Highland Perthshire. He followed their relationship with great interest over a matter of years. First he noticed that their nest had been robbed, twice within a few weeks, and realized otters must be to blame. Then, although it’s a truism that swans mate for life, he observed the cob (male) leaving the pen (female) for another! Crumley was overtaken with sympathy for the abandoned swan and got to feed her by hand and watch her fall asleep. “To suggest there was true communication between us would be outrageous, but I believe she regarded me as benevolent, which was all I ever asked of her,” he writes. Two years later he learns the end of her story. A pleasant ode to fleeting moments of communion with nature.
“Swans this wild let you into only a certain portion of their lives. They give you intimate glimpses. But you can never have any part in the business of being a swan. You can offer them no more than the flung tribute of your admiring gaze.”
“I think there is nothing in all nature that outshines that lustrous lacing of curves [of swan necks], nothing in all theatre that outperforms its pivotal tension.”
Holloway by Robert Macfarlane (2013)
[Illustrated by Stanley Donwood; 39 pages]
In 2011 Macfarlane set out to recreate a journey through South Dorset that he’d first undertaken with the late Roger Deakin in 2005, targeting the sunken paths of former roadways. This is not your average nature or travel book, though; it’s much more fragmentary and poetic than you’d expect from a straightforward account of a journey through the natural world. I thought the stream-of-consciousness style overdone, and got more out of the song about the book by singer-songwriter Anne-Marie Sanderson. (Her Book Songs, Volume 1 EP, which has been one of my great discoveries of the year, is available to listen to and purchase on her Bandcamp page. It also includes songs inspired by Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Sarah Hall’s Haweswater, and Doris Lessing’s Mara and Dann.) The black-and-white illustrations are nicely evocative, though.
Lines I liked:
“paths run through people as surely as they run through places.”
“The holloway is absence; a wood-way worn away by buried feet.”
Have you read any of these super-short novellas? Which one takes your fancy?
This is my second year of joining Laura (Reading in Bed) and others in reading mostly novellas in November. I’ve trawled my shelves and my current library pile for short books, limiting myself to ones of around 150 pages or fewer. First up: four short works of fiction. (I’m at work on various ‘nonfiction novellas’, too.) For the first two I give longer reviews as I got the books from the publishers; the other two are true minis.
Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg
(translated from the Polish by Eliza Marciniak)
I heard about this one via the Man Booker International Prize longlist. Quirkiness is particularly common in indie and translated books, I find, and while it’s often off-putting for me, I loved it here. Greg achieves an impressive balance between grim subject matter and simple enjoyment of remembered childhood activities. Her novella is, after all, set in Poland in the 1980s, the last decade of it being a Communist state in the Soviet Union.
The narrator (and autobiographical stand-in?) is Wiolka Rogalówna, who lives with her parents in a moldering house in the fictional town of Hektary. Her father, one of the most striking characters, was arrested for deserting from the army two weeks before she was born, and now works for a paper mill and zealously pursues his hobbies of hunting, fishing, and taxidermy. The signs of their deprivation – really the whole country’s poverty – are subtle: Wiolka has to go selling hand-picked sour cherries with her grandmother at the market even though she’s embarrassed to run into her classmates; she goes out collecting scrap metal with a gang of boys; and she ties up her hair with a rubber band she cut from an inner tube.
Catholicism plays a major role in these characters’ lives: Wiolka wins a blessed figure in a church raffle, the Pope is rumored to be on his way, and a picture of the Black Madonna visits the town. A striking contrast is set up between the threat of molestation – Wiolka is always fending off unwanted advances, it seems – and lighthearted antics like school competitions and going to great lengths to get rare matchbox labels for her collection. This almost madcap element balances out some of the difficulty of her upbringing.
What I most appreciated was the way Greg depicts some universalities of childhood and adolescence, such as catching bugs, having eerie experiences in the dark, and getting one’s first period. This is a book of titled vignettes of just five to 10 pages, but it feels much more expansive than that, capturing the whole of early life. The Polish title translates as “Unripe,” which better reflects the coming-of-age theme; the English translator has gone for that quirk instead.
A favorite passage:
“Then I sat at the table, which was set with plates full of pasta, laid my head down on the surface and felt the pulsating of the wood. In its cracks and knots, christenings, wakes and name-day celebrations were in full swing, and woodworms were playing dodgeball using poppy seeds that had fallen from the crusts of freshly baked bread.”
Thanks to Portobello Books for the free copy for review.
A Field Guide to the North American Family by Garth Risk Hallberg
Written somewhat in the style of a bird field guide, this is essentially a set of flash fiction stories you have to put together in your mind to figure out what happens to two seemingly conventional middle-class families: the Harrisons and the Hungates, neighbors on Long Island. Frank Harrison dies suddenly in 2008, and the Hungates divorce soon after. Their son Gabe devotes much of his high school years to drug-taking before an accident lands him in a burn unit. Here he’s visited by his girlfriend, Lacey Harrison. Her little brother, Tommy, is a compulsive liar but knows a big secret his late father was keeping from his wife.
The chapters, each just a paragraph or two, are given alphabetical, cross-referenced headings and an apparently thematic photograph. For example, “Entertainment,” one of my favorite stand-alone pieces, opens “In the beginning was the Television. And the Television was large and paneled in plastic made to look like wood. It dwelled in a dim corner of the living room and came on for national news, Cosby, Saturday cartoons, and football.”
This is a Franzen-esque take on family dysfunction and, like City on Fire, is best devoured in large chunks at a time so you don’t lose momentum: as short as this is, I found it easy to forget who the characters were and had to keep referring to the (handy) family tree at the start. Ultimately I found the mixed-media format just a little silly, and the photos often seem to bear little relation to the text. It’s interesting to see how this idea evolved into the mixed-media sections of City on Fire, which is as epic as this is minimalist, though the story line of this novella is so thin as to be almost incidental.
“Depending on parent genotype, the crossbreeding of a Bad Habit and Boredom will result in either Chemistry or Entertainment.”
“Though hardly the most visible member of its kingdom, Love has never been as endangered as conservationists would have us believe, for without it, the Family would cease to function.”
Thanks to Vintage Books for the free copy for review.
The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
This is the earliest McEwan work I’ve read (1981). I could see the seeds of some of his classic themes: obsession, sexual and otherwise; the slow building of suspense and awareness until an inevitable short burst of violence. Mary and Colin are a vacationing couple in Venice. One evening they’ve spent so long in bed that by the time they get out all the local restaurants have shut, but a bar-owner takes pity and gives them sustenance, then a place to rest and wash when they get lost and fail to locate their hotel. Soon neighborly solicitude turns into a creepy level of attention. McEwan has a knack for presenting situations that are just odd enough to stand out but not odd enough to provoke an instant recoil, so along with the characters we keep thinking all will turn out benignly. This reminded me of Death in Venice and The Talented Mr. Ripley.
First Love by Gwendoline Riley
[167 pages – on the long side, but I had a library copy to read anyway]
Neve tells us about her testy marriage with Edwyn, a Jekyll & Hyde type who sometimes earns our sympathy for his health problems and other times seems like a verbally abusive misogynist. But she also tells us about her past: her excess drinking, her unpleasant father, her moves between various cities in the north of England and Scotland, a previous relationship that broke down, her mother’s failed marriages, and so on. There’s a lot of very good dialogue in this book – I was reminded of Conversations with Friends – and Neve’s needy mum is a great character, but I wasn’t sure what this all amounts to. As best I can make out, we are meant to question Neve’s self-destructive habits, with Edwyn being just the latest example of a poor, masochistic decision. Every once in a while you get Riley waxing lyrical in a way that suggests she’s a really great author who got stuck with a somber, limited subject: “Outside the sunset abetted one last queer revival of light, so the outlook was torched; wet bus stop, wet shutters, all deep-dyed.”
Other favorite lines:
“An illusion of freedom: snap-twist getaways with no plans: nothing real. I’d given my freedom away. Time and again. As if I had contempt for it. Or was it hopelessness I felt, that I was so negligent? Or did it hardly matter, in fact? … Could I trust myself? Not to make my life a lair.”
Have you read any of these novellas? Which one takes your fancy?
This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day in the USA. (Mothering Sunday generally falls in March here in the UK, so every year I have to buy a card early to send to my mother back in the States, but I still associate Mother’s Day with May.) Earlier in the year I got over halfway through a Goodreads giveaway book, Beyond the Pale by Emily Urquhart, before I realized its author was the daughter of a Canadian novelist I’d read before, Jane Urquhart. That got me thinking about other mother–daughter pairs that might be on my shelves. I found one in the form of Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees plus an advance e-copy of her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor’s upcoming debut novel, The Shark Club. (I’ve previously reviewed their joint memoir, Traveling with Pomegranates.) And, as a bonus, I have a mini-review of Graham Swift’s novella Mothering Sunday: A Romance.
The Whirlpool, Jane Urquhart
From 1986, this was Urquhart’s first novel. Overall it reminded me of A. S. Byatt (especially The Virgin in the Garden) and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Set in 1889 on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, it features characters who, each in their separate ways, are stuck in the past and obsessed with death and its symbolic stand-in, the whirlpool. Maud Grady, the local undertaker’s widow, takes possession of the corpses of those who’ve tried to swim the Falls. Her creepy young son starts off mute and becomes an expert mimic. Major David McDougal is fixated on the War of 1812, while his wife Fleda camps out in a tent reading Victorian poetry, especially Robert Browning, and awaiting a house that may never be built. Local poet Patrick sees Fleda from afar and develops romanticized ideas about her.
Each of these narratives is entertaining, but I was less convinced by their intersections – except for the brilliant scenes when Patrick and Maud’s son engage in wordplay. In particular, I was unsure what the prologue and epilogue (in which Robert Browning, dying in Venice, is visited by images of Shelley’s death by drowning) were meant to add. This is the second Urquhart novel I’ve read, after Sanctuary Line. I admire her writing but her plots don’t always come together. However, I’m sure to try more of her work: I have a copy of Away on the shelf, and Changing Heaven (1990) sounds unmissable – it features the ghost of Emily Brontë! [Bought from a Lambeth charity shop for 20p.]
Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes, Emily Urquhart
In December 2010, the author’s first child, Sadie, was born with white hair. It took weeks to confirm that Sadie had albinism, a genetic condition associated with extreme light sensitivity and poor eyesight. A Canadian folklorist, Urquhart is well placed to trace the legends that have arisen about albinos through time and across the world, ranging from the Dead Sea Scroll story of Noah being born with blinding white skin and hair to the enduring superstition that accounts for African albinos being maimed or killed to use their body parts in folk medicine.
She attends a NOAH (America’s National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation) conference, discovers potential evidence of a family history of albinism, and even makes a pilgrimage to Tanzania to meet some victims. It’s all written up in as engaging present-tense narrative of coming to terms with disability: to start with Urquhart is annoyed at people reassuring her “it could be worse,” but by the end she’s ever so slightly disappointed to learn that her second child, a boy, will not be an albino like his sister. [Goodreads giveaway copy]
The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
It’s hard to believe it was 15 years ago that this debut novel was an It book, and harder to believe that I’d never managed to get around to it until now. However, in some ways it felt familiar because I’d read a fair bit of background via Kidd’s chapter in Why We Write about Ourselves and Traveling with Pomegranates, in which she and her daughter explored the Black Madonna tradition in Europe.
It joins unusual elements you wouldn’t expect to find in fiction – beekeeping and the divine feminine – with more well-trodden territory: the Civil Rights movement in the South in the 1960s, unhappy family relationships, secrets, and a teenage girl’s coming of age. Fourteen-year-old Lily is an appealing narrator who runs away from her memories of her mother’s death and her angry father, peach farmer T. Ray. You can’t help but fall in love with the rest of her new African-American, matriarchal clan, including their housekeeper, Rosaleen, who scandalizes the town by registering to vote, and the bee-keeping Boatwright sisters, August, June, and May, who give Lily and Rosaleen refuge when they skip town.
Although this crams in a lot of happenings and emotional ups and downs, it’s a charming story that draws you into the brutal heat of a South Carolina summer and keeps you hoping Lily will forgive herself and slip into the rhythms of a purposeful life of sisterhood. [Secondhand purchase in America]
A favorite line: “The way people lived their lives, settling for grits and cow shit, made me sick.”
The Shark Club, Ann Kidd Taylor
Dr. Maeve Donnelly loves sharks even though she was bitten by one as a child. She’s now a leading researcher with a Florida conservancy and travels around the world to gather data. Her professional life goes from strength to strength, but her personal life is another matter. Aged 30, she’s smarting from a broken engagement to her childhood sweetheart, Daniel, and isn’t ready to open her heart to Nicholas, a British colleague going through a divorce.
Things get complicated when Daniel returns to their southwest Florida island to work as the chef at her grandmother’s hotel – with his six-year-old daughter in tow. Maeve is soon taken with precocious Hazel, who founds the title club (pledge: “With this fin, I do swear. To love sharks even when they bite. When they lose their teeth, I will find them. When I catch one, I will let it go”), but isn’t sure she can pick up where she left off with Daniel. Meanwhile, evidence has surfaced of a local shark finning operation, and she’s determined to get to the bottom of it.
This is a little bit romance and a little bit mystery, and Taylor brings the Florida Keys setting to vibrant life. It took a while to suspend disbelief about Maeve’s background – an orphan and a twin and a shark bite survivor and a kid brought up in a hotel? – but I enjoyed the sweet yet unpredictable story line. Nothing earth-shattering, but great light reading for a summer day at the beach. Releases June 6th from Viking. [Edelweiss download]
Mothering Sunday: A Romance, Graham Swift
If you’re expecting a cozy tale of maternal love, let the Modigliani nude on the U.K. cover wipe that notion out of your mind. Part of me was impressed by Swift’s compact picture of one sexy, fateful day in 1924 and the reverberations it had for a budding writer even decades later. Interesting class connotations, too. But another part of me thought, isn’t this what you would get if Ian McEwan directed a middling episode of Downton Abbey? It has undeniable similarities to Atonement and On Chesil Beach, after all, and unlike those novels it’s repetitive; it keeps cycling round to restate its main events and points. There’s some good lines, but overall this felt like a strong short story stretched out to try to achieve book length. [Library read]


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From the campaign:
Destiny Aurora is an exciting space odyssey following an eclectic crew of Coalition officers as they attempt to bring order to the galaxy. Follow their exciting exploits in both the comic book series and the novel series. Also check out the tabletop Board Game that just released worldwide.
The campaign's about 1/3 of the way to their goal with still 32 days left on the clock.

domain: hobby


text:
Dr Quinn Grundy is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Faculty of Pharmacy based at the Charles Perkins Centre (CPC). Dr Grundy’s research explores industry partnerships in health and healthcare and the implications for health information, healthcare delivery and scientific evidence. She is a member of the Bias and Research Integrity and Wireless Wellbeing and Personalised Health nodes at the CPC. Her current work examines drivers of mobile health development and the evolution of academic-industry partnerships in this field.
Her doctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco, funded by the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, explored the ways that sales representatives from medical industry are increasingly integrated into daily patient care and the implications this has for patient safety, quality of care and rising health costs. Through this work, she participated on a university-wide Industry Relations Advisory Group tasked with revising existing university policy addressing the interactions between health professionals and industry
Dr Grundy is a registered nurse and worked clinically for the San Francisco Department of Public Health at the Medical Respite and Sobering Centre (www.sfsoberingcenter.com).

domain: health


Masuk High still needs one more victory to earn a spot in the state playoffs, after Stratford High came to Monroe and left town with a 60-37 SWC boys basketball victory on Thursday night.
The Panthers (7-10) will complete the regular season with a visit to New Fairfield (5-11), home to Newtown High (8-9) on Friday and on the road at Weston High (8-9) on Tuesday.
Dominic Migliaro scored nine points, Dan Cahill eight and the recently returned Matt Gerak had five markers for Masuk, which stayed with the revamped Red Devils (9-7) for a half.
Stratford had star guard Bernard Brantley back after missing a few weeks with an injury, and the senior scored 21 points.
The Red Devils opened the game by making three straight 3-pointers, but Masuk’s Patrick Cheever and Gerak answered with treys of their own and Migliaro banked in a runner.
Migliaro’s great pass back to Dan Cahill, while crossing the lane, resulted in a bucket and David Clarke split two defenders to score.
Stratford stayed one basket ahead despite a brace of free throws by Clarke and a baseline jumper from Chris Butler.
The Red Devils took a 21-19 lead after one quarter.
Masuk’s first field goal of the second period came with two minutes remaining on a Gerak drive to the rim.
In the meantime, Stratford had built a 31-22 lead. During the six-minute span, Cahill made a pair from the line and Ryan Fitzpatrick one. Five missed shots and five turnovers accounted for the other trips down the court.
The Panther defense limited Stratford to two free throws in the final 3:13 and Matt Hornak buried a baseline jumper to keep the game within reach at 33-26 heading into the locker room.
Masuk’s offensive production didn’t improve in the third stanza, as Stratford used a trapping defense and quickness in open space to go on a 16-4 run.
The Red Devils scored the first nine points of the period before Cahill stopped the streak with a free throw.
The Panthers, who went 7-for-13 from the line, missed 3-of-4 from the stripe on their next two possessions, and it was 49-28 when Fitzpatrick scored with 1:19 left in the frame.
Migliaro swished a 3-pointer, but Stratford took a 20-point lead into the final frame.


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domain: medical


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Find answers to medical questions from experts about fluids in the ear drums and loss of hearing with age.
Question: I can feel fluid in my right ear, and this has been happening for a couple of weeks. I try to clear my eardrum with a cotton bud but that doesn’t help. I don’t go swimming, neither do I think the condition is due to the showers I take. How could the fluid have entered my ear?
Answer: If the ear canal itself is not wet or obstructed by wax or other foreign objects, there is a possibility of actual fluid accumulating deep in the eardrum, in the space known as the middle ear. The middle ear space contains air and is ventilated via the Eustachian tube that opens into the back of the nose, roughly eight to 10 cm from the nostrils.
If the Eustachian tube is obstructed, for example, due to inflammation from a cold, negative pressure may develop in the middle ear. This can cause fluid from the middle ear lining to accumulate in the space that is supposed to contain air. However, this is usually temporary and the fluid will normally clear once the Eustachian tube starts working again. Using a spray to reduce inflammation in the nose may speed up this process.
If the fluid persists for a few weeks, it is important to get it checked to ensure there is no growth or lump in the back of the nose that is physically blocking the Eustachian tube.
Question: Lately, I find myself having to ask others to repeat what they say. I just can’t make out any conversation at all, especially in a noisy environment, even if the speaker is directly in front of me. I took up a complimentary hearing test offered by a hearing-aid company but it seems there is nothing wrong with my hearing. What can I do to hear better? I’m in my 40s.
Answer: Our ability to hear depends on our ears to pick up sound vibrations. Our inner ear then converts the sound energy into electrical signals that are then transmitted to the brain via our hearing nerve. Finally, our brain needs to interpret the sound for us to understand what we hear. Hearing, therefore, involves understanding what we hear (mainly speech) rather than just picking up sounds. Most people have no difficulties comprehending speech in a quiet environment. However, our ability to comprehend speech when there is background noise is far more varied.
A basic hearing test simply tells us that we are able to hear sound of certain loudness and gives little information about our comprehension ability. Hence, more advanced hearing tests are needed. However, these are rarely carried out due to lack of time and sometimes lack of appreciation of their importance when making the diagnosis of hearing impairment. Solutions to not being able to hear may include hearing aids and education about good communication strategies. There are also hearing rehabilitation programmes that can help enhance our ability to comprehend when there is background noise.
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22 Nov 2023
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Gerard Butler and Brad Pitt Flop at the Box Office
The latest films released by Hollywood A-listers Brad Pitt and Gerard Butler flopped during their opening weekend at the box office.
Last week Pitt's 'Killing Them Softly' earned a dismal $6.8 million while six previously released films scored significantly bigger numbers.
Unfortunately for Butler and his co-star Jessica Biel, 'Playing for Keeps' did poorly this week, pulling in $6 million during its opening weekend, also soundly beaten by five previously released films that are still raking in revenue 3-5 weeks after hitting theaters.
The popular James Bond flick 'Skyfall' topped the chart again, bringing the total gross to $261,620,000. Other popular flicks this weekend were 'Rise of the Guardians,' 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2,' 'Lincoln,' and 'Life of Pi.'
Things weren't all bad for Pitt, who earned his third Oscar nomination this year for 'Moneyball' and got engaged to Angelina Jolie.

domain: celebrity


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Casino games are designed to offer players a thrilling and exhilarating experience. The game of baccarat is no exception. It is a popular and exciting card game that can be played by both experienced and novice players. In baccarat, two hands are dealt: the player’s hand and the banker’s hand. Players must decide which hand they think will be closer to 9 points or have a higher total value. The object of baccarat is to predict which hand will be closest to 9 points or have a higher total value than the other. Bets can be placed on either hand, or on a tie between both hands. A player can also choose to bet on both hands, but this increases the chances of losing since it is very difficult for both hands to hold the same total value. After bets are placed, two cards are dealt to each hand and then one more card if either hand has a total between 0-5 points. The highest possible total in baccarat(บาคาร่า) is 9 points. There is no need for any complex strategy as it is mainly based on luck. However, with practice and experience, players may develop an eye for the game and be able to make better decisions.However, winning at baccarat requires more than just luck. In this article, we will provide you with some tips and tricks on how to play baccarat and win big.
- Know the Rules – Before you start playing baccarat, it is important to understand the rules of the game. Baccarat is a card game where the objective is to have a hand with a total value of 9 or as close to 9 as possible. Each card in the deck has a value, where the ace is worth 1, and cards 2-9 are worth their face value. The 10, jack, queen, and king are worth 0 points. Once you understand the rules of the game, you can start developing your strategy to improve your chances of winning.
- Bet on the Banker – One of the best tips for playing baccarat is to bet on the banker. The banker hand has a slightly better chance of winning compared to the player hand. The reason for this is that the banker hand has more options when drawing cards. In most casinos, the banker bet pays out 0.95:1, while the player bet pays out 1:1. However, you should also consider the commission charged by the casino on banker bets.
- Manage Your Bankroll – Managing your bankroll is crucial when playing baccarat. It is important to set a budget and stick to it. You should also decide on a betting strategy that suits your playing style. Some players prefer to bet more conservatively, while others prefer to take risks and bet larger amounts. It is important to find a strategy that works for you and to never exceed your budget.
- Practice, Practice, Practice – Like any other casino game, practicing baccarat can help you improve your skills and increase your chances of winning. Most online casinos offer free baccarat games that you can play without risking any real money. Take advantage of this opportunity to practice and get comfortable with the game before you start playing with real money.
- Avoid the Tie Bet – The tie bet is a tempting option in baccarat, as it offers a much higher payout compared to the player or banker bets. However, the odds of a tie occurring are very low. In fact, the probability of a tie is around 9.5%. Betting on a tie is a high-risk strategy, and the payout may not be worth it in the long run.
Baccarat is a fun and exciting game that offers players the opportunity to win big. However, it is important to understand the rules of the game and develop a winning strategy. Betting on the banker, managing your bankroll, and avoiding the tie bet are some of the tips and tricks that can help you increase your chances of winning. Practice is also important, as it can help you improve your skills and confidence. With these tips in mind, you can start playing baccarat like a pro and increase your chances of hitting the jackpot.
Once you have become familiar with the rules and developed a winning strategy, it is important to practice your skills. Baccarat is all about making informed decisions while avoiding unnecessary risks. You should use free online version of the game to hone your skills before playing online for real money. This will help you become more comfortable with the game and increase your chances of winning.
Finally, it is important to enjoy yourself while playing baccarat. This casino game offers an exciting way to spend time with friends or family while having the chance to win some extra cash. If you keep these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to becoming an expert baccarat player. Good luck!
Remember, the key to being successful at baccarat is knowledge and practice. Once you have mastered the basics, take the time to learn more advanced strategies and continue refining your skills. By understanding the nuances of baccarat and using your skills wisely, you can increase your chances of winning and have more fun in the process.
Finally, it is important to enjoy yourself while playing baccarat. This casino game offers an exciting way to spend time with friends or family while having the chance to win some extra cash. If you keep these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to becoming an expert baccarat player.
Additionally, familiarizing yourself with the different types of baccarat games, such as mini-baccarat and punto banco, can also help you get the most out of your experience. With a bit of practice and knowledge, you can become a successful baccarat player.
Additionally, it is important to play responsibly and stick to your budget. With a little bit of luck and the right strategy, you can become an expert baccarat player in no time!

domain: game


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Bollywood's biggest stars, Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh, are expecting their first child, they said in an announcement on Instagram today.
The heartwarming post, shared by Padukone and Singh, says 'September 2024' –indicating the expected delivery date – with illustrations of children's clothes and shoes as a border of the image.
In less than half an hour, the post has received more than 650,000 likes and thousands of comments.
Padukone was last spotted at the British Academy Film Awards, where she was seen wearing a stunning golden saree. The outfit shone bright, yet as soon as she took to Instagram, her comments section was rife with rumours of her pregnancy.
Copyright © 2022 Khaleej Times. All Rights Reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).

domain: news


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Roughly 100,000 people enrolled in health insurance through Obamacare last month — far short of the administration’s goal.
The Health and Human Services Department said 106,185 people have successfully applied for and chosen private insurance through the health care law’s new marketplaces. That total is only about 20 percent of the administration’s initial enrollment target for October, the first month in which consumers were able to sign up for coverage.
Officials have long acknowledged they would fall short of that target because of the problems surrounding HealthCare.gov, the problem-plagued website that handles enrollment for 36 states.
HealthCare.gov has performed even worse than expected. Fewer than 27,000 people selected a plan through the website, compared with roughly 79,000 who picked a plan through the 15 state-based insurance exchanges. Unofficial estimates leaked earlier this week suggested the federal website had done slightly better.
Another 396,000 people have been approved for Medicaid benefits, according to HHS.

domain: politics


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Tripe Dry is the first dry dog food to feature the superfood green tripe as the number one ingredient in all its formulas. There's no other dog food like it.
We're proud that Tripe Dry reflects our commitment to supporting our customers in providing a healthy, active, and full life!
The best dog food made in Canada, green venison tripe (New Zealand), green beef tripe (Canada) and fresh, quality ingredients.
Ingredients: Venison Tripe, beef tripe, red lentils, pork fat, venison, green lentils, yellow peas, green peas, pea protein, beef, chickpea, pea starch, ﬂaxseed, ﬁsh oil, pumpkin, spinach, carrot, broccoli, cranberry, apple, blueberry, banana, natural ﬂavor, zinc proteinate, iron proteinate, copper proteinate, manganese proteinate, vitamin A supplement, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin B12 supplement, a-tocopherol acetate, niacin, riboﬂavin, thiamine mononitrate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, manganous oxide, calcium iodate, sodium selenite, taurine, calcium carbonate, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, choline chloride, dried Lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation product, dried Lactobacillus casei fermentation product, dried Biﬁdo bacterium biﬁdium thermophilum fermentation product, dried Streptococcus faecium fermentation product, yucca schidigera, rosemary, cayenne, peppermint, thyme, green tea extract
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domain: food


21 lakh households to get drinking water connection this year: CM
Thiruvananthapuram: A total of 21 lakh households in the state will get drinking water connection through Jal Jeevan Mission this year, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said during the press conference after COVID review meeting here on Thursday.
The project will be implemented jointly by the state and central governments. There are 67,40,000 rural houses in the state and 18,30,000 among them have drinking water connection. Jal Jeevan Mission intends to provide drinking water connection to the remaining 49,11,000 houses by 2024, he added.
With the mission, a long term drinking water project for the houses in village areas will be implemented in panchayat level. The gram panchayat and the concerned standing committee will be supervising the project. MLA fund can be spent for the project in LIFE Mission model, he said.
All panchayats should come forward to fulfill the aim of giving water connection to all villages in the state. 332 panchayat committees have taken decision on the project so far. With the implementation of the project, the drinking water crisis in rural area will be resolved, the chief minister said.


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Again In Akinyele, Unknown Assailants Attack Mother, Daughter
Unknown assailants again visited the people of Alaja Community area of Moniya, Akinyele Local Government in Ibadan Oyo State around 1:00am today, attacked a 45 year old Mrs. Adeola Bamidele and her daughter aged 23 with a machete.
The woman, Adeola Bamidele explained that she was trying to rescue her daughter, Dolapo Bamidele when she was also slashed with a machete and they made away with her two phones.
Her daughter, Dolapo Bamidele could not talk due to the serious injury she suffered but her mother explained that their neighbours rushed them to the hospital.
The Alaja Landlord Association has informed the Moniya Police Station about the incident.
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Read Focus 1.1: Beyond A Reasonable Doubt – An Example ( see in your textbook page 20).
• Review Florida’s definition of “beyond a reasonable doubt” here: http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/jury_instructions/instructions-ch3.shtml (3.7)
• Research and read the facts of the case noted below and answer the question(s) that follow:
Harvey Weinstein was one of Hollywood’s most powerful men. The former megaproducer’s criminal trial started on Monday, January 6, 2020, in Manhattan, where Weinstein faces sexual assault charges that may land him in prison for years.
The post Beyond a Reasonable Doubt appeared first on nursing writers.


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So America has a Federal Shutdown ... at least partially ... paralysed because those supposedly responsible for leading the country have put egos and self-interest before all else. As a result, more than 800,000 federal workers who thought themselves in safe government jobs are kicking their heels at home, waiting to be called back to work, with no certainty they'll be paid for their enforced layoff.
Every good business knows that you can never let a crisis go to waste. To turn this crisis into our opportunity we must, like Mr Meyer and his fire station, start from the basics. The first flagship and most daring policy of an entrepreneurial public sector would be making Britain the best place on earth to start a new business.
The Dragons, Lord Sugar and almost anyone else who might be thinking of putting money into your venture make great sway about the importance of a business plan, two words which strike fear in the heart of many potential entrepreneurs. A business plan is vital, without one your business may just meander aimlessly, but it certainly does not have to be complicated.
If a man runs a business he is generally seen as successful, ambitious, reputable, strong, powerful and a target of admiration for all. He will never get called 'bossy' for telling people what to do. In contrast, if a woman runs a business it is usually seen as a problem. What's wrong with her? Can she not have kids? Did someone give her the money to fund this little project?
Starting your own business is a personal journey you take that makes you question who you are and what you are doing it for. We all question out decisions and tend to overthink our intentions, but I believe that if you follow these five mantras, you can achieve great things for you and your business.
Entrepreneurs are often perceived as the heroes of our age and widely championed as the answer to the economic doom and gloom. At a time when the vast majority of headlines portend long-term financial drudgery, success stories stand in sharp contrast, proving that it is possible to turn a great idea into a billion-dollar business.
Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business and keeping track of it is as important to the CEO of a major business as it is to a sole trader. Anything that disrupts the flow of money in, and money out of the business can have a devastating effect. This is particularly true for small and growing companies, since any delays in getting cash into the business could spell disaster.

domain: finance


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McDonald's Corporation announced that global comparable sales decreased 1.8% in October. Performance by segment was as follows: U.S. down 2.2%; Europe down 2.2%, and Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa down 2.4%.
This month marks the first time since 2003 that McDonald’s has seen a drop in sales, reports the Los Angeles Times. Throughout the U.S. recession and recovery, the chain had thrived with expanded offerings, limited-time deals like the McRib sandwich and its Dollar Menu.
"But the momentum isn't there anymore," said analyst Nick Setyan at Wedbush Securities. "In a category that isn't growing very much, they can't keep developing at the same pace they have been."
"The McDonald's System remains focused on serving the evolving needs of our more than 69 million customers daily," said McDonald's President and CEO Don Thompson. "Though October's sales results reflect the pervasive challenges of today's global marketplace, I am confident that our strategies and the adjustments we are making in response to the current business headwinds will build sales momentum and drive sustained, profitable growth."
In October, U.S. comparable sales decreased 2.2%. Modest consumer demand and heightened competitive activity offset the impact of local Dollar Menu advertising, the Monopoly promotion, and the recent launch of the Cheddar Bacon Onion premium sandwiches. Moving forward, the U.S. remains focused on enhancing its value leadership position by balancing strong everyday value messaging with affordable premium menu options.
In Europe, comparable sales declined 2.2% as positive results in the U.K. were offset by declines across many markets. Amid the segment's ongoing economic uncertainty, Europe is reinvigorating its value offerings through increased advertising and new meal combinations at various price tiers, featuring core and premium menu items, and enhancing the restaurant experience to attract more customers.
In Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa (APMEA), October's comparable sales declined 2.4% with negative results in Japan, Australia and other markets, including China. Looking ahead, APMEA seeks to further differentiate the McDonald's experience through unique daypart value platforms, locally-relevant menu choices and unmatched customer conveniences.
Source: McDonald’s Corp.


text: Hi everyone I know these questions are asked to death but I was wondering what my chances are to getting into a DO program. I am 24 with a Sci GPA 3.38, NonSci of 3.31. 29 on the MCAT 8E 9B 12P. I have done research and am published, volunteered at the ER and a DO clinic. I am just a little worried about my GPA. Thanks in advance.


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- 300 metre circuit
- 20 mins
- Self-guided heritage walk with brochure
- Suitable for
- Walking, Get to by public transport
- Flinders Ranges & Outback
- Download maps & GPS files
- 1 GPS file
- 3 photosJump to Photos section
- Travel options
About the Historical walk
Walk down Bowman Street in central Crystal Brook to learn about the early explorers that made their way across Australia, how their transport evolved from through to modern day exploration of space.
The Bowman Street theme of sculptures and plaques is dedicated to all explorers. The focus is on how they were able to cross some of Australia’s most inhospitable land.
Early European explorer, John Edward Eyre, passed through the region where the town is today in May 1839. He named the town Crystal Brook after the sparkling clear water of the stream located here.

domain: geography


Meet 'Good Morning America' Co-anchor Robin Robert's 3 Siblings
The journalist has been a prominent figure on TV and her strength has inspired an entire generation. Within her family she has found love and support, as the siblings are very close and supportive in every situation.
Young people can identify with her. Robin Roberts is a strong and courageous woman who has overcome adversity and has come forward with bravery and faith. As the youngest daughter of an Air Force pilot, she grew up with a strong sense of duty and hard work.
Robin Roberts attends David Lynch Foundation Hosts Women of Vision Awards at 583 Park Avenue on May 9, 2017 in New York City. I Image: Getty Images.
She and her three siblings grew up traveling to many places around the world due to their father's job. Later, her family settled in Pass Christian, Mississippi, and the young Robin was not only successful as a student but she was an outstanding athlete as well.
LAWRENCE “BUTCH” ROBERTS II
The eldest of the Roberts’ children is today a high school English teacher. After studying for many years and graduating from college in business, he decided to go back to school and pursue a career to become a teacher.
Robin did not share much time at home with her older brother. He was leaving for college when she was entering elementary school. However, love and respect show up when Robin talks about her big brother.
The second child of the Roberts siblings is the renowned journalist and co-anchor of Eyewitness Morning News, in New Orleans. She is also known for the news coverage made on Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
But perhaps the biggest recognition Sally-Ann had was becoming her sister Robin’s donor. The journalist was diagnosed with a disease called MDS a few years ago, and the best match she found was in Sally-Ann.
When asked, Sally-Ann replied, “I was born to do this. I believe that before I was in my mother’s womb, God knew what Robin would need.”
Talking about her sister, Robin once wrote on her Instagram:
"I’m forever grateful that my sister and countless prayers got me through my something.”
DOROTHY ROBERTS MCEWEN
Dorothy is currently a social worker and director of the South Mississippi Regional Center. Dorothy has commented that the four-year difference that each sibling has from the next one has been crucial to forging their personalities and relationships.
Their parents, educator Lucimarian, and Air Force colonel Lawrence, both supported each child's individual strengths and abilities. So the age difference between each one allowed them to grow confidently in their personal strengths instead of fueling sibling rivalry.


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The leading senators involved in healthcare reform were summed to the White House for a surprise meeting Wednesday, the day before President Obama takes his sales pitch on the road.
Healthcare has been the main topic on Capitol Hill this week, and Obama takes it to the rest of the country on Thursday with a town hall meeting in Green Bay, Wis.
"I thought the president was flexible except in one area, and that was 'get something done,’ “ said Sen. Chuck GrassleyChuck GrassleyDrug pricing debate going into hibernation GOP leaders host Trump's top deputies Key Republican wants details on Ohio State attacker MORE (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Finance Committee.
The senators said they remain committed to a schedule that includes committee markups in June and a bill on the floor in July.
"We assured him we're going to keep to our schedule," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max BaucusMax BaucusThe mysterious sealed opioid report fuels speculation Lobbying World Even Steven: How would a 50-50 Senate operate? MORE (D-Mont.) said.
The committee leaders weren’t the only lawmakers spotted at the White House on Wednesday. Along with Baucus, Grassley, Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Mike EnziMike EnziRepublicans want to grease tracks for Trump President-elect Trump: Please drain the student loan swamp Liz Cheney wins Wyoming House seat MORE (R-Wyo.), Sen. Ron WydenRon WydenThis Week in Cybersecurity: Dems press for information on Russian hacks Senate passes college anti-Semitism bill Overnight Finance: Trump takes victory lap at Carrier plant | House passes 'too big to fail' revamp | Trump econ team takes shape MORE (D-Ore.), who has been working on a bill that has bipartisan support, was seen going into the West Wing.
Baucus and others said the president is staying flexible on a number of contentious issues that have come up during the debate, but the White House was coy about how much or in what areas Obama is willing to bend.
"The president's going to watch what happens on Capitol Hill, and we'll have more to say as it gets closer to us," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
And one way for the president to sell his proposal is to take it outside the Beltway. It’s an approach that has worked for him before. He had blockbuster success in getting his economic plan through Congress by selling it in town hall-style meetings in small towns in Indiana and Florida.
The president's first healthcare focused townhall on Thursday will be followed with a speech to the American Medial Association (AMA) in Chicago on Monday.
Gibbs said that in Green Bay and Chicago events Obama will talk about "how we improve the way healthcare is delivered, the steps that have been taken as part of the recovery act to make those steps easier and more cost-efficient."
He did not say if the president would talk to the AMA about some of their key issues like reimbursements or liability.
"He'll lay out plainly what healthcare reform will mean for American families and their doctors and what it won't."
Ahead of the president's trip to Wisconsin, Organizing for American (OFA), the wing of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) armed with Obama's massive campaign supporter list, held a conference call with reporters and Rep. Steve Kagen (D-Wis.) to preview the president's case.
Kagen, a licensed physician, said Obama can learn what Americans want in healthcare reform "because he really does listen to ordinary people," but the congressman said he does not expect the president to offer anymore details beyond the outline he has given Congress.
"I think he's going to focus on the need to change our healthcare system under the guidelines that he has put forward," Kagen said, adding that those guidelines are "the outline of a great way to move forward."
Obama has enjoyed immense legislative success after traveling around the country to push for some of his more hotly debated initiatives, most notably his $787 billion stimulus plan.
And by stressing a bipartisan approach to healthcare, Obama is aiming to avoid the same fate of the Clinton administration’s healthcare reform initiative. The Clinton White House avoided input from lawmakers when it assembled a universal healthcare package and the plan was killed on Capitol Hill.
Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein noted that "the biggest benefit for Obama going on the road is that he gets the stage to himself and he has an unimpeded opportunity to refocus and redefine the debate."
By doing that, Gerstein said, he can force the hand of Congress to move at the pace he is demanding.
"It reasserts the primary of the president," Gerstein said. "It elevates him beyond being one part of the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor and tends to force congress to respond to him."


text: It's official: the Google Play Store is coming to Chrome OS. The company announced on Thursday that it is bringing more than 1.5 million Android apps to Chromebooks. Google adds that zero efforts are required from developers' end for their Android apps to function on Chrome OS. Users will also be able to see notifications and have in-line replies on the desktop. Users on developer channel builds of Chrome OS will get an option to use Google Play and Android apps starting early next month. Regular users on select Chromebook models will have this feature in September. Ars Technica has tons of more details about it. The Verge says Android apps are just what Chromebooks needed.


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2019 Garden 20 - Orakei
This new and entirely rebuilt garden is only two years old. Originally there was a small flat lawn at the street that was dull and unwelcoming. The backyard pool and deck faced a plain expanse of lawn that was muddy and shaded in winter, and full of weeds and cracked in summer.
The design intent was to enhance the usage of all the outdoor spaces. Integrating the new garden with the existing rear deck was essential for a cohesive design. A key to achieving this is the concrete planter which intersects the old deck and extends across the new hoggin area. This space has been reimagined into something akin to a Mediterranean living area, with its backdrop of olive ‘El Greco’ hedging, limestone paths and perennial flower beds. Native New Zealand grasses, Chionochloa flavicans, miniature toetoe and Carex testacea, mingle with perennials, Salvia ‘Love and Wishes’ and Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ to create a haven for insects and birds.
A fire bowl acts as a gathering point and extends the use of the garden seasonally and into the night. The dividing wall behind the fire bowl adds a sense of interest in exploring what lies behind.
Privacy from the road above was also an important consideration. Carefully placed trees include the summer flowering crepe myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica, and the weeping peppermint tree, Agonis flexuosa. Once a little bigger, these will provide an overhead canopy and sense of enclosure to the area.
The new front garden creates a seamless connection to the streetscape and offers an interesting but subtle welcome. Clipped westringia balls and spring flowering Betchel’s crab apple provide year round structure.
The materials have been chosen to create clean lines with an element of the organic and vernacular – hoggin on the groundplane, formwork on the concrete walls, the rust effect of corten steel. The garden was built to high expectations by the craftspeople of Second Nature.
By the owner

domain: design


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Kick-Start Your Social Enterprise with PooranLaw
Have a great business idea, but not sure how to proceed? PooranLaw can help you become a powerful and dynamic agent for social change. We are uniquely placed to offer wrap-around services to help you take your business idea to market and setting you up for success. We will guide you through our tried and tested step-by step approach and offer the following services along the way.
What is a Social Enterprise?
A business that sells goods or provide services for the purpose of creating a blended return on investment. Profits are used to generate social impact, rather than maximize profits to shareholders. The social enterprise may be initiated by a sole proprietor, not- for-profit, charity or for profit entity.
What are the Main Benefits?
Diversified and additional revenue to fund more social support services and/or create employment opportunities for targeted communities (for example, people who have a disability).
- Legal services:
- Identify the appropriate legal structure and governance framework based on your goals and current operating status
- Support throughout the incorporation process
- Set-up and maintain proper governing documents, service agreements
- Business planning and modeling, social impact analysis and reporting support
- Templates for budgeting, measuring success and social impact
- Provide tools to measure social impact for internal and external users
- Tips to facilitate the approval process with external funders and Boards if applicable
- Advise you on best practices, rules and your reporting obligations
- Advice you on tax rules and formulate a plan to stay current with Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) policies
- Support with financial reporting practices and current compliance with the CRA
- Communications and Marketing
- Templates for communications and marking strategies
- Social media guidelines
- Advice on creative tools
- Legal services:
Contact us to find out more about how PooranLaw can assist with your social enterprise initiatives.
Learn more about establishing a social enterprise:

domain: economics