August Books

Last Kind Words Saloon  by Larry McMurtry is the story of the closing of the American frontier through the travails of two of its most immortal figures: Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday in Long Grass, Texas. The taciturn Wyatt seems lost between bottles, and the dentist-turned-gunslinger Doc is more interesting as he is dying slowly--more slowly than the era that made them famous. While not up to McMurtry’s best, Saloon is still a short, interesting read.

Lucky Us by Amy Bloom is according to the NYT, “a short, vibrant book about all kinds of people creating all kinds of serial, improvisatory lives.”  For me, the reviews were more interesting than the book. After being abandoned by their parents, half-sisters Eva and Iris share decades in golden-era Hollywood and mid-20th-century Long Island . They have lots of luck, much of it bad,  but the potential of the plot doesn’t develop for me—probably because of my lack of depth. 

*The Fortune Hunter by Daisy Goodwin is “is a lush, irresistible story of the public lives and private longings of grand historical figures.” A totally predictable love triangle involving  a clever, plainspoken heiress; a dashing  but almost impoverished horseman Captain; and  the beautiful, bored empress of Austria.  Despite a well-worn plot, Goodwin’s 2^nd novel  places real historical characters is an engaging tale of manners and morals in Victorian England.

Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn received great reviews and is described as a “hilariously smart send-up of a certain major British literary award.” There are sharply drawn satirical portrayals of various literary types who ultimately give their award to an innovative  novel that is actually a cookbook. The writing is inventive and clever, but  after a few chapters it became ‘a tad’ tiresome.

June-July Books

*The Arsonist by Sue Miller is an engaging novel about  family and community tensions when an arsonist begins setting fire to the homes of the summer people in a small New England town. “Suspenseful, sophisticated, rich in psychological nuance and emotional insight,” this book probes themes of aging, belonging, class distinctions,  and community.

*Natchez Burning by Greg Illes grabs your attention and holds it for most of its 800 pages. Penn Cage has been an attorney, successful novelist and recently elected mayor of Natchez .  Now, he must deal with corrupt law enforcement, sociopathic business men, sadistic killers and  a radical  branch of the KKK when his father, a beloved “medical Atticus Finch” is accused of murder.  Illes manages elegantly to tie much of the sordid history of Mississippi racism and the fight for civil rights to this “epic tale” but struggles to tie all the threads together  in the finale.

*Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline finds Molly Ayer  avoiding juvie  by helping an elderly woman, Vivian,  clean out her home. Vivian had been  a young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance. Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her—and also realizes  that Vivian is a friend and mentor.

*The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor is based on Harvard’s most popular undergraduate class.  Achor  spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University and draws on the growing body of impressive research on the art and science of happiness. The writing style is engaging and the book reads like a popular and well-rehearsed  executive seminar  about  re programing  our brains to become more positive.

The Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford is the disappointing,  anticipated second novel by the author of NYT best seller, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.  Confined to a Seattle  Orphanage during the Great Depression,  a Chinese-American boy becomes convinced that a movie actress who was forced to give him up is actually his mother. There’s lots of opportunity for pathos, but the characters lack subtlety.

The Art of Social Climbing by Lincoln Kerney is described as “must-have manual for anyone looking to move up and blend into a world of houses, horses, and hired help.” The author knows the world he describes and offers some useful insight about matters of manners and taste, but  doesn’t always follow  his own advice about the dangers of dropping names or bragging.

The Keeper by John Lescroart is a Demas Hardy missing-persons case that gets complicated in a hurry. Hal Chase is a guard at the SF County Jail.  While he’s at SFO,  his wife, Katie, disappears from their home. Hal is soon picked up by police as the prime suspect and later charged with murder. Unfortunately, Hal is having an affair and so was his wife,  so suspects abound.  There’s also something rotten in the Sheriff’s department.  This is not great literature but engaging and fun to read. 

The Apartment by Greg Baxter “follows  an American man and European couple across a blurry, illogical, and frozen city  (Prague or Paris?) into a past the man is hoping to forget.” The book received excellent reviews but was a bit too “blurry and illogical” for my taste.

Suspicion by Joseph Finder  has Boston writer Danny Goodman in over his head after borrowing a large sum of money from a fabulously rich man who is the father of his daughter’s best friend—and maybe part of  a Mexican drug cartel.  The plot is formulaic, but “ so smartly put together, expertly paced and unpredictable that neither Danny's shallowness nor Finder's limitations as a prose stylist keep this from being an irresistible page-turner.”

*The Farm  by Tom Rob Smith ventures  into the almost crowded territory of Scandinavian thrillers, frequently associated with deep, dark family secrets, long-buried crimes and shocking revelations. Smith manages to simultaneously deliver on the  promise of this genre and also provide  insight into apparent paranoia with a psychological complex,  unexpected ending. 

*Looped  by Matthew  Lombardo is a play script based on a real event from 1965  when a boozed-up Tallulah Bankhead needed eight hours to redub—or loop—one line of dialogue from horror flick, 'Die! Die! My Darling!' It is a tough assignment  for poor Danny Miller, who's  been chosen to direct the sound editing session. The setting provides a believable backdrop to showcase the famous life and lines of the irrepressible Tallulah.

The Director by David Ignatius  has former tech entrepreneur Graham Weber as the  director of the CIA trying to save a moribund organization in "the post-Snowden era" of whistle-blowers and cyberterrorism.  Ignatius  writes with great authority on hackers' technology and motivation, as well as the history and culture of the CIA, builds an engaging story, but runs out of steam with a disappointing, unconvincing denouement.

*Summer House With Pool by Herman Koch is “a sly psychological thriller  within a pitch-dark comedy of manners.” As with his previous best seller (The Dinner), Koch tells a sinister tale, filled with ethical dilemmas,  through the eyes of a questionable narrator. Koch's deft and nuanced exploration of gender, guilt, and vengeance  employs sardonic humor to probe how far a person will go in risking his professional reputation and marriage while  still trying to protect his children.

April-May Books

*The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin “is a love letter to the world of books.”  A.J. Fikry, the irascible owner of Island Books, has endured some tough years: his wife dies, his bookstore is failing, and his rare edition of Poe poems is stolen.  He has given up on life until a baby is left in the store and A.J. decides to  make his life over.  This enchanting novel is literate, witty and wise.

**The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden by  Jonas Jonasson   is a picaresque tale of how one person's actions can have far-reaching—even global—consequences. Nombeko Mayeki has risen from a latrine cleaner in Soweto to become a chief adviser at the helm of one of the world's most secret projects in South Africa.  She holds the fate of the world in her hands when she discovers a nuclear missile that was supposed to have been dismantled. The satirical  novel has the same charm and sometimes over-the-top humor as Jonasson’s previous,  The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared.

Still Life by Louis Penny  is a cozy  mystery  featuring a small in village in Quebec complete with a cast of eccentric characters, a wise, insightful Chief Inspector with a varied team and, of course, a murder—of  Jane Neal, a beloved and elderly member of  Three Pines. None of the residents  can believe that anyone would murder Jane, though,  apparently  one of them has done just that.

*Red by John Logan is a searing portrait of an artist's ambition and vulnerability.  Abstract expressionist Mark Rothko has  landed the biggest commission in  recent history for  a series of murals in New York's Four Seasons Restaurant.  Rothko works feverishly with his young assistant,  but when Ken gains the confidence to challenge him, Rothko faces the agonizing possibility that his crowning achievement could also become his undoing. “Raw and provocative” in print and in performance.

*Shotgun Love Songs by Nickolas Butler is a debut novel called "Impressively original"  by The New York Times.  Five childhood friends from small-town Wisconsin went their separate ways with careers and families  are reunited during a wedding  visit marked by culture clashes,  pursuits of meaning and a woman who inspires passion in each of them. Butler powerfully  captures small town Wisconsin,  a specific time and place, yet describes the universal human condition. "This book does for Wisconsin what Larry McMurtry did for Texas in The Last Picture Show."   

The Other Story by Tatiana de Rosnay, the best-selling author of Sarah's Key, is engaging and well-written, but lacks the emotional depth of her previous novel. Hoping to put a generations-old secret behind him, Nicholas Duhamel becomes a successful writer and pens a novel that makes him famous before he is forced to reexamine his family's disturbing past.  She does capture and illustrates the difficulty of being productive and creative after writing a very successful book.

**The Financial Life of Poets by Jess Walter is the story of Matt Prior, who’s losing his job, his wife, his house, and his mind—until, all of a sudden, he discovers a way that he might just possibly be able to save it all . . . and have a pretty damn great time doing it.  You’ll have a damn great time reading this laugh-out –loud funny and insightful  book. “Walter's wildly funny, heartrending novel is a clever meditation on the American Dream gone horribly wrong.”

 **The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize and was described as  “An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.” Growing up in orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jong Il. His story is full of delicious satire, brilliant insight and empathy. 

*Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfilment by Tal Ben-Shahar, the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular and life-changing course.  One out of every five Harvard  undergraduates  lined up to take the class summarized in this book. The book (and course) is based on the new science of positive psychology, explains what happiness is and how to strive for it.

Missing You by Harlan Corben  has NYPD Detective Kat Donovan looking for love in all the wrong places.  Her on-line dating service has a picture of  her ex-fiancé Jeff, the man who walked out on her 18 years ago.  Corben almost manages to weave together alternative explanation of  Jeff’s bizarre behavior, her father’s death,  a missing mother, and a precocious teen-ager…almost. 

The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer's masterfully unveils a portrait of a troubled marriage, “a jigsaw puzzle of loyalty and betrayal, against a dangerous world of political games where allegiances are never clear and outcomes are never guaranteed.” Minutes after Sophie Kohn confesses to her husband, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is and killed. Her former lover, Stan Bertolli , a Cairo-based CIA agent, tries to help her find out why.

UP: How Positive Outlook Can Transform Our Health and Aging by Hilary Tindle is a simple, almost simplistic,  guide to the health benefits of an upbeat outlook on life.  She presents the highlights of good research on the subject, but obscures much of the value by phony, folksy illustrations or quotes from friends, colleagues  and associates.  

The Ballard of a Small Player by Lawrence Osborne follows “Lord Doyle” who is hiding out in Hong Kong, finding solace in alcohol  and losing  his embezzled wealth at the baccarat table. The British lawyer is searching through his past and trying to make sense of the present. At the peak of his gambling addiction,  he meets a prostitute (yes, with a heart of gold) who changes his fortune forever. Good reviews, but too much detail about the food, drink, and gambling in Macau.

*Labor Day by Joyce Maynard is an engaging story of a divorced mother and son whose lives change during a long summer weekend when an escaped convict comes into their house. Labor Day is “a sexy, page turning, poignant story” that “affirms Maynard’s reputation as a master storyteller and shows her to be a passionate humanist with a gifted ear and heart.” 

*Early Decision: Based on a True Frenzy by Lacy Crawford follows five students over one application season as the narrator helps them craft their college essays, cram for the SATs, and perfect the Common Application.  Crawford draws on 15 years of experience as a successful  private college counselor who understands  the madness of  the college admissions application process. The writing is witty and insightful insider's guide to  modern college admissions. It's also a sharp commentary on modern parenting among the rich and famous.

March Books

**The Invention of Wings Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees) follows Hetty "Handful" Grimke and Sarah, the daughter of a wealthy Charleston family. The story begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid. The novel follows the next thirty-five years of their lives and is Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, a feminist, suffragist and abolitionist).  Kidd does  excellent historical research  and  goes beyond the record to flesh out the inner lives of all the characters with  eloquent prose and imagery.

The Broken Places by Ace Atkins is a boring  jumble of a book about a murderer who is released from prison and returns to Jericho, Mississippi preaching redemption. Sheriff Quinn Colson is forced to confront the man's former partners in crime while the situation is further complicated by a dangerous tornado, an evil politician and various personal complications. 

Dead Aim by Robert Harris is a Santa Barbara mystery by an author I used to love.  His Jane Whitefield novels were excellent, but this is the most contrived novel I’ve read all year. Basically, the tale an ordinary man who tries to help a young woman and finds himself drawn into a lethal struggle with a series of unbelievable, deadly adversaries. Don’t bother!

*The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell by William Klaber is the fictionalized story , set in 1855  when Lucy cut her hair, changed clothes, and went off to live her life as a man. By the time she died,  she was notorious with a lengthy obituary in the New York Times. The book explores some of the hardscrabble challenges of living in the pre-Civil War era---especially while struggling with sexual identify and social mores of the day.

All the Dead Yale Men by Craig Nova explores the entanglements of fathers and sons — in the story of novae-riche father Pop Mackinnon, who used his wealth to manipulate his son Chip into the ‘right’ kind of marriage. Chip gave up the love of his life and married ‘wisely.’  The novel shows the impact over four generations by telling the story of Frank Mackinnon, son of Chip, a Boston prosecutor with a happy marriage and a daughter set to follow his footsteps into law school.

Doing Harm by Kelly Parsons is a debut novel by an  excellent physician who describes medical challenges and politics with aplomb but resorts to overly contrived dialogue and situations.   Chief resident Steve Mitchell is the quintessential surgeon: ambitious, intelligent, confident. In line for a coveted job. Steve’s future is bright until  a patient mysteriously dies, and it quickly becomes clear that a killer is on the loose in his hospital.

February Books

** An Officer and a Spy  by Robert Harris is the story of the infamous Dreyfus affair told as a chillingly dark, hard-edged novel of conspiracy and espionage. In 1895, a young Jewish officer is convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil’s Island . Georges Picquart is promoted to head  the counterespionage agency that “proved” Dreyfus's guilt and stumbles on information that leads him to suspect another spy and a coverup in the French military. Harris tells a "tale of uncanny timeliness––a witch hunt, secret tribunals, out-of-control intelligence agencies, the fate of a whistle-blower--richly dramatized with the singular storytelling mastery."

*Still Life With Bread Crumbs by Pulitizer prize winner Anna Quindlen record the pilgramage of a once world-famous photographer who moves to a small country cabin to reduce the expense of living in New York city. Slowly, he makes new friends, and begins to see the world around her in new, deeper dimensions while evaluating second chances at love, career, and self-understanding.  It is exquisite "chick lit," but  "brilliantly written, powerfully observed.  Still Life with Bread Crumbs is a deeply moving and often very funny story of unexpected love, and a stunningly crafted journey into the life of a woman."

*March  by Geraldine Brooks takes the absent father from Little Women as its central character.  March is an idealistic chaplain in the Civil War who leaves his wife and daughters to serve what he believes is a noble cause.  To evoke the period and add authenticity, Brooks turned to the journals and letters of Bronson Alcott, Louisa May’s father—a friend and confidant of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. From the intellectual world of Concord and the sensuous antebellum South, March adds adult resonance to Alcott’s optimistic children’s tale to portray the moral complexity of war.

*The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff  intertwines the history of polygamy in the Mormon Church and the story of Ann Eliza Young, the nineteenth wife of Brigham Young, with a modern mystery in which a polygamous man has been found murdered and one of his wives is accused of the crime. It is engaging and well written, but the movement between the two narriatives is confusing at times.

*The Husband's Secret by Lilian Morarity is " a knowing, touching, and entertaining page-turner." Discovering a tattered letter that says she is to open it only in the event of her husband's death, Cecelia is unable to resist reading the letter and discovers a secret that shatters her life and the lives of two other women. "Shocking, complex and thought-provoking, this is a story reading groups will devour."

Scyamore Row by John Gresham brings A Time to Kill's  Jake Brigance back fora dramatic courtroom showdown that probes the sordid history of Ford County, where racism, intrigue, suspense and plot twists challenge a small Mississippi town's concept of of justice.When wealthy Seth Hubbard hangs himself from a sycamore tree and leaves his fortune to his black maid, Jake Brigance once again finds himself embroiled in a controversial trial.   It is classic Gresham, formulaic, yet   well-written, lively and fun to read.

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."