*The Love of My Youth by Mary Gordon is part literary novel, part travelogue and partially a review of “roads not taken.” Miranda and Adam were young lovers but haven’t seen each other in 30 years. Their heady reunion takes place in Rome, a city of myths and ghosts Adam knows well. Miranda is there for an environmental health conference. Their intense conversations are psychologically intricate and complexly metaphysical and aesthetic that they seem a bit theatrical. We learn that their blissful love bloomed when they were 16 and slowly withered during their twenties as Adam devoted himself to becoming a great pianist and Miranda searched for a way to help make the world a better place. The more they talk on their Roman rambles, the more the reader wonders what finally drove them apart—and why their spouses don’t worry about their extended togetherness.
*The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein is about Enzo, a rescue lab terrier mix, adopted by race car driver Denny Swift. Enzo is a new age philosopher who hopes to be reincarnated as a person after watching Denny meet and marry Eve, have a daughter, Zoë, and risk his savings and his life to make it on the professional racing circuit. Enzo, frustrated by his inability to speak and his lack of opposable thumbs, watches Denny's old racing videos, coins koanlike aphorisms that apply to both driving and life. When Denny hits an extended rough patch, Enzo is a “reliable companion and a likable enough narrator, though the string of Denny's bad luck stories strains believability.”
*The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly is the fourth legal thriller featuring Mickey Haller the LA L.A. lawyer who uses his Lincoln town car as an office. A foreclosure client, Lisa Trammel, may be fighting too hard to keep her home and becomes the prime suspect when a mortgage banker, is killed. Strong circumstantial evidence points to Trammel, but Haller crafts an impressive defense that concludes with "the fifth witness." “Connelly has a sure command of the legal and procedural details of criminal court, and even manages to make the arcane, shady world of foreclosure interesting.” The novel is timely because of its description of shady mortgage lending/foreclosure practices and because its publication coincides with the release of the movie, “The Lincoln Lawyer."
Ape House by Sara Guren is a disappointing follow-up to her wonderful Water for Elephants. This clumsy outing begins with the bombing of a university research center dedicated to the study of how bonobo apes communicate. The blast occurs one day after reporter John Thigpen visits the lab and is entranced with the bonobos. After a series of personal setbacks, Thigpen pursues the story of the apes and subsequent explosions for a Los Angeles tabloid. “Unfortunately, the best characters in this overwrought novel don't have the power of speech.”
**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 only 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 Incredible Mrs. Chadwick: the Most Notorious Woman of Her Age by John S. Crosbie is a blend of fact and fiction about the career of a woman who became fabulously wealthy by borrowing huge sums of money, backed by forged bonds and a story about being the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie. Crosbie does a creditable job of research, fills in the blanks with reasonable assumptions and is a competent writer. The book, however, is less exciting than the story deserves.
*The Physics of the Impossible by Micho Kaku introduces complex theories of physics to general readers. His knowledge of Physics is matched by his knowledge of science fiction and his references to pop culture—Star Trek to Terminator 3—that engage the reader and help make the frontier of physics almost engaging. Kaku suggests that time travel, teleportation, alternative universes don’t violate known laws of physics and could be achieved in the next century. He also “investigates the moral issues of futuristic technology…and asks provoking questions about the fate of humankind.”
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
March Books
Retirementology: Rethinking the American Dream in a New Economy by Gregory B. Salsbury was an excellent idea that, to me, is poorly executed. Salsbury attempts to apply behavioral finance to retirement planning during an economic downturn. He identifies classic mistakes in earning, spending, saving, investing, and borrowing. His chart identifying common financially unhealthy traits such as procrastination and overconfidence along with the consequences of such traits is relatively helpful. It is good basic stuff, but there are no new insights.
Hell’s Corner is David Baldacci's “implausible fifth Camel Club novel (and) disappoints with cartoonish plotting and characterization.” After the president persuades former assassin Oliver Stone to tackle the growing threat of Russian drug gangs, Stone finds himself in Lafayette Park when gunfire breaks out and a bomb explodes. Taken off his original mission, Stone tries to identify the forces behind the attack with assistance from the “Camel Club”. “Those who prefer intelligence in their political thrillers will have to look elsewhere.”
*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 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.
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova is narrated by Sarah Nickerson is a 37-year-old, overachieving multi-tasker with a demanding job at a Boston consulting firm. Her husband, Bob, works at a struggling start-up and shares the stresses and pressures of rearing their three young children in an affluent suburb. A car accident and traumatic brain injury leave Sarah with “left neglect,” a lack of awareness of anything to her left, including the left side of her own body. Sarah’s mother, Helen, can help, but their relationship has been rocky. Seven-year-old son, Charlie is diagnosed with ADHD, Bob’s job is in jeopardy, but there is “healing of body, mind, and mother-daughter relationship and acceptance that ‘normal is overrated’.” A good book, but not up to Genova’s Still Alice.
The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfield includes Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and several important American politicians and millionaires in a gripping historical novel. Freud is an all-too-human man of obvious charm and originality; Jung is cold, calculating and obviously envious; and fictional narrator Dr. Stratham Younger is an admiring early Freudian who helps ease readers through some of Rubenfeld's longer monologues about life and architecture in New York in 1909. A better plot than Rubenfeld’s sequel, but this book could have benefited from the improved writing (or editing) of Death Instinct.
Strategic Moves by Stuart Woods is a relatively “weak entry in the long-running Stone Barrington series.” Super lawyer Stone grapples with both financial and international intrigue, beds a couple of gorgeous women, eats wonderful meals at Elaine's, drinks lots of Knob Creek, negotiates incredible agreements with and for his clients (who include an international arms dealer and the CIA), while staying a step ahead of the Mossad. Woods is an entertaining, productive writer probably won't win the Nobel prize this year.
*Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay captures “the insane world of the Holocaust and the efforts of the few good people who stood up against it.” Focusing on the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver, then transported to Auschwitz, the novel captures the terror and courage of Sarah who lives through the ordeal and the lasting impact on France. Told from the prospective of forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond as she, her arrogant, unfaithful husband and their 11 year-old daughter cope with personal and family issues.
**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.”
House Rules by Jody Picoult is a NYT’s best seller about an eighteen-year old with Asperger's syndrome, and his devoted single mother who has sacrificed her career, marriage and other son to help Jacob function. When he is accused of murder, his symptomatic behavior makes him look guilty. Picoult's deals intelligently with questions about autism and Asperger's, “the whodunit is stretched sitcom-thin and handled poorly, with characters withholding information from the reader throughout.” The book is engaging, but has too many voices with none asking the important, obvious questions.
Hell’s Corner is David Baldacci's “implausible fifth Camel Club novel (and) disappoints with cartoonish plotting and characterization.” After the president persuades former assassin Oliver Stone to tackle the growing threat of Russian drug gangs, Stone finds himself in Lafayette Park when gunfire breaks out and a bomb explodes. Taken off his original mission, Stone tries to identify the forces behind the attack with assistance from the “Camel Club”. “Those who prefer intelligence in their political thrillers will have to look elsewhere.”
*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 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.
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova is narrated by Sarah Nickerson is a 37-year-old, overachieving multi-tasker with a demanding job at a Boston consulting firm. Her husband, Bob, works at a struggling start-up and shares the stresses and pressures of rearing their three young children in an affluent suburb. A car accident and traumatic brain injury leave Sarah with “left neglect,” a lack of awareness of anything to her left, including the left side of her own body. Sarah’s mother, Helen, can help, but their relationship has been rocky. Seven-year-old son, Charlie is diagnosed with ADHD, Bob’s job is in jeopardy, but there is “healing of body, mind, and mother-daughter relationship and acceptance that ‘normal is overrated’.” A good book, but not up to Genova’s Still Alice.
The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfield includes Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and several important American politicians and millionaires in a gripping historical novel. Freud is an all-too-human man of obvious charm and originality; Jung is cold, calculating and obviously envious; and fictional narrator Dr. Stratham Younger is an admiring early Freudian who helps ease readers through some of Rubenfeld's longer monologues about life and architecture in New York in 1909. A better plot than Rubenfeld’s sequel, but this book could have benefited from the improved writing (or editing) of Death Instinct.
Strategic Moves by Stuart Woods is a relatively “weak entry in the long-running Stone Barrington series.” Super lawyer Stone grapples with both financial and international intrigue, beds a couple of gorgeous women, eats wonderful meals at Elaine's, drinks lots of Knob Creek, negotiates incredible agreements with and for his clients (who include an international arms dealer and the CIA), while staying a step ahead of the Mossad. Woods is an entertaining, productive writer probably won't win the Nobel prize this year.
*Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay captures “the insane world of the Holocaust and the efforts of the few good people who stood up against it.” Focusing on the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver, then transported to Auschwitz, the novel captures the terror and courage of Sarah who lives through the ordeal and the lasting impact on France. Told from the prospective of forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond as she, her arrogant, unfaithful husband and their 11 year-old daughter cope with personal and family issues.
**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.”
House Rules by Jody Picoult is a NYT’s best seller about an eighteen-year old with Asperger's syndrome, and his devoted single mother who has sacrificed her career, marriage and other son to help Jacob function. When he is accused of murder, his symptomatic behavior makes him look guilty. Picoult's deals intelligently with questions about autism and Asperger's, “the whodunit is stretched sitcom-thin and handled poorly, with characters withholding information from the reader throughout.” The book is engaging, but has too many voices with none asking the important, obvious questions.
Monday, February 28, 2011
February reads
*Heresy by S.J. Parris is set in 1583 against a backdrop of religious-political intrigue and barbaric judicial reprisals. Parris's debut novel features Giordano Bruno, a historical former Italian monk excommunicated by the Roman Catholic church and hunted across Europe by the Inquisition for his belief in a heliocentric infinite universe. Befriended by Sir Philip Sidney, the ambitious Bruno flees to more tolerant Protestant England, where Elizabeth I's secretary of state, recruits him to spy on suspected Catholic scholars suspected of plotting treason. As one Oxford fellow after another falls to gruesome homicide, Bruno struggles to unravel Oxford's tangled loyalties. Parris interweaves historical fact with psychological insight to provide an engaging read.
The Coming Population Crash: and Our Planet's Surprising Future by Fred Pearce is a contrarian view of population trends. Beginning with a critical historical review of Malthus, early eugenicists and contraceptive campaigners, Pearce visits regions of undeniably high contemporary population growth—India, Bangladesh, and Africa—and finds anecdotes to support the his hypothesis that world population will soon peak and then decline by citing declining fertility rates, aging baby boomers, and migration. I found the book to be challenging, provocative, well written, but not totally convincing.
**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.”
The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer is an engaging, formulaic thriller about Beecher White, an archivist who stumbles upon an old book hidden away in a room used exclusively by the president. To me, Beecher is portrayed as a likable, indecisive bumbler. He can't decide if the woman from his past loves him or is as insane as her father who tried to kill a former president. He can't decide which of his colleagues is part of a cabal willing to kill to protect the president from a 20 year-old crime or might be a successor member to George Washington's “inner circle," who provided objective information to presidents for over 200 years. His shifting interpretations of the data provide interesting twists and turns at appropriate intervals.
*Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern weaves a brilliantly funny, touching coming-of-age memoir around the best of his father’s most eloquent and profane quotes. An all-American story that unfolds on the Little League field, in Denny's, during excruciating family road trips, and in the Halperns' kitchen over bowls of Grape-Nuts, “Sh*t My Dad Says is a chaotic, hilarious, true portrait of a father-son relationship from a major new comic voice.” More than a million people now follow Mr. Halpern's musings on Twitter.
*Wench by Dolan Perkins-Valdez chronicles the lives of four slave women who are their masters' mistresses—Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet and Maw. The women meet when their owners vacation at the same summer resort in Ohio where they see free blacks and hear rumors of abolition. They are attracted to the concept of freedom, but are fearful about being caught and losing their children. An extended flashback in the middle of the novel delves into Lizzie's life and vividly explores the complicated psychological dynamic between master and slave. Reviewed favorability and compared to The Help, it is excellent, but not that great.
A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein is an enthusiastically reviewed suburban drama with an undercurrent of violence. Peter Dizinoff, a successful New Jersey doctor, is struggling to deal with undisclosed issues in his personal and professional life. His son, Alec, deflates Pete’s high expectations when he drops out of college and begins seeing Laura, the troubled daughter of Peter's best friend. Laura is ten years older than Alec and was acquitted for killing her baby she was 17, The details of Dizinoff’s malaise are slowly (very slowly) revealed to “build their way to a layered, emotionally wrenching climax” that I found as disappointing as Grodstein’s portrayal of the Dizinoff males.
A Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World's Population and How it Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation by Ted Fishman, a fretful jeremia, describes a number of locales--luxury retirement communities in Sarasota, Fla.; the rust-belt city of Rockford, Ill.; a village in Spain; Beijing--and finds a skyrocketing population over 65 with attendant problems: soaring medical costs, overwhelmed caretakers and government pension systems, with oldsters who feel sad and neglected. Fishman weaves these findings with all manner of demographic, economic, and cultural discontents, including plummeting birth rates, environmental degradation, underpaid immigrants, American industrial decline, globalization, and outlandish teen fashions. I especially enjoyed the chapter about how each decade brings new signs of aging. Unfortunately, you can't keep people from aging, and Fishman offers few helpful suggestions for coping with personal or societal aging.
Safe Haven by Nicolas Sparks shows why the author is King of Chic Lit. Well crafted and written, it follows the formula of his previous 14 romantic novels. A mysterious young woman Katie appears in a small North Carolina town, determined to avoid forming personal ties until events draw her into reluctant relationships with Alex, a widowed store owner with a kind heart and two young children; and another with her plainspoken single neighbor, Jo. “With Jo's empathic and stubborn support, Katie eventually realizes that she must choose between a life of transient safety and one of riskier rewards . . . and that love is the only true safe haven”.
** The Murderer’s Daughters by Susan Meyers begins with young Lulu finding her mother dead and her sister wounded at the hands of her 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.
The Coming Population Crash: and Our Planet's Surprising Future by Fred Pearce is a contrarian view of population trends. Beginning with a critical historical review of Malthus, early eugenicists and contraceptive campaigners, Pearce visits regions of undeniably high contemporary population growth—India, Bangladesh, and Africa—and finds anecdotes to support the his hypothesis that world population will soon peak and then decline by citing declining fertility rates, aging baby boomers, and migration. I found the book to be challenging, provocative, well written, but not totally convincing.
**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.”
The Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer is an engaging, formulaic thriller about Beecher White, an archivist who stumbles upon an old book hidden away in a room used exclusively by the president. To me, Beecher is portrayed as a likable, indecisive bumbler. He can't decide if the woman from his past loves him or is as insane as her father who tried to kill a former president. He can't decide which of his colleagues is part of a cabal willing to kill to protect the president from a 20 year-old crime or might be a successor member to George Washington's “inner circle," who provided objective information to presidents for over 200 years. His shifting interpretations of the data provide interesting twists and turns at appropriate intervals.
*Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern weaves a brilliantly funny, touching coming-of-age memoir around the best of his father’s most eloquent and profane quotes. An all-American story that unfolds on the Little League field, in Denny's, during excruciating family road trips, and in the Halperns' kitchen over bowls of Grape-Nuts, “Sh*t My Dad Says is a chaotic, hilarious, true portrait of a father-son relationship from a major new comic voice.” More than a million people now follow Mr. Halpern's musings on Twitter.
*Wench by Dolan Perkins-Valdez chronicles the lives of four slave women who are their masters' mistresses—Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet and Maw. The women meet when their owners vacation at the same summer resort in Ohio where they see free blacks and hear rumors of abolition. They are attracted to the concept of freedom, but are fearful about being caught and losing their children. An extended flashback in the middle of the novel delves into Lizzie's life and vividly explores the complicated psychological dynamic between master and slave. Reviewed favorability and compared to The Help, it is excellent, but not that great.
A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein is an enthusiastically reviewed suburban drama with an undercurrent of violence. Peter Dizinoff, a successful New Jersey doctor, is struggling to deal with undisclosed issues in his personal and professional life. His son, Alec, deflates Pete’s high expectations when he drops out of college and begins seeing Laura, the troubled daughter of Peter's best friend. Laura is ten years older than Alec and was acquitted for killing her baby she was 17, The details of Dizinoff’s malaise are slowly (very slowly) revealed to “build their way to a layered, emotionally wrenching climax” that I found as disappointing as Grodstein’s portrayal of the Dizinoff males.
A Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World's Population and How it Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation by Ted Fishman, a fretful jeremia, describes a number of locales--luxury retirement communities in Sarasota, Fla.; the rust-belt city of Rockford, Ill.; a village in Spain; Beijing--and finds a skyrocketing population over 65 with attendant problems: soaring medical costs, overwhelmed caretakers and government pension systems, with oldsters who feel sad and neglected. Fishman weaves these findings with all manner of demographic, economic, and cultural discontents, including plummeting birth rates, environmental degradation, underpaid immigrants, American industrial decline, globalization, and outlandish teen fashions. I especially enjoyed the chapter about how each decade brings new signs of aging. Unfortunately, you can't keep people from aging, and Fishman offers few helpful suggestions for coping with personal or societal aging.
Safe Haven by Nicolas Sparks shows why the author is King of Chic Lit. Well crafted and written, it follows the formula of his previous 14 romantic novels. A mysterious young woman Katie appears in a small North Carolina town, determined to avoid forming personal ties until events draw her into reluctant relationships with Alex, a widowed store owner with a kind heart and two young children; and another with her plainspoken single neighbor, Jo. “With Jo's empathic and stubborn support, Katie eventually realizes that she must choose between a life of transient safety and one of riskier rewards . . . and that love is the only true safe haven”.
** The Murderer’s Daughters by Susan Meyers begins with young Lulu finding her mother dead and her sister wounded at the hands of her 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.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Recent Books Read
2011 Books Read
*The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O'Hagan is a clever satire from the perspective of a philosophical Maltese given to Marilyn by Frank Sinatra. You can almost imagine de Tocqueville describing mid-century United States from a pampered canine perspective. Maf, like Miss Marple, is well schooled in the classics and enjoy listening and sniffing the feet and ankles such notables as Natalie Wood, Frank Sinatra, and JFK, as he offers erudite commentary, sometimes in dialogue with other dogs, on such subjects as interior decorating, celebrity, authenticity, religion, and death.
My Reading Life by Pat Conroy, like his other books combine a charming narrative voice and often over written prose. In this ode to the books and book people that shaped his life. Conroy attributes his love of literature to his mother, who nurtured his passion for reading and at the same time educated herself by studying his school books. Her favorite novel (and his) was Gone with the Wind, which she read to him when he was five years old. Conroy pays tribute to the men who were substitute father figures and mentors, among them a dedicated English teacher/mentor and legendary book rep who appropriately chastised him for his "overcaffeinated prose."
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender is narrated by young, needy Rose Edelstein, who can literally taste the emotions of whoever prepares her food. This use of magic realism gives her unwanted insight into other people's secret emotional lives—including her mother's, whose lemon cake betrays a deep dissatisfaction. “Bender plumbs an emotionally crippled family with power and authenticity…her gustative insights don't have the sensual potency readers might crave, (still) this coming-of-age story makes a bittersweet dish.”
The Reversal by Michael Connelly proves that the author is still at the top of his game and among the best in this genre. Longtime defense attorney Mickey Haller is recruited to change stripes and prosecute the high-profile retrial of a brutal child murder. After 24 years in prison, a convicted killer Jason Jessup has won a new trial because of new DNA evidence. Haller is convinced Jessup is guilty, and he takes the case on the condition that he gets to choose his investigator, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. Together, Bosch and Haller set off on a case fraught with political and personal danger—a pleasant, satisfying read.
The Weekend by Bernard Schlink (The Reader) describes a reunion of old friends after Jörg is released from prison. “Schlink's meditative (is about) the past's grip on the present and the possibility--or impossibility--of redemption.” Convicted of quadruple murder and numerous acts of terrorism on behalf of the radical left, Jörg spent 24 years in prison before being unexpectedly pardoned. His sister, Christiane, invites journalist Henner, whom Jörg believes betrayed him to the police; Ilse, who is beginning a novel about a common friend's alleged suicide; and Marko, a young revolutionary intent on convincing Jörg to speak out against the current government. While favorably reviewed, I found it slow going.
*The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O'Hagan is a clever satire from the perspective of a philosophical Maltese given to Marilyn by Frank Sinatra. You can almost imagine de Tocqueville describing mid-century United States from a pampered canine perspective. Maf, like Miss Marple, is well schooled in the classics and enjoy listening and sniffing the feet and ankles such notables as Natalie Wood, Frank Sinatra, and JFK, as he offers erudite commentary, sometimes in dialogue with other dogs, on such subjects as interior decorating, celebrity, authenticity, religion, and death.
My Reading Life by Pat Conroy, like his other books combine a charming narrative voice and often over written prose. In this ode to the books and book people that shaped his life. Conroy attributes his love of literature to his mother, who nurtured his passion for reading and at the same time educated herself by studying his school books. Her favorite novel (and his) was Gone with the Wind, which she read to him when he was five years old. Conroy pays tribute to the men who were substitute father figures and mentors, among them a dedicated English teacher/mentor and legendary book rep who appropriately chastised him for his "overcaffeinated prose."
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender is narrated by young, needy Rose Edelstein, who can literally taste the emotions of whoever prepares her food. This use of magic realism gives her unwanted insight into other people's secret emotional lives—including her mother's, whose lemon cake betrays a deep dissatisfaction. “Bender plumbs an emotionally crippled family with power and authenticity…her gustative insights don't have the sensual potency readers might crave, (still) this coming-of-age story makes a bittersweet dish.”
The Reversal by Michael Connelly proves that the author is still at the top of his game and among the best in this genre. Longtime defense attorney Mickey Haller is recruited to change stripes and prosecute the high-profile retrial of a brutal child murder. After 24 years in prison, a convicted killer Jason Jessup has won a new trial because of new DNA evidence. Haller is convinced Jessup is guilty, and he takes the case on the condition that he gets to choose his investigator, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. Together, Bosch and Haller set off on a case fraught with political and personal danger—a pleasant, satisfying read.
The Weekend by Bernard Schlink (The Reader) describes a reunion of old friends after Jörg is released from prison. “Schlink's meditative (is about) the past's grip on the present and the possibility--or impossibility--of redemption.” Convicted of quadruple murder and numerous acts of terrorism on behalf of the radical left, Jörg spent 24 years in prison before being unexpectedly pardoned. His sister, Christiane, invites journalist Henner, whom Jörg believes betrayed him to the police; Ilse, who is beginning a novel about a common friend's alleged suicide; and Marko, a young revolutionary intent on convincing Jörg to speak out against the current government. While favorably reviewed, I found it slow going.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Bob’s Ten Best Books of 2010
Fiction:
**Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is a witty and wise debut novel by Helen Simonson that introduces the unforgettable character of Major Ernest Pettigrew. The widowed Major epitomizes the Englishman with the "stiff upper lip" who clings to traditional values and tries unsuccessful to pass these along to his yuppie son, Roger. The story centers on Pettigrew's fight to keep his greedy relatives (including his son) from selling a valuable family heirloom--a pair of Churchill hunting guns. The embattled hero discovers unexpected comfort and consolation from his neighbor, the Pakistani shopkeeper, Jasmina Ali. Pettigrew and Ali's backgrounds and life experiences couldn't be more different, but they discover that they have important things in common. This wry, yet optimistic, comedy of manners with a romantic twist has great humor and insights on almost every page and is my favorite book of 2010.
**The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray by Walter Mosley was a surprising contender for my favorite 2010 book. Ptolemy Grey is 91 years old, suffering from dementia and regrets while living as a recluse in his Los Angeles apartment. Ptolemy begins to change when Robyn Small, a 17-year-old family friend helps clean up his apartment and straighten out his life. He volunteers for an experimental drug regime that may restore his mind, but shorten his life. Ptolemy uses his rejuvenation to solve the mystery of the recent drive-by shooting of his great-nephew, and to render justice, guided by the memory of his murdered childhood mentor, Coydog McCann. Though the medical details of his ‘recovery’ aren’t convincing, it is a creative literary technique that provides Mosley with a chance to show how talented a writer he is.
**The Lacuna is Barbara Kingsolver's best new novel in nine years since the excellent Poisonwood Bible). It focuses on Harrison William Shepherd, the son of a divorced American father and a Mexican mother. After getting kicked out of an American military academy and seeing the “bonus army riots”, Harrison spends several years in Mexico in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo; and their houseguest, Leon Trotsky. When Trotsky is assassinated, Harrison returns to the U.S. and settles in Asheville, N.C., where he becomes an author of historical potboilers (e.g., Vassals of Majesty) and is later investigated as a possible subversive. Narrated in the form of letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings, the novel starts slowing, but achieves an emotional peak when Harrison wittily defends himself before the Un-American Activities Committee (the panel includes a young Dick Nixon). I thought Kingsolver subtly wove parallels between the fall of Aztec civilization, the 1930s and 40s (and by implication), our own era. Kingsolver was masterful in resurrecting “a dark period in American history with the assured hand of a true literary artist.”
*Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore is a charming “coming of age” Southern novel in the tradition of Harper Lee or Fannie Flagg. It’s the early 1970s, and Catherine Grace Cline is the quick-witted daughter of Ringgold’s third-generation Baptist preacher, who is dying to escape her small-town life. Every Saturday, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plots her getaway to Atlanta. At 18, she packs her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves, to claim the life she’s always imagined. But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, tragedy brings Catherine Grace back home where a series of extraordinary events alter her perspective–and she begins to wonder where her place in the world may actually be. “Intelligent, charming, and utterly readable, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen marks the debut of a talented new literary voice.”
*The Inperfectionists by Tom Rachman charts the goings-on at a scrappy English-language newspaper in Rome. Each chapter is an exquisite short story with the intersecting lives of the men and women who produce the paper—and one woman who reads it religiously. Obit writer, Arthur Gopal, whose overarching goal at the paper is indolence, encounters personal tragedy and, with it, unexpected career ambition. Late in the book, as the paper buckles, recently laid-off copyeditor Dave Belling seduces the CFO who fired him. Throughout, the founding publisher's progeny stagger under a heritage they don't understand. As the ragtag staff faces down the implications of the paper's tilt into oblivion, “there are more than enough sublime moments, unexpected turns and wretchedness to warrant putting this on the shelf next to other great newspaper novels.”
*The Widowers Tale by National Book Award winner, Julia Glass, is “elaborately plotted and luxuriously paced, … inquisitive, compassionate, funny, and suspenseful… addresses significant and thorny social issues with emotional veracity, artistic nuance, and a profound perception of the grand interconnectivity of life.” The widower is Percy Darling, an acerbic patriarch and former Harvard librarian. His historic property includes a large house, pond and a spacious old barn, once his late wife's dance studio, now an upscale preschool. A mischievous and erudite curmudgeon, Percy only agrees to the school’s intrusion in the hope that his floundering daughter, Clover, will finally secure a job that makes her happy. Not that she'll ever catch up to her sister, a celebrity oncologist. Glass is great with the character development of family members and their associated contacts from a variety of social classes.
Non-Fiction
*Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin is the best, by far, of the four books I’ve read about the 2008 campaign—gossipy, insightful and informative. “Sarah Palin was serene when chosen for V.P. because it was “God’s plan.” Hillary didn’t know if she could control Bill (duh).”The men get less attention than the women who tend to come off slightly better. “Obama can be conceited and windy; McCain was disengaged to the point of recklessness; Biden talks a lot, and John Edwards is a cheating, egotistical blowhard.” But, hey, that’s politics. The authors worked their “200 sources” well. Many of the book’s events were covered previously, but sometimes, this volume delivers totally behind-the-scenes and genuinely surprising information. I was a campaign junkie, but was surprised that Senators Schumer and Reid (official Hillary supporters) encouraged Obama to seek the presidency and that Palin was initially screened by a Google search for “female Republican officeholders.”
*Comeback America by David M. Walker, former comptroller general of the US is an important analysis and set of recommendations to address the fiscal catastrophe facing America. Walker does excellent analysis and makes courageous recommendations in a totally non-partisan manner. Everyone needs to read this book—or at least the summary provided at the Peterson Foundation web-site.
*Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy by Joseph Stiglitz is a “spirited attack on Wall Street, the free market and the Washington consensus.”As a Nobel Prize winner and chairman of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, Stieglitz has some practical insights on what lead to the “Great Recession” and how to prevent the next one. He provides an understandable overview of modern economic theory and “the wrongheaded national faith in the power of free markets to regulate themselves and provide wealth for all.” It is hard to make economics consistently interesting, but Stiglitz comes close and ends with a plea for the original focus of economics as “moral philosophy.”
*The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity by Richard Florida is a broad, optimistic look at the current economic crisis and the opportunities it presents. Florida examines the latest of the "Great Resets," moments of transformative upheaval (like the Great Depression) "when new technologies and technological systems arise, when the economy is recast and society remade, and when the places where we live and work change to suit new needs." Though Florida often rushes to neat generalities and cheerleading, his background as a historical geographer provides interesting insights and a unique perspective on the yet unresolved economic calamity.
**Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is a witty and wise debut novel by Helen Simonson that introduces the unforgettable character of Major Ernest Pettigrew. The widowed Major epitomizes the Englishman with the "stiff upper lip" who clings to traditional values and tries unsuccessful to pass these along to his yuppie son, Roger. The story centers on Pettigrew's fight to keep his greedy relatives (including his son) from selling a valuable family heirloom--a pair of Churchill hunting guns. The embattled hero discovers unexpected comfort and consolation from his neighbor, the Pakistani shopkeeper, Jasmina Ali. Pettigrew and Ali's backgrounds and life experiences couldn't be more different, but they discover that they have important things in common. This wry, yet optimistic, comedy of manners with a romantic twist has great humor and insights on almost every page and is my favorite book of 2010.
**The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray by Walter Mosley was a surprising contender for my favorite 2010 book. Ptolemy Grey is 91 years old, suffering from dementia and regrets while living as a recluse in his Los Angeles apartment. Ptolemy begins to change when Robyn Small, a 17-year-old family friend helps clean up his apartment and straighten out his life. He volunteers for an experimental drug regime that may restore his mind, but shorten his life. Ptolemy uses his rejuvenation to solve the mystery of the recent drive-by shooting of his great-nephew, and to render justice, guided by the memory of his murdered childhood mentor, Coydog McCann. Though the medical details of his ‘recovery’ aren’t convincing, it is a creative literary technique that provides Mosley with a chance to show how talented a writer he is.
**The Lacuna is Barbara Kingsolver's best new novel in nine years since the excellent Poisonwood Bible). It focuses on Harrison William Shepherd, the son of a divorced American father and a Mexican mother. After getting kicked out of an American military academy and seeing the “bonus army riots”, Harrison spends several years in Mexico in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo; and their houseguest, Leon Trotsky. When Trotsky is assassinated, Harrison returns to the U.S. and settles in Asheville, N.C., where he becomes an author of historical potboilers (e.g., Vassals of Majesty) and is later investigated as a possible subversive. Narrated in the form of letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings, the novel starts slowing, but achieves an emotional peak when Harrison wittily defends himself before the Un-American Activities Committee (the panel includes a young Dick Nixon). I thought Kingsolver subtly wove parallels between the fall of Aztec civilization, the 1930s and 40s (and by implication), our own era. Kingsolver was masterful in resurrecting “a dark period in American history with the assured hand of a true literary artist.”
*Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore is a charming “coming of age” Southern novel in the tradition of Harper Lee or Fannie Flagg. It’s the early 1970s, and Catherine Grace Cline is the quick-witted daughter of Ringgold’s third-generation Baptist preacher, who is dying to escape her small-town life. Every Saturday, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plots her getaway to Atlanta. At 18, she packs her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves, to claim the life she’s always imagined. But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, tragedy brings Catherine Grace back home where a series of extraordinary events alter her perspective–and she begins to wonder where her place in the world may actually be. “Intelligent, charming, and utterly readable, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen marks the debut of a talented new literary voice.”
*The Inperfectionists by Tom Rachman charts the goings-on at a scrappy English-language newspaper in Rome. Each chapter is an exquisite short story with the intersecting lives of the men and women who produce the paper—and one woman who reads it religiously. Obit writer, Arthur Gopal, whose overarching goal at the paper is indolence, encounters personal tragedy and, with it, unexpected career ambition. Late in the book, as the paper buckles, recently laid-off copyeditor Dave Belling seduces the CFO who fired him. Throughout, the founding publisher's progeny stagger under a heritage they don't understand. As the ragtag staff faces down the implications of the paper's tilt into oblivion, “there are more than enough sublime moments, unexpected turns and wretchedness to warrant putting this on the shelf next to other great newspaper novels.”
*The Widowers Tale by National Book Award winner, Julia Glass, is “elaborately plotted and luxuriously paced, … inquisitive, compassionate, funny, and suspenseful… addresses significant and thorny social issues with emotional veracity, artistic nuance, and a profound perception of the grand interconnectivity of life.” The widower is Percy Darling, an acerbic patriarch and former Harvard librarian. His historic property includes a large house, pond and a spacious old barn, once his late wife's dance studio, now an upscale preschool. A mischievous and erudite curmudgeon, Percy only agrees to the school’s intrusion in the hope that his floundering daughter, Clover, will finally secure a job that makes her happy. Not that she'll ever catch up to her sister, a celebrity oncologist. Glass is great with the character development of family members and their associated contacts from a variety of social classes.
Non-Fiction
*Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin is the best, by far, of the four books I’ve read about the 2008 campaign—gossipy, insightful and informative. “Sarah Palin was serene when chosen for V.P. because it was “God’s plan.” Hillary didn’t know if she could control Bill (duh).”The men get less attention than the women who tend to come off slightly better. “Obama can be conceited and windy; McCain was disengaged to the point of recklessness; Biden talks a lot, and John Edwards is a cheating, egotistical blowhard.” But, hey, that’s politics. The authors worked their “200 sources” well. Many of the book’s events were covered previously, but sometimes, this volume delivers totally behind-the-scenes and genuinely surprising information. I was a campaign junkie, but was surprised that Senators Schumer and Reid (official Hillary supporters) encouraged Obama to seek the presidency and that Palin was initially screened by a Google search for “female Republican officeholders.”
*Comeback America by David M. Walker, former comptroller general of the US is an important analysis and set of recommendations to address the fiscal catastrophe facing America. Walker does excellent analysis and makes courageous recommendations in a totally non-partisan manner. Everyone needs to read this book—or at least the summary provided at the Peterson Foundation web-site.
*Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy by Joseph Stiglitz is a “spirited attack on Wall Street, the free market and the Washington consensus.”As a Nobel Prize winner and chairman of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, Stieglitz has some practical insights on what lead to the “Great Recession” and how to prevent the next one. He provides an understandable overview of modern economic theory and “the wrongheaded national faith in the power of free markets to regulate themselves and provide wealth for all.” It is hard to make economics consistently interesting, but Stiglitz comes close and ends with a plea for the original focus of economics as “moral philosophy.”
*The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity by Richard Florida is a broad, optimistic look at the current economic crisis and the opportunities it presents. Florida examines the latest of the "Great Resets," moments of transformative upheaval (like the Great Depression) "when new technologies and technological systems arise, when the economy is recast and society remade, and when the places where we live and work change to suit new needs." Though Florida often rushes to neat generalities and cheerleading, his background as a historical geographer provides interesting insights and a unique perspective on the yet unresolved economic calamity.
Books Read in 2010 (cont.)
*I Am Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira is the story of a 20-year-old midwife who dreams of becoming a surgeon and finds in the Civil War, an opportunity to gain the medical experience that is denied her by the establishment. From a variety of perspectives—Mary, Dr. Stipp (her reluctant mentor), the soldiers, their families, and social, political, and military leaders—“the novel offers readers a picture of a time of medical hardship, crisis, and opportunity.” Oliveira graphically depicts the amputation of a leg, the delivery of a baby, and soldierly life in gripping, historical detail and presents a far more accurate picture of the War than Gone with the Wind.
61 Hours by Lee Child is, according to the NYT, “the craftiest and most highly evolved of Lee Child’s electrifying Jack Reacher books.” There’s always a ticking clock in the background as Reacher, finds a wrong that needs righting. Reacher lands in Boulton, South Dakota, and finds himself helping out the local police as they attempt to protect a key witness in an upcoming drug trial. Then there’s the underground installation outside of town, formerly a military outpost, but now apparently housing a meth lab. As the hours pass, tension builds, and we learn more about the installation, the local cops, the witness, and a Mexican drug lord whose own clock is also ticking. A good formulaic treatment with excellent character development.
**The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray by Walter Mosley was a surprising contender for my favorite 2010 book. Ptolemy Grey is 91 year old, suffering from dementia and regrets while living as a recluse in his Los Angeles apartment. Ptolemy begins to change when Robyn Small, a 17-year-old family friend helps clean up his apartment and straighten out his life. He volunteers for an experimental drug regime that may restore his mind, but shorten his life. Ptolemy uses his rejuvenation to solve the mystery of the recent drive-by shooting of his great-nephew, and to render justice, guided by the memory of his murdered childhood mentor, Coydog McCann. Though the medical details of his ‘recovery’ aren’t convincing, it is a creative literary technique that provides Mosley with a chance to show how talented a writer he is.
Outwitting Trolls by William Tapply was favorably reviewed in the NYT. “Brady Coyne is a Boston attorney who focuses on a few private clients and the legal drudgery of their everyday life, which leads to a generally unexciting life”—and book. An old friend and former neighbor, in Boston for a conference, Ken contacts Brady for an uneventful get-together. The next day, Brady gets a call from Nichols’ ex-wife. She’s standing in her ex’s hotel room, Nichols is lying dead on the floor of his room, and she needs Brady’s help. But this murder is only the first, and Brady is soon trying to find the connection between these long ago friends and the violence dogging their family. A pleasant, but ‘unexciting’ read.
**Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is a witty and wise debut novel by Helen Simonson introduces the unforgettable character of Major Ernest Pettigrew. The widowed Major epitomizes the Englishman with the "stiff upper lip," who clings to traditional values and tries unsuccessful to pass these along to his yuppie son, Roger. The story centers on Pettigrew's fight to keep his greedy relatives (including his son) from selling a valuable family heirloom--a pair of Churchill hunting guns. The embattled hero discovers unexpected comfort and consolation from his neighbor, the Pakistani shopkeeper, Jasmina Ali. Pettigrew and Ali's backgrounds and life experiences couldn't be more different, but they discover that they have important things in common. This wry, yet optimistic comedy of manners with a romantic twist has great humor and insights on almost every page and is my favorite book of 2010.
61 Hours by Lee Child is, according to the NYT, “the craftiest and most highly evolved of Lee Child’s electrifying Jack Reacher books.” There’s always a ticking clock in the background as Reacher, finds a wrong that needs righting. Reacher lands in Boulton, South Dakota, and finds himself helping out the local police as they attempt to protect a key witness in an upcoming drug trial. Then there’s the underground installation outside of town, formerly a military outpost, but now apparently housing a meth lab. As the hours pass, tension builds, and we learn more about the installation, the local cops, the witness, and a Mexican drug lord whose own clock is also ticking. A good formulaic treatment with excellent character development.
**The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray by Walter Mosley was a surprising contender for my favorite 2010 book. Ptolemy Grey is 91 year old, suffering from dementia and regrets while living as a recluse in his Los Angeles apartment. Ptolemy begins to change when Robyn Small, a 17-year-old family friend helps clean up his apartment and straighten out his life. He volunteers for an experimental drug regime that may restore his mind, but shorten his life. Ptolemy uses his rejuvenation to solve the mystery of the recent drive-by shooting of his great-nephew, and to render justice, guided by the memory of his murdered childhood mentor, Coydog McCann. Though the medical details of his ‘recovery’ aren’t convincing, it is a creative literary technique that provides Mosley with a chance to show how talented a writer he is.
Outwitting Trolls by William Tapply was favorably reviewed in the NYT. “Brady Coyne is a Boston attorney who focuses on a few private clients and the legal drudgery of their everyday life, which leads to a generally unexciting life”—and book. An old friend and former neighbor, in Boston for a conference, Ken contacts Brady for an uneventful get-together. The next day, Brady gets a call from Nichols’ ex-wife. She’s standing in her ex’s hotel room, Nichols is lying dead on the floor of his room, and she needs Brady’s help. But this murder is only the first, and Brady is soon trying to find the connection between these long ago friends and the violence dogging their family. A pleasant, but ‘unexciting’ read.
**Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is a witty and wise debut novel by Helen Simonson introduces the unforgettable character of Major Ernest Pettigrew. The widowed Major epitomizes the Englishman with the "stiff upper lip," who clings to traditional values and tries unsuccessful to pass these along to his yuppie son, Roger. The story centers on Pettigrew's fight to keep his greedy relatives (including his son) from selling a valuable family heirloom--a pair of Churchill hunting guns. The embattled hero discovers unexpected comfort and consolation from his neighbor, the Pakistani shopkeeper, Jasmina Ali. Pettigrew and Ali's backgrounds and life experiences couldn't be more different, but they discover that they have important things in common. This wry, yet optimistic comedy of manners with a romantic twist has great humor and insights on almost every page and is my favorite book of 2010.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Books Read Since July 1
Out Stealing Horses by Pers Petterson is the story of Trond Sander, a widower nearing seventy, who moves to a bare cabin in remote eastern Norway, seeking the life of quiet contemplation. A chance encounter with a former neighbor causes him to ruminate on the last summer he spent with his adored father, who abandoned the family soon afterward. The novel focuses on an afternoon, when he and a friend set out to take some horses from a nearby farm. Beginning as an exhilarating adventure, the day ended abruptly and traumatically in an act of unexpected cruelty. “Petterson’s spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force, and the narrative gains further power from the artful interplay of Trond’s childhood and adult perspectives.”
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet by David Mitchell is one of the NYT “Top Ten for 2010.” Mitchell is known for his experimental, puzzle-like fiction. Unfortunately, some of the puzzles, names and places in this historical novel set in Edo-era Japan, eluded me—obviously, my bad. This suspenseful and meticulously detailed story of forbidden love — between a young Dutchman and a Japanese midwife, who is abducted by a mysterious group of monks —“ unfurls, musically, to become a meditation on East and West, superstition and science, tradition and change.” An important work for more sophisticated readers.
Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez is a post-apocalyptic tale told by 13-year old Cole, the son of liberal atheists and a smart, self-contained boy who loves to draw and is a keen observer—“a classic coming-of-age story with a terrifying medical catastrophe and a profound battle between secular and religious viewpoints.” The pandemic orphans and nearly kills Cole, who ends up living with a kindhearted Evangelical pastor and his wife in Salvation City, a community preparing for the Rapture and focused on bible studies, guns, rapture children, and saved adults. “ Nunez brilliantly contrasts epic social failure and tragedy with the unfurling of one promising life, reminding us that even in the worst of times, we seek coherence, discovery, and connection."
The Confession by John Gresham is a not-too subtle critique of capital punishment in general and the Texas justice system in particular. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, Travis Boyette abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donté Drumm, a local football star, and sent him to death row. Nine years later, Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donté is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what’s right and confess. The book focuses on the challenges of trying to get the attention of politicians who are rewarded for their conviction and execution record. Travis and an idealistic minister try to convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they’re about to execute an innocent man.
*The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva is an excellent thriller about Gabriel Allon, art restorer and Israeli super agent. In Glastonbury, an art restorer is murdered and a long-lost portrait by Rembrandt mysteriously stolen. Despite his reluctance, Gabriel is persuaded to use his unique skills to search for the painting and those responsible for the crime. But as he follows a trail of clues leading from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires and, finally, to a villa on the graceful shores of Lake Geneva, Gabriel discovers there are deadly secrets connected to the painting dating back to WWII. He deals with a remarkable cast of characters: a glamorous London journalist who is determined to undo the worst mistake of her career, an elusive master art thief who is burdened by a conscience, and a powerful Swiss billionaire who is known for his good deeds but may just be behind one of the greatest threats facing the world. “Filled with remarkable twists and turns of plot, and told with seductive prose.”
The Four Corners of the Sky by Michael Malone, one of my favorite Southern writers is an overly- ambitious blend of humor, mystery, adventure and sentimentality. Navy pilot Annie P. Goode comes home for her 26th birthday to her doting aunt and uncle in Emerald, NC, exactly where Jack, her con man father, left her 19 years earlier. Jack calls to say that he is dying and needs Annie’s help. Within a week, Ann finds herself in St. Louis, Miami, and Havana, always a step behind Jack, as everyone seeks a golden, gem-encrusted statue. Malone employs his trademark cast of Southern characters, literary references and wry humor, including using titles of old movies for his 55 chapters. With some serious editing, this long novel could have been one of his best, but “Bizarre coincidences, caricatured criminals and characters who spurt groan-worthy puns, classic movie lines and Shakespeare quotes in place of meaningful dialogue keep the novel teetering toward the absurd.”
Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz, psychology professor and dog person, applies ethology (the science of animal behavior) learned from white rhinos and bonobos, to dogs. Over eight years of study, she concludes that dogs know us better than we know them. Horowitz invites readers to imagine living 18 inches or so above the ground, with incredible olfactory senses comparable to the human capacity. Social and communications skills are also explored, as well as the practicalities of dog owning (Horowitz disagrees with the "pack" approach to dog training). “Dog lovers will find this book largely fascinating, despite Horowitz's meandering style and somnolent tone.”
Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré shows that the author is near, but not at, the top of his game. This Russian mafia spy thriller has an Oxford tutor and his lawyer girlfriend meet Dmitri "Dima" Vladimirovich Krasnov, an avuncular Russian businessman who challenges Perry to a tennis match. Perry wins, Dima takes a shine to the couple, and soon, Perry conveys a message to MI6 in England that Dima wishes to defect. They are ‘invited by MI6 to an exhausting debriefing. Not only is Dima a Russian oligarch, he's also one of the world's biggest money launderers. After a slow start, Le Carré gradually ratchets up the tension until the sad, inevitable end. One reviewer said, “His most accessible work in years.” A good read but not his best.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larrson is “the exhilarating (and exhausting) conclusion to Millennium trilogy.” Lisbeth Salander, the brilliant computer hacker who was shot in the head in the final pages of Fire, is alive, though still the prime suspect in three murders in Stockholm. While she convalesces under armed guard, journalist Mikael Blomkvist works to unravel the decades-old cover-up surrounding the man who shot Salander: her father, Alexander Zalachenko, a Soviet intelligence defector and longtime secret asset to Säpo, Sweden's security police. Sometimes the details of Swedish political history and personal backgrounds of minor characters are overpowering and there are almost endless sub-plots, Larrson is still hard to put down.
*The Widowers Tale by National Book Award winner, Julia Glass, is “elaborately plotted and luxuriously paced, … inquisitive, compassionate, funny, and suspenseful… addresses significant and thorny social issues with emotional veracity, artistic nuance, and a profound perception of the grand interconnectivity of life.” The widower is Percy Darling, an acerbic patriarch and former Harvard librarian His historic property includes a large house, pond and a spacious old barn, once his late wife's dance studio, now an upscale preschool. A mischievous and erudite curmudgeon, Percy only agrees to the school’s intrusion in the hope that his floundering daughter, Clover, will finally secure a job that makes her happy. Not that she'll ever catch up to her sister, a celebrity oncologist. Glass is great with character development of family members and associated contacts from a variety of social classes.
*Comeback America by David M. Walker, former comptroller general of the US is an important analysis and set of recommendations to address the fiscal catastrophe facing America. Walker does excellent analysis and makes courageous recommendations in a totally non-partisan manner. Everyone needs to read this book—or at least the summary provided at the Peterson Foundation web-site.
Dog Tags by David Rosenfelt got a positive reference from the NY Times and the mystery does have almost everything: a brilliant, lazy attorney with an attitude, two lovable dogs, an innocent man accused of murder, an almost super-human hit man, a nefarious criminal mastermind, etc.—You get the picture.
*The Privileges by Jonathon Dees is an intelligent, contemporary, morality tale about a charmed couple, a hedge fund, insider trading, vast wealth and the impact of acquiring great wealth. Supremely confident and ambitious Adam and Cynthia marry right out of college and quickly have children, April and Jonas. Adam excels at a private equity firm in Manhattan, but, impatient for the big money, he also launches a high-stakes insider-trading venture. The gleaming Moreys become so impossibly rich they don’t seem quite human to others, and, of course, money doesn’t preclude suffering. It could have been a compound cliché but excellent writing and good humor make it an excellent book despite a weak ending.
*The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity by Richard Florida is a broad, optimistic look at the current economic crisis and the opportunities it presents. Florida examines the latest of the "Great Resets," moments of transformative upheaval (like the Great Depression) "when new technologies and technological systems arise, when the economy is recast and society remade, and when the places where we live and work change to suit new needs." Though Florida often rushes to neat generalities and cheerleading, his background as a historical geographer provides interesting insights and a unique perspective on the yet unresolved economic calamity.
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larrson continues the chronicle of Lisbeth Salanderelf paired and journalist Mikael Blomkvist on the trail of another sinister criminal enterprise. This time, however, Lisbeth must return to the darkness of her own past if she is to stay out of prison-and alive. One reviewer described the book as “a break-out-in-a-cold-sweat thriller that crackles with stunning twists.” That’s true but some of the twists and coincidences strain the credulity of even Larrson fans. Expect healthy doses of high tech hacking, murder, betrayal, and deceit, as well as more varied sex and family disfunctionality than a Jerry Springer show.
*Rich Boy by Sharon Pomerantz “digs into notions of class and wealth in her debut novel, chronicling the upward strivings of a middle-class Jew as he loses himself in the strange world of the fabulously wealthy.” Handsome and smart, Robert Vishniak dreams of escaping his lower middle-class Philadelphia neighborhood. At Tufts, he rooms with the unconventional, but wealthy, Sanford Trace. Trace and his buddies introduce Robert to Smith College girls, fancy clothes, and New York State's elegant Tuxedo Park. Much of the novel evolves around Robert's relationships with three women: Gwendolyn, a Brit with a terrible secret; his wife, Crea, the daughter of his law firm's founding partner; and Sally Johannson, a shoeshine girl from his old neighborhood. The fascination with Sally makes the book more a soap opera than an insightful analysis of the spiritual malaise of the wealthy. Still, the novel is insightful, well-written, easy-read with an intriguing, complicated hero at its center.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson the first in a trilogy of Swedish best-selling page-turners. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Life looks bleak until a unique offer extended by an elderly titan of Swedish industry. Blomkvist will be paid handsomely to spend a year preparing a history of the family, their businesses—and, researching a mysterious disappearance from nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a few authority issues. Lots of twists, turns and coincidences, but the theme is “you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo.”
*Homer and Langley by E. L. Doctorow is “a small but sweeping masterpiece about the infamous New York hermits, the Collyer brothers.” It offers a broad panorama of modern U.S. history from an iconoclastic point of view—ranging from WWI through the boomer ascendency. The Spanish flu pandemic kills Homer and Langley's parents, Langley, the elder, goes to war leaving Homer, alone and going blind. When Langley returns, real darkness descends on the eccentric orphans. Langley hoards newspaper clippings and starts innumerable science projects inside their shuttered Fifth Avenue mansion. Occasionally, outsiders wander through the house, exposing it as a living museum of artifacts, Americana, obscurity and simmering madness
The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis by Joseph E. Stiglitz is a summary ofwork done by a UN panel of 20 leading global economists to review the recent financial crisis and suggest ways of preventing further disruptions of major proportions, chaired by Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz the panel ees the recent financial crisis as the latest and most damaging of several concurrent crises—of food, water, energy, and sustainability—that are tightly interrelated. The analysis and recommendations in the report cover the gamut from short-term mitigation to deep structural changes, from crisis response to reform of the global, economic, and financial architecture. An important and well-reasoned analysis, but it isn’t beach reading.
I’ll Never Be French by Mark Greenside “is one of the nicest of the trillions of books about (life in) France.” After a ten-week visit in Brittany, Greenside decides that his attachment to France is more permanent than the relationship that brought him to France. The quasi-impulsive purchase of an old stone house is made possible with the help of Madame P. who figures prominently and entertainingly through the rest of the book by facilitating several of the author's transactions with the sellers and the local servicemen who provide necessities such as heating oil and insurance. “Greenside tells a charming story about growing wiser, humbler and more human through home owning in a foreign land.”
One Good Dog by Susan Wilson is melodramatic fiction for dog lovers. Self-made Adam March loses his temper, his job, his family, and his house and is living in a bleak apartment working off his community-service sentence in a local men’s shelter. Adam’s story alternates with the perspective of Chance, a former fighting pit bull who has escaped, lived on the streets, and back at the animal shelter. Adam adopts Chance and comes to realize the joy and comfort of animal companionship. Adam’s and Chance both fight to begin new lives and relationships. Too saccharine, even for Miss Marples’ humble servant.
*The Inperfectionists by Tom Rachman charts the goings-on at a scrappy English-language newspaper in Rome. Each chapter is an exquisite short story with the intersecting lives of the men and women who produce the paper—and one woman who reads it religiously. Obit writer Arthur Gopal, whose overarching goal at the paper is indolence, encounters personal tragedy and, with it, unexpected career ambition. Late in the book, as the paper buckles, recently laid-off copyeditor Dave Belling seduces the CFO who fired him. Throughout, the founding publisher's progeny stagger under a heritage they don't understand. As the ragtag staff faces down the implications of the paper's tilt into oblivion, “there are more than enough sublime moments, unexpected turns and wretchedness to warrant putting this on the shelf next to other great newspaper novels.”
The God of the Hive: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes by Laurie King should appeal to die-hard fans of Sherlock Holmes or lovers of the previous nine novels about Russell and her much older husband, Conan Doyle's iconic detective. The plot picks up in the summer of 1924 right after the Rev. Thomas Brothers, who seeks to unleash psychic energies through human sacrifice, has shot Holmes's artist son, Damian Adler, seriously wounding the young man. Holmes's desperate quest for medical help takes him to Holland, while Mary travels through Britain in an effort to keep Damian's half-Chinese daughter, Estelle, safe from Brothers and his allies. Cliffhanging situations abound as both leads benefit from the convenient appearance of extremely helpful strangers.
The Postmistress by debut novelist Sarah Blake Blake takes readers between small town America and war-torn Europe in 1940. Single, 40-year-old postmistress Iris James and young newlywed Emma Trask are new arrivals to Cape Cod. They listen to American reporter Frankie as she delivers powerful and personal radio reports from London and Europe. Emma waits for the return of her husband—a volunteer doctor in England. Iris comes across a letter with information that she chooses to hide. Dependent on a series of coincidences, yet “Blake captures—a naïve nation in denial and… a continent wracked with terror—with … willingness to take on big, complex questions.”
*The Promise: President Obama, Year One by Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter records Obama's first year (plus) as U.S. President, from pre-inauguration planning (when he assumed, by default, responsibility for managing a financial melt-down through the passage of health care reform in March, 2010. An engaging, fast-moving, well-written contemporary history, Alter explores Obama's "temperament, his approach to decision making, and a thoughtful analysis of his ambitious first year.
*The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller explores the psyche of four people who are bound together by the 9/11 death of Gus--Leslie, his older sister, his girlfriend, who has written a new play that explores the agonizing hours when a family gathers, not knowing the fate of their mother/ wife who was on a train attacked by terrorists. Rafe, the actor playing the ambivalent husband, processes his own guilt about his terminally ill and Sam who is being “fixed up” with Billy. While the plot doesn't have much suspense or action, the NY Times said, “… (It) conveys the subjectivity of all experience but also succeeds in creating a haunting chamber-music piece with many different solos. . . . Its power grows from Ms. Miller’s intimate understanding of her characters.”
*The Frozen Rabbi by Steve Stern is a madcap romp through the anguish and ironies of the Jewish tradition that “matches mysticism with mayhem, beatitude with organized crime, creativity with crassness”. The manic, almost surreal, action revolves around Rabbi Eliezer ben Zephyr who is frozen in a block of ice in 1889 but makes it to the U.S. where, in 1999, when the “great thaw” brings the reanimated rabbi to Memphis, Tennessee, where, enthralled by America’s TV capitalism, he opens a profitable and controversial House of Enlightenment. Excellent reviews and a fun read, especially if you know a bit of Yiddish.
Rules of Vengeance by Christopher Reich is a better than average thriller. Dr. Jonathan Ransom flies to London for a medical conference. The next day, Jonathan's world is torn apart after a large car bomb explodes in Westminster. Jonathan is sure his wife (Emma), a former ‘operative,’ is behind the bombing, but the police think Jonathan is responsible. A convoluted chase ensues with Jonathan hunting his wife, and the cops along with an MI5 agent tracking Jonathan. Everyone, including the reader, remains clueless during much of the book—and sometimes afterwards.
Money to Burn by James Grippando's is an “overwrought financial thriller” with a Kafka-est hero, Michael Cantella,facing scandals with subprime lending, short selling, and Ponzi schemes providing a timely backdrop. On his 35th birthday, Cantella goes from being a star Wall Street performer to a financially wiped-out victim of identity theft. His Job-like problems rock his second marriage and his firm and set him up for a life on the run or worse. Lots of surprising (and illogical) plot twists, but it is an engaging read.
Hannah’s List by Debbie Macomber is, I suspect, classic ‘chick lit.’ Hannah Everett dies at 36 of ovarian cancer, leaving a letter for her pediatrician husband, Michael to be opened a year after her death. In it, she suggests he consider one of three women as his next wife: her cousin, Chef Winter Adams; Leanne Lancaster, Hannah's divorced oncology nurse; and Macy Roth, a ditzy, animal-loving artist. It seemed formulaic and very predictable, but then I’m not a chick.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoet by David Mitchell is one of the NYT “Top Ten for 2010.” Mitchell is known for his experimental, puzzle-like fiction. Unfortunately, some of the puzzles, names and places in this historical novel set in Edo-era Japan, eluded me—obviously, my bad. This suspenseful and meticulously detailed story of forbidden love — between a young Dutchman and a Japanese midwife, who is abducted by a mysterious group of monks —“ unfurls, musically, to become a meditation on East and West, superstition and science, tradition and change.” An important work for more sophisticated readers.
Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez is a post-apocalyptic tale told by 13-year old Cole, the son of liberal atheists and a smart, self-contained boy who loves to draw and is a keen observer—“a classic coming-of-age story with a terrifying medical catastrophe and a profound battle between secular and religious viewpoints.” The pandemic orphans and nearly kills Cole, who ends up living with a kindhearted Evangelical pastor and his wife in Salvation City, a community preparing for the Rapture and focused on bible studies, guns, rapture children, and saved adults. “ Nunez brilliantly contrasts epic social failure and tragedy with the unfurling of one promising life, reminding us that even in the worst of times, we seek coherence, discovery, and connection."
The Confession by John Gresham is a not-too subtle critique of capital punishment in general and the Texas justice system in particular. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, Travis Boyette abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donté Drumm, a local football star, and sent him to death row. Nine years later, Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donté is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what’s right and confess. The book focuses on the challenges of trying to get the attention of politicians who are rewarded for their conviction and execution record. Travis and an idealistic minister try to convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they’re about to execute an innocent man.
*The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva is an excellent thriller about Gabriel Allon, art restorer and Israeli super agent. In Glastonbury, an art restorer is murdered and a long-lost portrait by Rembrandt mysteriously stolen. Despite his reluctance, Gabriel is persuaded to use his unique skills to search for the painting and those responsible for the crime. But as he follows a trail of clues leading from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires and, finally, to a villa on the graceful shores of Lake Geneva, Gabriel discovers there are deadly secrets connected to the painting dating back to WWII. He deals with a remarkable cast of characters: a glamorous London journalist who is determined to undo the worst mistake of her career, an elusive master art thief who is burdened by a conscience, and a powerful Swiss billionaire who is known for his good deeds but may just be behind one of the greatest threats facing the world. “Filled with remarkable twists and turns of plot, and told with seductive prose.”
The Four Corners of the Sky by Michael Malone, one of my favorite Southern writers is an overly- ambitious blend of humor, mystery, adventure and sentimentality. Navy pilot Annie P. Goode comes home for her 26th birthday to her doting aunt and uncle in Emerald, NC, exactly where Jack, her con man father, left her 19 years earlier. Jack calls to say that he is dying and needs Annie’s help. Within a week, Ann finds herself in St. Louis, Miami, and Havana, always a step behind Jack, as everyone seeks a golden, gem-encrusted statue. Malone employs his trademark cast of Southern characters, literary references and wry humor, including using titles of old movies for his 55 chapters. With some serious editing, this long novel could have been one of his best, but “Bizarre coincidences, caricatured criminals and characters who spurt groan-worthy puns, classic movie lines and Shakespeare quotes in place of meaningful dialogue keep the novel teetering toward the absurd.”
Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz, psychology professor and dog person, applies ethology (the science of animal behavior) learned from white rhinos and bonobos, to dogs. Over eight years of study, she concludes that dogs know us better than we know them. Horowitz invites readers to imagine living 18 inches or so above the ground, with incredible olfactory senses comparable to the human capacity. Social and communications skills are also explored, as well as the practicalities of dog owning (Horowitz disagrees with the "pack" approach to dog training). “Dog lovers will find this book largely fascinating, despite Horowitz's meandering style and somnolent tone.”
Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré shows that the author is near, but not at, the top of his game. This Russian mafia spy thriller has an Oxford tutor and his lawyer girlfriend meet Dmitri "Dima" Vladimirovich Krasnov, an avuncular Russian businessman who challenges Perry to a tennis match. Perry wins, Dima takes a shine to the couple, and soon, Perry conveys a message to MI6 in England that Dima wishes to defect. They are ‘invited by MI6 to an exhausting debriefing. Not only is Dima a Russian oligarch, he's also one of the world's biggest money launderers. After a slow start, Le Carré gradually ratchets up the tension until the sad, inevitable end. One reviewer said, “His most accessible work in years.” A good read but not his best.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larrson is “the exhilarating (and exhausting) conclusion to Millennium trilogy.” Lisbeth Salander, the brilliant computer hacker who was shot in the head in the final pages of Fire, is alive, though still the prime suspect in three murders in Stockholm. While she convalesces under armed guard, journalist Mikael Blomkvist works to unravel the decades-old cover-up surrounding the man who shot Salander: her father, Alexander Zalachenko, a Soviet intelligence defector and longtime secret asset to Säpo, Sweden's security police. Sometimes the details of Swedish political history and personal backgrounds of minor characters are overpowering and there are almost endless sub-plots, Larrson is still hard to put down.
*The Widowers Tale by National Book Award winner, Julia Glass, is “elaborately plotted and luxuriously paced, … inquisitive, compassionate, funny, and suspenseful… addresses significant and thorny social issues with emotional veracity, artistic nuance, and a profound perception of the grand interconnectivity of life.” The widower is Percy Darling, an acerbic patriarch and former Harvard librarian His historic property includes a large house, pond and a spacious old barn, once his late wife's dance studio, now an upscale preschool. A mischievous and erudite curmudgeon, Percy only agrees to the school’s intrusion in the hope that his floundering daughter, Clover, will finally secure a job that makes her happy. Not that she'll ever catch up to her sister, a celebrity oncologist. Glass is great with character development of family members and associated contacts from a variety of social classes.
*Comeback America by David M. Walker, former comptroller general of the US is an important analysis and set of recommendations to address the fiscal catastrophe facing America. Walker does excellent analysis and makes courageous recommendations in a totally non-partisan manner. Everyone needs to read this book—or at least the summary provided at the Peterson Foundation web-site.
Dog Tags by David Rosenfelt got a positive reference from the NY Times and the mystery does have almost everything: a brilliant, lazy attorney with an attitude, two lovable dogs, an innocent man accused of murder, an almost super-human hit man, a nefarious criminal mastermind, etc.—You get the picture.
*The Privileges by Jonathon Dees is an intelligent, contemporary, morality tale about a charmed couple, a hedge fund, insider trading, vast wealth and the impact of acquiring great wealth. Supremely confident and ambitious Adam and Cynthia marry right out of college and quickly have children, April and Jonas. Adam excels at a private equity firm in Manhattan, but, impatient for the big money, he also launches a high-stakes insider-trading venture. The gleaming Moreys become so impossibly rich they don’t seem quite human to others, and, of course, money doesn’t preclude suffering. It could have been a compound cliché but excellent writing and good humor make it an excellent book despite a weak ending.
*The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity by Richard Florida is a broad, optimistic look at the current economic crisis and the opportunities it presents. Florida examines the latest of the "Great Resets," moments of transformative upheaval (like the Great Depression) "when new technologies and technological systems arise, when the economy is recast and society remade, and when the places where we live and work change to suit new needs." Though Florida often rushes to neat generalities and cheerleading, his background as a historical geographer provides interesting insights and a unique perspective on the yet unresolved economic calamity.
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larrson continues the chronicle of Lisbeth Salanderelf paired and journalist Mikael Blomkvist on the trail of another sinister criminal enterprise. This time, however, Lisbeth must return to the darkness of her own past if she is to stay out of prison-and alive. One reviewer described the book as “a break-out-in-a-cold-sweat thriller that crackles with stunning twists.” That’s true but some of the twists and coincidences strain the credulity of even Larrson fans. Expect healthy doses of high tech hacking, murder, betrayal, and deceit, as well as more varied sex and family disfunctionality than a Jerry Springer show.
*Rich Boy by Sharon Pomerantz “digs into notions of class and wealth in her debut novel, chronicling the upward strivings of a middle-class Jew as he loses himself in the strange world of the fabulously wealthy.” Handsome and smart, Robert Vishniak dreams of escaping his lower middle-class Philadelphia neighborhood. At Tufts, he rooms with the unconventional, but wealthy, Sanford Trace. Trace and his buddies introduce Robert to Smith College girls, fancy clothes, and New York State's elegant Tuxedo Park. Much of the novel evolves around Robert's relationships with three women: Gwendolyn, a Brit with a terrible secret; his wife, Crea, the daughter of his law firm's founding partner; and Sally Johannson, a shoeshine girl from his old neighborhood. The fascination with Sally makes the book more a soap opera than an insightful analysis of the spiritual malaise of the wealthy. Still, the novel is insightful, well-written, easy-read with an intriguing, complicated hero at its center.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson the first in a trilogy of Swedish best-selling page-turners. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Life looks bleak until a unique offer extended by an elderly titan of Swedish industry. Blomkvist will be paid handsomely to spend a year preparing a history of the family, their businesses—and, researching a mysterious disappearance from nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a few authority issues. Lots of twists, turns and coincidences, but the theme is “you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo.”
*Homer and Langley by E. L. Doctorow is “a small but sweeping masterpiece about the infamous New York hermits, the Collyer brothers.” It offers a broad panorama of modern U.S. history from an iconoclastic point of view—ranging from WWI through the boomer ascendency. The Spanish flu pandemic kills Homer and Langley's parents, Langley, the elder, goes to war leaving Homer, alone and going blind. When Langley returns, real darkness descends on the eccentric orphans. Langley hoards newspaper clippings and starts innumerable science projects inside their shuttered Fifth Avenue mansion. Occasionally, outsiders wander through the house, exposing it as a living museum of artifacts, Americana, obscurity and simmering madness
The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis by Joseph E. Stiglitz is a summary ofwork done by a UN panel of 20 leading global economists to review the recent financial crisis and suggest ways of preventing further disruptions of major proportions, chaired by Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz the panel ees the recent financial crisis as the latest and most damaging of several concurrent crises—of food, water, energy, and sustainability—that are tightly interrelated. The analysis and recommendations in the report cover the gamut from short-term mitigation to deep structural changes, from crisis response to reform of the global, economic, and financial architecture. An important and well-reasoned analysis, but it isn’t beach reading.
I’ll Never Be French by Mark Greenside “is one of the nicest of the trillions of books about (life in) France.” After a ten-week visit in Brittany, Greenside decides that his attachment to France is more permanent than the relationship that brought him to France. The quasi-impulsive purchase of an old stone house is made possible with the help of Madame P. who figures prominently and entertainingly through the rest of the book by facilitating several of the author's transactions with the sellers and the local servicemen who provide necessities such as heating oil and insurance. “Greenside tells a charming story about growing wiser, humbler and more human through home owning in a foreign land.”
One Good Dog by Susan Wilson is melodramatic fiction for dog lovers. Self-made Adam March loses his temper, his job, his family, and his house and is living in a bleak apartment working off his community-service sentence in a local men’s shelter. Adam’s story alternates with the perspective of Chance, a former fighting pit bull who has escaped, lived on the streets, and back at the animal shelter. Adam adopts Chance and comes to realize the joy and comfort of animal companionship. Adam’s and Chance both fight to begin new lives and relationships. Too saccharine, even for Miss Marples’ humble servant.
*The Inperfectionists by Tom Rachman charts the goings-on at a scrappy English-language newspaper in Rome. Each chapter is an exquisite short story with the intersecting lives of the men and women who produce the paper—and one woman who reads it religiously. Obit writer Arthur Gopal, whose overarching goal at the paper is indolence, encounters personal tragedy and, with it, unexpected career ambition. Late in the book, as the paper buckles, recently laid-off copyeditor Dave Belling seduces the CFO who fired him. Throughout, the founding publisher's progeny stagger under a heritage they don't understand. As the ragtag staff faces down the implications of the paper's tilt into oblivion, “there are more than enough sublime moments, unexpected turns and wretchedness to warrant putting this on the shelf next to other great newspaper novels.”
The God of the Hive: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes by Laurie King should appeal to die-hard fans of Sherlock Holmes or lovers of the previous nine novels about Russell and her much older husband, Conan Doyle's iconic detective. The plot picks up in the summer of 1924 right after the Rev. Thomas Brothers, who seeks to unleash psychic energies through human sacrifice, has shot Holmes's artist son, Damian Adler, seriously wounding the young man. Holmes's desperate quest for medical help takes him to Holland, while Mary travels through Britain in an effort to keep Damian's half-Chinese daughter, Estelle, safe from Brothers and his allies. Cliffhanging situations abound as both leads benefit from the convenient appearance of extremely helpful strangers.
The Postmistress by debut novelist Sarah Blake Blake takes readers between small town America and war-torn Europe in 1940. Single, 40-year-old postmistress Iris James and young newlywed Emma Trask are new arrivals to Cape Cod. They listen to American reporter Frankie as she delivers powerful and personal radio reports from London and Europe. Emma waits for the return of her husband—a volunteer doctor in England. Iris comes across a letter with information that she chooses to hide. Dependent on a series of coincidences, yet “Blake captures—a naïve nation in denial and… a continent wracked with terror—with … willingness to take on big, complex questions.”
*The Promise: President Obama, Year One by Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter records Obama's first year (plus) as U.S. President, from pre-inauguration planning (when he assumed, by default, responsibility for managing a financial melt-down through the passage of health care reform in March, 2010. An engaging, fast-moving, well-written contemporary history, Alter explores Obama's "temperament, his approach to decision making, and a thoughtful analysis of his ambitious first year.
*The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller explores the psyche of four people who are bound together by the 9/11 death of Gus--Leslie, his older sister, his girlfriend, who has written a new play that explores the agonizing hours when a family gathers, not knowing the fate of their mother/ wife who was on a train attacked by terrorists. Rafe, the actor playing the ambivalent husband, processes his own guilt about his terminally ill and Sam who is being “fixed up” with Billy. While the plot doesn't have much suspense or action, the NY Times said, “… (It) conveys the subjectivity of all experience but also succeeds in creating a haunting chamber-music piece with many different solos. . . . Its power grows from Ms. Miller’s intimate understanding of her characters.”
*The Frozen Rabbi by Steve Stern is a madcap romp through the anguish and ironies of the Jewish tradition that “matches mysticism with mayhem, beatitude with organized crime, creativity with crassness”. The manic, almost surreal, action revolves around Rabbi Eliezer ben Zephyr who is frozen in a block of ice in 1889 but makes it to the U.S. where, in 1999, when the “great thaw” brings the reanimated rabbi to Memphis, Tennessee, where, enthralled by America’s TV capitalism, he opens a profitable and controversial House of Enlightenment. Excellent reviews and a fun read, especially if you know a bit of Yiddish.
Rules of Vengeance by Christopher Reich is a better than average thriller. Dr. Jonathan Ransom flies to London for a medical conference. The next day, Jonathan's world is torn apart after a large car bomb explodes in Westminster. Jonathan is sure his wife (Emma), a former ‘operative,’ is behind the bombing, but the police think Jonathan is responsible. A convoluted chase ensues with Jonathan hunting his wife, and the cops along with an MI5 agent tracking Jonathan. Everyone, including the reader, remains clueless during much of the book—and sometimes afterwards.
Money to Burn by James Grippando's is an “overwrought financial thriller” with a Kafka-est hero, Michael Cantella,facing scandals with subprime lending, short selling, and Ponzi schemes providing a timely backdrop. On his 35th birthday, Cantella goes from being a star Wall Street performer to a financially wiped-out victim of identity theft. His Job-like problems rock his second marriage and his firm and set him up for a life on the run or worse. Lots of surprising (and illogical) plot twists, but it is an engaging read.
Hannah’s List by Debbie Macomber is, I suspect, classic ‘chick lit.’ Hannah Everett dies at 36 of ovarian cancer, leaving a letter for her pediatrician husband, Michael to be opened a year after her death. In it, she suggests he consider one of three women as his next wife: her cousin, Chef Winter Adams; Leanne Lancaster, Hannah's divorced oncology nurse; and Macy Roth, a ditzy, animal-loving artist. It seemed formulaic and very predictable, but then I’m not a chick.
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