January, 2014 Books

 

*Double Down: Game Change 2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heilmann takes the reader into back rooms, closed-door meetings of campaign teams developing strategy for the 2012 presidential campaign along with the public triumphs and disasters in a panoramic account of the most expensive campaign in history.  "Double Down exposed blunders, scuffles and machinations far beyond the klieg lights of the campaign trail." At 500 pages, it isn’t a quick read, but is well worth the effort for political junkies.

*One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson is 509 pages of largely interesting history about a summer in U.S. history that was truly “epochal.”  There was more about the early efforts in long-distance flying than I needed, but excellent accounts of how Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop and how the titanically talented Babe Ruth helped make professional baseball a profitable business with his enduring record of  sixty home runs in a single (short) season.  Bryson also provides intriguing  descriptions of Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Al Capone, Henry Ford, Jack Dempsey, Prohibition, how David Sarnoff ‘stole’ television and lots of fascinating historical tidbits. “Bryson captures its outsized personalities, exciting events, and occasional just plain weirdness with his trademark vividness, eye for telling detail, and delicious humor.”

*Perpetual Motion by Jeff Fumer is a captivating noir detective novel featuring “Cynical” Jones who is hired by a mysterious client to find the inventor of a perpetual motion machine   His search will take him round the high stakes roulette wheels in Vegas, through the desert in a high speed chase, and across the ocean in a private jet. His search is joined by FBI agents and a professional hit squad, which makes Cynical begin to wonder if there could be something to this invention...and what it might mean to the global economy.  I could be biased, but I found the book hard to put down with “well developed characters, crisp dialogue, and an engaging plot with a subtle but important message."

Bob's Best Books of 2013

FICTION

**The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt has been widely praised as one of the best books of 2013. I agree but, at 784 pages, I think it could have been even better with a bit more disciplined editing. It starts with a bang—an explosion at the Met that kills Theo’s mother and casts him adrift to become his own person.  With long passages of grief, dissolution, and criminality, it is engaging throughout and filled with much wisdom, insight and  beautiful prose  (and some that tries too hard) as Theo moves from Park Avenue to Las Vegas  to Greenwich Village to Amsterdam  and back to NYC in search of himself and eventually finds a deeply flawed person he can accept.

**The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion is a screen-ready blend of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night” and “Big Bang Theory.”   Don Tillman is a brilliant but socially challenged professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time to choose  a wife—since married people tend to live longer. In the evidence-based manner with which Don approaches everything, he designs the Wife Project to find a perfect partner: via a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey that ‘proves’ Rosie would be a terrible choice.  Still he finds her fun and exciting. Already available in 35 languages, Rosie is “funny, touching, and hard to put down.”

**The Boy Who Could See Demons by Carolyn Jess Cooke is reminiscent of “The Sixth Sense” with psychotherapist Dr. Anya Molokova who has personal reasons for specializing in childhood schizophrenia. Her patient is 10-year-old Alex Connolly who sees demons. His demon’s name is Ruen, and Alex has been seeing him since he was 5. Ruen tells Alex things that the boy couldn’t possibly know on his own. Ruen insists he’s Alex’s friend but, as we soon learn, he wants Alex to kill someone. Anya’s growing attachment worries her colleagues at a child and adolescent treatment center in Belfast. None of them realizes how much she is troubled by the anniversary of her daughter’s suicide and her mother’s long battle with mental illness.

**The Universe vs. Alex Woods by Gavis Extence is the tale of the son of a fortune teller, who was struck by a meteorite when he was ten years old, befriends a grumpy old widower and proves his friendship by getting stopped by border customs with a large bag of marijuana and an urn full of ashes. It is beautifully written, wise and funny—a blend of Mark Hadden (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night) and Kurt Vonnegut (the deity  of a church/reading group started by Mark).

**The Dinner by Herman Koch is a dark, suspenseful novel of love and hate and how they often overlap. At a fashionable, pretentious Amsterdam restaurant, two couples move from small talk to the wrenching shared challenge of their teenage sons' senseless act of violence that has triggered a police investigation and will force the parents to make the most difficult decision of their lives. During the course of a single meal we see the extent to which each family will go to protect their children. “Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator,” The Dinner has doubtless been the topic of countless dinner party debates in 26 countries.

**Golden Boy  by Abigal Tarttelin is “a harrowing coming of age with a deeply compassionate portrait of a family in crisis.” Max is an almost perfect sixteen year old. He is handsome, smart,  athletic and kind.  He is also an “intersex” adolescent trying to figure out how to navigate a world that doesn’t understand (or know about) his situation.  “Golden Boy hits all the deepest, biggest novelistic notes—family, identity, tragedy and hope…Tarttelin has  proven herself to be a writer of extraordinary empathy and incredible wisdom.”

**Kind of Kin by Arilla Askey is totally deserving of an enthusiastic NYT review (nytimes.com/2013/01/27/books/review/. When Oklahoma passes a tough "illegals" law,  Robert John Brown is sent to prison for hiding migrant workers.  Brown's daughter Sweet Georgia is left to manage a family (including a troublesome son and an orphaned nephew) that is coming apart at the seams as her marriage collapses under the stress. Askey’s treatment of poverty, politics religion, immigration and family (dis)functionality is masterful, heart-breaking and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

**The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison  was described by the NYTimes as “a story that offers a profound look into what it takes to truly care for another person.” After losing virtually everything meaningful in his life, Benjamin trains to be a caregiver, but his first client, a fiercely independent teen with muscular dystrophy, gives him more than he bargained for and soon the two embark on a road trip to visit the boy's ailing father.

**Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver is “is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking parable of catastrophe and denial.” The story introduces a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee who experiences something she cannot explain and how that discovery energizes diverse factions—religious leaders, climate scientists, environmentalists, politicians to address issues of poverty, consumerism, illusion and fear. “Flight Behavior is arguably Kingsolver's must thrilling and accessible novel to date” and the first great fiction I read in 2013.

NON-FICTION

*This Town : Two Parties And A Funeral--Plus, Plenty Of Valet Parking--in America's Gilded Capital  by     Mark Leibovich, New York Times political feature correspondent,  examines the power wars and exploitative practices of Washington, D.C.  With scathing insight and humor, Leibovich reveals how political and journalistic careers are made and broken while news events, scandals, and even funerals are used as networking opportunities.  Leibovich manages to skewer both parties, all branches of government, lobbyists and modern journalism.

*Wilson by A. Scott Berg’s new 800-page biography spares no detail, but is probably the definitive story of the 28th president, both as an icon and a talented but flawed human being. Berg captures his southern childhood, his rise through academe and his brief tenure as governor of New Jersey before defeating the incumbent  President Taft and past president Teddy Roosevelt. The Allied success in WWI prompted Wilson to travel to Europe for the peace conference; the first sitting president to leave the country. He was the first president to be welcomed as a rock star, and was determined negotiate  a charter for a League of Nations. But when the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, Wilson suffered a stroke and spent the last months of his presidency in seclusion, with his wife, Edith, effectively running the executive office.

*The Killer Angels by Pulitzer prize winner, Michael  Shaara, has been described as the “best novel ever written about the Civil War.” Incisive portraits of Lee, Longstreet, Meade, and other Civil War leaders are interwoven with rich historical detail to provide a fictional recreation of the pivotal battle at Gettysburg--four of the most bloody and courageous days of our nation's history. General Robert E. Lee believes this daring and massive move with seventy thousand men can mortally wound the Union Army, but James Longstreet, his most brilliant and loyal General stubbornly argues against his plan as two armies prepare for and fight the most important battle of the War.

*The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change by Al Gore is an important, impressive jumble of a book. Gore surveys our planet’s clouded horizon and offers a sober, learned, and moderately hopeful forecast “in the visionary tradition of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock.”  The book reflects great breath of knowledge and research with genuine passion and commitment, but like the former VP himself, it tends to go on a bit and needed a firmer editorial hand.

October-December Books

**The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt has been widely praised as one of the best books of 2013. I agree but, at 784 pages, I think it could have been even better with a bit more disciplined editing. It starts with a bang—an explosion at the Met that kills  Theo’s mother and casts him adrift to become his own person.  With long passages of grief, dissolution, and criminality,,  the prose is often eloquent, wise and beautiful. Theo moves from Park Avenue to Las Vegas to Greenwich  Village to Amsterdam and back to NYC  in search of himself and eventually discovers a deeply flawed person he can accept.

*Wilson by A. Scott Berg’s new 800-page biography spares no detail, but is probably the definitive story of the 28th president, both as an icon and a talented but flawed human being. Berg captures his southern childhood, his rise through academe and his brief tenure as governor of New Jersey before defeating  the incumbent  President Taft, and past president Teddy Roosevelt. The Allied success in WWI prompted Wilson to travel to Europe for the peace conference; the first sitting president to leave the country. He was the first U.S. president to be welcomed as a rock star, and  was determined negotiate  a charter for a League of Nations. But when the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, Wilson suffered a stroke and spent the last months of his presidency in seclusion, with his wife, Edith, effectively running the executive office.

Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search by Martin Sixsmith is less about the search and more about the adoption abuses of the Catholic  Church and  Michael Hess’s struggle to deal with the conflict between his homosexuality and the values of  his Church and his Republican Party.  The movie deals more effectively with the sense of loss experienced by his mother, and is superbly  played by Judy Densch.

**The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion is  screen-ready blend of “The Curioius Incident of the Dog in the Night” and “Big Bang Theory.”   Don Tillman is a brilliant but  socially challenged professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife—since married people tend to live longer. In the evidence-based manner with which Don approaches everything, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey that ‘proves’ Rosie would be a terrible choice.  Still he finds her fun to be with. Already available in 35 languages, Rosie is “funny, touching, and hard to put down.”

Levels of Life by Man Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes  is “urbane and wry, his style pared and sure, but his emotions are stormy.”  Barnes describes three nineteenth-century balloon flights in England and France enjoyed by three intriguing, eventually interconnected “balloonatics.” The narrator  is coping with the recent death of his wife, but I missed some of the “profound metaphorical resonance of Barnes’ fascination with ballooning.”  The reviews are so impressive, I can only conclude that I am not quite smart enough to adequately appreciate Barnes’ genius.

August/September Books

*The Killer Angels by Pulitzer prize winner, Michael  Shaara, has been described as the “best novel ever written about the Civil War.” Incisive portraits of Lee, Longstreet, Meade, and other Civil War leaders are interwoven with rich historical detail to provide a fictional recreation of the pivotal   battle at Gettysburg--four of the most bloody and courageous days in our nation's history. General Robert E. Lee believes this daring and massive move with seventy thousand men can mortally wound the Union Army, but James Longstreet, his most brilliant and  loyal  General,  stubbornly argues against the plan as two armies prepare for and  fight the most important battle of the Civil War.

Light of the World  is James Lee Burke’s 20th Dave Robicheaux novel  and finds the Louisiana sheriff's detective on vacation in Montana with family and friends. There they are hounded and haunted by a psychopathic serial killer, Asa Surrette.  Dave, his best friend and their daughters confront Asa, a billionaire oil man and crooked lawmen,  are in constant danger and always talk and  hang tough. This book could easily have been subtitled "Daddies, Don't Bring Your Daughters to Montana," as people don't just get killed: they're tortured, disfigured, and eviscerated. The much-honored Burke (two Edgars, a Guggenheim Fellowship) is still a master storyteller, but has done better—much better.

**The Boy Who Could See Demons byCarolyn Jess Cooke is reminiscent of “The Sixth Sense” with psychotherapist  Dr. Anya Molokova who  has personal reasons for specializing in childhood schizophrenia. Her patient is 10-year-old Alex Connolly who sees demons. Alex has been seeing "Ruen" since he was 5. The demon tells Alex things that the boy couldn’t possibly know on his own. Ruen insists he’s Alex’s friend but we soon learn that he wants Alex to kill someone. Anya’s growing attachment to Alex worries her colleagues at  a child and adolescent treatment center in Belfast. None of them realizes how much she is troubled by the anniversary of her daughter’s suicide and her mother’s long battle with mental illness.

**The Universe vs. Alex Woods  by Gavis Extence is the tale of the son of a fortune teller, who was struck by a meteorite when he was ten years old.  Alex befriends a grumpy old widower and proves his friendship by getting stopped at the border by customs with a large bag of marijuana and an urn full of ashes. It is beautifully written,  wise and funny—a blend of Mark Hadden (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night) and Kurt Vonnegut (deity  of a church/reading group started by Alex).

  

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman is a modern fantasy about fear, love, magic, and sacrifice in the story of a family at the mercy of dark forces, whose only defense is the three mysterious women who live on a farm at the end of the lane.  “A stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.”

 *This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral--Plus Plenty of Valet Parking in America's Gilded Capital  by Mark Leiovich, New York Times political feature correspondent,  examines the power wars and exploitative practices of Washington, D.C.  With scathing insight and humor, Leibovich reveals how  political and journalism careers are made and broken while news events,scandals, and even funerals are used as networking opportunities.

July Books

.

Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill by Michael Shelden covers the World War II prime minister's early career  (1901-1936) with emphasis on his contributions to building a modern navy, his experimentation with radical social reforms, and his lesser-known romantic pursuits. The research is solid and the writing is accomplished, but this was not my favorite book about Churchill.

Six Days by Harland Corbin takes place six years after Professor Jake Fisher watches Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. When Sanders learns of his rival's death and attends the funeral, he discovers that Natalie is not the woman he remembers and feels compels to search for answers.  The book is a well-honed, professional formula with almost too m any coincidences involving his alma mater and current employer.

Evening at Five by Gail Goodwin, a three-time National Book Award nominee and bestselling author of eleven critically acclaimed novels was described as “a literary jewel, a bittersweet novella of absence and presence and the mysterious gap between them.” Seven months after the unexpected death of her husband, Rudy, Christina reflects on almost thirty years of life together, the bond between them, and her grief, from the perspective of their long-time ritual of getting together every evening at five o'clock to share drinks and their mutual love of language and music.

A Delicate Truth by John Le Carré is vintage British spy craft.  A counter-terrorist operation, codenamed Wildlife, is mounted on Gibraltar to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms buyer.  The operation is so secret that even the Minister’s personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it. Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier posthumously forces Toby to ask if Wildlife was as success as reported or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up?

June Books

One False Move by Harland Corbin Myron Bolitar series has the unforgettable, smart mouth sports agent agreeing to protect a top female basketball star.  He has both a professional and personal interest in Brenda but there is a chasm of corruption and lies, a vicious young Mafioso on the make, and a secret that some people are dying to keep–and others are killing to protect. The dialogue is crisp and engaging, but the conclusion is a bit disappointing.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky tells the story of men and women thrown together in frightening circumstances beyond their control. As Parisians flee the city, human folly surfaces in every imaginable way. Nemirovsky was already a highly successful writer living in Paris when she started the book but she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. The book remained  hidden and unfinished for 64 years.  It is brilliant in places, but would doubtless been better if she had lived to finish the work.

One Shot by Lee Childs continues to chronicle the exploits of ex-military investigator Jack Reacher who is called in by a man accused of a lethal sniper attack on a heartland city.  The evidence against him is (almost too) overwhelming, but Reacher (picture Tom Cruise  at 6’6” and 250 pounds)  teams up with a young defense attorney to find an unseen enemy who is manipulating events behind the scenes.  This isn’t great literature but an engaging vacation diversion.

*Life After Life by Jill McCorkle follows the residents, staff, and neighbors of a North Carolina retirement center (from twelve-year-old Abby to eighty-five-year-old Sadie) as they share profound discoveries about each other and themselves.  McCorkle captures a cacophony of voices (almost too many) as they subtly experience their own transformations.

*The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison  was described by the NYTimes as “a story that offers a profound look into what it takes to truly care for another person.” After losing virtually everything meaningful in his life, Benjamin trains to be a caregiver, but his first client, a fiercely independent teen with muscular dystrophy, gives him more than he bargained for and soon the two embark on a road trip to visit the boy's ailing father.