January, 2018 Books

The Old Man by Thomas Perry is hardly his first book about an “Everyman” with a hidden wealth of money, special training and ratiocinative ability, but this follows the formula and is an enjoyable escape. Dan Chase is not a harmless retiree in Vermont. At sixty, he thinks he has escaped the Middle Eastern terrorists who are still irritated that he has millions of dollars intended for their ‘evangelism’. Almost a primer for paranoids with plenty of money, the plot “moves faster than a speeding bullet.” (WSJ)      

*Principles by Ray Dialo is not just another “How to Succeed” book. Reflecting the wisdom, experience and insights of one of the “100 most powerful men in the world” and legendary founder of arguably the world most successful hedge funds. There are brilliant insights and powerful, well-written paragraphs, but I wish he could have condensed it from 210 principles and 567 pages.  My summary is clarity about values/principles combined with radical honesty and transparency will lead to success in business, relationships and life.  Ben Franklin might have written this book if he had enjoyed access to super computers and big data.    “Significant...The book is both instructive and surprisingly moving.” (NYT)

The Baker’s Secret by Stephen Kierman is an engaging story of subtle French resistance in a small Normandy village on the eve of D-Day.  When her Jewish mentor is shamed and imprisoned, Emma decides to dilute the ration of floor she receives to bake baguettes for the occupying troops and shares two loaves a day with the starving villagers. “A shimmering tale of courage, determination, optimism, and the resilience of the human spirit,” but it lacks the kind of originality provided by the best of this genre like The Light We Cannot See. 

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny is largely set in Quebec with an obsessive historian's quest for the remains of the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, and ends in murder. Although recuperating from injuries, Chief Inspector Gamache can’t walk away from a crime that threatens to ignite long-smoldering tensions between the English and the French even while receiving information from the village of Three Pines, where Bistro owner Olivier was recently convicted of murder. Readers interested in the history of Quebec may find this the best of the Gamache novels.  Others will find another enjoyable read.

*Turtles All the Way Down by John Green is a coming-of-age story about Aza Holmes, a high school student struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder.  With her best friend, she tries to focus on searching for a fugitive billionaire who happens to be the father of her almost boyfriend. Despite the potential reward and the powerful attraction, she feels for Davis, his kiss makes her think about the 75 million microbes that just entered her mouth. This mystery and romance is a “deeply empathetic novel about learning to live with demons and love one's imperfect self.”

Bob's Best Books for 2017

**A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is the best book I’ve read this year.  It “immerses us in an elegantly drawn era” and life of Count Alexander Rostov. In 1922, he is sentenced to house arrest in a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin.  With an indomitable spirit, erudition, wisdom and wit, he ‘witnesses’ some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history while living in an attic room and losing none of his aristocratic civility. 

**Rules of Civility by Amor Towles is a first novel almost as good as his A Gentleman in Moscow. Witty and intelligent Katey Kontent’s life is changed by an encounter with a handsome banker in a on New Year's Eve, 1938.  She is quickly catapulted into the upper echelons of New York society, where she befriends a shy multi-millionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well and a single-minded widow in her search for a better life.  Reminiscent of Scott Fitzgerald, the novel masterfully weaves intricate imagery and themes with surprisingly appealing characters.

*Sing, Unburied, Sing is Jesmyn Ward’s "searing and profound journey, told in the varied voices of 13-year old Jo Jo’s dysfunctional family. Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam (dying of Cancer) and Pop (role model), and the occasional visit of their addict mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Coast of Mississippi with occasional input from his dead uncle and distant white grandfather.  Clearly an important book, but not easy reading.

**The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin, bestselling author of The Aviator’s Wife, is historical fiction about the “scandalous, headline-making, and enthralling friendship between literary legend Truman Capote, peerless socialite Babe Paley” and other members of New York’s high society in mid-20^th Century. Like me, you may have missed some of the glamour (and heart-break) of this era.

**Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly is a debut novel inspired by the true story of New York socialite, Caroline Ferriday. The lives of three women intertwine through WWII and converge at the Ravensbruck concentration camp as Caroline becomes increasing involved from her post at the French consulate. Kasia Kuzmerick becomes a courier in the Polish resistance and a subject for medical experiments, while Dr. Herta Oberheuser learns surgery at Ravensbruck. “Smart, thoughtful and just an old-fashioned good read.”

*Our Souls at Night is the last of Kent Haruf’s sparse novels about Holt, CO and a sweet love story about a deep senior friendship growing out of a mutual search to escape loneliness, and leads toa a surprising reprieve of life neither expected. The quiet drama plays out against the backdrop of a gossiping (and at times disapproving) small town with special angst from their grown children with further complications from an extended visit by a sad young grandchild… “A spare yet eloquent, bittersweet yet inspiring story.” (See the movie with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.)

**The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis describes how Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of articles challenging assumptions about the decision-making process, redefined our belief in rationality, and won the Nobel prize in economics.  Not Lewis’ best work, but still engaging, informative and insightful.

**Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice is Bill Browder’s autobiographical story of how he became the world’s largest and most successful investor in the kleptocratic Russian economy before gaining international respect as a human rights advocate. The transformation came when his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested and murdered in prison after uncovering a $230 million fraud committed by Russian government officials. Browder has been leading a campaign to expose Russia’s endemic corruption and human rights abuses. “Red Notice is part John Grisham-like thriller, part business and political memoir." 

*Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari who has received rave reviews from the likes of a former U.S. president, a Nobel laurate and Bill Gates for this book and its predecessor, Sapiens.  Harari is brilliant, witty, insightful…and verbose. The first and last chapters contained amazing analysis of how we have evolved through past epochs and how the 21^st century may evolve “from overcoming death to creating artificial life” and merging with it. Much of the other 350 pages were dense, repetitive, but still impressive.

*Before I Forget by life style maven, B Smith, and her husband, Dan, (with Vanity Fair’s Michael Shnayerson), is B’s unfolding story on coping with early-onset Alzheimer's. Alternating short chapters interweave their individual stories with advice that can help seniors and other readers learn about living with memory loss and other challenges of aging.

*Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Glide to Thriving in the Age of Acceleration by Thomas L. Friedman is a big book with some excellent insights and analysis.  But like the title, the book is too long, a bit confusing and included too much ‘cut and paste’ from interviews, columns and conversations.  Still, there is gold if you have the patience for the search.  Friedman believes that the year 2007 was a major inflection point with the release of the iPhone, together with advances in silicon chips, software, storage, sensors, and networking, creating a new technology platform that opened unbounded opportunities and challenges. Despite his obvious wisdom, Friedman could have benefited from a tough editor. Still, I thought the discussion of “Mother Nature’s Political Party” made the slog worthwhile.

November-December Books

The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz continues the saga of investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist who seeks to uncover the truth about Lisbeth Salander’s (the girl with the dragon tattoo) traumatic childhood. They must navigate dangerous challenges including an anti-Muslim gang, her mafia-connected twin and the conductors of a sinister pseudoscientific experiment.  This fifth installment of the Millennium series tries to maintain the framework created by the late Stieg Larsson but is the weakest of the series.

The Best of Me by Nicolas Sparks maintains the author’s franchise with the story of former high school sweethearts (from different sides of the tracks, of course) who return to their hometown for the funeral of a mentor and confront their choices and the hold of family history.  Will they wind up together after this interlude is the primary question and holds our attention despite formulaic characters and amazing coincidences mixed in with a little magic realism. 

*At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon “knits Mitford's small-town characters and multiple story lines into a cozy sweater of a book.” (USA Today). A surprisingly engaging, simple story about the challenges and complexities of a small Southern town centers on the wisdom and good works of Father Tim, a bachelor rector (for how long?) who takes in a huge dog, unloved boy, solves a mystifying jewel theft, and resolves a sixty years old secret. Mitford reminds me of Mayfield or a religious, southern version of “Three Pines” (Louise Penny), and Father Tim is a little like an ordained Andy Griffith.

In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Alende uses a minor traffic accident as a catalyst for an unexpected bond among a human rights scholar, his Chilean lecturer tenant and an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, to explore the difficulties of immigrants and refugees in the developed world. The story moves from present-day Brooklyn to Guatemala in the recent past to 1970s Chile and Brazil, and sparks the beginning of a love story between the scholar and his tenant.  Who am I to criticize a world class author, but this isn’t Alende’s best work and didn’t spark my admiration.

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump edited by Bandy Lee presents the analysis of 27 psychologists, psychiatrists, and mental health professionals who assess US President Donald Trump's mental health who conclude that mental illness crates a “clear and present danger” to the country. The analysis attempts to be objective and scientific, makes a reasonable case for its hypothesis, but suffers from the obvious bias of seeking points of view to support that view.

The Fall Guy by James Lasdun is a ‘psychological thriller” featuring a wealthy banker and gorgeous wife who invite his troubled cousin to spend the summer with them in their idyllic mountaintop house. There are lots of lies and self-deceptions with an almost secret affair and a not so secret murder, but who is the real villain/ victim? I found it tedious and predictable at times but reasonably engaging.

The Misfortune of Marion Palm by Emily Culliton is a "wildly entertaining debut” about a Brooklyn Heights wife and mother who has embezzled $180,000 from her children's private school and makes a run for it, leaving behind her trust fund poet husband, his maybe-secret lover,  two daughters, and a school board who desperately need to find her. I found it mildly entertaining with too many coincidences. 

Our Short History by Lauren Grodstein is the book that Karen, a single mother with advanced cancer, writes as she grapples with mortality, love and the fear that her ex will take Jake away before her final days. It’s a thoughtful meditation on love and grief, with a great concept, but didn’t engage my interest as much as I had hoped.

*Sing, Unburied, Sing is Jesmyn Ward’s "searing and profound journey, told in the varied voices of 13-year old Jo Jo’s dysfunctional family. Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam (dying of Cancer) and Pop (role model), and the occasional visit of their addict mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Coast of Mississippi with occasional input from his dead uncle and distant white grandfather.  Clearly an important book, but not easy reading.

**Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice is Bill Browder’s autobiographical story of how he became the world’s largest and most successful investor in the kleptocratic Russian economy before gaining international respect as a human rights advocate. The transformation came when his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested and murdered in prison after uncovering a $230 million fraud committed by Russian government officials. Browder has been leading a campaign to expose Russia’s endemic corruption and human rights abuses. “Red Notice is part John Grisham-like thriller, part business and political memoir."

The Nix by Nathan Hill, is a brilliant but overstuffed satirical debut novel about a failed writer and increasingly apathetic college professor, who gets a second chance at literary fame by writing about the infamous mother who deserted him. Hill has penetrating, often funny and well-written insights about almost everything.  For me, it was just too much of too many good themes, and for the NYT, it was a “supersized and audacious novel of American misadventure.”