Bob's Best Books of 2011

FICTION:

Room by Emma Donoghue's is about, Jack, a typical 5-year-old who likes to read books, watch TV, and play games with his Ma—but he has lived his entire life in an 11 x 11 room, sharing the tiny space with his mother and a nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, Room is the real world, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to create a normal life for her son. When they achieve the dream of experiencing “Outside,” the consequences are frightening. “Room is rife with moments of hope and beauty, and the dogged determination to live.” An amazingly original novel of survival, discovery and growth—an extended view of moving outside the comfort zone of “Plato’s Cave.”

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall describes the travails of Golden Richards, the title patriarch, his four wives and 28 children. Golden's houses are the sort of places where the dog often wears underwear and a child or two doesn't. “Golden may be hapless, distracted, and deceitful, but he is large-hearted and so is his story.” Like John Irving and Pat Conroy, Udall is a great storyteller who sees humor in the human tragedy and enjoys pyrotechnics.

The Murderer’s Daughters by Susan Meyers begins with young Lulu finding her mother dead and her sister wounded at the hands of their alcoholic father. The novel traces the trauma’s impact for 30 years. Rejected by family, they are sent to an orphanage, where Lulu turns tough and calculating, searching for safety and control until they manipulate a way into an adoptive family. Lulu is a great student, becomes a doctor, marries an understanding husband and has two intuitive children who are confused the secretiveness about her past. Her sister, Merry becomes a victim witness advocate who is dependent on Lulu, drugs and alcohol, and looks for love in all the wrong places. In the background, their imprisoned father looms until a crisis forces Lulu and Merry to confront what happened years ago. I found the book psychologically complex, believable and enjoyable.

Father of the Rain by Whiting Award–winner Lily King is narrated by the insightful daughter of an alcoholic father, follows their evolving relationship over four decades. Daley watches her charismatic WASPy father flounder through divorce, disgrace and increasing alcoholism. With a caring, socially responsible mother and self-imposed distance from him, she eventually returns to her father's side after he is no longer capable of living alone. Dealing with deep and complex emotions, “King's latest is original and deftly drawn, the work of a master psychological portraitist.”

Bill Warrington’s Last Chance by James King was 2009 Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award–winner April Shea is a bright 14-year-old girl who experiments with pot and constantly squabbles with her single mother, Marcy. Together, Marcy and April care for Marcy's 79-year-old father, Bill, a Korean War vet, retired salesman, failed father and now, an Alzheimer’s patient. Bill longs to bring his family together for a reunion, but with no takers on this idea, Bill and April take off for California, where April plans on joining a band and Bill imagines he can force a reunion. With shades of “Death of a Salesman” and The Notebook, King fashions a good story with a terrific ending.

Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld (Yale law professor who is married to the “Tiger Mom”) uses the 1920 bombing of Wall Street as the backdrop for a superbly written novel and well-crafted historical mystery. The ambitious plot provides a believable solution to the never-solved search for the person/s responsible for the death and injury of more than 400 people. Rubenfeld weaves such historical figures as Marie Curie and Sigmund Freud through the shifting landscape with a historian's factual touch and a storyteller's eye for the dramatic. I was enthralled as Dr. Stratham Younger, his beautiful fiancée, scientist Colette Rousseau, and Det. James Littlemore succeed in providing a reasonable solution to an important ‘cold case.’ “This fat book is heir to Caleb Carr’s The Alienist.”

NON FICTION

Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President by Pulitzer Prize winner, Ron Suskind, tells how Wall Street struggled to save itself while a young president with great gifts tries to master the world’s toughest job, and rescue the economy in the first real management job of his life. Suskind is critical of Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, and Larry Summers, (especially Summers)—all of whom had too much confidence. His heroes are Paul Volker, Gary Gensler (CFTC), Jim Weinstein (CECS) and Pete Rouse. The ensemble cast ranges from the titans of high finance to a new generation of reformers, from petulant congressmen and acerbic lobbyists to a tight circle of White House advisers—and, ultimately, to a unique portrait of the president himself. “Based on hundreds of interviews and filled with piercing insights and startling disclosures, Confidence Men brings into focus the collusion and conflict between the nation’s two capitals.”

The Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature by Timothy Ferris convincingly explains how and why science was an integral part of the intellectual toolkit of the leaders of political and individual liberty. A readable history of science and intellectual thought, Ferris begins with profiles of seventeenth-century philosophical pioneers, continues with champions of the Enlightenment’s intersection of science and self-government, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, and reviews contemporary threats to this tradition. “Lucid and captivating... Ferris’s clear and educative account makes for an enjoyable read.”

This Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum is “a wake-up call and a call to collective action”. They analyze the four challenges we face—globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation’s chronic deficits, and our pattern of excessive energy consumption—and spell out what we need to do now to sustain the American dream and preserve American power in the world. Friedman and Mandelbaum believe that the recovery of American greatness is within reach and offer a five-part formula for prosperity that could enable us to cope successfully with the current challenges.

Examined Lives by James Miller combines short biographies and synopses of 12 philosophers’ ideas of wisdom. The book is aimed at people like me who are intrigued by the history of philosophy but not prepared to take on the original texts. Miller introduces Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes, Seneca, Augustine, Montaigne, Descartes, Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Nietzsche, then describes how their mental abstractions were buffeted by demands of material or political realities that sometimes led contemporaries and posterity to bridle at inconsistencies between their words and deeds.

December Books

**Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President by Pulitzer Prize winner, Ron Suskind, tells how Wall Street struggled to save itself while a young president with great gifts tries to master the world’s toughest job, and rescue the economy in the first real management job of his life. Suskind is critical of Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, and Larry Summers, (especially Summers)—all of whom had too much confidence. His heroes are Paul Volker, Gary Gensler (CFTC), Jim Weinstein (CECS) and Pete Rouse. The ensemble cast ranges from the titans of high finance to a new generation of reformers, from petulant congressmen and acerbic lobbyists to a tight circle of White House advisers—and, ultimately, to the president himself, as you’ve never before seen him. Based on hundreds of interviews and filled with piercing insights and startling disclosures, Confidence Men brings into focus the collusion and conflict between the nation’s two capitals

*Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson captures s the intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries ( personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing). Jobs , warts and all, is still portrayed as a creative genius who realized the power of integrating design, creativity and technology. Isaacson’s masterful biography is “instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.”

The Lion in Winter by James Goldman originally opened on Broadway in 1966, was the basis of two successful movies and an excellent 2011 performance by Santa Barbara’s Ensemble Theater Company. Set during Christmas 1183, the play opens with the arrival of Henry's wife , whom he has had imprisoned since 1173. The story concerns the gamesmanship between Henry, Eleanor, their three surviving sons Richard, Geoffrey, and John, their guest, Phillip II of France. Historically creative, the script is beautifully written, and “explores themes of dysfunctional family, political maneuvering, war and peace, as well as aging, death, inheritance, and posterity.”

October & November Books

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore alternates chapters between Harold White's (a new member of eminent Sherlockian society) amateur sleuthing in Europe and Doyle's own account of his search for a serial killer, aided by Dracula creator Bram Stoker. White is inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars, at their annual New York City dinner. Scholar Alex Cale plans to present a long-lost diary penned by Arthur Conan Doyle, but someone strangles Cale before he can do so. Doyle's great-grandson hires White to solve the murder and trace the diary, which is missing from Cale's hotel room. The book is engaging and entertaining, but doesn’t challenge the master.

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks is described as “a moving and nuanced intellectual adventure, a story of achievement and a defense of progress.”Drawing on a wealth of current research from numerous disciplines, Brooks takes a composite couple, Harold and Erica, from infancy to school; from the “odyssey years” of young adulthood to the issues of poverty, success and effective leadership. He reveals the deeply social aspect of our very minds and exposes the bias in modern culture that overemphasizes rationalism, individualism, and IQ. Along the way, he challenges conventional definitions of success while looking toward a culture based on morality, trust and humility. The novel is interesting, important, but a bit wordy and sometimes jumbled.


The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes won the 2011 Man Booker prize and received breathless reviews. The novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return to his consciousness through a bequest from one of them. Tony Webster thought had had left it all behind as his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement, but he gets to see his life in new perspective.

*This Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum is “a wake-up call and a call to collective action”. They analyze the four challenges we face—globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation’s chronic deficits, and our pattern of excessive energy consumption—and spell out what we need to do now to sustain the American dream and preserve American power in the world. Yet Friedman and Mandelbaum believe that the recovery of American greatness is within reach and offer a five-part formula for prosperity that could enable us to cope successfully with the current challenges.

Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva follows the successful formula of his best selling series about art restorer and Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon. Even though almost a third of the book involves reminding the reader of characters and events from previous novels, Silva manages to keep a high level of energy and excitement as Gabriel and his team essentially demolishes a new group of Islamic terrorists with a little help from a Saudi heiress, the CIA and MI-6.

Tony and Susan by Austin Wright is a crime story within a domestic novel that was largely unnoticed in 1993 when it was originally published. Reissued this year to glowing reviews, Wright explores the nature of marriage and memory, while dissecting the potential impact of ‘minor’ choices.’ Susan reads her ex-husband’s first novel, Nocturnal Animals , in which an impulsive change of plan delivers Tony Hastings and his family into the hands of strangers who terrorize them. By counterpoising the eroding compromises of Susan's daily life with the sufferings of the fictional Hastings family, Wright shows that macho posturing, cruelty, and irresponsibility can be universal.
*The Paris Wife by Paula McLain brings Hadley Richardson Hemingway out from the shadow cast by her famous husband. The Hemingway relationship included a whirlwind courtship and a few fast and furious years of the expatriate lifestyle in 1920s Paris. This bonbon of literary tourism provides glimpses of literary giants of the era, including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Despite her basic decency, Hemmingway outgrows his starter wife after six years. “Much more than a woman-behind-the-man homage, this beautifully crafted tale is an unsentimental tribute to a woman who acted with grace and strength as her marriage crumbled.”

Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance by by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm is actually an excellent text on economic history and macro economic theory and provides an in-depth historical analysis of the role of crises in capitalist economies. With thumbnail sketches of nineteenth and twentieth century economic thought from Smith, Keynes, and the “Austrian school”, they reject the "quaint beliefs" that markets are "self-regulating," and blame Alan Greenspan's refusal to use the power of the Fed to dampen unbridled speculation, choosing instead to pump "vast quantities of easy money into the economy and keep it there for too long." A thoughtful, sometimes repetitive, important book that can be slow going for non economic wonks.

*The Rules of Civility by AmorTowles depicts an enchanting, martini-filled pre-WWII New York City. A chance meeting at a jazz club on New Year's Eve brings three memorable characters together for an enlightening and occasionally tragic search for a better life. “Towles' writing also paints an inviting picture of New York City, without forgetting its sharp edges…reminiscent of Fitzgerald.”

September Books

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Phillip Pullman is relatively faithful in style, time line, and events to the gospel canon-though Pullman has twins born to Mary, one called Jesus, and the other Christ. As children, Christ is a goody-goody and Jesus the popular one. Jesus and Christ continue down separate but intertwined paths. Jesus becomes a philosopher-revolutionary and Christ is the seemingly savvy brother. Pullman's story “reveals” how the politics and structure of the institutional church were plotted by power-hungry men, who used the renown of Jesus and his well-meaning brother as pawns in a corrupt game.

*The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt reads like a Coen brothers’ script for a retelling of the Don Quixote legend—although their quest is initially to track down and kill a prospector. The brothers journey from Oregon to San Francisco, and eventually find their target in the Sierra foothills, after meeting a witch, a bear, a dead Indian, a parlor of drunken floozies, and a gang of murderous fur trappers. Initially Charlie is the “lead man,” but Eli, the rotund, deadpan narrator, develops personal insight, morals and leadership along the way. “DeWitt has produced a genre-bending frontier saga that is exciting, funny, and…moving.”

*Notes at an Exhibition by Cornwall’s Patrick Gale describes the impact of mental illness on a family of a brilliant, but troubled artist, and her family. Each chapter is introduced by a note from a posthumous exhibition of Rachel Kelly. The book is artfully constructed and told through several voices as Gale portrays Rachel, her Quaker husband and their four children, with insight and caring detail to each of them and to her art/creativity.

Frenchman’s Cove by Daphne du Maurier described the revolt of Lady Dona St. Columb against the boring confines of high society in the 18th century. She retreats to the Cornish country house where chance leads her to meet a French pirate and discovers that “her passions and thirst for adventure have never been more aroused.” A classic “bodice buster” that will disappoint fans of Ian Fleming or Tom Clancey.

The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier was the first of the Cornwall books during our visit. A University of London chemical researcher, asks Richard to stay at Kilmarth, an ancient house near the Cornish coast. Here, Richard drinks a potion and finds himself at the same location—but in the fourteenth century. The effects of the drink wear off but it is wildly addictive, and Richard cannot resist traveling back and forth in time. He eventually finds emotional refuge with a beautiful woman of the past who is also trapped in a loveless marriage. Reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, the book is a professionally developed yarn of history, romance, and self deception.

August Books

A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay (Sarah’s Key) fails to live up to her previous successful novel. Parisian architect Antoine Rey and his sister, Mélanie, celebrate her 40th birthday where they vacationed until their mother died there in 1974. Upon returning, Mélanie is gripped by a shocking repressed memory of her mother’s affair and loses control of the car. A skeptical Antoine investigates as an upsetting chain of events unfurls in his own family. “This perceptive portrait of a middle-aged man's delayed coming-of-age story rates as a seductive, suspenseful, and trés formidable keeper.”

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin provides the life story of the two-foot eight-inches tall Mercy Lavinia “Vinnie” Bump over a century after her story-book life. Although encouraged to live a life hidden away from the public, she becomes a ‘showboat freak,’ then reaches out to impresario P. T. Barnum, marries the tiny superstar General Tom Thumb in the wedding of the century, and became the world’s most unexpected celebrity. An engaging novel of public triumphs and personal tragedies, this “is the irresistible epic of a heroine who conquered the country with a heart as big as her dreams.”

* The Snowman by Norwegian author Jo Nesbø has been translated into 40 languages and compared to Stieg Larsson fans and Tom Harris. A child wakes up to find his mother has disappeared and, a snowman has appeared out of nowhere, the calling card of a terrifying serial killer. “Brilliantly crafted, this credible and dark page-turner fully fleshes out the characters. “ Is the Snowman a suspicious doctor, a notorious playboy, or someone on the police force? Despite a few improbabilities, the plot is intense and the book is hard to put down.

Sunset Park by Paul Auster is a decent novel by a much respected writer. New York native Miles Heller now cleans out foreclosed south Florida homes, falls in love with an underage girl and flees to Brooklyn where he moves in with a group of artists squatting in the borough's Sunset Park neighborhood. The narrative broadens to take in the lives of Miles's roommates and estranged parents. “The fractured narrative takes in an impressive swath of life and (recent) history.

**Father of the Rain by Whiting Award–winner Lily King is narrated by the insightful daughter of an alcoholic father, follows their evolving relationship over four decades. Daley watches her charismatic WASPy father flounder through divorce, disgrace and increasing alcoholism. With a caring, socially responsible mother and self-imposed distance from him, she eventually returns to her father's side after he is no longer capable of living alone. Dealing with deep and complex emotions, “King's latest is original and deftly drawn, the work of a master psychological portraitist.”

*The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan is “one of the most original, audacious, and terrifying novels in years.” Jake is over 200, but nonstop sex and exercise with a high protein diet have kept him physically healthy, but so distraught and lonely he is actually contemplating suicide—even if it means ending a thousand years old legend. “…A powerful, definitive new version of the werewolf legend—mesmerizing and incredibly sexy.”

July Books

*Blood Money: a Novel of Espionage by David Ignatius of the Washington Post is “a terrific, believable novel about the intersection of politics, ethics and finance.” A new CIA intelligence unit is trying to buy peace with America's enemies, but someone is killing its agents. Sophie Marx is asked to figure out who's doing the killing and why. She starts with Alphabet Capital, a London hedge fund that provides cover for this secret operation, but the investigation soon widens to include several Middle Eastern capitals. She wonders if her hard-nosed boss, Jeffrey Gertz, his genial mentor at headquarters or the well-mannered head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate are giving her the whole story.


A Little Death in Dixie by Lisa Turner is a “tightly-plotted novel that turns the screws and sends readers racing to its surprise conclusion." Well, I thought it was professionally crafted but not great. One of Memphis' most seductive and notorious socialites has vanished. Is she's off on another drunken escapade or a victim of foul play? Aetective Billy Able quickly discovers a complex web of tragedy, mystery, suspicion, and sordid secrets including a few of Billy's own.

*My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands by Chelsea Handler is “as much fun as getting drunk and waking up in some stranger's bed.” I wouldn’t know, but she hilariously reports on photographing her parents having sex at seven and growing up to research the joys of one-night stands, i.e., “having sex early so you're not months into a relationship before you discover he's into ‘anal beads and duct tape’." She finds a date on ChocolateSingles.com., sleeps with a "little midget," and ‘enjoys’ a number of would-be partners less well adjusted than herself or with penises too small to consider. Some of the stories might not be completely true, but it would be a great loss to (mostly) single men (and her readers) if she eventually settles down with just one.

Swamplandia by Karen Russell is “a suspenseful, deeply haunted book” according to the NYT. Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has always lived at Swamplandia, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when cancer fells Ava’s mother, their headliner, the family slips into chaos; her father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a ghost, and her brilliant older brother, Kiwi, defects to a rival park called “The World of Darkness”. As Ava sets out on a mission through the haunted swamps, we are drawn into a lush and dramatic terrain that challenges the concreteness of reality. Wonderful reviews, superb writing, and almost too imaginative for my tastes.

Flourish by Martin Seligman Seligman, the guru of the "positive psychology" movement, who abandons his previous emphasis on learned optimism and happiness, which he now views as too simplistic. This examination of how individuals might achieve a richer, multilayered goal: a life of well-being could have been his most important book. He identifies four factors that can help individuals thrive: positive emotion, engagement with what one is doing, a sense of accomplishment, and good relationships. Unfortunately, he does too much “cut and paste" from grant proposals, course syllabi and previous papers to provide more than an occasional nugget amidst the muck.

A Singular Woman:The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother by Janny Scott portrays Dunham as a feminist, an unconventional, independent spirit, a cultural anthropologist, and an international development officer who surely helped shape the internationalist world view of her son. The book is tirelessly researched, adds to our knowledge about her Indonesian experience, but sometimes gets lost in extraneous details… “a straightforward, deeply reported account-- a complicated portrait of an outspoken, independent-minded woman with a life of unconventional choices.”

June Books

*Bill Warrington’s Last Chance by James King was 2009 Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award–winner. April Shea is a bright 14-year-old girl who experiments with pot and constantly squabbles with her single mother, Marcy. Together, Marcy and April care for Marcy's 79-year-old father, Bill, a Korean War vet, retired salesman, failed father and now, an Alzheimer’s patient. Bill longs to bring his family together for a reunion, but with no takers on this idea, Bill and April take off for California, where April plans on joining a band and Bill imagines he can force a reunion. With shades of “Death of a Salesman” and The Notebook, King fashions a good story with a terrific ending.

Nose Down, Eyes Up by Merrill Markoe features Jimmy, a canine seminar leader who instructs members of his pack in the art of manipulating their human masters. Jimmy's canine wisdom is made available when his owner, Gil, an unlucky in love handyman learns how to communicate with dogs. When Gil shoots down Jimmy's idea that he is Gil's biological son, Jimmy insists on meeting his birth mother, who happens to belong to Gil's now-remarried ex-wife. A series of setbacks beset the duo, and “the tribulations provide lessons in life, love and finding happiness.” Fun, cute, but hardly great literature.

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Petroff won the Minotaur Books/MWA Best First Crime Novel award. Det. Simon Ziele has abandoned big-city policing for the quiet dullness of a town in Westchester County when someone kills a Columbia mathematics graduate student whose brilliance evoked jealousy in her peers, in her home. Ziele's investigation is soon joined by Alistair Sinclair, a Columbia criminologist who thinks he knows the killers identity. The period detail, characterizations and plotting are well-done, but I found the plot predictable and a little slow.

*The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall describes the travails of Golden Richards, the title patriarch, his four wives and 28 children. Golden's houses are the sort of places where the dog often wears underwear and a child or two doesn't. “Golden may be hapless, distracted, and deceitful, but he is large-hearted and so is his story.” Like John Irving and Pat Conroy, Udall is a great storyteller who sees humor in the human tragedy and enjoys pyrotechnics.

Dixie Divas by Virginia Brown introduces the Divas--a group of 12 women from the small Mississippi town near Memphis, Tennessee. This eclectic group holds a very private monthly meeting with chocolate, alcohol and an occasional transvestite stripper as the main staples. The main characters are Trinket, a 51 year old divorcee who just moved back to Cherry Hill and her cousin, Bitty, recently divorced from her fourth husband Senator Hollander who is discovered murdered in her coast closet. Most of the Divas work to help find the killer while we also learn about the history of the area, the people with a slice of southern small town living. Too clever by a third, but still a fun, quick read.