Notable Books

The Most Dangerous Thing, by Laura Lippman

2012-02-01T15:12:00.000-08:00

Lippman takes "thrillers" in a different direction. I don't know if it's even fair to describe this book as a member of any genre, really.

A group of five young people find each other. There are two girls and three boys, the three boys all brothers and the two girls friends. They do a lot of exploring together, and one day happen upon a shack far from anywhere, and learn that an old black man lives there. They make his acquaintance and visit him from time to time. He lives on handouts and they manage to slip food from their homes to bring to him.

One day it all changes. One of the girls, Gwen, gets together with one of the brothers, Sean, and the group breaks apart. The two take to the shed from time to time to make out, when "Chicken George" - their name for the old black man - is not there. One evening the youngest boy, Gordon, is not home for supper on time and fathers head out to look for him. They come upon Gordon and Mickey (the other girl) running from the shack, and Chicken George lying on the ground. They tell the adults that George had molested Gordon and they knocked him down.

This much we learn fairly early on.

This much the group carries around with it, as do the fathers involved. We, the readers, know there is something more, but what it is we do not know. Gordon was always a fuck-up, from an early age. He becomes an alcoholic and ultimately kills himself, and this is when it really begins. But it's not really a rerun of "The Big Chill". Chapter by chapter we get to know the different friends a bit more and we get to know little bits more about their time together and apart. And in the end we do learn the secret. I won't tell.

I had some trouble liking the characters, got a bit impatient at times, but kept reading and as the book started closing in it started to grab me. I had trouble putting it down and kept thinking about it when I was not reading it. It's really more an exploration of character than of a particular event. We can't trust Lippman to bring us out safely, which is one of the intriguing things about her.

2012 ALA Notable Books

2012-01-23T18:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.ala.org/rusa/awards/notablebooks/lists/2012

FICTION:

Banks, Russell. Lost Memory of Skin. Ecco. 9780061857638
A surprisingly sympathetic exploration of the lives and treatment of sex offenders and how this reflects on our society.

Barnes, Julian. The Sense of an Ending. Knopf. 9780307957122
A 60-something retiree living near London searches through his memories to discern what role, if any, he may have played in a decades-old tragedy.

deWitt, Patrick. The Sisters Brothers. Ecco. 9780062041265
A darkly comic and quixotic quest western tale about two brothers whose divergent world views are presented in sparkling prose and originality.

Goldman, Francisco. Say Her Name. Grove. 9780802119810
Poetic novelization of the author’s struggle to cope with his young wife’s accidental death.

Harbach, Chad. The Art of Fielding. Little, Brown. 9780316126694
One man’s failure to attain perfection on the baseball field reveals the pain and beauty that life offers in this psychologically astute novel.

MacLeod, Alexander. Light Lifting. Biblioasis. 9781897231944
Seven fearless short stories explore the limits of physical and emotional endurance in muscular prose.

Obreht, Téa. The Tiger’s Wife. Random House. 9780385343831
After the death of her beloved grandfather, a young doctor navigates family history, folklore, and love across ethnic barriers in a war-torn country.

Ondaatje, Michael. The Cat’s Table. Knopf. 9780307700117
An adventurous 21-day ocean voyage filled with a rich assortment of characters and escapades resonates through a boy’s life on his way to a new life.

Phillips, Arthur. The Tragedy of Arthur. Random House. 9781400066476
In an adulthood marred by family dysfunction, an author who dislikes Shakespeare reluctantly finds himself in possession of the Bard’s lost gem. Or does he?

Russell, Karen. Swamplandia! Knopf. 9780307263995
An inventive story set in an alligator theme-park navigates boundaries between childhood and adulthood, imagination and reality, in an American landscape both familiar and surreal.

Torres, Justin. We the Animals. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 9780547576725
Searing portrait of a troubled, mixed-race working class family centers on the youngest son as he struggles to find his identity amid affection and abuse.

Trevor, William. Selected Stories. Viking. 9780670022069
These finely sculpted and timeless stories provide a greater appreciation for finding beauty in the minutiae of daily life.

NONFICTION:

Adams, Mark. Right Turn at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time. Dutton. 9780525952244
In this humorous travelogue, the author sprinkles historical anecdote with investigative reporting as he retraces the steps of early explorers into ancient Peru.

Bartók, Mira. The Memory Palace. Free Press. 9781439183311
Beautifully wrought memoir chronicles the 17-year estrangement of the author and her homeless, schizophrenic mother, and the painful reunion that brings them together.

Gleick, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. Knopf. 9780375423727
This comprehensive study, a melodious interplay between science and literature, documents the transmission of human knowledge from the talking drums to the Internet.

Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Norton. 9780393064476
Meditation on the power of literature, examining how a medieval book hunter’s serendipitous discovery of an ancient prose poem provides a theoretical bridge to the Renaissance.

Hillenbrand, Laura. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Random House. 9781400064168
An Olympic runner’s physical and inner-strength is tested by the experience and aftermath of a plane crash, 42 days at sea, and Japanese imprisonment.

Hitchens, Christopher. Arguably: Essays. Twelve. 9781455502776
Polymath and public intellectual displays his considerable range and biting wit in these thoughtful, incisive pieces that provoke and challenge.

Homans, Jennifer. Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet. Random House. 9781400060603
Elegant, authoritative work traces the evolution of classical dance from the 16th century to today, highlighting social and cultural dimensions of this traditional art form.

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Strauss, Giroux. 9780374275631
Entertaining look at the complexities and oddities that characterize our mental processes from the only psychologist ever to have won the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Viking. 9780670022205
Definitive work on his life and transformation from petty thief to charismatic leader of during the turbulent civil rights era.

Millard, Candace. Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President. Doubleday. 9780385526265
Era of great corruption and change in U.S. history is illuminated through the tragic story of two men – one destined for greatness, the other a madman.

Mukherjee, Siddhartha. Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Scribner. 9781439107959
The history of these diseases and their treatment is examined through the stories of those seeking to discover a cure and the individuals affected.

Reitman, Janet. Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 9780618883028
An investigation of the origins, personalities, and controversies of this uniquely American religious movement.

POETRY:

Rimbaud, Arthur. Illuminations. Translated by John Ashbery. Norton. 9780393076356
A vigorous new translation of the French prodigy’s last poems as rendered by one of America’s finest contemporary poets.

Bartlett, Jennifer, Sheila Black, and Michael, Northen. Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Cinco Puntos. 9781935955054
Collection of poems and essays that provides insight into the lives of the estimated 50 million Americans with disabilities.

My Challenge for 2012

2012-01-01T09:52:00.000-08:00

I'm taking the books from last year's list that I did not read and adding them to this year's list:

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

Descarte's Bones, by Russell Shorto
Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder
Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey
Freedom, by Johathan Franzen
Love Songs from a Shallow Grave, by Colin Cotterill
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, by Laney Salisbury and Aley Sujo

And adding:

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman

We'll see whether I stick to the list...

How 2011 Went for me

2011-12-31T17:38:00.000-08:00

I challenged myself to read the following in 2011:

~~Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro~~
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
~~His Illegal Self, by Peter Carey~~
Descarte's Bones, by Russell Shorto
Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder
Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey
Freedom, by Johathan Franzen
Love Songs from a Shallow Grave, by Colin Cotterill
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, by Laney Salisbury and Aley Sujo
~~An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken~~

I read the above three plus:

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin

The Ministry of Special Cases, by Nathan Englander

Bearing the Body, by Ehud Havazelet

His Illegal Self, by Peter Carey

The Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti

So: eight total. Not glorious, especially considering how many other books I read this last year! I am determined to make a better showing in 2012.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin

2011-12-31T17:22:00.000-08:00

The title refers to a ditty used to teach Southern children how to spell Mississippi: M - I - crooked letter, crooked letter - I - crooked letter, crooked letter...

It's a story that had to happen in Mississippi or a similar southern state.

Two boys, growing up in the 70s, one black, one white, become friends. But secret friends, because such a friendship was not acceptable then. The two meet under curious circumstances and ultimately find they are connected by more than geography.

Larry Ott, the white boy, is a quiet bookish boy who is thrilled when the neighbor girl asks if he wants to take her to a drive-in. The date does not go as planned and the next day the town is out looking for the girl. Suspicion centers on Larry because he was the last one to see her. For years he carries around this suspicion and his future is changed forever.

Meanwhile, a thoughtless comment by Larry pushes his friend Silas away. The two grow up and get on with their lives, separately. Until another incident pushes the two together and at least some of the mystery of years before is solved.

It's a beautifully-written story that goes back and forth from the past to the present, letting the tension build slowly and the characters develop. To me it feels very real and very sad.

The Ministry of Special Cases, by Nathan Englander

2011-12-31T17:19:00.000-08:00

A Jewish family in Argentina during the Dirty War suffers an unimaginable loss. Kaddish and Lillian and their son Pato are managing to get by with Lillian's work and with Kaddish's occasional work when the police arrest Pato and take him away. Kaddish's work consists of destroying family names on tombstones in the disreputable part of the Jewish cemetery, so that persons with those names can claim to come from a better class of citizens. Kaddish, "son of a whore" himself, has long accepted the division of the cemetery so taking money to erase the past is not a moral issue for him.

There is nothing straightforward about Pato's disappearance. No police station will claim him. Nobody will file a report on his disappearance. Neighbors look blank when Kaddish and Lillian ask if they saw what happened. It is as if Pato never existed. This because everyone knows that anyone who aids a family that has been somehow marked by the present regime will be marked themselves. People cannot afford to help, for by doing so they may lose their lives.

Lillian and Kaddish disagree on how to help their son. They try some things together and other things apart. Finally Kaddish comes to believe Pato is dead while Lillian believes it is against their religion to believe so until they have seen his body. This difference in belief tears them apart.

The story is written with wry humor in spite of the dark subject matter. The Ministry of Special Cases, for example, is a classic bureaucracy and is justly skewered. Kaddish is drawn with a warm sympathy for his failings.

A revealing portrait of Argentina's Dirty War from the inside.

PW's Best Books of 2011

2011-11-23T22:28:00.000-08:00

The Publisher's Weekly Interactive Guide to the best books of 2011 can be found here.

PW's Top Ten Books of 2011

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
After the Apocalypse by Maureen McHugh
Bossypants by Tina Fey
Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie
There but for the by Ali Smith
Hemingway's Boat by Paul Hendrickson
One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina
Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens

Fiction

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
There but for the by Ali Smith
The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky, trans. by Tim Mohr
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman
Volt by Alan Heathcock
The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes by William Kennedy
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Call by Yannick Murphy
The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht
Cain by José Saramago
Luminarium by Alex Shakar
Someday This Will Be Funny by Lynne Tillman
I Married You for Happiness by Lily Tuck
Leche by R. Zamora Linmark

Mystery/Thriller

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott
Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
Revenger by Rory Clements
Hurt Machine by Reed Farrell Coleman
A Simple Act of Violence by R.J. Ellory
Field Gray by Philip Kerr
The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman
A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny
Two for Sorrow by Nicola Upson

SF/Fantasy/Horror

After the Apocalypse by Maureen McHugh
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Triptych by J.M. Frey
Unpossible by Daryl Gregory
Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan, Vol. 1 by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Erekos by A.M. Tuomala

Non-fiction

Bossypants by Tina Fey
Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie
Hemingway's Boat by Paul Hendrickson
One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina
Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens
The Convert: A Parable of Islam and America by Deborah Baker
The Anatomy of a Moment by Javier Cercas
The Beautiful and the Damned:A Portrait of the New India by Siddhartha Deb
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
Townie: A Memoir by Andre Dubus III
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
Life Itself: A Memoir by Roger Ebert
A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman
Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso
Love and Capital: Karl Marx and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution by Mary Gabriel
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick
Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers by Michael Holroyd
Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History by Robert Hughes
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography by Errol Morris
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend by Susan Orlean
The Long Goodbye: A Memoir by Meghan O'Rourke
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity by Jeffrey D. Sachs
Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin
The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson

Children's Fiction

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
Chime by Franny Billingsley
Small Persons with Wings by Ellen Booraem
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
Missing on Superstition Mountain by Elise Broach, Antonio Javier Caparo
Where She Went by Gayle Forman
Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai
Legend by Marie Lu
The Apothecary by Maile Meloy, illus. by Ian Schoenherr
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, illus. by Jim Kay
The Flint Heart by Katherine and John Paterson, John Rocco
Divergent by Veronica Roth
Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu, illus. by Erin McGuire
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente, illus. by Ana Jua
The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Tell the Tales by Chris Van Allsburg et al
Variant by Robison Wells
Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
Blink & Caution by Tim Wynne-Jones
How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

Poetry, Romance, Comics, Children's Picture, Children's Non-Fiction, Religion, and Lifestyle categories can be found HERE.

New York Times (NYT) Most Notable - 2011

2011-11-23T20:42:00.000-08:00

Read more about each book (including links to NYT reviews) on this page.

FICTION AND POETRY

THE ANGEL ESMERALDA: Nine Stories.By Don DeLillo.

THE ART OF FIELDING. By Chad Harbach.

THE BARBARIAN NURSERIES. By Héctor Tobar.

BIG QUESTIONS. Or, Asomatognosia: Whose Hand Is It Anyway? Written and illustrated by Anders Brekhus Nilsen.

THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC. By Julie Otsuka.

CANTI. By Giacomo Leopardi. Translated by Jonathan Galassi.

THE CAT’S TABLE. By Michael Ondaatje.

CHANGÓ’S BEADS AND TWO-TONE SHOES. By William Kennedy.

COME ON ALL YOU GHOSTS. By Matthew Zapruder.

11/22/63. By Stephen King.

THE FREE WORLD. By David Bezmozgis.

GHOST LIGHTS. By Lydia Millet.

THE GRIEF OF OTHERS. By Leah Hager Cohen.

GRYPHON: New and Selected Stories. By Charles Baxter.

HOUSE OF HOLES: A Book of Raunch. By Nicholson Baker.

THE LAST WEREWOLF. By Glen Duncan.

THE LEFTOVERS. By Tom Perrotta.

LIFE ON MARS. By Tracy K. Smith.

THE LONDON TRAIN. By Tessa Hadley

LONG, LAST, HAPPY: New and Selected Stories. By Barry Hannah.

LOST MEMORY OF SKIN. By Russell Banks.

THE MARRIAGE PLOT. By Jeffrey Eugenides.

A MOMENT IN THE SUN. By John Sayles.

MR. FOX. By Helen Oyeyemi.

MY NEW AMERICAN LIFE. By Francine Prose.

1Q84. By Haruki Murakami. Translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel.

OPEN CITY. By Teju Cole.

THE PALE KING: An Unfinished Novel. By David Foster Wallace.

PARALLEL STORIES. By Peter Nadas. Translated by Imre Goldstein.

SAY HER NAME. By Francisco Goldman.

SCENES FROM VILLAGE LIFE. By Amos Oz. Translated by Nicholas de Lange

THE SENSE OF AN ENDING. By Julian Barnes.

SEVEN YEARS. By Peter Stamm. Translated by Michael Hofmann.

SHARDS. By Ismet Prcic.

SPACE, IN CHAINS. By Laura Kasischke.

STONE ARABIA. By Dana Spiotta.

THE STRANGER’S CHILD. By Alan Hollinghurst.

THE SUBMISSION. By Amy Waldman.

SWAMPLANDIA! By Karen Russell.

TALLER WHEN PRONE: Poems. By Les Murray.

TEN THOUSAND SAINTS. By Eleanor Henderson.

THIS BEAUTIFUL LIFE. By Helen Schulman.

THE TIGER’S WIFE. By Téa Obreht.

THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR. By Arthur Phillips.

TRAIN DREAMS. By Denis Johnson.

NON-FICTION

AND SO IT GOES. Kurt Vonnegut: A Life. By Charles J. Shields.

ARGUABLY: Essays. By Christopher Hitchens.

THE ART OF CRUELTY: A Reckoning. By Maggie Nelson.

ASSASSINS OF THE TURQUOISE PALACE. By Roya Hakakian.

THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY: Explanations That Transform the World. By David Deutsch.

BELIEVING IS SEEING: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography. By Errol Morris.

THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE: Why Violence Has Declined. By Steven Pinker.

BLOOD, BONES AND BUTTER: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. By Gabrielle Hamilton.

BLUE NIGHTS. By Joan Didion.

THE BOY IN THE MOON: A Father’s Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son. By Ian Brown.

CARAVAGGIO: A Life Sacred and Profane. By Andrew Graham-Dixon.

CATHERINE THE GREAT: Portrait of a Woman. By Robert K. Massie.

CLARENCE DARROW: Attorney for the Damned. By John A. Farrell.

COCKTAIL HOUR UNDER THE TREE OF FORGETFULNESS. By Alexandra Fuller.

DESTINY OF THE REPUBLIC: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President. By Candice Millard.

THE ECSTASY OF INFLUENCE: Nonfictions, Etc. By Jonathan Lethem.

1861: The Civil War Awakening. By Adam Goodheart.

EXAMINED LIVES: From Socrates to Nietzsche. By James Miller.

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. By Charles C. Mann.

GEORGE F. KENNAN: An American Life. By John Lewis Gaddis.

GREAT SOUL: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India. By Joseph Lelyveld.

HARLEM IS NOWHERE: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America. By Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. (Little, Brown, $24.99.)

HOLY WAR: How Vasco da Gama’s Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations. By Nigel Cliff.

IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. By Erik Larson.

INFERNO: The World at War, 1939-1945. By Max Hastings.

THE INFORMATION: A History. A Theory. A Flood. By James Gleick.

INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion. By Janet Reitman.

IS THAT A FISH IN YOUR EAR? Translation and the Meaning of Everything. By David Bellos.

JERUSALEM: The Biography. By Simon Sebag Montefiore.

THE KEATS BROTHERS: The Life of John and George. By Denise Gigante.

KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOOR: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World. By Lisa Randall.

MALCOLM X: A Life of Reinvention. By Manning Marable.

THE MEMORY CHALET. By Tony Judt.

MIDNIGHT RISING: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War. By Tony Horwitz.

MOBY-DUCK: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them. By Donovan Hohn.

MY SONG: A Memoir. By Harry Belafonte with Michael Shnayerson.

THE NET DELUSION: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. By Evgeny Morozov.

ONE DAY I WILL WRITE ABOUT THIS PLACE: A Memoir. By Binyavanga Wainaina.

THE ORIGINS OF POLITICAL ORDER: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. By Francis Fukuyama.

PAULINE KAEL: A Life in the Dark. By Brian Kellow.

PULPHEAD. By John Jeremiah Sullivan.

THE QUEST: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. By Daniel Yergin.

RIGHTS GONE WRONG: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality. By Richard Thompson Ford.

RIN TIN TIN: The Life and the Legend. By Susan Orlean.

[SIC]: A Memoir. By Joshua Cody.

THE STORM OF WAR: A New History of the Second World War. By Andrew Roberts.

THE SWERVE: How the World Became Modern. By Stephen Greenblatt.

THINKING, FAST AND SLOW. By Daniel Kahneman.

TO A MOUNTAIN IN TIBET. By Colin Thubron.

TO END ALL WARS: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. By Adam Hochschild.

A TRAIN IN WINTER: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France. By Caroline Moorehead.

VAN GOGH: The Life. By Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith.

WHO’S AFRAID OF POST-BLACKNESS? What It Means to Be Black Now. By Touré.

WHY THE WEST RULES — FOR NOW: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. By Ian Morris.

A WORLD ON FIRE: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War. By Amanda Foreman.

The Long Song - Wendy's Review

2011-08-03T08:22:00.001-07:00

Kitty turned to face her master.

‘Come along, Caroline. Hurry. We need to get out of the sun.’

‘Can I take her?’ she asked.

Kitty tried to seize air enough to breathe.

‘Yes, if she’ll amuse you. She would be taken soon enough anyway. It will encourage her to have another. They are dreadful mothers, these negroes.’

‘She’ll be my companion here,’ Caroline said. ‘I could train her for the house, or to be my lady’s maid.’ – from The Long Song, page 41 -

July is born in the early part of the nineteenth century on a Jamaican sugar plantation. Her mother is a black slave, her father the white overseer who is her mother’s rapist. One hot day when July is still just a young child, she is noticed by Caroline Mortimer, the sister of the plantation’s owner who has arrived from England. On a whim, Caroline decides to take July to be her companion, stealing her from July’s mother without a second thought and renaming her Marguerite. The Long Song is July’s story, narrated retrospectively by an adult July many years later. It is not an easy story, spanning decades and taking the reader through the tumultuous years of the Baptist War and the controversial end to slavery in Jamaica. But, it is July’s voice which drives the narrative. Funny, cynical, highly observant and intelligent, July weighs in on racism, violence, and the struggle for freedom at a time when blacks were viewed as property to rich, white landowners.

Only with a white man, can there be guarantee that the colour of your pickney will be raised. For a mulatto who breeds with a white man will bring forth a quadroon; and the quadroon that enjoys white relations will give to this world a mustee; the mustee will beget a mustiphino; and the mustiphino…oh, the mustiphino’s child with a white man for a papa will find each day greets them no longer with a frown, but welcomes them with a smile, as they at last stride within this world as a cherished white person. – from The Long Song, page 203 -

The Long Song is a brilliant novel narrated by an unforgettable character. July is, perhaps, one of the most memorable female voices I have read in a long, long time. Bittersweet, funny, often devastating…this is a novel which drew me in immediately and held me in its grip to the final page. Andrea Levy writes with an honesty and insight into the human condition that takes one’s breath away.

The Long Song was shortlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize, longlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize, and named as a 2010 New York Times Most Notable book. It is, in my opinion, worthy of all these accolades. Beautiful prose, enduring characters, and the evocation of place that vibrates off the page, all combine to create a remarkable novel of historical significance.

Readers who love literary fiction and historical fiction will want to put The Long Song on their must read list.

Highly recommended.

Quality of Writing:
Plot:
Characters:

Overall Rating:

The Lotus Eaters - Gavin's Review

2011-06-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

St Martins Griffin, New York, 2010

In the fall of 1965 Helen Adams arrived in Vietnam trying to find out about the death of her brother Michael and a desire to break out of her normal life.

" My brother wrote me a letter before he was killed. He said no matter what happened he couldn't regret coming. I needed to see for myself. And the only way to become famous is to cover combat, right? I dropped out because I was worried it would be over by the time I graduated." From pages 86/87.

Drawn into the excitement and chaos of war and attracted to combat photographer Sam Darrow, Helen stays, learns to take photographs and discovers an obsession she had no idea she was carrying.

This book surprised me. I find it is hard to believe it is Tatjana Soli's first novel.

When I first started reading it I wasn't sure what to expect. Would this be a story that revolved around the covert and overt attractions between three photographers? Would it be a blood and guts war story? What I found was a tightly woven novel that brought the "American war" to me in a way that connects it to the land and its people. It is beautiful and appalling and after reading a few pages I found it hard to put down.

All I can do now is include a few passages and hope they seduce you, cause you to pick up and read this book.

She rode out with the helicopter pilots high over the land of the delta south of Saigon, trailing over the endless paddy fields that reflected up at them like broken pieces of a mirror. The dull green of choking jungle and sinewy-limbed mangrove swamp contrasting with the light green of new rice; the land only rarely broken signs of human habitation - small clusters of thatched roofs or an occasional one of red tile. From above, the land appeared empty and peaceful, only farmers bent in the paddies or orchards She sat like a tourist, enthralled by the dirty green and reddish brown rivers, slow and thick-moving like veins pumping life into the lands. From page 116.

After the calm of the village, the sheer numbers of people overwhelmed; the scale of the disaster made her feel useless. Dry-mouthed, she licked her lips, tasting salt, growing more thirsty. When an old man collapsed on the side of the road, she stooped down, shielding him from view, and gave him precious mouthfuls of water, but in seconds a crowd formed, and she had to move on. From page 203.

The Vietnamese called the the Tay Nguyen, the Western Highlands, because in their minds they saw the country as a whole, not accepting the artificial divisions of north and south.
Names were important.
Names, finally, were the only things the Vietnamese had left. For a whole period of history, Vietnam existed only on the tip of someone's tongue, forbidden to be said out loud.
Geography became power. From page 317.

I have read other books about the Vietnam war, The Things They Carried, Dispatches and Fire in the Lake, being the most memorable. I am adding The Lotus Eaters to that list.

Unbroken - Wendy's Review

2011-06-07T09:43:00.001-07:00

All he could see, in every direction, was water. It was June 23, 1943. Somewhere on the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, Army Air Forces bombardier and Olympic runner Louie Zamperini lay across a small raft, drifting westward. - from Unbroken, preface -

Louie Zamperini grew up in Torrence, California. He was an intrepid and curious child who fearlessly forged his way through the world. Difficult to manage, always in some sort of trouble, and a talented thief from an early age, Zamperini seemed destined for the criminal life. Luckily, he had an older brother, Pete, who saw greatness in him and steered his energies towards running. Louie was a natural talent and found himself qualifying for the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the 5000 at only nineteen years old. Although he failed to medal, he finished a respectable seventh place in that event and caught the eye of none other than Adolph Hitler. And then WWII unfolded, drawing Zamperini into the military where, despite his fear of flying, he trained as an Army Air Forces bombardier. Sent to the Pacific, he began flying missions aboard a B24 bomber. In June of 1943 while on a rescue mission, Zamperini’s plane went down. He and two crewmen drifted aboard a life raft for more than thirty days, surviving huge waves, hot and unrelenting sun, starvation, dehydration and aggressive sharks…before drifting into Japanese waters and being taken captive. Unbroken is Zamperini’s story of survival against all the odds, but it is also the story of the War in the Pacific, the brutality which thousands of POWs faced as captives of the Japanese, and the resiliency of the human spirit.

Laura Hillenbrand brings the war to the reader with impeccable research and a talent for narrative that is hard to find in many nonfiction books. She spent seven years writing Unbroken, and has introduced a hero who is hard to forget. Hillenbrand peppers first hand accounts with facts about the war to tell Zamperini’s chronological story which is mesmerizing. There were many things I learned that I had not known before…for example, I was stunned to learn that trainees were killed at an astonishing rate before even seeing any combat. For every plane lost in combat, six planes were lost in accidents.

Pilot and navigator error, mechanical failure and bad luck were killing trainees at a stunning rate. In the Army Air Forces, or AAF, there were 52,651 stateside aircraft accidents over the course of the war, killing 14,903 personnel. – from Unbroken, page 61 -

A report issued by the AAF surgeon general suggests that in the Fifteenth Air Force, between November 1, 1943, and May 25, 1945, 70 percent of men listed as killed in action died in operational aircraft accidents, not as a result of enemy action. – from Unbroken, page 80 -

Perhaps even more shocking, the ability to rescue men in downed planes was dismal. Not only were planes poorly equipped for emergencies prior to mid-1944, but search planes were even more likely to crash than combat planes.

The most difficult part of this book to read was that about the lives of prisoners of war. Hillenbrand does not spare her readers any of the brutality and inhumanity which faced servicemen captured by the Japanese. She attempts to explain why those POWs captured in the Pacific theater were the most-ill treated of any prisoners.

Few societies treasured dignity, and feared humiliation, as did the Japanese, for whom a loss of honor could merit suicide. This is likely one of the reasons why Japanese soldiers in World War II debased their prisoners with such zeal, seeking to take from them that which was most painful and destructive to lose. – from Unbroken, page 183 -

The statistics support this cultural phenomenon – indicating that for “every Allied soldier killed, four were captured; for every 120 Japanese soldiers killed, one was captured.”

Hillenbrand provides a balanced look at what happened in the POW camps – showing readers that although many Japanese soldiers delighted in the torture and debasement of prisoners, there were those who heroically tried to help POWs…and in so doing, probably saved many lives. She also provides wonderful stories of internal sabotage orchestrated by prisoners. Survival for many, depended on maintaining their dignity, helping others, and actively undermining their enemies.

I raced through this book, reading almost 300 pages in less than 24 hours (a fast pace for me). Hillenbrand is a gifted author, one who carefully uncovers the essence of what it means to be human in the face of cruelty, degradation, and hopelessness. Although graphic at times, I could not stop reading this amazing book.

The book also takes a look at the US decision to drop the A-bomb. A long controversial subject, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is something that I have always steadfastly criticized. Unbroken didn’t necessarily make me change my mind, but it did offer a view from the other side.

A few of the trains slipped past Hiroshima. Virtually every POW believed that the destruction of this city had saved them from execution. John Falconer, a survivor of the Bataan Death March, looked out as Hiroshima neared. “First there were trees,” he told historian Donald Knox. “Then the leaves were missing. As you got closer, branches were missing. Closer still, the trunks were gone and then, as you got in the middle, there was nothing. Nothing! It was beautiful. I realized this was what had ended the war. It meant we didn’t have to go hungry any longer, or go without medical treatment. I was so insensitive to anyone else’s human needs and suffering. I know it’s not right to say it was beautiful, because it really wasn’t. But I believed the end probably justified the means.” - from Unbroken, page 320 -

Hillenbrand provides a copious bibliography and explained that she cross-checked individual accounts against the historical record to ensure accuracy of reporting. The result is a touching biography of a resolutely courageous man. Unbroken will surely be a favorite read for book clubs – it provides much to discuss. It is definitely one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Highly recommended.

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Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter - Wendy's Review

2011-04-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

When she was awake, the senile, skeletal black lady in the bed beside Ina would watch him with eyes narrowed by suspicion, but not because of Larry’s past, he figured, but his skin color, a woman close to ninety whose family had left her here, and Larry would wonder how many wrongs she’d endured from white people in her almost-century of living. Sometimes he thought of Alice Jones, of Silas, how Larry’s mother had given them coats but not a ride in her car. How what seemed liked kindness could be the opposite. – from Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, page 181 -

Larry Ott has lived his whole life in a small town in Mississippi. Different from other boys, quiet, and a bookworm, he doesn’t make friends easily. So when Silas, a black boy, and his single mother move onto the Ott’s land into a tumble down cabin, Larry cautiously extends a hand in friendship. The two boys connect almost instantly, but hide their friendship from people who might not approve of it – especially Larry’s abusive, alcoholic father. Then the unthinkable happens. Larry takes the beautiful and worldly Cindy Walker on a first date to the drive-in, and the girl is never seen again. Suspicion that Larry is responsible for her disappearance follows him from that day forward, and his only friend moves away leaving Larry alone once again.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter opens twenty-five years after Cindy’s disappearance. Another local girl has gone missing and once again, the accusatory eyes of the town have fallen onto Larry. Silas has returned, working as a constable, and avoiding Larry while quietly doing his job. Old secrets are surfacing which will bring the two men back together again and may hold the key to the mystery of both missing women.

Tom Franklin’s Edgar Award nominated novel is both literary and mystery – a novel which takes the reader deeply into the South where racism infiltrates everything. Atmospheric and firmly anchored in place, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter moves back and forth from the mid-70s to the present, gradually revealing the characters and uncovering their secrets.

Larry Ott is a sympathetic character – a man who has been ostracized and rejected his whole life, but who has maintained his gentle nature and humanity through it all. Larry, it seems, symbolizes all those bullied children who only wish for one friend in a world which seems against them.

I sped through this novel which is somewhat predictable, and yet still manages to be wholly satisfying. The relationship between Silas and Larry is complex and takes center stage; the mystery seems almost secondary to the real story about two men, one black and one white, who share secrets and a past which informs their whole lives.

Themes of the book include bullying, racism, and domestic violence. Readers should be warned, some of the language in the book is harsh and Franklin does not spare the reader the ugliness of racism. Despite this, the imagery and language never feel gratuitous because the idea of being different (whether it be due to skin color or something less tangible) is a strong concept in the novel. Larry is viewed as “scary” and strange because he is a bit of a recluse and prefers his books to socializing; Silas’s skin color keeps him in a less than responsible position on the police force.

Tom Franklin’s novel reminds me of another author whose work I have enjoyed: John Hart. Both men set their stories in the South and create damaged characters who are not well-accepted in society. Both authors weave the literary genre tightly together with mystery-suspense.

Readers who love both literary and mystery, will undoubtedly want to pick up a copy of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter.

Highly recommended.

That Old Cape Magic - Wendy's Review

2011-04-02T09:36:00.001-07:00

“Good heavens, no, it wasn’t you. What kept us together was ‘That Old Cape Magic.’ Remember how we used to sing it every year on the Sagamore?” She then turned to Bartleby. “One glorious month, each summer,” she explained. “Sun. Sand. Water. Gin. Followed by eleven months of misery.” Then back to Griffin. “But that’s about par for most marriages, I think you’ll find.” The I think you’ll find, he understood, was of course meant to suggest that in her view, his own marital arithmetic was likely to be much the same. - from That Old Cape Magic, page 7 -

Jack Griffin is middle-aged, married for thirty-four years to Joy, and driving around the Cape with his father’s ashes in his car’s wheel well as he contemplates his childhood, his unruly (and often emotionally absent) parents, and his own marriage. By the end of the weekend, everything will have changed – suddenly and unexpectedly. A year later, he finds himself on the coast of Maine at his daughter’s wedding, separated from his wife, now carrying two urns in the trunk of his car, and unable to turn off the ironic and sarcastic voice of his dead mother which plays inside his head. Richard Russo’s iconic novel is filled with humor, bittersweet nostalgia, and wise observations of marriage and love.

Russo is a genius when it comes to developing character. Griff is a man who has finally come to rest in Connecticut, after giving up a career as a screen writer in Los Angeles. He settles into his job as a college professor, and he and his wife Joy buy their dream house and nurture their daughter, Laura. But Griff has a lot of unfinished business – especially regarding his relationship with his parents which has come to inform his life and his marriage. Russo employs a lot of irony and humor in unraveling Griff and his parents. Griffin’s mother is outrageously elitist and narcissistic. When she retires from her position as a professor at a small, Indiana university, she stuns everyone with her farewell speech.

“Unlike my colleagues,” she said directly into the microphone, the only speaker of the evening to recognize that fundamental necessity, “I’ll be brief and honest. I wish I could think of something nice to say about you people and this university, I really do. But the truth we dare not utter is that ours is a distinctly second-rate institution, as are the vast majority of our students, as are we.” Then she returned to her seat and patted Griffin’s hand, as if to say, There, now; that wasn’t so bad, was it? - from That Old Cape Magic, page 20 -

On the other hand, Griff’s father is a bit bumbling and prone to having a wandering eye when it comes to other women. He also has a propensity for automobile accidents. His car is perpetually damaged, the trunk secured with a bungee cord.

Griffin, raised as an only child, seems dwarfed by his bigger-than-life parents. His struggle to find his own place in the world, secure his own marriage, and come to terms with the ambivalent love he has for his difficult parents is what drives the narrative in That Old Cape Magic.

Russo’s writing in That Old Cape Magic is, well, magical. I found myself completely absorbed in the lives of the characters, wanting them to find redemption, hoping that all the many strands of their lives would weave together again. Russo does what so many writers struggle to do – namely, make you care about what happens to the characters which people the story. Russo’s strength lies in his razor sharp observations of life with all its subtle quirks and twists, especially middle-aged life when individuals begin to look back on the paths they’ve chosen and wonder whether they have made the right decisions; to contemplate the plans they have mapped out and question the outcomes.

Late middle age, he was coming to understand, was a time of life when everything was predictable and yet somehow you failed to see any of it coming. – from That Old Cape Magic, page 248 -

Readers who love literary fiction and who appreciate irony, humor and deftly developed characters, will love this novel.

Highly recommended.

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Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro

2011-03-05T13:38:00.001-08:00

Another set of terrific short stories by this remarkable Canadian writer. The title story is actually a fictionalized version of a real life, and it sits at the very end of this volume. The rest are intimate glimpses into important episodes of several lives.

So what does it mean - Too Much Happiness? It may be that there is no such thing. Maybe that just when we think all our wishes have been granted - they aren't. Or perhaps the stories are about unexpected things in a life. But that's too simplistic to describe these stories.

They are pieces of lives of ordinary people. Real pieces, unexpected journeys and unexpected actions. People who find parts in themselves that may have been lost. People who simply lose. People who accept, then don't.

All of the stories held my attention, as each character made its way into me, became some sort of friend or acquaintance. And their stories are vivid and real.

Bearing the Body, by Ehud Havazelet

2011-02-17T19:32:00.000-08:00

I was born in 1946, in the U.S. My family is not Jewish. I grew up, though, with the images from World War II, particularly the horrors of concentration camps. I have read books and magazines and seen films about this subject and in my dreams I often see the crowded trains and I think about how they ate, how they defecated, what they were thinking. I see in my mind the lines of the newly-arrived prisoners, being sorted; I see the piles of clothing of those sent to the "showers", the shoes, the jewels. I see the families separated, those surviving wondering if they will ever see the others again.

So even though I had no personal connection to these horrors they still live in my heart. Yet it was only after I was well into this book that I started to see the world perhaps as Sol sees it, or as Nathan sees it.

Sol and Nathan are the two lead characters. Sol is elderly, former owner of a shoe factory, and Nathan is his younger son, in his forties, pursuing at last a medical career. Sol's wife is dead. Sol was young when he was sent to the camps, and he managed to be sent to a barracks with his brother Chaim. He heard of others in his family from time to time but never saw any of them again.

Sol and his wife moved to New York after being liberated from the concentration camp, and their greatest wish was that their children never really know what they went through. So this dark ugly past was never discussed, yet the two boys had to feel it, wonder about it.

The story is about the death of Nathan's older brother Daniel, and Nathan's efforts to find out what happened. But the real story is about Nathan's tenuous hold on his own life, and his relationship with his increasingly bitter father. Intertwined through the story is always the background: what Sol lived through and could never forget.

Initially I was a little confused, in the first several pages, trying to sort out who was who and what was going on. I soon caught on, though, and was stuck instead in a kind of molasses-like sludge of misunderstandings, memories, wrong moves, recriminations, regrets. I am not a fan of "happy books", although at times I enjoy them. I love a book full of psychological issues, frankly, often including unhappy people searching, or flawed characters committing thoughtless acts. Yet this one really did bog me down at times. I became irritated at Sol and Nathan both, wondering when they were going to get past their own delusions and start seeing clearly. I kept reading though, and there were moments that jumped out at me, that told me in essence why I kept reading and what the book was about.

His Illegal Self, by Peter Carey

2011-02-08T09:39:00.000-08:00

Intense is how I would describe Peter Carey's writing, from the books of his I have read. It certainly describes this one.

Told alternately from the point of view of the boy Che and from the caretaker Anna, this story is set in the 1970s, occasionally harking back to the 1960s for background. Anna is about to begin a career as a professor at Vassar when she is called back to a former life by an accidental connection. A radical member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), she was always malleable and in thrall to the leaders of that movement. Now she is older and stronger yet the pull is still there and is why she agrees to pick up the seven-year-old boy for a visit with his outlaw mother.

The boy is not told much. He has to go on instinct and expectation. When he first sees Anna step out of the elevator he is sure she is his mother. His mother, whom he last saw at age two. He has managed to build an imaginative world about his parents, aided by a babysitter who reads the papers and has radical ideas himself. So he is happy to say good bye to his grandmother and take off with this hippie-like woman.

Through a series of planned and unplanned events, Anna and Che find themselves sought by the law, and Anna makes decisions she later regrets. The two of them ultimately find themselves in the deep outback of Australia, about as remote from the New York world they knew as possible. And initially this is just fine with Anna.

Che - also known as Jay - is not thrilled to be dragged along to live an "alternative" lifestyle. He just wants to stay in a motel now and then. The two get to know different members of the commune they somewhat accidentally enter and try to get by. It isn't an easy or happy existence, although it sometimes has its rewards.

Each day and each act was, for me, intense. I never knew what was coming or if all would come out all right for any of the people involved. This is one thing I have learned about Carey - you really don't know how it will end. There were moments that made my stomach hurt.

I was drawn to it all, though, almost like to an accident but more personally caught up. I became attached to these characters, especially to the little boy. There are so many moments that felt real to me, accurate and deep. It isn't easy to portray the thoughts of a young boy when you are a middle-aged man, but somehow Carey seems to do it beautifully and believably.

I surprised myself by how much I liked the ending.

This is not a book for everyone. If you want light and easy, go somewhere else. If you want more this may be for you. I think it will stick with me for a long time.

The Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti

2011-01-30T10:53:00.000-08:00

Several reviewers refer to this tale as "Dickensian" and I have to agree. It stars a young boy, Ren, an orphan who is adopted by a con man, Benjamin, because Ren is missing one hand. Benjamin makes up any number of stories about the missing hand, and uses the sympathy of others to take their money. He soon learns that Ren has a way with stealing in any case, and is glad he doesn't have to teach him that particular skill.

So we start to think of Oliver Twist and others. This story, though, is set in New England. Not that it matters much, as that part of the country is older and steeped in buried history, much like its namesake.

The tale - and I feel "tale" is the right word - takes on gigantic dimensions in the adventure department, yet while I laughed at the absurdity of some of the characters I was willing to buy them. I also found the dialogue believable, authentic, unlike the mannered dialogue I have encountered in other "period" novels. Normally I walk away from fantastic fairy tales and period stories but this one grabbed me, from the grave-digging to the giant to the yelling landlady.

The Three Weissmanns of Westport - Wendy's Review

2011-01-28T17:05:00.000-08:00

When Joseph Weissmann divorced his wife, he was seventy-eight years old and she was seventy-five. He announced his decision in the kitchen of their apartment on the tenth floor of a large, graceful Central Park West building built at the turn of the century, the original white tiles of the kitchen still gleaming on the walls around them. Joseph, known as Joe to his colleagues at work, but always called Joseph by his wife, said the words “irreconcilable differences,” and saw real confusion in his wife’s eyes.

Irreconcilable differences? she said. Of course there are irreconcilable differences. What on earth does that have to do with divorce? - from The Three Weissmanns of Westport, page 1 -

Betty Weissmann may be seventy-five years old and used to being taken care of by her wealthy husband Joseph, but he underestimates her pluck, resiliency, and the blind loyalty of her daughters. Banished from the home she has shared with Joseph for almost 50 years, Betty packs up her things and moves into a beach side cottage in Westport, Connecticut (owned by Betty’s eccentric cousin Lou) with her daughters Miranda and Annie. Annie, a librarian, is the eldest and most practical of the daughters. Miranda, a 49 year old literary agent, is reeling from a business crisis when it is discovered that the authors she represents are fabricating their memoirs. Together the three women descend upon Westport, determined to make the best of their situations and support each other along the way.

The Three Weissmanns of Westport is a funny, poignant, sometimes heartbreaking novel filled with memorable and quirky characters. Betty bravely faces her impending divorce, preferring to think of herself as a widow rather than a divorcee.

In the days to come, not only was Betty merry, but she insisted that she was, literally, a widow.

“Poor, dear Joseph,” she said when they finally accepted Cousin Lou’s invitation to dinner. “God rest his soul.” – from The Three Weissmanns of Westport -

Miranda’s zest for life is only temporarily dampened by her business woes. She has a history of passionate love affairs which end in disaster, and is a bit of a diva. And so when she sets her sights on a man much younger than she, it is only a matter of time before things get interesting.

Annie works as a librarian, is divorced and is mourning the fact that her two sons have grown up and away from her. She dreads moving to the coast with her mother and sister (who exuberantly embrace the small, run down beach cottage). She longs to isolate herself with her books, tires of being the responsible older sister, and bemoans the aging process.

Together, the three women forge a bond that elevates them past failed romances, unexpected revelations, and family crises. Cathleen Schine fills her novel with humor, the simple joy of sun drenched days and bird song, and the comfort of friendships. I loved the contrary, yet loving relationship between the two sisters; and the realistic, yet poignant connection between a mother and her children. What Schine does, quite elegantly, is make the reader care about the characters. She exposes their flaws, unearths their fears and vulnerabilities, and in doing so, makes them real. I found myself cheering Betty, Miranda and Annie onward, wanting them to realize their dreams and find their happiness.

The Three Weissmanns of Westport is a story of family connection, of searching for love, of falling down and getting back up again. This is a satisfying novel which will appeal to those readers who like their characters quirky and who find humor in life despite disaster. Cathleen Schine writes fantastic women’s fiction.

Highly recommended.

Want to win a copy of this book? Don’t miss my giveaway January 28 – February 4, 2011.

2011 ALA Notable Books

2011-01-24T15:52:00.000-08:00

Notable Books for Adults List, 2011

Fiction

Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass.

Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.

Next by James Hynes.

The Surrendered by Chang Rae Lee.

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel by David Mitchell.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli.

The Lonely Polygamist: A Novel by Brady Udall.

Non-Fiction

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow.

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick.

Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier.

The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness by Oren Harman.

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent.

Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hourby Lynne Olson.

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

Just Kids by Patti Smith.

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson.

Poetry

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty: Poems by Tony Hoagland.

Wait: Poems by C.K. Williams.

An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken

2011-01-21T16:40:00.000-08:00

A writer of fiction, Elizabeth McCracken found herself in France in an old house in the country, pregnant. She and her husband like to visit different places when not required to be home. Thus the French country. The two of them arranged for a midwife and had access to a hospital about 40 minutes away. All checkups went well, until the last one, when there appeared to be something amiss.

The baby was stillborn.

This book is the story of that baby, the months before and after, the way Elizabeth and her husband coped with the loss. It is written simply and freely, from the heart. Yet, although she says she did very little editing, she seemed to have a sense of how to tell the story. We know from the start that the baby dies, but we know no more about it until well into the story.

What we learn goes beyond the grief. We learn how a tragedy can be associated with a place to such an extent that the place is forever ruined. We learn that it is important to say something to the grieving parents, not to ignore the grief.

We learned, in this case, that McCracken does not want to forget the happy days, months, before the birth, even though she never wants to see those places again. It's important to remember.

McCracken wrote the book, she says, so that she does not have to keep telling the story, so that she does not have to answer the question, "Is this your first child?" It hurts to keep explaining, "No, the first was stillborn". Better that acquaintances already know.

A simply-written memoir that manages to sidestep the maudlin yet lets us in on the fullness of a mother's pain.

Judith's 2010 and Challenge for 2011

2011-01-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

Last year I challenged myself to read ten books from the notable lists. I only read five!

There is no me without you, by Melissa Faye Greene
The View from Castle Rock, by Alice Munro
The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard
Brightsided by Barbara Ehrenreich
Circling my Mother, by Mary Gordon

I'm going to be just as conservative and set my goal to read these ten (and hope I achieve at least ten):

Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
His Illegal Self, by Peter Carey
Descarte's Bones, by Russell Shorto
Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder
Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey
Freedom, by Johathan Franzen
Love Songs from a Shallow Grave, by Colin Cotterill
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, by Laney Salisbury and Aley Sujo
An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken

As usual, I reserve the right to change my mind about which books I read.

Freedom - Wendy's Review

2011-01-07T13:18:00.001-08:00

“It’s all circling around the same problem of personal liberties,” Walter said. “People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don’t have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can’t afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to. - from Freedom, page 361 -

Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel Freedom doesn’t shy away from the politically incorrect; it doesn’t mince words; it certainly doesn’t extol the virtues of freedom. Instead, this is a novel which takes a hard, often cynical look, at middle America.

Patty and Walter Berglund are in many ways the typical middle-American couple. They live in the suburbs and have exactly two children (one boy and one girl). Patty becomes the traditional stay at home mom, and Walter is a successful environmental lawyer. But, despite the outside wrappings, this is a couple whose lives are far from perfect. Joey, their son, starts having sex early and then moves next door to live with his obsessed girlfriend; Walter’s best friend from college is a rock star whose propensity to disrespect women is actually an attractant rather than a repellent for Patty; and when Walter takes a job working with a big coal company whose idea of preservation first involves blowing the tops off of pristine mountains…all bets are suddenly off.

Freedom is a huge, sprawling book that follows the lives of the Berglunds and their closest friends and relatives for decades. Along the way there is humor, cynicism, love, betrayal, and the consequences of too much freedom. Franzen explores adultery, rape, teenage lust, environmental catastrophe, greed, and political shallowness. It all adds up to a rather negative, albeit amusing, look at contemporary America – especially that of parenting and marriage.

This was my first Franzen novel, and I was impressed by his characterizations and impeccable skill at the craft of writing. At times I found myself laughing out loud at Franzen’s sardonic sense of humor; but mostly I found myself marveling at the genius of his prose. Freedom is not a light read. It is a rather negative view of the American way of life – not all I agreed with, but many times the truth of the novel was hard to deny. The characters in this novel are hardly likable. Instead, they are flawed and use their freedom to mess up their lives and the lives of those they love. Despite not really liking any of the characters, I did end up liking the book.

Since finishing this novel, I’ve read some wildly disparate reviews of it. Some people love it; others hate it; some never finished it…and I see where not everyone will connect to Freedom. On the other hand, once in a long time a novel comes along which is truly an “American” novel from start to finish. I think Freedom fits the bill. Despite painting America with a negative brush, Franzen also provides an interesting perspective on what life is like in the 21st century. Whether readers agree or disagree with his conclusions, Freedom is an entertaining read.

Highly recommended for readers who enjoy literary fiction.

I Curse the River of Time - Wendy's Review

2011-01-07T13:16:00.000-08:00

The picture of Mao I had was the well-known retouched photograph where he sits hunched over his desk writing with one of those Chinese brush pens, and I always thought, or hoped, that it was not one of his political or philosophical articles he was writing, but one of his poems, perhaps the one which begins:

Fragile images of departure, the village back then.
I curse the river of time; thirty-two years have passed.

for it showed the human Mao, someone I was drawn to, someone who had felt how time was battling his body, as I had felt it so often myself; how time without warning could catch up with me and run around beneath my skin like tiny electric shocks and I could not stop them, no matter how hard I tried. – from I Curse the River of Time, page 56 -

Avrid Jansen is thirty-seven years old and has spent nearly twenty years searching for the truth through Communism. But now the year is 1989 and Communism is unraveling. Avrid is faced with a crisis of identity when his marriage fails and he learns that his mother has cancer, and everything he has believed in seems to be crumbling. When Avrid discovers his mother has left Norway to return to Denmark where she was born and raised, he boards a ferry to join her at their summer house.

Per Petterson’s novel I Curse The River of Time is the story of a man and his mother – two people who have drifted apart and are now brought back together. The story is non linear and told almost entirely from Avrid’s limited point of view. Avrid remembers moments from his childhood and the early days of his marriage. Gradually, the fault lines in his relationships and his insecurities are revealed. The reader discovers that Avrid has rejected his parents’ wish that he be educated and leave behind his working class roots. Instead, in alignment with his Communist leanings, Avrid chooses to leave college and go to work in the factory where his father once toiled.

[...] I wanted to be part of the working class, which, for Christ’s sake I already was, and always had been. The whole point, for them, was that I should stop being working class so they could all be proud of me, because I had been allowed to go farther. - from I Curse the River of Time, page 145 -

There is much in the novel that remains ambiguous and unnamed. Avrid’s mother seems to have a history which is largely secret, or at least Avrid remains ignorant of it. Because of this, the novel takes on a drifting, dreamlike atmosphere which I found bleak. Avrid fumbles and struggles with his identity as son, husband and Maoist. At times he seems to lack any insight into who he is and who he wishes to be, and he sees his life as something which he has little control over.

I have never really been able to see enormous changes coming until the last minute, never see how one trend conceals another, as Mao used to say, how the one flowing right below the surface can move in a whole different direction than the one you thought everyone had agreed on, and if you did not pay attention when everything was shifting, you would be left behind alone. – from I Curse the River of Time, page 67 -

Petterson’s prose is spare and reflective, and he provides little hope in a novel about loss, isolation, regret, and confused identity. The landscape of a wintry Norway and Denmark are a perfect backdrop to the story. In fact, the descriptions of scene were some of my favorites in the book.

I Curse the River of Time revisits some of the themes from Petterson’s award winning book Out Stealing Horses (read my review) – those of identity, a boy’s ambivalence with a parent, grief and loss – but it is a much bleaker book. I can’t say I enjoyed the novel as it is a sad meditation on aging, marriage and the child/parent relationship, but I did respect the writing which allows the reader to fully realize the character development.

Readers who enjoy literary fiction in translation and who have appreciated Petterson’s previous work might want to give this one a try.

The Lotus Eaters - Wendy's Review

2011-01-07T13:15:00.001-08:00

California was infinitely far away. California was gone. Even her dreams were shaped by this land – rice paddies stretched flat to the horizon, mountains and jungles, fields of green rice shoots and golden rice harvests like rippling fields of wheat, lead curtains of monsoon rain, bald gaunt hides of water buffalo, and, too, Saigon’s clotted alleyways, the destroyed tree-lined avenues, the bombed-out, flaking, pastel villas, even their small crooked apartment with the peacocks and Buddhas painted on the door. The battered, loving, treacherous people. Her heart’s center, Linh. An undeniable rightness in ending here. - from the ARC of The Lotus Eaters, page 30 -

Helen Adams is an American photojournalist who arrives in Vietnam in 1967 as a scared, inexperienced freelance photographer. A woman reporter in Vietnam is not met with enthusiasm, especially from the men who make up the news corp and the soldiers in the field. Helen is expected to cover the human interest aspects of the Vietnam War, but instead she connects with Sam Darrow – a veteran reporter with a Pulitzer prize under his belt – and convinces him to take her into the field. She continues to position herself for combat coverage even when Darrow no longer seems willing to help her. Eventually, Helen overcomes the doubts of others and secures her place among the men…but there is a price to pay which Helen never anticipated.

The Lotus Eaters is part action-thriller, and part love story as Helen finds herself torn between two men – Sam Darrow (who is most at home in the middle of a war), and Linh (a Vietnamese poet who mourns the loss of his country). It is also a story about identity and love of country, about the horror of war and about what makes us human.

The novel begins in 1975 in Saigon as frightened South Vietnamese citizens and Americans attempt to flee the city in front of the North Vietnamese takeover. Fast-paced, tense and graphic…the first forty pages had me glued to my seat. Soli takes no time to develop a sense of place and history with her characters driving the narrative. I was immediately hooked, and I wanted some back story on Helen and Linh. Soli did not disappoint. She sets the stage, then takes the reader back to the mid-sixties when Helen first arrives in Vietnam. From there, the story moves forward.

Soli writes with authority and takes the reader inside the minds and hearts of her tightly drawn characters. The war scenes, including devastated villages and patrols through the jungle, capture the emotion of war. But, what is remarkable about Soli’s writing in The Lotus Eaters is not the story of war but the story of a country and its people, and the definition of “home.” Despite the burned out fields, Soli manages to also capture the beauty of Vietnam as Helen grows to love the country.

This is what happened when one left one’s home – pieces of oneself scattered all over the world, no one place ever completely satisfied, always a nostalgia for the place left behind. – from the ARC of The Lotus Eaters, page 277 -

This is a mesmerizing novel on all levels. The Lotus Eaters is haunting, evocative and marvelously written. Helen’s growth as a character found me empathizing with her and fearing for her safety. But it was the character of Linh who really captured my heart – a man who loses family and country, and yet still finds the poetry in life.

In case you have not yet figured it out, this is a novel which I can highly recommend…especially for readers interested in the Vietnam War era. Unlike many novels which cover this unpopular war, Soli focuses not on the politics, but on the people most impacted…and it is that which makes The Lotus Eaters unique.

Read a guest post by the author.

Room - Wendy's Review

2011-01-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

After nap we do Scream every day but not Saturdays or Sundays. We clear our throats and climb up on Table to be nearer Skylight, holding hands not to fall. We say “On your mark, get set, go,” then we open wide our teeth and shout holler howl yowl shriek screech scream the loudest possible. Today I’m the most loudest ever because my lungs are stretching from being five.

Then we shush with fingers on lips. I asked Ma once what we’re listening for and she said just in case you never know. - from the ARC of Room -

Jack’s mother has lived seven years in a tiny room after being kidnapped at the age of nineteen. Jack’s birth (the result of repeated rapes), gives her a new purpose for her life – that of mother. Room is Jack and Ma’s story which begins on the morning of Jack’s fifth birthday. Narrated in the unique voice of Jack, the novel follows the characters from the limited life of captivity, to the overwhelming and chaotic Outside world and freedom.

Emma Donoghue deftly creates Jack and Ma’s world within an eleven by eleven foot room. Their days are surprisingly interesting, with Ma creating imaginative games for them to play together. But there is an underlying tension, made more poignant by the fact that it is through a five year old’s eyes that we see the story unfolding. Jack is no longer an infant. He is a smart, curious boy who asks a lot of difficult questions. His mother has allowed him to believe that the world does not exist except for the room in which they live, an alternate reality which eventually must be corrected if they are ever to escape Room.

I must admit that the first 40 pages or so of this novel took some getting used to…Jack’s voice is odd. But once I allowed myself to be fully inside Jack’s world, the book began to resonate with me. The daring escape attempt is perhaps one of the most suspenseful and nerve-wracking scenes I’ve read in a long, long time. Ma’s inner turmoil is perfectly captured through the eyes of her observant son – even though he does not fully understand it. What begins as a story of captivity evolves into a deeper novel of mothering, love, hope and the resilience of the human spirit.

It takes a talented writer to write entirely from the point of view of a child – and Donoghue pulls off this feat seamlessly. The relationship between mother and child is beautifully revealed on every level. Donoghue’s ability to draw the reader in and emotionally invest them in the story is brilliant. Room was recently shortlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize…and it is a well deserved nomination. Original, enthralling, haunting, and memorable Room is a novel I highly recommend for readers who enjoy literary fiction.

PW's Best Books of 2010

2011-01-07T12:40:00.000-08:00

From their site:

This year we took our annual slugfest to the pub underneath our new office and came up with a list of the year's top 100 books that could be our best ever. It wasn't any easier with a drink in hand to pick, and agree upon, the best books of 2010, but we did it. And, as a magazine that's published continuously since 1872 and reviews over 7,000 books a year, we had a lot to consider. The women are back... strong... and we're all over the globe. Before the full list hits in Monday's issue, here's a peek at our top 10. So who made the cut? There's Franzen mining the American family for his canvas; Egan, the music industry; Hillenbrand, Louis Zamperini, a hero from our greatest generation; Lee, the Korean War; Skloot, one African-American woman's experience with medical research in the days of segregation; Wilkerson, the great African-American migration; Udall, a lonely Mormon polygamist; Spencer, a very American moral dilemma; Lewis, our financial crash of 2008; and, of course, Smith- rock and roll idol, whose literary gifts match her musical talent-delved into New York City's in the '60s and '70s and her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe.

TOP TEN OF THE YEAR:

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (Knopf)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (Random)
The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead)
The Big Short by Michael Lewis (Norton)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Crown)
Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco)
Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer (Ecco)
The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall (Norton)
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (Random)

BEST FICTION:

The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
Parrot & Olivier in America by Peter Carey
The Privileges by Jonathan Dee
Tutankhamun by Nick Drake
Extraordinary Renditions by Andrew Ervin
Faithful Place by Tana French
To the End of the Land by David Grossman, trans. from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
The Four Stages of Cruelty by Keith Hollihan
Father of the Rain by Lily King
Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré
Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste
How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Sourland by Joyce Carol Oates
Years of Red Dust by Qiu Xiaolong
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachmann
Invisible Boy by Cornelia Read
Vestments by John Reimringer
Innocent by Scott Turow
Self-Portraits by Frederic Tuten
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk, trans. from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns

MYSTERY:

The Man with the Baltic Stare by James Church
Love Songs from a Shallow Grave by Colin Cotterill
Bleed a River Deep by Brian McGilloway
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
The Insane Train by Sheldon Russell
The Red Door by Charles Todd

ROMANCE:

The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne
The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook
The Heir by Grace Burrowes
Barely a Lady by Eileen Dreyer
Trial by Desire by Courtney Milan

SF/FANTASY/HORROR:

The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum
Feed by Mira Grant
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms/The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
A Special Place: The Heart of a Dark Matter by Peter Straub

COMICS/GRAPHIC:

X'Ed Out by Charles Burns
Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson
How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less by Sarah Glidden
Duncan the Wonder Dog by Adam Hines
Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri and Randy DuBurke
Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams
Bodyworld by Dash Shaw
Acme Novelty Library: Lint by F.C. Ware
AX: Alternative Manga by Edited by Sean Michael Wilson and Mitsuhiru Asakawa
Weathercraft: A Frank Comic by Jim Woodring

NONFICTION:

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman
Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship by Gail Caldwell
Composed: A Memoir by Rosanne Cash
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
About a Mountain by John D'Agata
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier
The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance by David V. Herlihy
Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans
Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda
The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by Jane Leavy
Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Grace of Silence: A Memoir by Michele Norris
Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed by Judy Pasternak
Let the Swords Encircle Me: Iran-A Journey Behind the Headlines by Scott Peterson
Listen to This by Alex Ross
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error by Kathryn Schulz
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro
Bomber County: The Poetry of a Lost Pilot's War by Daniel Swift
Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. I by Mark Twain
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant
Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the Dawn of the American Woman by Sam Wasson
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu

RELIGION:

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle
Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William Dalrymple
Fishers of Men: The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest by Adam Elenbaas
The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold
Hannah's Child by Stanley Hauerwas
Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid McCulloch
American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell
Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith by Stephanie Saldaña
Hillel: If Not Now, When? by Joseph Telushkin
Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference by Desmond M. Tutu and Mpho A. Tutu

LIFESTYLE:

Food Matters Cookbook: Lose Weight and Heal the Planet with More than 500 Recipes by Mark Bittman
The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual by Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo, Peter Meehan
Around My French Table byDorie Greenspan
One Big Table: 800 Recipes from the Nation's Best Home Cooks, Farmers, Pit-Masters and Chefs by Molly O'Neil
Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives by Annie Murphy Paul
In the Green Kitchen: Techniques to Learn by Heart by Alice Waters

2010 Christian Science Monitor's Best Fiction Books

2011-01-07T12:35:00.000-08:00

The Christian Science Monitor’s best books of fiction of 2010 – gleaned from those books which they reviewed over the year.

36 Arguments for the Existence of God, by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, by Maaza Mengiste
Ruby’s Spoon, by Anna Lawrence Pietroni
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson
Parrot and Olivier in America, by Peter Carey
Tinkers, by Paul Harding
The Imperfectionists,by Tom Rachman
Faithful Place, by Tana French
Room, by Emma Donoghue
To the End of the Land, by David Grossman
The Invisible Bridge,” by Julie Orringer

Wendy's Goals in 2011

2011-01-07T12:33:00.000-08:00

Last year I set the goal to read 12 books, and I accomplished that (you can see the books I read here).

Books Read:

The Three Weismanns of Westport by Cathleen Shine (from 2010 NYT Most Notable) – COMPLETED January 28, 2011; rated 4.5/5; read my review.
Shadow Tag, by Louise Erdrich (from 2010 NYT Most Notable) – COMPLETED February 23, 2011; rated 5/5; read my review.
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin (from 2011 ALA Notable) – COMPLETED March 2, 2011; rated 4.5/5; read my review.
That Old Cape Magic, by Richard Russo (from 2010 Tournament of Books) – COMPLETED April 1, 2011; rated 4.5/5; read my review.
Unbound, by Laura Hillenbrand (from 2010 PW Best Books) – COMPLETED June 6, 2011; rated 5/5; read my review.
The Long Song, by Andrea Levy (from 2010 NYT Most Notable) – COMPLETED July 31, 2011; rated 5/5; read my review.

This year, I am adjusting my goals and hope to read 15 books from the following list:

Bound, by Antonya Nelson (from 2010 NYT Most Notable)
Foreign Bodies, by Cynthia Ozick (from 2010 NYT Most Notable)
How to Read the Air, by Dinaw Mengestu (from 2010 NYT Most Notable)
The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer (from 2010 NYT Most Notable)
Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes (from 2011 ALA Notable AND 2010 NYT Most Notable)
Sourland: Stories, by Joyce Carol Oates (from 2010 NYT Most Notable)
The Surrendered, by Chang-rae Lee (from 2011 ALA Notable AND 2010 NYT Most Notable)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell (from 2011 ALA Notable AND 2010 NYT Most Notable)
Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff (from 2010 NYT Most Notable)
The Wave, by Susan Casey (from 2010 NYT Most Notable)
Homer and Langley, by E.L. Doctorow (from 2010 Tournament of Books)
The Book Of Night Women, by Marion James (from 2010 Tournament of Books)
Under the Dome, by Stephen King (from 2010 Tournament of Books)
The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver (from 2009 NYT Most Notable, AND 2010 Tournament of Books)
Miles From Nowhere, by Nami Mun (from 2010 Tournament of Books)
Burnt Shadows, by Kamila Shamsie (from 2010 Tournament of Books)
Woodsburner, by John Pipkin (from Christian Science Monitor Best Books 2009)
The Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (from Christian Science Monitor Best Books 2009)
The Lost City of Z, by David Grann (from 2009 NYT Most Notable, 2009 PW Best Books, 2010 ALA Notable, AND Christian Science Monitor Best Books 2009)
The Hakawati, by Rabih Alameddine (from 2009 ALA Notable Books)
American Rust, by Philipp Meyer (from 2009 NYT Most Notable)
A Mercy, by Toni Morrison (from 2010 ALA Notable, AND 2008 NYT Most Notable)
Heyday, by Kurt Anderson (from Christian Science Monitor Bests – 2007)
The Septembers of Shiraz, by Dalia Sofer (from 2007 Christian Science Monitor Best Books AND NYT Most Notable-2007)
The Plague of Doves, by Louise Erdrich (from 2009 ALA Notable Books AND 2008 PW Best Books)
The Likeness, by Tana French (from 2008 PW Best Books)
Day, by A.L. Kennedy (from 2008 PW Best Books)
The Boat, by Nam Le (from 2008 PW Best Books and 2008 NYT Most Notable)
Away, by Amy Bloom (from 2008 ALA Notable Books)
The Whistling Season, by Ivan Doig (from 2007 ALA Notable Books)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007 NYT Most Notable)
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, by John Vaillant (from 2011 ALA Notable Books)

Wendy's Goals: 2010

2011-01-07T11:29:00.000-08:00

I managed to reach my goal of reading 12 BOOKS from the Notable lists in 2010...here are the results:

The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood (from 2010 Tournament of Books, AND 2009 NYT Most Notable) – COMPLETED January 7, 2010; rated 3.5/5; read my review.
Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (from Christian Science Monitor Best Books 2009, AND 2010 Tournament of Books) – COMPLETED February 20, 2010; rated 3/5; read my review.
The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters (from 2009 NYT Most Notable, 2009 PW Best Books, AND 2010 Tournament of Books) – COMPLETED April 3, 2010; rated 4/5; read my review.
The Children’s Book, by A.S. Byatt (from 2009 PW Best Books) – COMPLETED March 14, 2010; rated 5/5; read my review.
Little Bee, by Chris Cleave (from 2010 ALA Notable, AND 2010 Tournament of Books) – COMPLETED April 25, 2010; rated 4/5; read my review.
Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann (from 2009 NYT Most Notable, Christian Science Monitor Best Books 2009, 2010 ALA Notable, AND 2010 Tournament of Books) – COMPLETED April 30, 2010; rated 4.5/5; read my review.
There is No Me Without You, by Melissa Fay Greene (from 2007 ALA Most Notable) – COMPLETED June 9, 2010; rated 4/5; read my review.
Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese (from 2009 PW Best Books) – COMPLETED August 7, 2010; rated 5/5; read my review.
Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen (from 2010 NYT Most Notable) – COMPLETED November 15, 2010; rated 4.5/5; read my review.
I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson (from 2010 NYT Most Notable) – COMPLETED July 27, 2010; rated 3/5; read my review.
The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli (from 2010 NYT Most Notable) – COMPLETED March 19, 2010; rated 4.5/5; read my review.
Room by Emma Donaghue (from 2010 NYT Most Notable) – COMPLETED October 2, 2010; rated 5/5; read my review.

Circling My Mother, by Mary Gordon

2010-12-09T10:27:00.001-08:00

As promised, Mary Gordon "circles" her mother in this curious memoir. She grabs memories from others along with her own, and tries to piece together how others saw her mother, to get at a more complete picture.

At the end, she says she doesn't want to forget her mother, and it's apparent that writing about her helps her remember. But it isn't just memories that color the story.

We learn of her mother's, Anna's, early years, when she contracted polio at the age of three, how she lived with her sisters, how she supported her family for years, years for which she never was given thanks. We hear about her unusual marriage to a literary man some years older, who never manages to make money at any of the many schemes he tries. And we hear of the surprise birth of little Mary, Anna's only child, almost a miracle.

Mary remembers growing up with her afflicted mother, wondering how her parents got married. They fought every day but apparently made up at night. She remembers the beauty of her mother's face, complexion, hair, and doesn't forget the awkwardness of her gait, with her damaged leg, eventually encased in a brace.

A part of this memoir that I found particularly interesting was Anna's religion. She was Roman Catholic to the max, a max I honestly did not realize existed (my ignorance). Not only did she adhere to Catholic tenets, but she also chose her friends and even film stars, based on their religion. This in spite of the fact that her husband was Jewish and the two did not easily combine their faiths but rather ridiculed each other. For several years Anna actually took time out to spend with a favorite priest. She, and other older women, would take a "vacation" to be near this priest, to listen to him, spend time in his environment as he moved to different locations. This relationship was an odd one, as the priest was falling continually downward in his work, not easily accepted by most churchgoers, yet these women were entranced with his view of the world.

While Anna was held back by her affliction, Mary suggests that maybe this was actually what she wanted - to be happy in her clerical work and confined to a limited world. Her polio gave her what she may have really wanted.

IN the end, Mary tries to connect the earlier almost glamorous mother with the ill, dying, demented, alcoholic one, relying even on the smell of her favorite perfume. She struggles at this point in the book in a way that she doesn't seem to elsewhere. It is a time of confession and exposure and she is uncomfortable with it, yet feels it is necessary.

I found it a fascinating look at not just the woman and the family but also at the time: depression, war, post-war euphoria, religion. As well as the tidbits about genealogy, where Anna came from and how she hung onto it.

Bright-Sided, by Barbara Ehrenreich

2010-12-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

It has been something of a theme in the last few of Ehrenreich's books that the middle- and lower-classes get to carry the cross. When bad things happen, it's their fault,whether the bad things happen to them or to somebody else. In Bait and Switch, Ehrenreich specifically targets the coaches and seminars aimed at newly-unemployed white collar workers, telling them how to change their looks and attitudes, and asks "what's wrong with this picture?"

In Bright-Sided, she takes this theme farther. She investigates the actual positive-thinking industry itself, from its presumed origins to the present day, and points to the links between this near-magical-thinking method and the recent economic disasters. A significant case in point was George W. Bush, who hated to hear anything "negative". If we believe all is right with the world then good things will come to us.

Ehrenreich traces the origins of the positive-thinking movement to a reaction to doomsday Calvinist training back in the early days of this country. She picks out a few examples of preachers of different sorts, most particularly Mary Baker Eddy, who rejected the common fatalistic teachings of the day and proposed that all we need is there for the taking if we simply let it in.

While she makes several references to Harriet Beecher Stowe and two of her siblings, she does not, oddly, mention Henry Ward Beecher, another brother, who essentially led the movement away from Calvinism to an early version of today's feel-good religions. He became what was probably the first religious megastar, even accompanied by the scandals that seem to go along with this position. (Take a look at The Most Famous Man in America - and here I note that I am related to the Beechers, just for disclosure.) Somehow Ehrenreich misses Beecher, but she doesn't miss the bigger picture.

From here she moves into the twentieth century and to such luminaries as Norman Vincent Peale (The Power of Positive Thinking), Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich), Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People). She looks at the new crop, from Martin Seligman to the co-authors of The Secret to many others.

While the now-huge industry of positive thinking, including motivational speakers, seminars and workshops, books, DVDs and more, relies in large part on the contention that positive thinking actually works, Ehrenreich plunges daggers into that balloon. She dissects the claims that the method is backed by science and finds that the emperor has no clothes.

So what? So what if millions spend their money needlessly on shoddy science? It wouldn't be the first time. The reason for Ehrenreich's anger, which starts at the very beginning of the book with anger at the exhortations of others to see her diagnosis of breast cancer as a positive thing and her chances at beating it as dependent on her attitude, is that this focus on wispy, intuitional, ungrounded methods pulls the rug out from under sounder disciplines and actions. Thus the rise of the corporations at the expense of everyone under the top levels. Thus the damage to our economy, to our housing stability, to our position in the world, and to our own ability to do anything about any of it.

Positive thinking, in other words, is a negative thing. We need to stay not in the negative but in the real world. Base our decisions on sound reasoning and experience. See what is happening clearly, take the blinders off. Get angry if it makes sense.

As usual, the book is simply written, easy to read, and contains many pages of notes and references, allowing one to take it further.

I like that Ehrenreich faced this one down directly, but I want more. I may need to dip more into the heavier texts. We'll see.

New York Times (NYT) Most Notable - 2010

2010-11-28T07:34:00.000-08:00

The Book Review has made these selections from books reviewed since Dec. 6, 2009, when they published their previous Notables list. Links are to NYT reviews of the books.

FICTION & POETRY

AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE. By David Goodwillie.

ANGELOLOGY. By Danielle Trussoni.

THE ASK. By Sam Lipsyte.

BOUND. By Antonya Nelson.

COMEDY IN A MINOR KEY. By Hans Keilson.

DOUBLE HAPPINESS: Stories. By Mary-Beth Hughes.

FOREIGN BODIES. By Cynthia Ozick.

FREEDOM. By Jonathan Franzen.

FUN WITH PROBLEMS: Stories. By Robert Stone.

GIRL BY THE ROAD AT NIGHT: A Novel of Vietnam. By David Rabe.

THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST. By Stieg Larsson.

GREAT HOUSE. By Nicole Krauss.

HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE. By Charles Yu.

HOW TO READ THE AIR. By Dinaw Mengestu.

I CURSE THE RIVER OF TIME. By Per Petterson. Translated by Charlotte Barslund with Per Petterson. .

ILUSTRADO. By Miguel Syjuco.

THE IMPERFECTIONISTS. By Tom Rachman.

THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE. By Julie Orringer.

LISA ROBERTSON’S MAGENTA SOUL WHIP. By Lisa Robertson.

THE LIVING FIRE: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2010. By Edward Hirsch.

THE LONG SONG. By Andrea Levy.

THE LOST BOOKS OF THE ODYSSEY. By Zachary Mason.

THE LOTUS EATERS. By Tatjana Soli.

MATTERHORN: A Novel of the Vietnam War. By Karl Marlantes.

MEMORY WALL: Stories. By Anthony Doerr.

MR. PEANUT. By Adam Ross.

THE NEAREST EXIT. By Olen Steinhauer.

THE NEW YORKER STORIES. By Ann Beattie.

ONE DAY. By David Nicholls.

THE PRIVILEGES. By Jonathan Dee.

ROOM. By Emma Donoghue.

THE SAME RIVER TWICE. By Ted Mooney.

SELECTED STORIES. By William Trevor.

SHADOW TAG. By Louise Erdrich.

SOLAR. By Ian McEwan.

SOMETHING RED. By Jennifer Gilmore.

SOURLAND: Stories. By Joyce Carol Oates.

THE SPOT: Stories. By David Means.

SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY. By Gary Shteyngart.

THE SURRENDERED. By Chang-rae Lee.

THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET. By David Mitchell.

THE THREE WEISSMANNS OF WESTPORT. By Cathleen Schine.

TO THE END OF THE LAND. By David Grossman. Translated by Jessica Cohen.

VIDA. By Patricia Engel.

A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD. By Jennifer Egan.

WHAT BECOMES: Stories. By A. L. Kennedy.

WHITE EGRETS: Poems. By Derek Walcott.

WILD CHILD: Stories. By T. Coraghessan Boyle.

NONFICTION

ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis. By Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.

APOLLO’S ANGELS: A History of Ballet. By Jennifer Homans.

BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY: The Election That Changed Everything for American Women. By Rebecca Traister.

THE BOOK IN THE RENAISSANCE. By Andrew Pettegree.

THE BRIDGE: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. By David Remnick.

CHANGING MY MIND: Occasional Essays. By Zadie Smith.

CHARLIE CHAN: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous With American History. By Yunte Huang.

CHRISTIANITY: The First Three Thousand Years. By Diarmaid MacCulloch.

CLEOPATRA: A Life. By Stacy Schiff.

COLONEL ROOSEVELT. By Edmund Morris.

COMMON AS AIR: Revolution, Art, and Ownership. By Lewis Hyde.

CONTESTED WILL: Who Wrote Shakespeare? By James Shapiro.

COUNTRY DRIVING: A Journey Through China From Farm to Factory. By Peter Hessler.

THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES: A Biography of Cancer. By Siddhartha Mukherjee.

EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History. By S. C. Gwynne.

ENCOUNTER. By Milan Kundera. Translated by Linda Asher. (Harper/HarperCollins, $23.99.) Illuminating essays on the arts in the context of a “post art” era.

THE FIERY TRIAL: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. By Eric Foner.

FINISHING THE HAT: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes. By Stephen Sondheim.

FOUR FISH: The Future of the Last Wild Food. By Paul Greenberg. (Penguin Press, $25.95.)

HITCH-22: A Memoir. By Christopher Hitchens. (Twelve, $26.99.)

THE HONOR CODE: How Moral Revolutions Happen. By Kwame Anthony Appiah.

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS. By Rebecca Skloot.

INSECTOPEDIA. By Hugh Raffles. (Pantheon, $29.95.)

KOESTLER: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic. By Michael Scammell.

THE LAST BOY: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood. By Jane Leavy.

LAST CALL: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. By Daniel Okrent.

THE LAST HERO: A Life of Henry Aaron. By Howard Bryant.

THE LAST STAND: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. By Nathaniel Philbrick.

LIFE. By Keith Richards with James Fox.

LONG FOR THIS WORLD: The Strange Science of Immortality. By Jonathan Weiner.

THE MIND’S EYE. By Oliver Sacks.

OPERATION MINCEMEAT: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory. By Ben Macintyre.

ORIGINS: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives. By Annie Murphy Paul.

PARISIANS: An Adventure History of Paris. By Graham Robb.

PEARL BUCK IN CHINA: Journey to “The Good Earth.” By Hilary Spurling.

POPS: A Life of Louis Armstrong. By Terry Teachout.

THE POSSESSED: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. By Elif Batuman.

THE PRICE OF ALTRUISM: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness. By Oren Harman.

THE PROMISE: President Obama, Year One. By Jonathan Alter.

THE PUBLISHER: Henry Luce and His American Century. By Alan Brinkley.

RATIFICATION: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788. By Pauline Maier.

THE SABBATH WORLD: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time. By Judith Shulevitz.

SCORPIONS: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices. By Noah Feldman.

SECRET HISTORIAN: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade. By Justin Spring.

SUPREME POWER: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court. By Jeff Shesol.

THE TALENTED MISS HIGHSMITH: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith. By Joan Schenkar.

THE TENTH PARALLEL: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam. By Eliza Griswold.

TRAVELS IN SIBERIA. By Ian Frazier.

THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. By Isabel Wilkerson.

WASHINGTON: A Life. By Ron Chernow.

THE WAVE: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean. By Susan Casey.

WILLIE MAYS: The Life, the Legend. By James S. Hirsch.

The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard

2010-10-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

There are some literary books, I have to admit, that aren't meant for me. I think of myself as omnivorous when it comes to books, reading many genres, many styles, fiction and non, and liking many unexpectedly. Then there are those with which I never can connect.

This is one of those books. It is written almost poetically, in short sentences and paragraphs, almost abruptly. Odd little bits are added to paragraphs, as if they are thrown in later, an afterthought.

It is a short book about the lives of Toby Maytree (always referred to as "Maytree") and Lou Bigelow (always called "Lou"), together and apart, from when they met to the end of their lives. It is about the nature of love, what it means to love, as well as the nature of life, what it means to live. The story is told in the third person and conversations are reported within paragraphs, usually without distinguishing punctuation. The effect, even though often the words are exact, was to me an effect of distance, as if I weren't really there hearing those words.

A paragraph:

Two years later they were dancing in the kitchen to "Lady be Good". Maytree turned down the radio and ran his notion by Lou. It is an unnameable boon love hauls down, that people rightly prize as the best of life, and for which it fusses over weddings. Not only will a cave-dwelling pair cull food and kill so kids thrive, but their feeling for each other, not to mention for the kids, brings something beyond food people need. Each felt it between them when they danced. It was real as anything the mind could know. Her eyes' crystal, her split-faced smile, agreed. He rolled the volume knob. Oh sweet and lovely.

I never really got to know them, although I had a general feeling I did not like Maytree and I somewhat liked Lou, what I could grasp of her. I was irritated by the names and means of some of their companions - Deary and Reevadare, for example, for no reason I can name. I simply never connected. I have read other reviews by those who so loved this book that they read it twice. I am missing what they have, and am perhaps poorer for it. I hope this book finds another like that.

Cutting for Stone - Wendy's Review

2010-08-14T11:45:00.001-07:00

The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not. – from Cutting For Stone -

Shiva and Marion Praise Stone come into the world as identical twins attached at the skull. Their father, a British surgeon living in Ethiopia, abandons them within moments of their birth, and their mother (a nun who kept her pregnancy secret from everyone) dies without holding them in her arms. The two brothers are raised in and around the hospital in which they are born. Called Missing. a misspelling of the intended name Mission, its name coincides with one of the major themes of the novel: missing people, missing fathers, missing clues, etc… Abraham Verghese’s sprawling family saga spans nearly fifty years and takes the readers from Ethiopia, to New York, to Boston, and back to the small village in Africa where the story first began.

Marion narrates the novel, taking the reader back to when his mother first makes her voyage to Africa as a young first novitiate of the Carmelite Order of Madras. While traveling there she meets Thomas Stone, a skilled British surgeon, and the first glimmerings of their love begin. In the first part of the book, the reader is introduced to Matron (Missing’s wise leader), Hema (a gynecologist who becomes the boys’ adoptive mother), Ghosh (a warm and caring doctor who imbues Marion with the desire to become a surgeon), Rosina (the boys’ nursemaid), and Genet (Rosina’s young daughter who steals Marion’s heart). Once the characters have been established, the novel moves forward building on the lives of the characters and pulling the reader into their stories.

Verghese’s debut novel is centered around the twins who although are physically identical, are very different people. Their connection as brothers is tested throughout the book, and although the reader sees their relationship through only the eyes of Marion, it is a compelling look at siblings, specifically twins.

He was the rake, and I the erstwhile virgin; he the genius who acquired knowledge effortlessly while I toiled in the night for the same mastery; he the famous fistula surgeon, and I just another trauma surgeon. Had we switched roles, it wouldn’t have mattered one bit to the universe. – from Cutting for Stone -

Cutting for Stone is a big, wonderful saga about love, fate, search for identity, and the passion that drives one to pursue their life’s work. The lives of the characters find a natural rhythm in the setting of Ethiopia, a country which has faced coups, military dictatorship, and instability. Verghese captures the beauty of Ethiopia’s countryside, as well as the colorful personalities of its citizens.

In many ways, Verghese’s voice is similar to another great writer – that of John Irving. His ability to bring to life quirky characters while fleshing out complex ideas, his meandering plot which spans decades, and his probing into father/son relationships all made me think of Irving’s work. It is no wonder that I immediately became embroiled in the novel and did not want it to end. I was not surprised when in the acknowledgments at the end of the book Verghese gives a nod to Irving’s friendship and wisdom.

Cutting for Stone is one of those books which is impossible to put down. Here is a lush, emotional, intelligent and compelling novel written by an accomplished story teller. I loved that Verghese, a physician himself, wrote a novel about two generations of doctors and was able to capture the passion of medicine. By placing the story mostly in a small African village, Verghese is able to show that the physician’s greatest gift is not found in technology, but in his or her ability to provide comfort.

I loved this book and its characters (who felt like living, breathing people to me). I loved the journey. Abraham Verghese has written a gorgeous novel which deserves to be savored. Readers who love hefty family sagas in the style of John Irving, and are drawn to literary fiction will enjoy this book.

Highly recommended.

Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers - Tim's Review

2010-08-06T19:35:00.000-07:00

I recently read an an interesting comparison between two dominant strands of how we approach reading a book, particularly for reviewing -- the journalistic approach and the literary criticism approach. While I don't necessarily agree with all the observations, it does fairly define those approaches and, as this review demonstrates, I find myself largely in the journalistic view.

Why is that? Because the journalistic approach is based on the individual reader's response to a book. And that directly influences my view of Richard Powers' most recent novel, Generosity: An Enhancement. Put simply, I don't care for metafiction. So, it's not surprising that the fact it appears in the first paragraph affects my view of the book, although I can't honestly say to what extent.

Granted, the book is not full of passages telling you this is, in part, a story about someone writing a story. Yet the device is used enough to distract me and, more importantly, undercut the more interesting social issues the book presents. But for the metafictional elements, I have fairly high praise for Generosity, which made a number of "best of" lists when initially released last year and is now out in a trade paper edition.

Powers uses a two-track approach to the main story. (Or is it? Is metafiction about the story you think you're reading or the statements and suggestions of the fictional (?) author writing the fictional story?) One track is built around Russell Stone, a writer who basically quit writing when he learned how his first published articles affected the people who were the subjects. He now lives in a small Chicago apartment, editing the stories submitted for the entirely subscriber-generated content of a self-improvement magazine and, as the novel opens, is beginning a job teaching a creative nonfiction night class at a small nondescript college in downtown Chicago. Among his students is Thassadit Amzwar, an Algerian Berber refugee from the county's civil wars and political unrest. Despite the strife that marked her life, Amzwar seems immeasurably happy, ebullient to the point she even has a positive effect on her fellow students and people she encounters on the street. Enthralled by her disposition, Stone becomes concerned whether she has hypomania, one aspect of bipolar disorder, or if she is the rare hyperthermic, a person who is always happy and positive. He even consults a clinical psychologist with the school's counseling center, Candace Weld, who bears a striking resemblance to the lost love of Stone's life and also becomes drawn in by Amzwar's ubiquitous euphoria.

The other track centers on Tonia Schiff, the host of a cable television science show, who is preparing a episode about the potential benefits and ramifications of genomics and genetic engineering. The main subject of the program is Thomas Kurton, whose biotech companies are seeking ways to improve life through genetic engineering. When the two tracks cross, testing done on Amzwar by Kurton's company gives rise to a belief that the potential exists to create a "happiness gene" based on her genetic structure. Once Amzwar's identity leaks out after the publication of the journal article on the testing, her life changes dramatically.

Akin to how Powers' National Book Award-winning The Echo Maker examined aspects of neuropsychology, Generosity considers the implications of programming the genes of fetuses, creating drugs tailor-made for an individual's genetic code or extending life far beyond today's life expectancies -- and the profits to be made from patenting genetic information. Kurton see this as creating a wonderful new world. Stone and Schiff are more leery, In fact, after trying to grasp the journal article, Stone concludes:

Homo sapiens has already divided itself, if not into the Eloi and the Morlocks, then into demigods and dispossessed, those who can tame living chemistry and those who are mere downstream products. A tiny elite is assembling knowledge more magical than anything in Futopia, ... learning how a million proteins interact to assemble body and soul. Meanwhile, Stone and his 99.9 percent of the race can only sit by, helplessly illiterate, simply praying that the story will spare them.

Powers also takes Generosity beyond the ethical and social issues of the concept that happiness is simply a function of genetics. The characters also confront the more basic questions of how we define happiness or contentment, how we achieve -- or lose -- it, and how each of us views our lives and our world. As a result, it is not as deep an exploration into the science and tends to be more character driven than The Echo Maker.

Powers does have the ability to quickly capture characters. For example, saying one of the students in Stone's class is "a small, hard woman who must run with both wolves and scissors" does as much to establish that character as a couple paragraphs of description. At the same time, the main characters don't seem to be plumbed too much. Weld, for example, never really feels fully fleshed out and rarely comes across as much more than a convenient bridge between Stone's world and Kurton's. Moreover, every time the omniscient author interjects himself and reminds us the characters are his creation, their development and our ability to invest in them is undermined.

Setting aside my admitted distaste for metafiction, Generosity is more engaging than The Echo Maker. Particularly with its flaws, that doesn't make it a national award winning book. But if all we read were books that won awards, we would miss a lot of interesting works. Even for readers who may have my predilection toward metafiction, the flaws in Generosity are offset by the book's ideas and the way Powers approaches them. As such, it not only is worth reading, it may be a more accessible introduction to his style and approach for newcomers to his work.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)

There Is No Me Without You, by Melissa Faye Greene

2010-07-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

Greene brings home the AIDS epidemic in Ethiopia in this book, by making it personal. She doesn't spare us the statistics, which are too large to be comprehensible, but she intertwines the numbers with the names. A small sample of names, drawn mostly from the orphanage created by one woman, Haregewoin Teferra.

Haregewoin is already on the wrong side of middle age when she loses her grown daughter, one of only two. She has known grief before, with the loss of her husband, and the loss of her daughter drags her down to an unrecognizable state. So when she is approached by a Catholic organization to take in and foster a couple of AIDS orphans, she initially can't see why she would do such a thing. But then she realizes that the priest is handing her a lifeline, bringing more children into her life when she desperately needs them. From then, she can't say no.

She takes children into her little compound, comprised of a small brick house and some metal shipping containers, surrounded by a wall. A day hardly passes when there isn't somebody at the door with another child. And Haregewoin has enough love for them all. For she is that rare person who loves deeply, who touches everyone with that love. For some time she survives with help from her other daughter Suzie (sending part of her paycheck), from donations from other friends, and from whatever she can dig up. When she is approached by an organization to adopt out some of her children, she moves into a different stage financially.

She begins to obtain more funding and more children, and is able to secure better accommodations. But money continues to cause her distress and soon the number of children has become so large that she no longer recognizes each by name. Through this detailed description of Haregewoin's life and work with orphans we learn that "even saints aren't saints", that having a passion for children is not enough.

We learn, too, how it is that millions in Africa have simply been written off because drug companies are unwilling to allow them access to effective AIDS drugs at reasonable cost and how politicians unfortunately back the drug companies. In other words, the AIDS crisis in Africa is as much a tale of greed as anything else.

Surprisingly, at least to me, it appears that the genesis of AIDS and its later spread have had nothing to do with sex. There is a lot of information in this book. There is also a touching story of one woman, along with brief stories of many of the orphans she saved. It is therefore highly readable and a way to bring some perspective to a problem so huge our minds can't take it in.

The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vásquez - Tim's Review

2010-07-04T08:43:00.000-07:00

If someone mentions South America and Nazis, what comes to mind? For many, it's the seemingly ubiquitous idea of Nazis escaping there after the war. While the concept has at least a few kernels of truth, it ignores or pushes aside events that swept up Latin America during the war.

South American writers, though, recognize that even if their nations were not combatants, they were not immune from the effects of Nazism and World War II. Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, in fact, created a fictional encyclopedia of ultra right-wing writers in North, Central and South America with his Nazi Literature in the Americas. More directly addressing the topic is The Informers, the first novel of Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez translated into English.

The Informers is inspired by a woman of German-Jewish origin Vásquez met in late 1999 who emigrated to Colombia with her family as a teenager in 1938. In Vásquez's hands, she becomes Sara Guterman, the subject of a book written by Gabriel Santoro, a young Bogotá writer whose father of the same name is a nationally recognized and honored professor of rhetoric. Like her real life counterpart, Guterman's family moves to Colombia in the 1930s as her German Jewish parents fled Nazism. She becomes a lifelong friend of the senior Santoro.

In telling Guterman's story, Santoro fils also examines the impact of the "Proclaimed List of Certain Blocked Nationals," a list announced by the U.S. Government of some 1,800 individuals and entities in Latin American "deemed to be acting for the benefit of Germany and Italy." That list became the basis of blacklists in Colombia, with people informing on others, usually with German or Jewish backgrounds, for real or unfounded suspicion or out of self-interest. Many end up in internment camps in Colombia and, in fact, a number of Latin Americans were sent to the United States for internment. The senior Santoro tells his students there were "thousands of people who accused, who denounced, who informed." He teaches that "the system of blacklists gave power to the weak, and the weak are a majority. That was life during those years: a dictatorship of weakness. The dictatorship of resentment[.]"

Despite those comments and the fact he also teaches lawyers and judges, Santoro père disparages his son's book in a published review. Not only does he downplay its discussion of the blacklist years, he calls the book a "failure" and says listing its shortcomings "would be as futile as it would be exhausting." Father and son do not speak for three years after that.

The senior Santoro breaks the silence when he contacts his son to tell him he is facing a life-threatening health condition. The two begin to reconcile and when father survives the health scare, he views it as a new chance at life. While he at some point apologizes for the review, he never truly explains his reasons for it. After several months, though, the senior Santoro dies in a car accident. Before and after his father's death, with information provided by Guterman and his father's girlfriend (his own informers), Santoro begins to peel away layers of silence, misdirection and falsity to reveal a secret his father hid for decades and that explain his hostility to the book.

Anne McLean translates Vásquez's generally artful prose, with the latter being an author who doesn't indulge in trite metaphor. To the contrary, Santoro senior's "breathing whistled like a paper kite" and "the notion of his past bothered him like a raspberry seed stuck in his teeth." While the younger Santoro narrates the book, Vásquez is not tied to a single traditional narrative style. One part of The Informers is the first chapter of Sanotoro's book about Guterman. Other parts are almost transcript-like versions of interviews and yet another is basically a recording of a conversation between the younger Santoro and Guterman, consisting of lengthy passages of Guterman's recollection of events before and during the blacklist era. Some readers may see the changing formats format extending a slowly unfolding structure that is already intricate but it does not become a major distraction. Perhaps more noticeable is that the younger Santoro seems strangely aloof, as if viewing himself as a journalist requires him to approach the events and revelations that impact his life in that role.

The Informers, first published in translation in the U.S. in 2009 and now in a trade paper edition, doesn't limit itself to Colombia's World War II history. Electoral politics, internal armed conflict and terrorism, and the power of the drug cartels also come into play as Vásquez takes his story through some half century of Colombian history. Those items play a role in the author's own life, as the violence and unrest caused by guerrilla movements and the drug lords led him to Europe, where he now lives and writes in Barcelona. (Interestingly, Bolaño lived on the Mediterranean coast in Spain less than 50 miles from Barcelona when he wrote most of his novels.)

With The Informers, Vásquez provides another example of how literary fiction and many of its most common themes can illuminate seemingly forgotten history and its consequences. Not only do these themes help animate the story, they help engage the reader. The fact the themes explored in The Informers, such as the relationship of father and son, family secrets and betrayal, are age-old doesn't keep it from helping unfold 20th Century history.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)

There is No Me Without You - Wendy's Review

2010-06-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

Haregewoin had one color photo of Atetegeb holding her baby. She enlarged this photo until its lines turned all pastel and soft. She framed it and centered it on the wall above the sofa. She framed a smaller black-and-white photo of Atetegeb and Suzie as teenagers laughing together. Under the lass she placed a slip of paper upon which she’d typed the words from a pop song: “There is no me without you.”

A child cannot live without a mother or father. A mother or father cannot live without the child. - from There is No Me Without You, page 134 -

A widowed, middle-class woman grieves for her daughter who dies horribly from AIDS. More than a year later, depressed and still mourning, she enters a church to request a hut in the cemetery near her daughter’s grave – she has decided to go into seclusion and live out the rest of her life in grief. Instead of seclusion, however, the priest offers her something different – to become a foster mother to an orphaned teenage girl whose mother has died from AIDS. The decision to accept the priest’s offer is a turning point for Haregewoin Teferra and her life begins again.

She had lost her daughter. And God sent her these precious children. - from There is No Me Without You, page 259 -

There is No Me Without You is Haregewoin’s story told by award-winning journalist Melissa Fay Greene. When Haregewoin took in her first orphan, her heart was opened to the plight of her country’s children. Thousands of Ethiopians were dying from a virus with no cure, and leaving behind their children who were shunned because of fear. The options for these children were few – many ended up on the streets, starving, selling sex for food, or dying from the same disease which had taken their parents. Haregewoin Teferra was an angel of mercy. Very quickly she found her small home filled with children who had no other place to go.

Greene provides the historical backdrop for the AIDS pandemic in Africa which later made its way to every country in the world. She explores the variety of theories about why AIDS arrived in the human population…the most compelling of these being the theory of serial passage – that a weak pathogenic virus is strengthened through mutation of the virus as it is injected from one host to another. In the case of AIDS, unsterile injections of vaccines in third world countries may have been the genesis of the disease whose roots have been found in African monkeys. I was shocked to learn that even as late as 2000, there was an estimated thirty to fifty billion unsterile injections occuring per year…even though a single-use autodestruct disposable syringe had already been developed. Why were these new syringes not being used? Of course, the reason is money.

Global health experts agree that safer needles are a crucial step toward eradicating the iatrogenic spread of diseases, but where will the funding come from? WHO’s budget is insufficient and the big donors are not coming forward. - from There is no You Without Me, page 84 -

Greene reveals the incredible poverty and poor delivery of medical services which has allowed AIDS to continue killing people by the thousands in Africa, while in the United States people are surviving the disease because of access to life saving drugs. She examines the greed of the pharmaceutical companies who initially charged upwards of $15,000 per year for the latest AIDS drugs, while production costs for those drugs were somewhere in the range of $200. Patent protection contributes to the inability for poor countries to acquire the medications needed to save their communities. When GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) patent on AZT expired in 2005, generic drug makers were able to provide the drug for $105 per year, a marked decrease from GSK’s price of $3893.64 per year. Despite the ability to now provide generic first line AIDS drugs to patients, multinational drug companies continue to fight for exclusive patents on the second line drugs…a move that makes them out of reach for poor countries.

The statistics Greene shares with her readers is stunning and heartbreaking; the numbers staggering:

81% of Ethiopia’s people live on less than two dollars a day; and 26% live on less than a dollar a day (page 12)
By 1999, UNAIDS estimated that 33 million people around the world were living with HIV/AIDS and that 16.3 million people worldwide had died from the disease. (page 113)
In 2000, AIDS had killed more than twenty-one million people, including four million children. More than thirteen million children had been orphaned by AIDS – twelve million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Twenty-five percent of those lived in two countries: Nigeria and Ethiopia. (page 20)
By 2000, Ethiopia had the world’s third-largest HIV/AIDS-infected population, trailing only India and South Africa. (page 117)
Spending on health per person in Ethiopia in 2002 was two dollars per year – across all of sub-Saharan Africa during that time, it was ten dollars per person per year (page 14)
In 2005, Ethiopia had 1,563,000 AIDS orphans; and 4,414,000 orphans from all causes – the second highest number in Africa (page 268)
In 2006, 4.7 million people were in immediate need of lifesaving AIDS drugs, but only 500,000 had access to them. During that time, sixty-six hundred Africans were dying each day of AIDS. In Zimbabwe, a UNICEF report stated that every twenty minutes a child either died from AIDS or was orphaned by the disease. (page 25)

The hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic in Africa are the children who continue to be orphaned by this disease. They are also the most innocent of victims – often being born HIV positive because their mothers are ill with the disease.

In North America and Europe, it had been discovered that triple-dose combination therapies, beginning twenty-eight weeks into a women’s pregnancy, could reduce transmission of HIV to the baby by 98 percent and save the mother, too. Public health campaigns, counseling, prenatal care, and ARV therapy for HIV-infected pregnant women in the United States reduced childhood infections to below 2 percent of births. In 2002, the number of new cases of pediatric AIDS was ninety-two.

And in 2003, fifty-nine.

But fewer than 10 percent of HIV-positive pregnant women in Africa had access to these drugs.

So, in Ethiopia, the number of new pediatric cases in 2003 was roughly sixty thousand. - from There is No Me Without You, page 214 -

In light of these kinds of statistics, Haregewoin’s mission to help the children of her country is even more poignant. Greene’s writing is compelling. She intersperses the facts with beautiful descriptions of Africa and its people. She captures the stories of individual children with a tenderness which made my heart ache. Many of the children mentioned in the book go on to find homes in adoptive families. Some do not.

Perhaps the strongest element of this book was Greene’s portrayal of Haregewoin herself. No one is perfect, but it would have been easy for Greene to place Haregewoin on a pedestal – make her into a saint. Instead, Greene describes Haregewoin’s weaknesses, struggles and ultimate triumph through a lens of honesty. Times were not easy. Choices made were not always the right ones. And yet, imagine stepping forward to take on what Haregewoin Teferra took on. She was essentially a volunteer who lived, breathed, and slept her mission of saving children. Sadly, Haregewoin passed away from natural causes last year. Her work, however, continues to live on.

There is No Me Without You is another one of those books which is hard to read. It is painful. At times it made me angry. There seems to be no end to the suffering in Africa. And yet, it is also a book which is important to read. There is hope within the pages – a glimpse of the humanity and kindness that can overcome the worst of situations. And for that reason, it is a book I recommend.

Let the Great World Spin - Wendy's Review

2010-06-01T08:17:00.001-07:00

Tacked inside his cabin door was a sign: NOBODY FALLS HALFWAY.

He believed in walking beautifully, elegantly. It had to work as a kind of faith that he would get to the other side. He had fallen only once while training – once exactly, so he felt it couldn’t happen again, it was beyond possibility. A single flaw was necessary anyway. In any work of beauty there had to be one small thread left hanging. - from Let the Great World Spin, page 160 -

On August 7, 1974 Philippe Petit – a 24 year old daredevil - walked a tightrope wire strung between the twin towers 1350 feet above New York City. His feat stunned New Yorkers who marveled at the ease at which he traversed the wire – not once, but seven or eight times – before handing himself over to police. It is this event which opens Colum McCann’s novel Let the Great World Spin – a novel less about New York City and more about the connections between people and how life continues forward despite unfathomable loss.

Let the Great World Spin introduces nearly a dozen characters to the reader who at first seem unconnected. But as McCann allows them to tell their stories in alternating chapters, the synchronicity of their lives begins to unfold. At first it seems they are only related to each other through the feat of the tightrope walker – it is only by reading through to the end of the novel that the reader recognizes their connections on a deeper level.

It had never occurred to me before but everything in New York is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself, each thing as strange as the last, and connected. – from Let the Great World Spin, page 306 -

John Corrigan is a spiritual man who immigrates to America. He finds himself living in the Bronx among the prostitutes and pimps, the crime and the poverty. He is a gentle man who is searching for a greater meaning. His character represents the quest for the simple things in our lives which bring comfort and beauty – the yearning for light in the darkness.

What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday. The comfort he got from the hard, cold truth – the filth, the war, the poverty – was that life could be capable of small beauties. He wasn’t interested in the glorious tales of the afterlife or the notions of a honey-soaked heaven. To him that was a dressing room for hell. Rather he consoled himself with the fact that, in the real world, when he looked closely into the darkness he might find the presence of a light, damaged and bruised, but a little light all the same. – from Let the Great World Spin, page 20 -

Throughout the novel, the reader is reminded of the darkness in the world – the wars, addiction, crime. A judge finds himself cynical and overwhelmed despite his desire to make a positive difference in the world. A group of women meet each week to share the stories of their sons who have died in the Vietnam War. A prostitute examines her life from behind the bars of a prison cell.

Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief. - from Let the Great World Spin, page 247 -

My big tall boy, shaving. Long ago, long ago. The simple things come back to us. They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward. – from Let the Great World Spin, page 81 -

Yet, McCann does not leave his readers in the darkness. The novel is also full of hope and that little bit of light which Corrigan seeks. At its heart, Let the Great World Spin is about moving forward despite the flaws in our world, overcoming our losses, and leaning on each other.

It was America, after all. The sort of place where you should be allowed to walk as high as you wanted. – from Let the Great World Spin, page 262 -

When the twin towers fell on September 11, 2001 New York gasped, mourned, hugged each other closer, and then kept on going. That resoluteness in the face of unspeakable tragedy is mirrored in McCann’s book. The prose is rich, the characters infused with grace and courage, and I found myself drinking in the story, letting it wash over me.

McCann’s novel also takes a look at a pivotal point in American history – the final year of the Vietnam War, a war which took a huge toll on young lives, and forced us to look deeply at what brings us into conflict and the cost of such decisions. Decades later, it seems we are still learning the same lessons, and so it seems fitting that the final pages of Let the Great World Spin take place in 2002, as America totters on the cusp of yet another controversial war.

Colum McCann won the 2009 National Book Award for Let the Great World Spin – and it is easy to see why. This is a complex novel peopled with unforgettable characters.

Highly recommended.

Visit my blog tour for this book.

Little Bee - Wendy's Review

2010-04-28T07:14:00.001-07:00

How I would love to be a British pound. A pound is free to travel to safety, and we are free to watch it go. This is the human triumph. This is called, globalization. A girl like me gets stopped at immigration, but a pound can leap the turnstiles, and dodge the tackles of those big men with their uniform caps, and jump straight into a waiting airport taxi. Where to, sir? Western Civilization, my good man, and make it snappy. – from Little Bee, page 2 -

Sarah and Andrew, a British couple, travel to Nigeria where they hope to heal the wounds in their marriage. They check into a beachfront hotel, blissfully ignorant of a war which is raging in the area – a war for oil, where the native people are being murdered to gain access to the black gold which lies beneath their villages. A young girl (who has taken the name Little Bee) and her sister have fled from one of these villages and soldiers are tracking them down. It is on the beach that the African girls cross paths with Sarah and Andrew…and horror unfolds.

Chris Cleave’s novel doesn’t start on the beach, but everything that happens there has a lasting impact on the characters. The novel actually begins two years after the beach incident – Little Bee managed to get to England where she sought asylum and where, within minutes of her arrival, the immigration authorities locked her up in an Immigration Removal Center. Now she has managed to get free of the Center and has traveled on foot to Sarah and Andrew’s home. It is there where the real story unfolds.

That summer – the summer my husband died – we all had identities we were loath to let go of. My son had his Batman costume, I still used my husband’s surname, and Little Bee, though she was relatively safe with us, still clung to the name she had taken in a time of terror. We were exiles from reality, that summer. We were refugees from ourselves. – from Little Bee, page 22 -

Little Bee is a book about two women who unexpectedly find each other through tragedy. It is their stories, told in alternating points of view, which drive the narrative of the novel and reveal the underlying inhumanity of the refugee and asylum system in England.

Cleave’s prose is ironic, at times humorous (although the themes of the novel are anything but funny), and original. When Sarah compares the recent unfolding of the war to that of her child, Charlie (who dresses as Batman throughout the novel), the resultant analogy is a brilliant look at how wars (and children) need our constant attention lest they grow out of control.

The war was four years old. It had started in the same month my son was born, and they’d grown up together. At first both of them were a huge shock and demanded constant attention but as each year went by, they became more autonomous and one could start to take one’s eye off them for extended periods. Sometimes a particular event would cause me momentarily to look at one or the other of them – my son, or the war – with my full attention, and at times like these I would always think, Gosh, haven’t you grown? – from Little Bee, page 33 -

Thematically the novel explores fate and how in an instant our lives can be changed by things not in our control. It also takes a hard look immigration laws, specifically those impacting individuals seeking asylum from brutal governments (which are often militarized). A third theme looks at the choices we make and how those choices impact our futures and the futures of those closest to us. Cleave examines these themes through the unlikely friendship of the two protagonists – Little Bee and Sarah.

One of the problems I had with the book was not so much the story or Cleave’s writing – but the marketing of the book which sets the reader up with certain very high expectations. The book flap reads:

We don’t want to tell you what happens in this book. It is truly a special story and we don’t want to spoil it.

And they don’t tell us. So as a reader, we purchase the book with certain expectations. I expected not just a good book, but a book which was going to blow me away; perhaps provide a twist in the plot which would surprise me. That didn’t happen (I actually anticipated how the book HAD to end) and I could not help but feel a little manipulated. I think the publisher did a bit of a disservice to the author by marketing the book the way they did…so I won’t hold it against Cleave.

In fact, this is a good book. It is a meaningful book which is heartbreaking in many ways. Despite revealing the dark side of humanity in his story, Cleave also shows that there are good people in the world. There is light even when there is darkness. The world may have evil, but it also has hope and goodness. My favorite character in the book was not either of the women, but Charlie – the little boy who poses as a superhero. Not only does Charlie represent the innocence in the world, but he is also symbolic of future hope. His child’s voice was endearing and honest…a refreshing glimmer of goodness in a novel which looks at betrayal.

Little Bee is not an easy read, but it is a book I am glad I read.

Recommended for book groups, and for readers who enjoy literary fiction.

The Children's Book - Wendy's Review

2010-04-04T15:36:00.002-07:00

The children mingled with the adults, and spoke and were spoken to. Children in these families, at the end of the nineteenth century, were different from children before or after. They were neither dolls nor miniature adults. They were not hidden away in nurseries, but present at family meals, where their developing characters were taken seriously and rationally discussed, over supper or during long country walks. And yet, at the same time, the children in this world had their own separate, largely independent lives, as children. – from The Children’s Book, page 31 -

The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt is a huge, sprawling multi-family saga set in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. Olive Wellwood, a children’s author, lives with her husband Humphrey and their seven children (ages zero to 13 years) at Todefright – a huge mansion whose grounds edge the forest. Olive writes each child their own story – fairy tales which have no end.

They were like segmented worms, with hooks and eyes to fit onto the next moving and coiling section. Every closure of plot had to contain a new beginning. There were tributary plots, that joined the mainstream again, further on, further in. Olive plundered the children’s stories sometimes, for publishable situations, or people, or settings, but everyone understood that the magic persisted because it was hidden, because it was a shared secret. – from The Children’s Book, page 89 -

The stories Olive writes parallel reality. The secrets she alludes to also exist outside of the books, lurking in the dark corners of Todefright waiting to be discovered.

There are several other families which comprise Byatt’s ambitious novel. Benedict Fludd, a barely sane potter, hides his perverse fantasies about his two daughters, while Fludd’s wife escapes reality by sinking into a drug induced state of complacency. Humphrey’s brother Basil and German wife Katharina are raising the beautiful Griselda and rebel Charles (ages 11 and 14). Prosper Cain, a museum owner and widow, also has two children – the independent minded Julian (age 15) and conflicted Florence (age 12). Finally, there is Phillip who is found wandering in the basement of Cain’s museum and is taken in by Benedict Fludd when he realizes that Phillip is a budding artist (later, Phillip’s sister Elsie joins the cast).

Despite the sheer number of characters introduced, Byatt does an admirable job at developing them – giving them distinct personalities, strengths and weaknesses. I did stop reading early on in order to create a character chart, but found that by the time I got 100 pages into the novel, I no longer needed to refer to it. Later I found this terrific list of characters on Wikipedia.

Byatt uses the historical and political backdrop of the Women’s Suffrage movement in England, Socialism and the inside workings of the Fabian Society, and the build up to WWI to frame her novel which begins in 1895 and ends just after WWI in 1919. Byatt skillfully shows the transition from the Victorian Age to the Edwardian age.

It was a new time, not a young time. Skittishly, it cast off the moral anguish and human responsibility of the Victorian sages Lytton Strachey was preparing to mock. The rich acquired motor cars and telephones, chauffeurs and switchboard operators. The poor were a menacing phantom, to be helped charitably, or exterminated expeditiously. The sun shone, the summers broiled and were brilliant. The land, in places, was running with honey, cream, fruit fools, beer, champagne. – from The Children’s Book, page 431 -

During this time, the reader follows the lives of the children as they grow into young adults, make mistakes, search for their identities, go off to fight in the trenches, and begin their own families. Olive’s eldest children (Tom and Dorothy) take center stage as characters from the Wellwood family. Tom is Olive’s favorite child and is stuck in Olive’s fantastical world of boys without shadows and underground tunnels – he roves the woods and lives in a dreamworld. Dorothy wishes to be someone more than someone’s wife and sets her sights on becoming a doctor. One of my favorite Wellwood characters is Hedda, whose spunk and determination eventually leads her to becoming a Suffragette. The reader also comes to know Julian Cain well…a boy who early on recognizes he prefers the company of men to that of women and is not afraid to acknowledge his sexuality. I especially felt myself drawn to Imogen – the eldest Fludd daughter – who manages to escape her wretched father and make a life for herself.

At the turn of the century, the young were about to be adults, or some of them were, and the elders looked at the young, with their fresh skins and new graces and awkwardnesses with a mixture of tenderness, fear and desire. The young desired to be free of the adults, and at the same time were prepared to resent any hint that the adults might desire to be free of them. – from The Children’s Book, page 252 -

Interspersed throughout the novel are snatches of Olives stories which provide insight into the background of the characters…and the secrets. It seems every character has a secret: infidelity, sexual identity, incest, and political aspirations. As each secret is uncovered, another aspect of the characters is revealed – a bit like peeling off the layers of an onion.

In case you have not already figured it out, I loved this book. I loved its density. I loved the character development. I loved Byatt’s gorgeous use of language and the care she took in getting the historical details correct. I especially enjoyed the fairy tales and the theme of not growing up which weaves through the story (Byatt references Peter Pan in this novel and the idea of staying child-like forever is played out in the book). I found the historical background on the Women’s Suffrage movement in England to be fascinating…and yes, Byatt’s female characters are immersed in the drama and conflict of that time.

“It is a terrible thing to be a woman. You are told people like to look at you – as though you have a duty to be the object of … the object of … And then, afterwards, if you are rejected, if what you … thought you were worth …is after all not wanted … you are nothing.” – from The Children’s Book, page 357 -

They were troubled, as intelligent girls at the time were troubled, by the question of whether their need for knowledge and work in the world would in some sense denature them. Women worked, they knew, as milliners and typewriters, housekeepers and skivvies. They worked because they had no means, or were not pretty or rich enough to attract a man. - from The Children’s Book, page 358 -

This novel is so intricate and far-reaching, it is hard to do it justice in a review. This was my first experience with Byatt’s writing and it has made me eager to read more of her work. But, if you just read one novel this year, let it be The Children’s Book…a wholly satisfying and enjoyable read from start to finish.

Highly recommended.

The Little Stranger - Wendy's Review

2010-04-04T10:43:00.001-07:00

The subliminal mind has many dark, unhappy corners, after all. Imagine something loosening itself from one of those corners. Let’s call it a – a germ. And let’s say conditions prove right for that germ to develop – to grow, like a child in the womb. What would this little stranger grow into? A sort of shadow-self perhaps: a Caliban, a Mr. Hyde. A creature motivated by all the nasty impulses and hungers the conscious mind had hoped to keep hidden away: things like envy, and malice, and frustration… - from The Little Stranger, pages 353-354 -

In a small English village in Warwickshire sits a Georgian home called Hundreds Hall. It was once an elegant mansion with beautiful grounds and many servants to keep its rooms flawless. But the war has taken its toll on the people and economy of England, and Hundreds Hall is now in decline with crumbling masonry, weed-choked gardens and leaky ceilings. Dr. Faraday, the local physician, had visited the mansion as a child and his mother was once a maid there, so he is shocked at what the once beautiful home has become when he is called out to see an ailing servant girl. He quickly befriends those still living at Hundreds Hall: the elderly Mrs. Ayres and her two adult children… Roderick (who is crippled from the war), and Caroline. Within a short period of time, strange things begin to happen – scorch marks appear on the walls, the telephone rings in the middle of the night and then goes dead, and the family dog acts out of character. Are these events caused by a ghost, as Betty the young servant girl believes, or something far more sinister?

Sarah Waters’ newest novel is Gothic in style. Set in post-war England sometime in the the late 1940s and narrated by a questionable narrator (Dr. Faraday), the story unfolds slowly at first but then picks up about mid-way through the book. Waters takes her time to carefully develop her characters and introduces the theme of class differences early on when it becomes evident that Dr. Faraday has never relinquished his dismay at being the son of a maid, and the Ayreses (despite their current bleak economic situation) will always consider themselves a family of means.

As in all good Gothic novels, Hundreds Hall becomes a character in the book. The descriptions of the house’s decline, its dark and gloomy halls and closed off rooms with peeling or mildewed wallpaper, seems to be a metaphor for the economic decline of the times. Beneath its crumbling exterior, the house also holds family secrets and tragedy.

Waters gives clues as to the malevolent presence in the house, but it is not until the end that I was certain of its origins…and then I was thrilled by Waters’ deft manipulation of her story. As with all of her work, Waters’ writing is sophisticated and satisfying, and filled with descriptions which capture the historical time of the story.

My only complaint, and it is a small one, was the slow pace at the beginning of the book. Waters takes her time to set the stage and introduce her characters, and at times I grew impatient for some action. Once events start to happen, however, the pace picks up. I found myself reading straight through the last 150 pages with barely a break.

Readers who have liked Waters’ previous books and who like a good Gothic mystery, will most likely find The Little Stranger an enjoyable, albeit disturbing, read.

The View from Castle Rock, by Alice Munro

2010-03-31T14:49:00.000-07:00

I read Munro’s Runaway and decided she was a new favorite author. So I was happy to find another of her books on the notable books lists.

This one is more truly autobiographical than Runaway, and in fact almost historical. Munro traces her own family back several generations, learns what she can about them, and tells little stories about them here, before she reaches her own generation and settles on her own stories.

She freely admits to embellishment, even breaking into the middle of a story to say, “I can’t say for sure this happened”. It appears, from her stories about herself, that she has long enjoyed embroidering, but it’s more than that. She wonders, “might this have happened?” "what if that happened?" And maybe these things did happen, if not in the precise way she imagines them.

I did not love the early stories. I was missing something, the emotional element. It was there in some cases but clothed differently, lightly touched, and so the stories did not draw me in the way the Runaway stories did. However, as they came closer to her own generation the stories filled out more, seemed to have more substance. And when she got to her own time and her own life, they are just beautiful.

It was good to have the background, too, where she came from, her distant as well as immediate past. All of it fits into who we are.

I loved her descriptions of how she felt when butted up against different “classes”, when she herself qualified as “poor”. This might be a major theme of the book, in fact. Her distant relatives were far from rich, and it was a search for a better life that brought them across the Atlantic and into Canada (as well as into the US in some instances). From generation to generation, the family members worked hard and accepted who they were and their position in life, even as they knew they had the brains to equal the intellectual elite that might at times shun them. There is pride and a sense of place here, even down to the gifts offered for Alice's first wedding.

Alice herself stands out as a child, somehow does not quite fit in. She’s attractive enough, she's bright, she's thoughtful, but she likes to indulge in activities that are seen as "time-wasting" by others in the family and by the community at large. Reading, enjoying that thing called "nature", simply being alone with her thoughts. These things are not productive. When she finds a suitor her family breathes a sigh of relief.

I most enjoyed the intimate moments, and there are many, the honesty in how Munro looks at herself, the lack of self-pity or any idea that she had ever been "unfortunate". She even manages to trade on her upbringing, to use it to surprise, even shock, others, especially when she adds elements to it that were never there. I gained a great sense of her and I like her, even envy her.

Wolf Hall - Wendy's Review

2010-02-20T21:23:00.000-08:00

Thomas Cromwell is now a little over forty years old. he is a man of strong build, not tall. Various expressions are available to his face, and one is readable: an expression of stifled amusement. His hair is dark, heavy and waving, and his small eyes, which are of very strong sight, light up in conversation: so the Spanish ambassador will tell us, quite soon. It is said he knows by heart the entire New Testament in Latin, and so as a servant of the cardinal is apt – ready with a text if abbots flounder. His speech is low and rapid, his manner assured; he is at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop’s palace or inn yard. he can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury. He will quote you a nice point in the old authors, from Plato to Plautus and back again. He knows new poetry, and can say it in Italian. He works all hours, first up and last to bed. He makes money and he spends it. He will take a bet on anything. - from Wolf Hall, page 25 -

Hilary Mantel’s sprawling, Booker Prize winning novel Wolf Hall is set in England during the sixteenth century. Narrated by Thomas Cromwell, it is an intimate look into the life of King Henry VIII and the cast of historical figures who surrounded him. More importantly, it is an examination of the clash between the Roman Catholic Church and the royalty – a battle of wills and politics that turned deadly for many as King Henry sought to divorce Catherine of Aragon (who could not give him a male heir) and marry Anne Boleyn.

Since Christ did not induce his followers into earthly power, how can it be maintained that the princes of today derive their power from the Pope? In fact, all priests are subjects, as Christ left them. It is for the prince to govern the bodies of his citizens, to say who is married and who can marry, who is bastard and who legitimate. – from Wolf Hall, page 435 -

This tumultuous time in history was defined by the struggle between Catholic power and Protestant will; a time when players could change sides in an instant and the charge of treason meant certain death. The Protestant Reformation, headed by Martin Luther, plays a large part in Wolf Hall and leaves one to wonder which side Cromwell was really on. It is a complex and complicated history into which Mantel drops her characters. Readers who lack adequate knowledge about English history in the 1500’s may find themselves lost in a sea of details and characters (many who share the same first name); and find themselves struggling to get through this densely written tome.

Mantel writes her novel in the present tense – an interesting choice for historical fiction, but one which I think worked to her advantage. She also picks the perfect protagonist to drive her story. Cromwell is an interesting historical character. In Mantel’s book, he is richly imagined…a man who is is able to sidle up to the King of England and play one man against another in order to ensure his place in history, while at the same time is a loving family man who grieves so much for his wife and two young children (who die from illness), that he never re-married. The stark contrast between empathetic father and manipulative, driven lawyer helps define the internal conflict of the novel.

It’s beautiful, he says, not wanting to spoil his pleasure. But next time, he thinks, take me with you. His hand skims the surface, rich and soft. The flaw in the weave hardly matters. A turkey carpet is not an oath. There are some people in this world who like everything squared up and precise, and there are those who will allow some drift at the margins. He is both these kinds of person. He would not allow, for example, a careless ambiguity in a lease, but instinct tells him that sometimes a contract need not be drawn too tight. – from Wolf Hall, page 187 -

But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain. It is weak to be anecdotal. It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man’s power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires. – from Wolf Hall, page 294 -

Another strength of Wolf Hall was Mantel’s sardonic sense of humor which comes through in pithy dialogue between the characters. Cromwell’s observations of Anne are priceless…and Mantel reveals the ridiculousness of some of the royalty, as well as the Church.

Despite this and her excellent characterization, Mantel chooses to use an ambiguous pronoun. Her use of “he” (to identify the narrator) instead of “I” consistently confused me. I often found myself going back to re-read a passage in order to understand who was now speaking or acting. Often the “he” in the sentence did not match the subject which made it all the more confusing. Mantel’s disregard for this grammatical “rule” took away from the story for me. I found myself often setting the book aside in frustration. I could not completely immerse myself in Cromwell’s complex world. I felt as though I were reading a book, rather than falling into a story.

I wanted to love this book. Passages where Mantel let her gifts as a writer shine, left me feeling that this book should have read better. I should have flown through it in record time, exclaiming at the scope of what I had read. Instead, I found myself relieved to have finally finished the book after nearly three weeks of slogging through its pages.

Many readers are raving about Wolf Hall…I suspect most of them had a good understanding of English medieval history and so could sort through the ambiguity of Mantel’s prose. Sadly, I am not one of them. Although I admire Mantel’s writing ability, I have to admit, I really did not enjoy this book. Mantel is apparently going to be publishing a sequel to Wolf Hall. I think I will skip it.

Some might like this book.

Pam’s Roundup for 2009 and 2010 plans

2010-02-15T08:47:00.000-08:00

Here is my roundup for 2009 and my plans for 2010! Links are to reviews on my blog.

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson (CSM 2008, NYT 2008, PW 2008)
The Likeness by Tana French (CSM 2008, PW 2008)
Serena by Ron Rash (CSM 2008, PW 2008,)
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski (CSM 2008, PW 2008)
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa (2009 ALA, NYT 2008, PW 2008)

I didn’t actually read the last book, but I did read several other notable books that I didn’t have on my original list:

No One Heard Her Scream by Jordan Dane (PW 2008)
Outliers by Maclom Gladwell (PW 2008)
What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman (PW 2007)
Columbine by Dave Cullen (2010 ALA, NYT 2009, PW 2009)

This year, I have again settled on five, with the hope that I actually read many more than this.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. (Man Booker Prize, CSM Best Books 2009, 2010 Tournament of Books, and NYT Most Notable 2009)
Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips. (CSM Best Books 2009, NYT 2009 Notable Books, 2010 Tournament of Books, PW 2009 Best Books)
Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr. (CSM Best Books 2009)
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. (NYT Notable Books 2009, 2010 Tournament of Books, PW 2009 Best Books)
Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by Jeannette Walls. (NYT Notable Books 2009, 2010 Tournament of Books)

2010 ALA Notable Books

2010-01-27T08:54:00.000-08:00

The ALA has announced its Notable Books for 2010:

Fiction

The Convalescent, by Jessica Anthony

The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood

The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker

Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon

Little Bee, by Chris Cleave

Spooner, by Pete Dexter

Tinkers, by Paul Harding

The Vagrants, by Yiyun Li

Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann

A Mercy, by Toni Morrison

Generosity: An Enhancement, by Richard Powers

Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin

Non-Fiction

Columbine, by Dave Cullen

Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers

The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann

The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors without Borders, by Emmanuel Guibert

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, by Richard Holmes

Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld & the American Dream, by Patrick Radden Keefe

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, by Christopher McDougall

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath, by Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman

Provenance: How a Con Man & a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, by Lainey Salisbury and Sujo Aly

Stitches: A Memoir, by David Small

The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War, by Nicholas Thompson

Tinkers by Paul Harding

2010-01-27T07:05:00.000-08:00

Tinkers by Paul Harding

Bellevue Literary Press, New York, 2009

Borrowed from the library.

A Publishers Weekly 2009 Notable Book

An odd, beautiful book about a son and his father. As George lays dying, surrounded by his family, he drifts in and out of time, revisits his childhood and memories of his family and his father, Howard. Howard was a salesman, a tinker and an epileptic who deserted his family. George retired from teaching and learned to repaired clocks. Built of time, memory and dream, Harding has created a story filled with unusual people and unforgettable images. Some are beautifully descriptive.

Nearly seventy years before George died, his father, Henry Aaron Crosby, drove a wagon for his living. It was a wooden wagon. It was a chest of drawers mounted on two axles and wooden spoked wheels. There were dozens of drawers, each fitted with a recessed brass ring, pulled open with a hooked forefinger, that contained brushes and wood oil, tooth powder and nylon stockings, shaving soap and straight-edged razors….From page 11.

What of miniature boats constructed of birch bark and fallen leaves, launched into cold water clear as air? How many fleets were pushed out towards the middle of ponds or sent down autumn brooks, holding treasures of acorns, or black feathers, or a puzzled mantis? Let those grassy crafts be listed alongside the iron hulls that cleave the sea, for they are all improvisations built from the daydreams of men, and all will perish, whether from ocean siege or October breeze. From page 77/78

Others are out of a dream.

A wind came through the trees sounding like a chorus, so like a breath then, so sounding like a breath, the breath of thousands of souls gathering itself up somewhere in the timber lining the bowls and depressions behind the worn mountains the way thunderstorms did and crawling up their backs the way thunderstorms did, too, which you couldn’t hear, quite, but felt barometrically – a contraction or flattening as of tone as everything compressed in front of it, again, which you couldn’t see, quite, but instead could almost see the result of — water flattening, so the light coming off it shifted angles, the grass stiffening, so it went from green to silver, the swallows flitting over the pond all being pushed forward and then falling back to their original positions as they corrected for the change, as if the wind were sending something in front of it…From page 128

There is incredible freedom of style in this book. Harding moves from the mundane to the unusual, even the visionary, without floundering or loosing his sense of balance. His language is clear and precise, almost blinding, like a laser, like sunlight glancing off a field of snow. I have never read a book like this, and will not forget it.

Wolf Hall

2010-01-20T16:38:00.000-08:00

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Henry Holt & Co., New York, 2009

Borrowed from my local library.

Winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize.
A 2009 NYT Most Notable Book.
A CSM Best Book of 2009.

This book will be on my top 10 list for 2010. It may even be my favorite book of the year. Wait, you ask, it is only the middle of January, how can you say that? I say that because Mantel has created a world so full and rich that I didn’t want to leave it. She has given me a place as vivid as the streets of my own city, as lively as my favorite café. She has introduced me to characters that I want to talk to, that I wish to comfort and, sometimes, to scream at.

Of course, that is impossible, we are centuries and worlds apart. After all, this is fiction. Immersed in the history of early 16th century Britain, Mantel tells the story of one man, Thomas Cromwell. With roots in the lower class, Cromwell, the son of a brewer and blacksmith, rises to become a confidant to Cardinal Wolsey, the Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII. Eventually Cromwell becomes the King’s chief minister and the enemy of Thomas More, staunch supporter of the Pope. Henry, afraid of dying without a legitimate heir, wishes to annul his first marriage and marry another. There are multiple threads of politics, sex and double-dealing and, of course, the King’s battle with the Catholic Church. But this book is so much more than another fictionalized account of that time in history.

Wolf Hall is dense, dark and rich in a way that made me slow down my reading and savor every page. Mantel places Cromwell in the third person and some readers find this difficult. It did not really bother me. I rather enjoy the rhythm of shifting from Cromwell’s thoughts to observing him from some close vantage point. The only part I found awkward was trying to keep track of the different Royal lineages, and Mantel, or her editors, have graciously placed a list of characters and the Tudor and Yorkist family trees at the front of the book.

I really love Mantel’s style, her intelligence, and her trust in my abilities as a reader. I will read this book again

The Year of the Flood - Wendy's Review

2010-01-14T11:30:00.000-08:00

This was not an ordinary pandemic: it wouldn’t be contained after a few hundred thousand deaths, then obliterated with biotools and bleach. This was the Waterless Flood the Gardeners so often had warned about. It had all the signs: it traveled through the air as if on wings, it burned through cities like fire, spreading germ-ridden mobs of terror and butchery. The lights were going out everywhere, and now the news was fading away; systems were failing as their keepers died. It spelled total breakdown which was why she’d needed the rifle. Rifles had been illegal for years, but laws were no longer a factor. – from The Year of the Flood, page 18 of the ARC -

The year is far in the future, a time when animals are becoming extinct at a rate faster than people can document, and the level of pollution requires individuals to don nose cones in order to go outside. The government is horribly corrupt – creating weird animals like liobams (part lamb, part lion) and embedding diseases into vitamin supplements. Criminals are either executed or sent to serve months “playing” Painball, a deadly form of today’s paintball.

Welcome to Margaret Atwood’s latest dystopian novel which serves as a prequel to her previous work Oryx and Crake. The Year of the Flood takes place roughly during the same time period as Oryx and Crake, but jumps back and forth from the post-pandemic months and the years leading up to the disaster. Jimmy (Snowman) makes a reappearance in The Year of the Flood, but the main characters are two women – Toby and Ren. The novel is narrated first in Toby’s voice then in Ren’s, alternating chapters to provide significant background on not only the state of the world, but each woman’s personal story as well.

The heroes of the novel are members of a (mostly) pacifist, eco-friendly group called the Gardeners. Headed up by a Christ-like man called Adam One, the Gardeners rescue people off the streets (and from morally reprehensible lives), prohibit meat eating of any kind, document the animals being lost to extinction, and work underground to gain information about the various corrupt practices of the government. Both Toby and Ren become members of the Gardeners – Toby as a healer and eventually one of the Eves (female members who take on a leadership role in the group), and Ren who joins the group as a child.

Nobody does dystopian literature better than Atwood – and in The Year of the Flood she provides complex female characters who are faced with futuristic horrors which involve women as sexual tools for men, plenty of violence, and lots of cynicism. There is also Atwood’s signature sense of humor embedded in the story which is often graphic while exploring serious subjects such as pandemics, government corruption, and loss of our natural resources.

I love Margaret Atwood’s writing. I am always astonished by the brilliance of her prose and her ability to tell an engrossing story. But The Year of the Flood is not without its faults. I could have lived without the insertion of Adam One’s sermons and song lyrics from the Gardener’s “hymn” book. I also felt the ending was rather abrupt and left the reader wondering what the future held for the characters (in this way, it was a lot like Oryx and Crake).In some ways, I felt Atwood wrote the ending to connect the novel to Oryx and Crake – it felt a bit contrived.

Despite its faults, The Year of the Flood will appeal to readers who enjoy an engaging dystopian tale and who have read and liked Atwood’s previous work. I would be interested to see if Atwood is planning a third book in the series…and if so, where she might take her characters next.

Sandra's Wrap-up for 2009

2010-01-14T11:25:00.000-08:00

This is my second year of reading Notable books but it seems I never actually wrote a specific post about it. My tally for 2008 was 33 books from the Notable lists, and these 14 books in 2009, of which I managed 3 reviews. The stars tell the story on the others.

The Madonnas of Leningrad***** by Debra Dean

The Elegance of the Hedgehog**** by Muriel Barbery

A Mercy***** by Toni Morrison

Olive Kitteridge***+ by Elizabeth Strout

Home Repair*** by Liz Rosenberg

The Little Stranger***** by Sarah Waters

Little Bee***** by Chris Cleave

The Weight of Heaven****+ by Thrity Umrigar

A Short History of Women*** by Kate Walbert

Invisible***** by Paul Auster

Lacuna***** by Barbara Kingsolver

Await Your Reply**** by Dan Chaon

The Broken Teaglass**** by Emily Arsenault

The Anthologist*** by Nicholson Baker

I'm sure I can manage a dozen in 2010. Leave a comment if you have any questions about any of these books and authors or want to know which I read in 2008. I'd be willing to write a brief review of any book if asked. Happy reading in 2010.

My challenge for 2010

2010-01-07T13:47:00.001-08:00

I am challenging myself to read ten books from the notable lists in 2010. The books I have chosen so far:

Nonfiction:

Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder
Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey

Fiction:

Too Much Happiness, by Alice Munro
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
His Illegal Self, by Peter Carey
Descarte's Bones, by Russell Shorto
The View from Castle Rock, by Alice Munro

I will update this to a total of ten - or beyond - as I work through the lists.

December 5, 2010:

I have read one of the above! I am currently reading three from the lists:

Brightsided by Barbara Ehrenreich
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
Circling my Mother, by Mary Gordon

So far this year I have read:

There is no me without you, by Melissa Faye Greene
The View from Castle Rock, by Alice Munro
The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard

Not a wonderful showing this year!

2009 Progress

2010-01-06T08:17:00.000-08:00

Last year I challenged myself to read 10 books. I had gone for 20 the year before and found it was too much pressure. I met the challenge on November 17. Through the year I revised the list so here it is with read and unread books as it finally shook out:

So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger - read
Fine Just the Way it is, by Annie Proulx - read
No One Heard Her Scream, by Jordan Dane - read
His Illegal Self, by Peter Carey
When Will There be Good News? by Kate Atkinson - read
Descartes' Bones, by Russell Shorto
The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly - read
The Private Patient by P. D. James. - read
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver et al - read
Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell - read
Away, by Amy Bloom - read

American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld - read

I have not chosen a list for 2010 yet but expect I'll put the unread books from my 2009 list on it and expand from there. I love that we are choosing from several years now because sometimes just the right book comes along and it's from a year or so back.

3m's Wrap Up for 2009

2010-01-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

Over the last two years, I've read 12 books in each year that were notable. This year, my goal was only 6, but if I'd known that I was only one away from completing 12 again, I definitely would have read another one. Oh well, there's always 2010, though my goal is just 6 titles again.

Of the list below, Finn and Petropolis made my Top 20 of the year. My two least favorites on this list were Mistik Lake and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Finn by Jon Clinch (2008 ALA)

Petropolis by Anya Ulinich (2007 CSM)

Mistik Lake by Martha Brook (2007 PW)

Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junor Diaz (2007 NYT)

The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro (2007 NYT)

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (2007 PW)

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti (2008 NYT)

The Help by Kathryn Stockett (2009 CSM)

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009 NYT)

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008 PW)

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (2009 PW)

Tim's 2009 Wrap Up Post

2009-12-14T12:02:00.000-08:00

My goal for the challenge was six books and I reached that at the beginning of August. Read and reviewed for the challenge were:

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust. (Review):

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu (Review);

Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser. (Review);

A Free Life by Ha Jin. (Review);

Breath by Tim Winton. (Review); and,

The Challenge: How a Maverick Navy Officer and a Young Law Professor Risked Their Careers to Defend the Constitution--and Won by Jonathan Mahler. (Review)

I'm guessing I read others in the last quarter of the year but ~~was~~ am too lazy to go back and look. It wasn't hard to see why the six listed books were considered notable. I enjoyed each in their own way. I would be hard-pressed to pick a favorite given their wide variety and range.

The quality of the books leads me to continue the challenge this year, again at the six book level. Part of the reason I'm staying with six is that, like Wendy, I read several from the latest lists before the lists were released. They include, with links to reviews on my blog:

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath by Michael and Elizabeth Norman. (Christian Science Monitor Best Books - Nonfiction) (Review);
The Good Soldiers by David Finkel. (Christian Science Monitor Best Books - Nonfiction, NYT Most Notable, PW's Best Books of 2009);
American Rust by Phillipp Meyer. (NYT Most Notable - Fiction);
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon. (NYT Most Notable - Fiction, 2010 Tournament of Books; PW's Best Books of 2009);
Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, translated by Michael Hofmann (NYT Most Notable - Fiction) (Review);
Invisible by Paul Auster (NYT Most Notable - Fiction) (Review);
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (NYT Most Notable - Fiction, 2010 Tournament of Books) (Review);
Columbine by Dave Cullen (NYT Most Notable - Nonfiction, PW's Best Books of 2009);
Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding (NYT Most Notable - Nonfiction);
The City & The City by China Mieville (2010 Tournament of Books, PW's Best Books of 2009);
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich (PW's Best Books of 2009) (Review);
Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer (PW's Best Books of 2009)

While I could probably just point to those dozen and call it good, I figure challenging myself to another six simply means I'll find additional worthy books I might not otherwise have read.

Wendy's 2009 Wrap Up Post

2009-12-09T08:48:00.001-08:00

At the beginning of 2009, I challenged myself to read at least 6 books from the Notable Lists on this blog. Here is how I did:

~~Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill~~ (from NYT Most Notable - 2008) - COMPLETED April 4, 2009; rated 3/5; read my review.
~~The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery~~ (from Christian Science Monitor Bests - 2008) - COMPLETED July 18, 2009; rated 4.5/5; read my review.
~~Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson~~ (from 2008 ALA Most Notable and NBCC Best Books- 2007 and NYT Most Notable-2007) - COMPLETED January 6, 2009; rated 5/5; read my review)
~~Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh~~ (from 2008 PW Best Books) COMPLETED July 12, 2009; rated 5/5; read my review.
~~Unaccustomed Earth~~, by Jhumpa Lahiri (from 2008 PW Best Books, 2008 NYT Most Notable, and 2009 ALA Notable Books) COMPLETED February 22, 2009; rated 5/5; read my review.
~~Matrimony, by Joshua Henkin~~ (from 2007 NYT Most Notable) COMPLETED February 11, 2009; rated 3.5/5; read my review.
~~What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman~~ (from 2007 PW Best Books) COMPLETED June 16, 2009; rated 4.5/5; read my review.
~~The Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti~~ (2008 NYT Most Notable) COMPLETED July 29, 2009; rated 3/5; read my review.
~~The Road Home, by Rose Tremain~~ (2008 NYT Most Notable) COMPLETED January 16, 2009; rated 5/5; read my review.
~~City of Refuge, by Tom Piazza~~ (2008 Christian Science Monitor Best Book) COMPLETED October 8, 2009; rated 5/5; read my review.

I also knocked off some books from the 2009/10 lists (although I didn't know it at the time). These are:

~~The Help by Kathryn Stockett~~ (2009 Christian Science Monitor Best Books, and 2010 Tournament of Books Best Books) COMPLETED September 3, 2009; rated 5/5; read my review.
~~Follow Me, by Joanna Scott~~ (2009 NYT Most Notable) COMPLETED April 25, 2009; rated 4/5; read my review.
~~The Believers, by Zoe Heller~~ (2009 PW's Best Books, and 2010 Tournament of Books Best Books) COMPLETED November 1, 2008; rated 4/5, read my review.
~~Last Night In Twisted River, by John Irving~~ (2010 Tournament of Books Best Books) COMPLETED November 1, 2009; rated 5/5; read my review.

So with the exception of The Believers which I actually read in 2008, I finished 13 books for this challenge! And I'm happy with that!

Looking Ahead to 2010

2009-12-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

Beginning January 1, 2009, this challenge became a PERPETUAL Challenge. What does this mean? It means that participants may work through the Notable Lists found on this blog at their own pace...reading as many or as little as they wish. My only request is that at the beginning of each new year, participants set goals for the books they would like to read for the year. These goals are not "set in stone" and can be changed at any time, but will serve as a guideline for each individual.

Please feel free to post your goals for 2010 for this challenge. You may read from ANY notable list on this blog:

All lists
2007 Lists
2008 Lists
2009 Lists
2010 Lists

Participants on this blog are encouraged to challenge themselves to read books from the lists and post reviews to this blog. Cross posting to personal blogs is permitted (and encouraged!).

The "rules" are simple.

IF you are not currently a member of this blog and would like to become a member, post a comment to this post with your email address. You will then be invited to join the blog. **Please note, to protect the privacy of your email address we will delete your comment as soon as we send you the invitation to join.
You may join the challenge WITHOUT joining the blog. Simply leave a comment on this post with a link to the post on your blog about the challenge and your goals. If you do not have a blog, simply leave your goal list in the comments.
Please only post reviews about notable books listed on the blog
Label your posts this way: using your name and the list name (example: Wendy, 2007 NYT Most Notable). Please do not use the title of the book in your labels. To search for reviews on specific books, please use the Blogger Search feature in the upper left hand corner of the blog.
You create your own reading list; there is no minimum number of books to read. Feel free to substitute out books on your list or change your list to meet your personal reading needs and goals. THIS IS A PERPETUAL CHALLENGE.
Overlaps with other challenges are allowed.

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly - HAVE FUN!!!

Christian Science Monitor Best Books of 2009

2009-12-09T08:01:00.000-08:00

Each year, the Christian Science Monitor posts it best novels of the year. Here are the picks for 2009:

Lark and Termite
By Jayne Anne Phillips
Knopf
72 pp

The Help
By Kathryn Stockett
Putnam
453 pp

The Weight of Heaven
By Thrity Umrigar
HarperCollins
365 pp

Woodsburner
By John Pipkin
Doubleday, 366 pp.

The Thing Around Your Neck
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Knopf
218 pp.

Let the Great World Spin
By Colum McCann
Random House
349 pp.

The Anthologist
By Nicholson Baker
Simon & Schuster
245 pp.

Love and Summer
By William Trevor
Penguin Group
212 pp.

A Gate at the Stairs
By Lorrie Moore
Knopf
336 pp.

Mathilda Savitch
By Victor Lodato
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
304 pp.

The Children’s Book
By A.S. Byatt
Knopf
688 pp.

Wolf Hall
By Hilary Mantel
Henry Holt
532 pp.

They also list their Best Books of 2009: Nonfiction:

A World of Trouble:
The White House and the Middle East – from the Cold War to the War on Terror
By Patrick Tyler
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
628 pp

The Ascent of Money:
A Financial History of the World
By Niall Ferguson
Penguin
442 pp.

The Somme:
The Darkest Hour on the Western Front
By Peter Hart
Pegasus Books/Norton
624 pp.

A. Lincoln:
A Biography
By Ronald C. White Jr.
Random House
816 pp.

The Lost City of Z:
A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
By David Grann
Doubleday
352 pp.

Cheever:
A Life
By Blake Bailey
Knopf
784 pp.

The Third Reich at War
By Richard J. Evans
Penguin Press
926 pp.

The First Tycoon:
The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
By T.J. Stiles
Knopf
736 pp.

Fingerprints of God:
The Search for the Science of Spirituality
By Barbara Bradley Hagerty
Riverhead Books
323 pp.

Shop Class as Soulcraft:
An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
By Matthew B. Crawford
Penguin Press
246 pp.

Tears in the Darkness:
The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath
By Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman
Farrar, Staus and Giroux
464 pp.

Provenance:
How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art
By Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo
Penguin Press
352 pp.

The Age of Wonder:
How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and the Terror of Science
By Richard Holmes
Pantheon
576 pp.

Strength in What Remains:
A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
By Tracy Kidder
Random House
277 pp.

The Snakehead:
An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream
By Patrick Radden Keefe
Doubleday
432 pp.

The Sisters of Sinai:
How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels
By Janet Soskice
Knopf
304 pp.

Horse Soldiers:
The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan
By Doug Stanton
Scribner
416 pp.

A Paradise Built in Hell:
The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
By Rebecca Solnit
Viking
353 pp.

Green Metropolis:
Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability
By David Owen
Riverhead Books
357 pp.

The Good Soldiers
By David Finkel
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
285 pp.

The Clinton Tapes:
Wrestling History with the President
By Taylor Branch
Simon & Schuster
720 pp.

The Big Burn:
Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire That Saved America
By Timothy Egan
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
324 pp.

The Boy Who Harnassed the Wind
By William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
William Morrow
288 pp.

Lit:
A Memoir
By Mary Karr
Harper
386 pp

New York Times (NYT) Most Notable - 2009

2009-12-09T07:13:00.000-08:00

The Book Review has made these selections from books reviewed since Dec. 7, 2008, when they published their previous Notables list. Read more about each book (including links to NYT reviews) on this page.

Fiction and Poetry:

Amateur Barbarians, by ROBERT COHEN
American Rust, By PHILIPP MEYER
The Anthologist, By NICHOLSON BAKER
The Art Student’s War, By BRAD LEITHAUSER
Asterios Polyp, Written and illustrated by DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI
Await Your Reply, By DAN CHAON
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, By MAILE MELOY
The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, By PETER ACKROYD
Chronic City, By JONATHAN LETHEM
The Confessions of Edward Day, By VALERIE MARTIN
Dearest Creature, By AMY GERSTLER
Do Not Deny Me: Stories, By JEAN THOMPSON
Don’t Cry: Stories, By MARY GAITSKILL
Every Man Dies Alone, By HANS FALLADA; translated by MICHAEL HOFMANN
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, By WELLS TOWER
Family Album, By PENELOPE LIVELY
Follow Me, By JOANNA SCOTT
A Gate at the Stairs, By LORRIE MOORE
Generosity: An Enhancement, By RICHARD POWERS
Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, By JEANNETTE WALLS
How it Ended: New and Collected Stories, By JAY McINERNEY
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, By DANIYAL MUEENUDDIN
Invisible, By PAUL AUSTER
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, By GEOFF DYER
The Lacuna, By BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Lark and Termite, By JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS
Let the Great World Spin, By COLUM McCANN
The Little Stranger, By SARAH WATERS
Love and Obstacles: Stories, By ALEKSANDAR HEMON
Love and Summer, By WILLIAM TREVOR
The Museum of Innocence, By ORHAN PAMUK; translated by MAUREEN FREELY
My Father’s Tears: And Other Stories, By JOHN UPDIKE
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, By KAZUO ISHIGURO
Nothing Right: Short Stories, By ANTONYA NELSON
Once the Shore: Stories, By PAUL YOON
One D.O.A., One on the Way, By MARY ROBISON
Sag Harbor, By COLSON WHITEHEAD
A Short History of Women, By KATE WALBERT
The Sky Below, By STACEY D’ERASMO
The Song Is You, By ARTHUR PHILLIPS
Too Much Happiness, By ALICE MUNRO
Typhoon, By CHARLES CUMMING
A Village Life, By LOUISE GLÜCK
Wolf Hall, By HILARY MANTEL
The Year of the Flood, By MARGARET ATWOOD

Nonfiction

The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn, By LOUISA GILDER
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, By RICHARD HOLMES
Ayn Rand and the World She Made, By ANNE C. HELLER
Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, By FRANK BRUNI
The Case for God, By KAREN ARMSTRONG
Cheever: A Life, By BLAKE BAILEY
City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s, By EDMUND WHITE
Closing Time: A Memoir, By JOE QUEENAN
Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places, By BILL STREEVER
Columbine, By DAVE CULLEN
A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent, By ROBERT W. MERRY
Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, By JAMES McMANUS
Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, By MORRIS DICKSTEIN
Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, By LINDA GORDON
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, By GORDON S. WOOD
The Evolution of God, By ROBERT WRIGHT
A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon, By NEIL SHEEHAN
The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found, By MARY BEARD
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, By T. J. STILES
Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, By BRAD GOOCH
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, By GREG GRANDIN
The Good Soldiers, By DAVID FINKEL
The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11, By JOHN FARMER
Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme, By TRACY DAUGHERTY
Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan, By DOUG STANTON
In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic, By DAVID WESSEL
The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America, By STEVEN JOHNSON
The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China, By HANNAH PAKULA
Lit: A Memoir, By MARY KARR
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, By LIAQUAT AHAMED
Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, By CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY
The Lost Child: A Mother’s Story, By JULIE MYERSON
The Lost City Of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, By DAVID GRANN
Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever, By WALTER KIRN
Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, By MELVIN I. UROFSKY
The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks, By ROBIN ROMM
Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town, By NICK REDING
My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times, By HAROLD EVANS
The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street, By JUSTIN FOX
Open: An Autobiography, By ANDRE AGASSI
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, By REBECCA SOLNIT
Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life, By CAROL SKLENICKA
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, By LARRY TYE
Securing the City: Inside America’s Best Counterterror Force — the NYPD, By CHRISTOPHER DICKEY
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, By MATTHEW B. CRAWFORD
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom, By GRAHAM FARMELO
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, By ROBIN D. G. KELLEY
The Third Reich at War, By RICHARD J. EVANS
The Weight of a Mustard Seed: The Intimate Story of an Iraqi General and His Family During Thirty Years of Tyranny, By WENDELL STEAVENSON
When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present, By GAIL COLLINS
Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, By BENJAMIN MOSER
The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, By DOUGLAS BRINKLEY
Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity, By DANIEL JONAH GOLDHAGEN
Yours Ever: People and Their Letters, By THOMAS MALLON
Zeitoun, By DAVE EGGERS

2010 Tournament of Books Long List

2009-12-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

Each year The Morning News posts its short lists for the best books of that year - there is then a run-off to determine which book is THE BEST. This year is the first year they have released a long list. They write:

Our criteria for selecting the titles on the long list were the same as we normally adhere to. Books must be novels (for the most part), and must have been published for the first time in English in 2009 (for the most part). Considerations included: our own reading experiences; recommendations from family and friends, readers, publishing folk, and TMN staff; critics’ opinions, from internet shoppers to prestigious names; prize-winners; other media groups’ best-of lists; sales records, high and low; too much hype or too little hype; independent publisher versus big bad media; authors’ reputations; authors’ previous participation in previous Tournaments; blurb quantity and quality; etc. So yes, pretty much everything except the cover art. Of the following 50 titles, we doubt you’ll have a bad time reading any of them. Only 16, however, will we consider strong enough to withstand blood sport in March.

In January, the 16 finalists will be announced.

The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood
The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker
Rage, Sergio Bizzio
The Women, T.C. Boyle
Await Your Reply, Dan Chaon
Trouble, Kate Christensen
Little Bee, Chris Cleave
Fever Chart, Bill Cotter
Four Freedoms, John Crowley
Everything Matters!, Ron Currie Jr.
Spooner, Pete Dexter
Homer & Langley, E.L. Doctorow
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, Apostolos Doxiadis
The Believers, Zoe Heller
Last Night in Twisted River, John Irving
The Book of Night Women, Marlon James
Under the Dome, Stephen King
The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
Big Machine, Victor Lavalle
Chronic City, Jonathan Lethem
The Golden Mean, Annabel Lyon
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
Ransom, David Malouf
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
The City & The City, China Mieville
Manituana, Wu Ming
A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore
Miles from Nowhere, Nami Mun
Once a Runner, John Parker
Lark and Termite, Jayne Anne Phillips
Generosity, Richard Powers
Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon
Wetlands, Charlotte Roche
My Abandonment, Peter Rock
That Old Cape Magic, Richard Russo
Burnt Shadows, Kamila Shamsie
The Help, Kathryn Stockett
Far North, Marcel Theroux
The Alternative Hero, Tim Thornton
Brooklyn, Colm Toibin
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, Wells Tower
This Is Where I Leave You, Jonathan Tropper
My Bird, Fariba Vafi
The Book of Fathers, Miklos Vamos
The Informers, Juan Gabriel Vasquez
A Short History of Women, Kate Walbert
Half Broke Horses, Jeannette Walls
The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
Sag Harbor, Colson Whitehead
Lowboy, John Wray

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

2009-11-17T16:30:00.000-08:00

What a pleasure! An interesting array of characters and plenty of action, but that is not all.

The central character is Joanne, who suffers a great loss when she is six. We get to pick up on her life thirty years later, where we find she has become a doctor, is married and has a baby son she adores - and may be threatened by the same man who destroyed her family 30 years before. Joanne is kind and thoughtful and just possibly stronger than she looks.

On another track is Louise, a police detective particularly obsessed by cases of violence against women. She too is married, to an understanding and unflappable doctor, but she feels the need to test their bond again and again. She is prickly and aggressive.

Jackson Brodie is a former detective (also former police detective and former military guy), newly married yet on a trip to see a young son whose mother insists is not Jackson's. By a stroke of luck, Brodie has inherited big bucks so does not have to work, but he does not feel he really earned it so does not flaunt it. Brodie was central in Case Histories and One Good Turn, Atkinson's previous two novels, as well. His trip is more adventurous - and dangerous -than he would like.

Primary driving force, though, is Reggie. Reggie is a sixteen-year-old girl ("with a boy's name") who takes care of Joanne's baby and dog when the doctor is at work. Having struggled through quite a life already, Reggie is remarkably open to affection and is tough and resilient. She is also loyal and determined. It is Reggie who really brings everyone together. Reggie is also quite the little scholar, learning primarily on her own. Atkinson nails the teenage speech, which I found highly entertaining.

Joanne disappears one day and Reggie seems to be the only one who thinks there is something suspicious about the story her husband offers. The baby is with her but not the dog. And not a few other things that Reggie in particular insists would have been with her.

Beyond the suspense of the story there are the characters. All fully-formed persons, we get to see how they make decisions, good and bad, and act intelligently or not. We also get a great sense of place and custom, without being overwhelmed by it. The book is enjoyable for its quiet humor and believable characters, beautifully drawn, so fun to watch.

PW's Best Books of 2009

2009-11-02T02:25:00.000-08:00

(Please note: When I originally saw this list at PW, it stopped after True Compass. When I looked again at the source page on 11/3/09, the list had more titles on it. I have since added those titles.)

PW Top 10

Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
Await Your Reply: A Novel by Dan Chaon
A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
Big Machine by Victor LaValle
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard HolmesStitches by David Small
Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

Fiction

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly
The Fate of Katherine Carr by Thomas H. Cook
Spooner by Pete Dexter
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
Ravens by George Dawes Green
Tinkers by Paul Harding
The Believers by Zoë Heller
The Vagrants by Yiyun Li
How to Sell by Clancy Martin
New World Monkeys by Nancy Mauro
The Last War by Ana Menendez
Nemesis by Jo Nesbø
Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips
The Cry of the Sloth by Sam Savage
Drood by Dan Simmons
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
Once the Shore by Paul Yoon

Poetry

Chronic by D.A. Powell
Museum of Accidents by Rachel Zucker
The Bitter Withy by Donald Revell
The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy
Upgraded to Serious by Heather McHugh

Mystery

Bryant and May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler
The Wrong Mother by Sophie Hannah
The Dark Horseby Craig Johnson
The Silent Hour by Michael Koryta
Londongrad by Reggie Nadelson
The Lord of Death by Eliot Pattison
The Cloud Pavilionby Laura Joh Rowland

Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Lovecraft Unbound edited by Ellen Datlow
The Devil’s Alphabet by Daryl Gregory
The City & the City by China Miéville
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Mass Market

Captive of Sin by Anna Campbell
Soulless by Gail Carriger
A Dark Love by Margaret Carroll
Child of Fire by Harry Connolly
Hunt at the Well of Eternity by Gabriel Hunt, as told to James Reasoner

Comics

Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke and Richard Stark
Driven by Lemons by Josh Cotter
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou with art by Alecos Papdatos and Annie Di Donna
The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert and Didier Lefèvre
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco
A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
You’ll Never Know: A Good and Decent Man by Carol Tyler
Pluto by Naoki Urasawa

Nonfiction

Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater by Frank Bruni
Land of the Lost Souls: My Life on the Streets by Cadillac Man
Columbine by Dave Cullen
Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
Food for Thought, Thought for Food edited by Richard Hamilton and Vincente Todolo
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe
True Compass: A Memoir by Edward M. Kennedy
Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder
Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer
Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn
Gabriel García Márquez by Gerald Martin
Green Metropolis by David Owen
Larry’s Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant—and Save His Life by Daniel Asa Rose
Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith
Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan by Doug Stanton
Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957–1965 by Sam Stephenson
Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 by Gordon S. Wood

Religion

Angry Conversations with God: A Snarky but Authentic Spiritual Memoir by Susan E. Isaacs
The Case for God by Karen Armstrong
The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Our Pain by Scott Cairns
Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox
Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom
In Due Season: A Man’s Life by Paul Wilkes
Judas: A Biography by Susan Gubar
Muslims in America: A Short History by Edward E. Curtis IV
Rashi by Elie Wiesel

Lifestyle

Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy by Lidia Bastianich and Tanya Bastianich Manuali
Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan
Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller
Child Care Today: Getting It Right for Everyone by Penelope Leach Gourmet Today by Ruth Reichl

Children's Fiction

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
Going Bovine by Libba Bray
Fire by Kristin Cashore
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
If I Stay by Gayle Forman
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick
The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness.
A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan
Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor, illus. by Jim Di Bartolo
The Uninvited by Tim Wynne-Jones

Source: Publishers Weekly

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6704595.html
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6704596.html

Starting Over

2009-10-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

I know it has been a long time since I posted anything but now that things have clam down some, well at least I hope they did. I am back posting what I have read and also I still watch my Spanish soaps those two are what have kept me going.

Three months ago my father past away at the age of 85 he had Parkinson's which he suffer so much he was in so much pain it came to the point were we couldn't take care of my dad so we had to do the hardest thing which was put him in a nursing home he hated there and wanted to come home which broke my heart. In Feb he got sick and caught pneumonia, we knew if he were to get it again he would not make it. On Fathers day he had a cold which again turned into pneumonia he past away July 31st we were all there.

I never in a million years thought that I would see my dad take his last breath, I could see how much he had been suffering so when he died I left a piece come over me just know that he is in a better place and not suffering though I miss him and there are times I forget his is gone, I remember going to the nursing home I would tease him and say OK don't bother me I am going to read. He knew how much I love books he would always tell me how many books do you have three hundred I said no not that much he said but I'm close.

I got a netbook which I love so much it's mostly for the Internet to be honest I totally forgot about my blogg since I hardly went on the computer then it hit my yeah I can start working on it again. So here I am I have read 31 books this year which I was hoping to read more I am hoping to read 50 so that is my goal wish me luck.

As for my Spanish soaps Old ones finish and new ones starts that's what I like about them I am watching a couple of them now. I have to put new pictures up so come back and see what I have done.

Until then
Happy Reading
Lisa

American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld

2009-10-05T08:15:00.000-07:00

I read voraciously, yet it is rare for me to enjoy a book so thoroughly as I enjoyed this one.

Sittenfeld, after reading a biography of Laura Bush, realized that the former first lady is a complicated person, an interesting person. Her life seems like a novel. So she decided to write it. Yes, it’s fiction, but many of the basic elements of Laura Bush’s life are also in the life of the fictional Alice Lindgren of Wisconsin. By creating this character Sittenfeld has license to explore Alice’s thoughts, her emotions, her character, to bring her alive yet acknowledge, in the end, that she does not really exist.

The parallels are so close as to suggest that Sittenfeld is sorting through events in the Bushes’ lives and trying to create character from the bits and pieces she knows of the individuals. It would be presumptuous to write a biography, inserting the answers, the whys throughout, without even meeting the subjects. But the whys are what are so interesting. Who is Laura Bush and why did she behave as she did in the Bush White house? What caused her to marry George W. Bush?

More than a story of the presidential years, though, this is an investigation into love, and, delightful to me personally, a close look at what it means to grow up in the upper Midwest in the middle of the 20th century. I was born the same year Alice was and I was born in the midwest - Upper Michigan instead of Wisconsin. So much of what Alice experiences, how she reacts, how she feels, reflects how I have felt and experienced life myself much of the time. I think Sittenfeld nailed it, at least what it is like to be a bookish intelligent midwesterner with an open mind. Thus even though we are not alike I was able to understand how she acted, how she felt. Her life makes sense, her actions make sense.

There is much insight in here, in the ways our upbringings might cause us to see others very differently. For example, Alice acknowledges her own deep feelings and sense of obligation towards those in need, yet she can understand and accept that those raised in a privileged household, where they are kept effectively insulated from others, might not have the capacity to care in the same way. She does not blame them, but rather asserts her right to feel differently.

Another interesting insight is in her sense of obligation in relation to her position in the world. She finds herself occupying a position of influence - wife of the president - and realizes that with such privilege comes a greater burden: how much should she do to right injustices, to relieve suffering? How much can she do? What is her responsibility?

The novel offers an answer to the question, how can you love somebody with whom you so often disagree? Sometimes love has nothing to do with agreement; love may not be magic but its elements in this case may be reasonably defined. Alice’s quiet, thoughtful character is in stark contrast to that of Charlie Blackwell, the stand-in for George W. Bush. She is drawn to his essential acceptance of his own flaws - what you see is what you get. And to the fun he represents, that she craves. The story also explains how others might be drawn similarly to a candidate who speaks as plainly as they do.

The development of Charlie’s character is fully as interesting as Alice’s. We see how he comes to value loyalty over truth; how he can see disagreement as almost traitorous. We see how the clannish nature of his family provides a cushion against the world, and a history to live up to, a competition to join. We see, too, how being part of an Ivy League school extends that family, adds some sort of validity to a certain way of thinking.

One recurrent theme comes from mention of the children’s novel The Giving Tree. It is Alice’s favorite children’s book and she reads it in many places to many children. The story of The Giving Tree is of a little boy and a tree. The tree provides everything it can for the boy for his whole life and at the end provides a place to rest and is happy to do it. Did Alice represent the Giving Tree? Did she gladly give of herself to the man that she loved?

It’s a beautifully-written novel with complex, believable and sympathetic characters. Even without the parallels to recent history it stands tall.