The list for the 2012 Tournament of Books was just announced on Facebook, although as I type this, I see that their web page has not been updated as of yet.

Anyway, take a look at this list! These books will be dueling it out for the win. I am reading four of them now (good timing on my part) and the rest of them, with the exception of a few, were already on my “want” list.

The 16 Books That Will Compete in the Eighth Annual Battle Royale

• Nathacha Appanah, The Last Brother
• Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
• Teju Cole, Open City
• Helen Dewitt, Lightning Rods
• Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers
• Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot*
• Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding*
• Alan Hollinghurst, Stranger’s Child*
• Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones*
• Haruki Murakami, 1Q84*
• Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife
• Michael Ondaatje, The Cat’s Table
• Ann Patchett, State of Wonder
• Donald Ray Pollock, Devil All the Time
• Karen Russell, Swamplandia
• Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

To see the full announcement, including the names of the judges, check out this post.

Which ones do you plan to read?

*Books I’ve read or that I am reading now.

Safe from the Sea by Peter Geye
The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni
Annabel by Kathleen Winter
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Lamb by Bonnie Nadzam

I apologize for making this so brief, but my Mac died!! I have another laptop in the house, The Boy’s, but he grumbles every time I get on it. Right now I am at The Hub’s office, using this computer from 1990 and I swear it’s running IE 1.0 (or something close to it).

Happy New Year!! Happy Reading!

My brain is saying no. The mild weather in Southern California agrees with me. No, I am not quite there yet but Christmas is a mere seven weeks away. Did you know that? The Hub and I got into a heated discussion about it. He prefers to let it creep up on him, but he’s not the one who does the buying, or the cooking or really any of it. Okay, he handles the Christmas lights (and has fallen off the roof twice). I do all the rest and I don’t complain because I LOVE Christmas.

I love Thanksgiving, too. I’ve been compiling my gluten-free recipes as this will be my first gluten-free Thanksgiving meal. This year though, I don’t want to wait until Black Friday to get the shopping started. I have two reasons for this. The first, is that it’s just easier to buy a little at a time and I tend to make better decisions when not pressed for time. The second, is that the family business is still teetering on collapse so I have to shop in small spurts in order to afford things. There, I said it.

This year, there may be more bookish gifts than in previous years. I’ve already bought this for The Boy:

The Boy is a visionary so there was no way for me to pass this one by without the opportunity to wrap it up in red and white and stick it under the tree. The tree that I know will be attacked in some way by the Otter Pup.

I haven’t yet, but I would love to buy The Girl these books. She also wants a Kindle. That is a discussion for another time. They are affordable enough, but I really don’t want her to download books willy-nilly. Not unless I become-famous-from-some-reality-TV-show-get -married-for-only-72-days-and-then-file-for-divorce. Smirk. I could probably afford the willy-nilly downloading of books then.

Of course, with every trip to the bookstore I feel as if I must pick-up a little something for myself. Except, this bookstore is in London.

There is something very special about Persephone books. I find that I seem to crave them (yearn for them?) only at Christmas.

Are you thinking about the holidays yet? I can’t wait to read King’s new one over Thanksgiving break. I have it all planned.

But…

What if they are truly horrible in every way? Would you throw them away then? I was going through my shelves and came across two such books. They are horrible. I won’t even mention the names because even a negative mention would be a waste of breath.

I thought about just leaving them on a bus bench, at the park, in a bathroom stall somewhere. The compost bin was also an option. What do you do with books like these?

Never Let Me Go
By Kazuo Ishiguro
(Vintage, Paperback, 9781400078776, October 2010, 304pp.)

The Short of It:

Hauntingly sad, poetic and beautiful.

The Rest of It:

*No obvious spoilers.

The story opens with Kathy H., who has been a “carer” for over eleven years. As she tells her story, the reader is taken back in time to her years at Hailsham, a boarding school located in the English countryside where she was friends with Tommy and Ruth. There, they took classes on all sorts of subjects and were told over and over again by their guardians, that they were special.

Yes, they are special. Very special indeed. What the reader figures out pretty early on, is that these children have a special purpose. However, the children do not know exactly what that purpose is. They just know that they are special, and during their time at Hailsham, they are given information to help them understand that purpose, but not in plain words. Not in a way that they would easily understand.

The school experience is like what you’d expect. There are cliques and teachers who test the administration with their actions. Although Kathy, Tommy and Ruth are very close friends, they have their moments, too. As they grow, they begin to realize their purpose and the dawning realization of what they are, creates tension in ways they are not often prepared to deal with.

This entire story is peppered with clinical aspects. Hailsham is very hospital-like and lab tests are the norm. Since these children really don’t know of a life different from their own, they are somewhat happy yet deep down, they yearn for something more. They just don’t know what.

In one sense, Ishiguro’s delivery is cold as ice. Everyone possesses an aloofness that is slightly off-putting. But, there is a tenderness…a softness to the characters that will make your heart ache. These characters yearn for what they don’t have, yet they have resigned themselves to the lives they’ve been given. They will never really love, because to do so, would mean losing it in the end. They can never have children, or get married or live to a ripe, old age. What they have, is the pleasure of knowing that they’ve lived their life for a purpose.

This book reminded me a lot of The Unit, which has the same premise but uses adults instead of children. In a lot of ways, this book was harder to swallow because it dealt with children, yet Ishiguro handles the topic expertly and I found myself thinking about these characters many days after finishing the book. Its coldness melted away and became profoundly touching.

I haven’t seen the movie, but now I really want to. You can view the movie trailer here.

Source: Borrowed

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