Year of Wonders

written by Geraldine Brooks

I got all crazy about this book almost from the moment I picked it up, and I started telling everyone how great it is. Then I got to the ending and I wished I hadn't been quite as evangelistic about getting everyone to put this on their next-to-read list. Don't get me wrong, it's still an amazing book, and Geraldine Brooks (alas, no relation) is an amazing writer. But I won't mince words here: I hated the ending.

The book is definitely fiction, but it's based on the true story of the villagers of Eeyam, a hamlet in the English countryside which was nearly decimated by the Plague in the mid-1600s. The town voluntarily quarantined itself when it became apparent that the contagion was running rampant in their village. An estimated two-thirds of the villagers ended up dying.

The story's told by a widow named Ann Frith. Already struggling to care for her home and her children after her husband is killed in a mining accident, she endures wave after wave of additional and profound loss as the Plague takes hold of her community and courses through the village. Her heroism, though, is unmatched — except perhaps by the town rector and his wife. The three of them tirelessly care for those who are sick, dying, or mourning, risking their own health in the process.

For three-fourths of the book, I could not get enough of the story. Even though it sounds depressing, the character development and story line were totally riveting. The three main characters — Anna, the rector, and the rector's wife — though heroic, were also human and believable. I loved the author's portrayal and her use of language. It was amazing.

Then comes the ending. In a bizarre turn of events, (spoiler warning!) just as the death toll finally stops and the village is about to declare itself Plague-free, the rector's wife ends up murdered by a crazed villager, the rector turns near-catatonic and completely gives up his faith, and Anna skips town with another woman's illegitimate baby to make a new life for herself in — get this! — the harem of an Algerian Muslim! It's almost like a different author altogether penned the last 60 or 70 pages of the book!

At first I thought "oh, I'm bugged by the ending because it's sort of a slap in the face to any sort of Christian virtue that was evident in these characters' lives earlier in the book." But you know what - that's not quite true. In fact, I'm totally okay with books about murderers and heathens and illegitimate babies and harems and all the rest ... those sorts of things are, after all, often important and illuminating parts of compelling novels. But not in this book. The ending was such a disappointment that finishing this book ended up being a hollow experience indeed.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

written by Mark Haddon

I was in a serious bind on New Year's Day... there I was, with a day off from all responsibilities, the kids were happily parked in front of Guitar Hero, Jay was busy with some photo editing, and I had the entire afternoon to curl up with a book. Only problem was, I didn't have a book. And the library wasn't open. And there was a furious blizzard brewing up outside, so no way was I going out to the bookstore.

So I stopped by my friend Summer's house and asked if she might have something I could borrow. To my delight, she walked me upstairs to a huge shelf full of books and said to take my pick. Ironically, right at eye level was a novel that had caught my eye at the library recently. At the time I first saw it, I was in the middle of reading something else, so I hadn't picked it up. But here it was, so I took it.

It's a quick, interesting read and it gets you inside the head of a young man named Christopher who is apparently autistic. At his teacher's urging, Christopher decides to write a book, and ostensibly the story is about the death of his neighbor's dog. But along the way we learn about Christopher's life and needs, the fragile state of his family. and how autistic people are so easily misunderstood. The book is alternately comedic, sad, touching, and harrowing. And I certainly found it to reveal, at times, my prejudices about mentally impaired people... prejudices which I guess I didn't realize were there.

Lisey's Story

written by Stephen King

I used to have a thing for Stephen King books back in the day. Like way back. Then in my early days of figuring out what I wanted to do with God and spirtuality, I got kind of creeped out by how dark these books were, and I didn't touch any of his stuff for a long while. But I've had this one lying around for about a year and finally decided to pick it back up. It was an impulse purchase I made in a moment of panic when I thought I might need to go on a road trip, bookless ... but then the trip ended up being canceled and I never did get into the book. I tried a couple times, but I just couldn't quite get my interest piqued.

Which brings me to my first complaint about the King of horror: the guy just meanders all over the place in his later writings, and it takes forever to get to the point. But I guess he's entitled to do that now that he's made his millions and can just write for the fun of it. I envy that, actually.

Quick synopsis of the book: it's a disturbing tale (big surprise there, huh?) of a middle-aged writer named Scott Landon, who has been plagued for his whole life by what appears on the surface to be a mental illness that runs in his family. His father and his brother both suffered from extreme and bizarre mental breaks, and Landon's means of escaping from the pain and danger of living with such circumstances leads him to discover (create?) an alternate reality - not a mental one but an actual physical one where he can travel away from his current anguished existence to another "plane" of reality. Not only does that escape route prove to be his means for staying (seemingly) sane, but the whole experience provides him endless material for his career as a horror fiction writer.

So the obvious question here is, did King write this book about himself? Did he suffer under a hellaciously crazed father and a brother who suddenly turned into a dangerous animal-like beast? I don't think so. After reading the book I poked around to find out a little about his life, and it looks to me like he had a fairly ho-hum upbringing. But the guy does have some twisted imagery in his head, let's be clear on that. The book portrays mental illness as startlingly predatory, and I won't spoil the story for you, but I will say that eventually the beastly darkness hunts down some folks, and it's not pretty.

It's actually a really good story once you get into it, and it sated my appetite for something scary, at least for a while. I like King's style and his creativity. So even when he got into the meandering parts of the book, I didn't really mind all that much because his writing is so fun to read. One of his really remarkable skills is to seamlessly take you across many different locations and time periods without being at all confusing. I don't know how he does it so artfully, but I love that. Another notable thing is that there are a lot of subtle but clever references to other literature, and to music. I probably only got half of them (or less!), but they were fun to discover nonetheless.

The only glaringly "off" thing in the story seemed to be that the heroine, Lisey (Scott's wife) was a little too steely. There is no way that any woman (or any person, for that matter), no matter how strong, could endure some of the experiences in this story without completely freaking out into a nervous fit. But whatever. If he had baked that into the story, I'm sure it would have added even more bulk to the already-bulky 653 pages.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

written by Lisa See

For one reason or another, I've really fallen off in my consumption of fiction these last few months. I hate it when life gets in the way of reading! This was a great novel to dive back in with. It came from my very smart and well-read mother-in-law, who reads all the good books out there.

This book is both amazing and disturbing. It chronicles the lives of two Chinese women living in rural nineteenth-century China, and the horrific struggles they endure simply because they are female. Though the two women, Snow Flower and Lily, are not related, at around age 6 they are matched with each another by their families as laotong. Literally translated, this means "old sames," implying that the girls' past, present and future are so aligned that they are sort of soulmates.

Not all Chinese girls of that era were matched with a laotong, and it seems to be something of a privilege. The seriousness of the match was almost akin to marriage; families had to consent to the pairing of the girls, and there was a legal agreement involved which the girls had to sign (at age six or seven!), pledging to be faithful to this contractual friendship for life. The relationship provided lifelong emotional support for the two women, and it was often also a boon to the families involved: alliances between respected or prosperous clans helped to cement the economic and social stability of both families.

Lily and Snow Flower endure the barbaric ritual of footbinding together (Google it — you'll be appalled), they grow into young women together, and they both eventually "marry out" to men of their families' choosing. Through all the stages of their lives, they share and document their histories in nu shu (a secret writing created by Chinese women) on the fan that they share.

Once the girls reach adulthood and marry, the novel gets pretty turbulent. Through circumstances that neither of them can control, Lily marries into a well-to-do family and Snow Flower marries into a despised family. Their lives diverge and their friendship suffers, though they are still bound together through a handful of shocking and heartbreaking experiences. Both endure amazing hardships, and you're left with the impression that it generally sucks to be a woman in nineteenth-century China — regardless of how well off your family might be. As one of the traditional sayings from the book quips, "Raising a girl and marrying her off is like building a fancy road that others may use." Nice.

This would be a good book for any young woman to read, as it's a jarring reminder of how far women have come, not only in the Chinese culture but in the world in general.

The Shack

written by William P. Young

My niece Melissa passed this book along to me. Generally I avoid the genre of "Christian fiction" because to me, books in this category too often feel too tidy, too scrubbed-clean. But since I was hearing a little bit of buzz about this book, I thought what the heck.

Before I lambast it, let me just say that it is thought-provoking, and I like books that challenge my paradigms and stretch my thinking. This one certainly does that, particularly in how it portrays the trinity. (Spoiler warning!) Suffice to say that if you have never envisioned God the Father as a large, boisterous black woman (think Whoopi Goldberg), this book will probably take you a little off guard.

Nutshell version: a guy named Mack loses his youngest daughter to a horrific child-molesting murderer. Two years later, still grieving, he receives a note in his mailbox, ostensibly from God, inviting him to the shack in the woods where his daughter was killed. He goes there, encounters God in a fantastical otherworldly series of events, and basically goes away healed and restored.

Well, anytime you write a book about God, you're going to offend or agitate somebody, and I think this book does a pretty good job of that. Just take a look at the ratings on Amazon — generally, people give it five stars and gush about it, or they give it one star and condemn it. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. As far as literary quality, I think it tends toward the low end of the scale. Portions of it are really poorly written and downright cheesey. Many elements of the story seem misplaced and underdeveloped. (If you've read it, think about the weird spirit-lady-being that Mack finds in the cave. Huh? What was that?) By the middle of the book I found myself wishing that whoever did the editing for this book had been far more ruthless.

But anything that shakes the tree a little and gives me a different view of the many facets of God's personality — well, I'm open to that. In fact, I rather like the fact that this book seems to really hone in on the loving, nurturing facets of God's character ... mostly because I think the church universal is a little too uptight for its own good and could use a good dose of love/nurture to counteract the centuries of penance/guilt in which it's been steeped.

Howevah! If you're looking to this book as a source of theological truth, don't. Repeat after me: it is just a fable. Treat it about the same as you would treat Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Take what works for you (there is some good allegory) and leave the rest (there's a lot to leave, trust me).

My biggest complaint about the book actually has nothing to do with the plot or the theme or the writing quality. It's the shameless self-promotion at the end. After finishing the book, you find several pages that urge you to tell all your friends about the book, write positive book reviews about the book, buy multiple copies of the book and give it away to friends, post on online bulletin boards about how great the book is. Please. That, too me, is just slimey.

The Stepford Wives

written by Ira Levin

Now here's a throwback for you! I had always heard of the movie, but had never seen it and never even knew it was based on this little novella. The book was originally published in 1972, during a time when feminism was kind of the up-and-coming thing. But it was a bit before my time so I didn't know too much about it, except that it had something to do with some kind of sinister plot to make all the wives in the town of Stepford think and act the same.

I'm told the book was quite groundbreaking back in the day, because of its not-s0-subtle feminist messages. And even though it's no longer what our present-day culture would consider revolutionary, it is pretty entertaining. Basic plot is, a family moves to the charming town of Stepford, which they are initially quite pleased with, but soon the wife begins to see that all the women are subservient cookie-cutter Mrs. Cleaver types. Additionally, the men essentially run the town and most evenings can be found congregating at the local men's association (which of course excludes women). Uneasy about this, she does some research and finds that a handful of the most influential men have backgrounds in either experimental science or have worked at Disneyland, the acknowledged hub of all things animatronic. Her conclusion is that the men calculatingly do away with their real wives and replace them with lifelike fembots whose functions are pretty much limited to housework and sex.

At times the book is laugh-out-loud funny. The most entertaining element to me, though, was to observe that what was edgy and borderline-conteroversial back in the early seventies actually comes off as a little chauvinist and provincial today. For example, the main character, though she considers herself a feminist, has what we would today consider a very conventional lifestyle: she doesn't work (except that she's somewhat of a hobby-photographer), her husband is the family breadwinner, and she busies herself with taking care of the house and the kids. Sure, she's a little feisty and independent, but even so, she takes part in a fair bit of daytime grocery shopping, ladies' luncheons, and mid-day tennis matches. Not that those are bad things; they just don't fit our present-day definition of feminist. Kind of interesting, I think, to note how our picture of feminism has shifted quite a bit in 30 years.

This is a quick, short book — only 123 pages, and although it doesn't quite fit the description on the back cover ("a masterpiece of psychological suspense"? That's a bit of an overstatement, I think!) it's still kind of a fun read.

Oh, and my favorite line in the book: when the main character is visiting a friend, they're sitting outside next to the friend's pool and "the maid, a slightly gray-haired woman named Nettie, brought them a pitcher of Bloody Marys and a bowl of cucumber dip and crackers." Who knew I'd make a cameo appearance!?

Good Family

written by Terry Gamble

Wow, I've read two books inside of two weeks. You can tell I've been on vacation!

This book is billed as fiction, but you definitely get the sense that many elements of it are autobiographical. It's about a wealthy, WASP-y family steeped in old money, and the story is told by the adult daughter of the dying matriarch. The setting is a sprawling "summer cottage" (read: mansion) on an island in northern Lake Michigan, where the matriarch's daughters and an assortment of other relatives are gathered to see her through her final days.

Though the locale is fictional, any midwestern reader will picture Mackinac Island right away. The island has large, Victorian-style homes, a quaint historic downtown, and no automobiles are allowed. The author, I found out later, has a lot in common with the protagonist: she grew up in California but spent her summers at a family beach house on Lake Michigan. This novel grew out of her experience of losing her mother under circumstances similar to what's described in this story.

There isn't a ton of action in this book, and at times I wished the dying mother would just die already. The whole ordeal seems to kind of drag on and on. But even though the mother's looming death feels a bit wearisome, it does give the author a good backdrop for unfolding a really well-done character study. You get a vivid peek into the past of the daughter, Maddie, who, despite her privileged upbringing, has endured a lot of pain and dysfunction, including alcoholism, a failed marriage, loss of a child, and some really out-there family relationships. You also get a candid view of some of the kooky aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.

If your family is anything like mine, you'll recognize some of the experiences and character traits in the stories the author tells. In fact, the book reminded me in some ways of the movie The Family Stone, which also portrays some archetypical characters and relationships.

It was really helpful to have a chart of the family tree at the front of the book, just because some of the characters seemed to run together in my mind.

Overall, it's not a bad summer read. Despite some of the kind of depressing themes, I think Gamble is a really talented writer, and I felt quite drawn in by her portrayal of individual characters.

The Dogs of Babel

written by Carolyn Parkhurst

This tale is of a university professor and linguist named Paul Iverson who marries a quirky, artsy woman nine years his junior and who loses her, tragically, under mysterious circumstances. He comes home from work one day to find his wife dead in the back yard, at the base of an apple tree. No witnesses - not even neighbors or passersby - have any clues as to what happened, and only the couple's dog, Lorelei, was present at the time of death. Iverson finds himself on a desperate mission to tap into the dog's knowledge of what happened, and he takes a sabbatical from his job in order to teach Lorelei to communicate. The story follows him through months of reclusive research, encounters with a psychic hotline, and a brush with a criminal and cult-like subculture that performs bizarre and cruel surgeries on dogs to teach them to talk.

It sounds kind of weird, and it is, but overall it's actually not a bad novel. The wife is a heartbreaking but fascinating character who is brilliantly creative and spontaneous, and who apparently suffers from depression and maybe some sort of mood disorder. I wonder if the author had some exposure to someone like Lexy in real life. It is painful to read at times - I guess more so if you have known anyone with depressive tendencies or if you've ever (spoiler warning) lost anyone to suicide.

One piece that I thought was really artfully done was the parallel plot of Lexy's career: she happens to be an artist who specializes in making sculpted masks, and throughout the book, her work is often expressive of some of the tensions and struggles she is battling. Another thing I appreciated about the book is that it does not have a tidy, buttoned-up ending. It is sad and haunting and makes you think. On the down side (and yes, I know I'm no Jane Austen), parts of the novel seemed a little amateurish. The psychic hotline stuff was just hokey. And the characters in the dog-maiming cult were very cliche and not well developed. The biggest thing that bothered me, though, was that you find out in the last 75 pages or so that the husband knew a critical piece of information early on, which wasn't shared with the reader but would've made the reader feel completely different about the entire story. That felt manipulative and to me, and it really cheapened the story to almost a dime-store-level.

Still, the book was a good read-in-the-car book on the way to Maryland; it certainly beats looking out the window at Ohio for two and a half hours.

A Girl Named Zippy

written by Haven Kimmel

Haven Kimmel is a most excellent storyteller. She takes what you might otherwise consider a disjointed jumble of memories about growing up in a podunk Indiana town, and spins them into one of the funniest books I've read in a long time.

I'm not usually that into memoirs, but part of what's so appealing here is that I can relate to some of her childhood experiences. Like Zippy, I grew up in the midwest in the early 1970s, lived in a very small town (still live there, in fact), and was (am) the baby of the family. But even if the genre of thirtysomething midwestern women reflecting on childhood doesn't float your boat, I'm betting you will like this book. It's really funny stuff.

One evening after dinner, I actually read a few pages of this book out loud to my kids and their cousins, because it was just too funny not to share. I won't give away the punchline, but it involved a crazy story about Zippy eating a shocking number of raw carrots (because her mom had - gasp - taken a job outside the home and Zippy was forced to forage for a snack while her mom was at work). The ensuing aftermath was awful and hilarious at the same time.

An interesting wrinkle is that some of the things Zippy writes about are kind of disturbing. For example, she casually observes that there are never family dinner times in her house, that the house is always filthy and has little or no food in it, that her dad sometimes disappears for hours or days with no explanation, and that her mother sits on the couch for days on end, reading science fiction. One can assume from reading this book that Zippy's dad was something of an alcoholic and compulsive gambler, and her mom suffered from bouts of depression, so the homefront was not always blissful — yet all this is presented quite matter-of-factly, even humorously, not in a life-stopping, psychosis-bending, pity-me-because-my-family's-dysfunctional sort of way. I like that, not because I think that family problems should be minimized or swept under the rug, but because all of us (yes, even wholesome midwesterners) can point to a fair bit of dysfunction in our upbringing. But unlike some of the other chick lit out there, Kimmel's memoir doesn't let these darker points define her childhood; they're merely there as part of the fabric.

My friend Lisa, who also read this book, told me that Kimmel has written a follow-on memoir about her mom, called She Got Up Off the Couch - and Other Heroic Acts from Moreland, Indiana. I'll have to check that out.

Starvation Heights

written by Gregg Olsen

Scary book, this.

It's a piece of true crime, set in the early 1900s, about a quacky "fasting doctor" named Linda Burfield Hazzard, who was actually not a doctor at all. She was a charlatan who applied a "fasting treatment" to her patients (many of whom ended up dying of starvation) at her Wilderness Heights "sanitarium" on an out-of-the-way island in the Pacific Northwest. It just so happened that several of her patients were rather wealthy, and what do you know, much of their wealth ended up in the hands of the good doctor (supposedly according to the patients' wishes) prior to their deaths.

It was a case of not only malpractice but also brainwashing, and I found it fascinating.

In the book's spotlight are Claire and Dora Williamson, sisters and young British heiresses who had traveled to Washington state on holiday. Upon reading about Hazzard's fasting treatment, they decided to put themselves under her care for some unnamed malady that they both claimed was sapping the life out of them. The author implies that there was likely nothing major wrong with the two young women; they were just faddists whose interest in alternative healing methodologies led them to the wrong place at the wrong time. Within a month of arriving at what the locals had dubbed Starvation Heights, the two women were emaciated, delusional, and unable to walk or care for themselves. They had withered away to mere shadows after weeks of consuming little more than water and vegetable broth.

Oh and much of their money and jewelry had disappeared in the process.

One of the sisters ended up dying of starvation at the sanitarium. The other sister then began to see that Hazzard's practices were manipulative and unsound. However, too weak and withered to check herself out of the place, she secretly sent a desparate plea to a friend in Australia. This set in motion a long process of being rescued from the sanitarium and participating in a trial in which Hazzard was eventually convicted of medical malpractice.

I don't usually love true crime stuff, but this book reads like a novel and I enjoyed it a lot. I'd recommend it.

How to Breathe Underwater

written by Julie Orringer

This is one of the darkest books I've read in a long time. It appealed to me because it's a collection of nine short stories, all self-contained and unrelated — and since these days I'm hard pressed to read more than a handful of pages a day, I figured it would be kind of nice to be able to actually finish something inside of a week for a change. As it turned out, I ended up taking the book with me to Mexico on vacation, and I think I finished the whole thing in just a day — not because it was a particularly stunning work, but because I had more time than usual to lounge around with a book in my hand.

All of the stories feature young characters in the spotlight, each of them thrust into adulthood (or at least into very complex adult matters) far too soon, either by their own doing or by circumstances beyond their control. The book is sometimes painful to read, I guess because some of the stories stir up difficult memories of my own adolescence. Lots of self-absorption going on in those years, and that's true for many of the characters in Orringer's stories too.

The best of the nine stories, I thought, was The Isabel Fish, because it's the only one that seems to have any form of resolution. Like the other stories, though, it deals with a fair amount of moribidity: the main character is a girl who survives a horrible car accident in which her brother's girlfriend dies. She and her brother, in a clumsy but courageous effort to overcome the scars of that experience, end up learning "how to breathe underwater" by taking scuba lessons, and in the process they deal with some of the anger and blame that has hung between them since the accident. It sounds kind of dorky when I write it out that way (yeah... taking scuba lessons to get over the drowning death of someone close to you...), but really, it's kind of a cool story.

The most disturbing of the nine stories, I thought, had to be the very first one in the book. In Pilgrims, we see a horribly twisted plot involving all kinds of death and dysfunction. It features a sad and desparate family in which the mother is dying, another family in which the mom has already died, bratty elementary-age children who are completely out of control and see no problem with torturing one another ... anyway, the upshot of it is, some of the children actually kill another child and then attempt to cover up the deed. Don't look for any resolution in this story, because there is none. In fact there doesn't even seem to be a real ending — the story just stops, as if the author got up for coffee and forgot to come back.

One thing that made the book somewhat more interesting is that the author is perhaps from (or familiar with) my own stomping ground, as in many of the stories there are references to Royal Oak, Ann Arbor, and Chicago.

Overall, I think this writer has an interesting and engaging style, and certainly the stories are thought-provoking. But I don't know as I'd recommend the book, because I really prefer stuff that's less dark and morose — or at least stuff that comes full circle with a complete, cogent ending.

The Color of Water

written by James McBride

This book caught my eye right away when I saw it at the library because its subtitle is A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. Now doesn't that just make you want to know all about this guy's story? It truly is an amazing memoir — the moving story of McBride's own life but also a beautiful portrayal of the tough-as-nails woman who raises 12 incredible children, McBride among them, under the worst of circumstances.

The story alternates between McBride's recollections and his mother's, and it is as much her story as it is his. While providing a rich history of his mom's own upbringing in an abusive home under the rule of a very crooked white Jewish rabbi (she fled her abusive family home in the south and became "a black woman in white skin" by moving to Harlem and marrying a black man), he also explores his lifelong struggle with his own racial identity. Is he Jewish? White? Black? Or the color of water? While tackling these questions, he provides a sometimes-humorous, sometimes-poignant chronology of his own growing-up years, including lots of colorful stories about his siblings and extended family.

It's a cool book that sends the powerful message that true love and dignity can overcome a world of hardship.

The Know-It-All

written by A.J. Jacobs

This was a book that came to me from my boss. She picked up a copy for me and a copy for herself because her daughter had read a bit of it and thought it good. It's a funny, funny book, but man, you need to read it in small doses. Jacobs' style is a bit like Dave Barry's: extremely entertaining, but after a while, extremely exhausting.

Jacobs took a year to read through the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica and somehow managed to turn his experience into 369 pages of light and funny reading. The book includes his reflections on key Brittanica entries and a lot of self-deprecating humor and personal stories about his own life. It also contains an absolutely dizzying amount of trivia gleaned from the pages of the Britannica. Someone with a better memory than I might actually learn some things from this book, but I think the only fact I remember is that gymnasium, when translated literally in Greek, means "school of naked exercise." Who knew?

The book is organized alphabetically, just like the encyclopedia. So you'll find a healthy handful of entries regarding words that begin with A, another bunch for B, and so on. It's easy to read this book in short bits of time because most entries are less than a page long. And short bits of time are perfect, since he does start to get annoying if you read too much at a time. He's a really entertaining writer, but you can only take so much sitcom-esque material at one time.

The New York Times calls Jacobs a "stunt journalist" because he tends to do crazy things and then write funny stuff after the fact. In addition to the Britannica stunt, he also wrote a book called The Year of Living Biblically, in which he documented how he dedicated one year of his life to carrying out the literal interpretation of every command he could find in the Bible.

Overall, this is a fun and easy read.

When the Emperor Was Divine

written by Julie Otsuka

It's been a while since I've blogged a book. Life has a way of getting in the way of my reading! In any case, toward Christmastime I picked up this book from the library for something to read over the holidays, and I'm just now getting around to blogging it.

It's a very cool, short, high-impact novel about a Japanese-American family that was placed in detainment camps for nearly two year during the 1940s. I love this book because it sheds much light on the experience of the children who became detainees. In fact, I think it would be a great book for middle schoolers or high schoolers, just because it gives such a vivid perspective on what it would've been like to be part of this heartbreaking and shameful period in our country's history. Certainly it's too succinct to provide an in-depth study of the internment camps, but it sure does give a snapshot about this often-forgotten group of World War II victims.

Three Weeks With My Brother

written by Nicholas Sparks

My friend Kellie loaned me this book and talked me into giving Nicholas Sparks a second try. This is his first nonfiction book, and I will admit, I did like it better than his smarmy novels. There's some candid, touching stuff here as he tells some stories about his childhood, set against the backdrop of a travelogue from a current-day trip that he embarks on with — you guessed it — his brother. His style still irritates me, though.

Of note:

• The byline includes Sparks' brother Micah, but the entire book is told only from Nicholas' perspective. I find that kind of weird. I kept expecting to hear from Micah, but that never happened.
  
• Sparks calls this "a memoir." I'm sorry, but the guy's only thirtysomething! Is he really entitled to use the word "memoir" when his life isn't even half over yet?
  
• It was fun to read about some of these brothers' childhood antics, especially because they grew up around the same time as I did. The parenting styles and cultural trends of the early and mid-seventies are certainly things that I identify with.
  
• Even in his nonfiction, Sparks is guilty of oversimplifying just about everything! Case in point: he tells of how his son seems to have some form of learning disability or autism or something, and scads of respected medical professionals couldn't agree on a diagnosis or effective treatment. So what does Sparks do? He basically just pulls the kid up by the bootstraps, spends hours on end "working with him" and by third grade the son ends up being pretty much normal. Huh? Anyone with a special-needs kid knows that life just isn't that simple! You don't solve a learning disability by just "working with" the kid more, or harder.
  
• Sparks seems to have a perpetual need to to puff himself up, sending the message that his biggest fault is that he just can't quit accomplishing so much. Check out this self-important statement about one of the more difficult periods in his life: "Somehow, despite all that, I squeezed in time to earn a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, lift weights, and jog daily. I continued to read a hundred books a year. I slept less that five hours a night..." (And he did this all while writing a sizeable collection of very simplistic but bestselling novels, each of which he carefully and clearly mentions by name, several times.) Looking past all the overachieving, I see a dysfunctional dad/husband/workaholic who just seems driven to write more books and make more money.
  
• There is some pretty enjoyable humor here, though if you're super-sensitive to cultural propriety, there might be some stuff that offends you. In some of their travels, the two brothers come off as dorky, juvenile, overgrown nine-year-olds swept up in a lot of buffoonery, with no appreciation for foreign cultures. (Micah, for example, gets busted for lying down on a sacred ritual stone at a Mayan ruin and asking to get his picture taken.)
  
• There were some kind of aimless ponderings about God and faith, but they didn't materialize into much. Sparks seems to have a vague sense of devotion but can't quite seem to close the loop on why God should matter - to his brother or to anyone else.
  
• The recounting of the loss and pain this family has experienced is memorable. I think any person will empathize with some of the difficulties Sparks experienced through the death of his parents and his sister.

The Innocent Man

written by John Grisham

There was a time in my late twenties when I went on an "extreme Grisham" kick and within the span of about a year, read every book he wrote. No small feat, considering I had a newborn at home to contend with back in those days, and there was precious little spare time for reading (or anything else!) in my life.

So now, just for old time's sake, I try to keep up with the newest stuff he comes out with. This one was published in 2006, so I was a little late getting around to it. It's his first-ever nonfiction book. It tells the story of Ron Williamson, a man whose life was pretty much ruined when he was wrongfully convicted of a brutal rape and sent to death row.

Of note:

• Grisham makes some important and disturbing points just by telling Williamson's horrific story. If even half of the stuff about the mishandling of William's case is true, I fear for anyone who finds themselves at the mercy of our criminal justice system, which is apparently ruled by the good-old-boy network and is deeply riddled with heinous flaws and injustices.

• His storytelling is really plain Jane in this book — quite lackluster compared to the drama and suspense you find in his fiction. Maybe it's because he gets so bogged down in the details of the story, or maybe it's because he didn't want to poison the well by inserting his own dramatic twist on this appalling real-life story. But I felt he could've been a lot more engaging. Parts of the book seemed to drag on and on; it became a bit of a chore to keep reading. In some areas he repeated himself. I came away believing that Grisham's should really stay with his forte: fiction.

• Why on earth are the pictures inserted in the middle of the book? The photos and their captions totally give away the ending of the story! That was really annoying. If you plan on reading the book, force yourself to bypass the pictures till the end.

The Human Stain

written by Philip Roth

When this book caught my eye at the library, some murky corner of my memory told me that I'd heard of it (or was it just the movie by the same name?)... anyway, I vaguely remembered it being acclaimed by ... someone, I don't know who. After reading the back cover, I was intrigued enough to check out the book: it details how a dean at an upper-crust New England university gets ousted for purportedly being a racist, despite the fact that his secret and shocking personal history "would astonish his most virulent accuser." In a nutshell (spoiler warning!), he's actually black — but because his skin and features are not profoundly African-American, he has spent most of his adult life passing himself off as a white man with Russian Jewish roots.

Kind of an interesting premise, but I generally did not like this novel. One reason was that Roth's writing felt quite laborious to me (sentences spanning several lines - enough to send a technical writer running)... but the bigger reason I disliked it was because there was just too much offensive vulgarity. And before you accuse me of being too prudish, I need to say that yes, I do get the fact that modern literature usually has a hefty dose of sexual themes. But this book just contained far too much desperation and sleaze for me. The main character, Coleman Silk, reminded me a lot of the protagonist in Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee: an intelligent, mature, seemingly respectable man who, just under the surface, is disturbingly immoral. Still, like the Coetzee book, there were some pockets of great writing that did make me want to keep reading.

Of note:

• I could not get a clear picture of Faunia Farley, Coleman Silk's mistress. She seemed like an utterly unknowable character in this story. Maybe that was the way the author intended it? She was, after all, a woman with a very troubled life and appeared (to me at least) to have some incredibly complex social problems. Maybe her unknowableness was an intentional reflection of that.


• There is a really brilliant section of the book in which Faunia observes and contemplates crows. I know it sounds funny, but I found it to be such a profound and symbolic passage. And then Roth artfully closes the loop on the symbolism by bringing it back in near the end of the book. It was very cool. You have to read it to understand what I mean.


• Coleman Silk has a colleague at the university, a Pariesienne-born female professor, who takes up way too much of this book. She is a sub-plot that feels very unnecessary to me, and the long sections on her foibles really drag.


• Also unnecessary was any mention of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. I'm not sure why that had to be a backdrop to the story. It was annoying.

Bottom line: I wouldn't recommend this book. Am I getting cranky? I haven't read any real you-must-read-this books lately...

Once Removed

written by Mako Yoshikawa

I am not above being drawn to a book by its cover. The art on this novel's front, along with its title, made me curious, so I checked it out from the library in hopes that it would be a good summer read. After a few difficult starts (my fault, not the book's - life is just too busy sometimes to get engrossed in a new book without some effort!) I re-started and finished this book while Jay and the kids and I were visiting my in-laws in Maryland.

The story is mainly about a whole bunch of conflicted women. Two of them are stepsisters (Claudia and Rei) and though they forged a deep relationship as children when the dad of one married the mom of the other, the parents divorced when the girls were both 17. The girls consequently drifted apart. The book picks up 17 years later when they rekindle their relationship. The main thread of the novel, though, is not really about Claudia's relationship with Rei, but rather the tension between Claudia and Hana (Rei's mother and Claudia's stepmother).

Of note:

• One of the reasons I found it hard to get engaged in this book from the beginning is because there is such a complicated web of relationships to keep track of: the two sisters, their own natural parents, the parents' former spouses... and then there's also a persistent romance between Claudia and a married man, so you'll need to keep track of his wife and children in the mix. Interestingly, though, this kind of complexity is a reflection of real life, with so many of us being part of blended families and step-relationships.


• The title is clever, given the story line. And like I suspected, the art on the cover does have some significance to the story.


• Rosie (Claudia's natural mother) feels like a flat, incomplete character to me. Even though her role becomes bigger toward the end of the book, we never really get a clear picture of what kind of person she is.


• On the other hand, the author portrays Henry (Claudia's natural father) with great clarity. Her descriptions of his mannerisms and personality were really vivid.


• The author draws interesting parallels between Hana as the "other woman" who broke up Claudia's parents' marriage, and Claudia's own relationship with Vikrum, a married man. I especially found it intriguing that both of these illicit relationships were intercultural.


• There is a lot of looming, unresolved drama surrounding Hana's experience as a girl when she witnessed the Hiroshima bombing. The novel implies that Hana's choice to keep her experience a secret is what led to her marriage dissolving. Huh? I don't get that.


• The back cover of the book is full of hyperbolic adspeak, particularly the last paragraph, which claims that the novel "Tak[es] us from the exotic Japan of the 1940s and '50s, to the verdant English countryside, to the urban streets of Boston..." Come on now! The book is about relationships, not locales! In fact, I had to think hard to remember what part of the book even took place in the "verdant English countryside."


• There are big (and sometimes painful) observations here regarding love, marriage, devotion, and betrayal.

Our Lady of the Forest

written by David Guterson

This was a pretty funky book, the funkiness probably compounded by the fact that I read it in one sitting, immediately after a week-long solo hike on the Appalachian Trail, when my head was still spinning from walking out of the woods and back into the frenetic buzz of civilization.

The novel deals with a homeless teenage runaway named Anne Holmes who, while hunting for mushrooms in a remote area of the Pacific northwest, encounters several Marian apparitions. She confides mainly in two people: a fellow wanderer named Carolyn who doesn't really believe in the apparitions but is excited about the potential financial benefits, and a confused young priest who is struggling with doubt and his role in the church.

Of note:

• I liked the way Guterson develops such a vivid picture of the depressed logging town where the story takes place. North Fork is definitely a gloomy place in need of redemption, and this becomes all the more apparent when Anne's visions create such a swell of activity and hope. North Fork kind of reminds me of some of the towns I've seen in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Towns that have lots of history but are now sadly languishing under economic hardship and loss of purpose.


• The character of Tom Cross, an unemployed logger with all kinds of problems, is intertwined with Anne's visions, but his story felt underdeveloped to me, and his abrupt transformation in the end of the book seems very trite and unsubstantiated.


• The priest in whom Anne confides has a complicated sexuality that I found really bothersome to the story. And yes, I know there's a point to be made here about how those trained and chosen for sacred work (like the priest) are sometimes much less qualified and much less spiritual than mundane but faithful riffraff (like Anne). But the constant references to the priest's issues with lust and masturbation got old.


• I think the book makes an interesting point made about how society is quick to grope for the miraculous, and to turn spiritual phenomena into commercial ventures. Once word gets out about Anne's visions, miracle-seekers from all over the surrounding area start coming out of the wordwork, turning Anne's experiences into frenzied media-worthy events.

A Walk to Remember

written by Nicholas Sparks

In preparing for my June backpacking trip, I stopped at the library in search of some light reading, literally and figuratively. I needed something that wouldn't require too much concentration and wouldn't add too many unnecessary ounces to my backpack. This book met both requirements, so I added it to the small pile of stuff on my ping-pong table that I would eventually shoehorn into my pack (which, incidentally, ended up tipping the scales at a mere 27.5 pounds, even after adding the book).

It was classic Nicholas Sparks - definitely a chick book, and a tearjerker on many levels. If you haven't read any of Sparks' books, think Message In a Bottle, the movie from 1999, which was based on one of his novels.

This story's about an unlikely match between two high-school students in the 1950s: an affable, underachieving boy and an angelic but dowdy and hyperreligious girl. In a sweet but far-too-perfect romance, they end up facing a horrific situation together (spoiler warning): she finds out she has leukemia and has only a short few months to live, but they end up marrying anyway.

Lots of cliche here, to be sure, but if all you want is a quick read and don't mind the schmaltz, it's not bad. As for me, it suited me fine for a backpacking trip (anything that doesn't mention bear attacks or predatory mountain dwellers pretty much qualifies as okay reading) but I don't know if I'll be shopping for more Sparks books.

The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days

written by Frederick Buechner

This is the first of three autobiographical works by Frederick Buechner. (Although I think he would argue that there's a bit of autobiography in each of his books, even the novels.) It's a very compelling story, this candid retelling of how he came to faith. He strings together bits of childhood memories and recollections of his early adulthood, and in the process points to how many of the events of his life - both the overtly significant ones and the seemingly mundane ones - guided him along a path (without his knowing it) that culminated in his realization of God's active and loving presence in his life.

Particularly powerful, I think (and this is a spoiler, so be warned!) are Buechner's ponderings about his father's suicide. If you have been affected yourself by the suicide of someone close to you, I think you might find his perspective interesting - maybe even healing.

Unlike some of his other stuff, this book is easy and quick to read. You'll find yourself doing a lot of your own self-reflection as you read his impressions and thoughts about God and life. You will see yourself in this book. But you won't feel preached at or proselytized. In fact, if you're like me you'll probably find it extraordinarily refreshing that Buechner doesn't purport to have all the answers to life's hardest spiritual questions; nor does he persuade you to join up with any particular line of thinking, or make you feel less-than-worthy if you disagree with him.

Telling the Truth

written by Frederick Buechner

One of my college literature professors, Jeff Duncan, has been on my mind recently, and here's why. I went on a cleaning rampage last month, one of my chief missions being to reduce the size of my burgeoning library. As I was doing some tough love on the bookshelves, I came across Frederick Buechner's Telling The Truth, which Duncan kindly gave me when I was the ripe age of 21. At that time I tried my darnedest to slog my way through it, and I remember being a bit bewildered and confused, thinking: perhaps one day I'll understand some of what this guy is saying. If memory serves, I don't think I made it through the entire book.

Fast-forward 16 (oy!) years, and there I sat in my home office, trying to decide whether to keep the bloody book or move it on. I decided to give it another try, and whoa. It was somehow both jarring and gentle at the same time. I guess some things are just more compelling now that I "have a little age on me," as my dad used to say.

Buechner spins the gospel in light of human failure (tragedy), the hilarity of God's free gift of redemption (comedy), and the amazing truth of how in the end there is resolution and good really does triumph over evil (fairy tale).

Now I find myself on a steady diet of Mr. Buechner's other works - fact, it's been all Buechner all the time around here lately, and for that I have Duncan to thank. It's funny how sometimes God starts a little something in us and then waits around patiently — sometimes years! — while we dilly-dally, drinking nothing but milk for far too long but then finally one day accepting a few morsels of solid food.

I'm so grateful not just for the book Duncan gave me, but that he had the guts to give a flighty, self-absorbed student something to ponder. It took me a while, but I'm pondering now.

Blue Like Jazz

written by Donald Miller

This book came on recommendation from my friend Dave. Every Tuesday morning, Dave and I supervise the dropoff area at our kids' school while solving most of the world's problems in about 30 minutes. One of our favorite woes to discuss is how the church (universal) has become pretty dogmatic and in many ways irrelevant to the rest of society. Hence this book.

The author, Donald Miller, wrote this book as a commentary on "Christian spirituality" - which he carefully differentiates from what you and I think of as mainstream evangelical Christianity. He equates Christian spirituality to jazz music, saying that he never used to like jazz because "it doesn't resolve." But after exeriencing God in a multitude of ways outside of the usual boxy white-bread evangelical Christian paradigms, he comes to know and love Jesus in a different way. A way that still "doesn't resolve" but is embraceable nonetheless.

Of note:

• The premise of this book is sort of "Velvet Elvis lite." Which is pretty arrogant for me to say, actually, now that I think about it, since I haven't even read all the way through Velvet Elvis yet. (Jay has though - and isn't that almost the same thing?) Anyway, one of the themes is this: what you're used to thinking of as normal, right, Christian living might not be normal, right, or Christian.
• Donald Miller's style was refreshing to me for about the first 20 pages. Then it got annoying. The guy needs an editor. Badly. Some of the essays in the book read like a Junie B. Jones story.
• One of the biggest things in the book to resonate with me was how Miller describes his ineptness at living out biblical community. I feel like he is describing me as he compares his life to a movie with just one central character: "Life was a story about me because I was in every scene. In fact, I was the only one in every scene. I was everywhere I went. If somebody walked into my scene, it would frustrate me because they were disrupting the general theme of the play...the movie, the grand movie, was about me... that is the way I lived." That was, and unfortunately to a great extent, still is, the way I live.
• The other big thing I loved about this book is how he blasts the traditional notion that to be a Christian, you have to be a right-wing Republican, hate homosexuals and hippies, and never question or doubt. Who can live like that, really?

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

written by Bill Bryson

I picked up this book because I thought I loved Bill Bryson. Certainly I did love A Walk in the Woods and have also enjoyed portions of A Short History of Nearly Everything and some of his travel writings. He's famous for his ability to capture the humor and idiocy of the places and people he visits, and Thunderbolt makes this evident - only this time it's not a travelogue of a physical journey, but a journey of his growing-up years.

But his writing, to me, falls short this time. It's funny but not funny. Part of it's a generational thing; I think people of Bryson's generation (who grew up in the fifties and sixties) might get more out of this book than I did. Some of the story line just felt plainly uninteresting, since the events of the time didn't hold personal relevance for me. And although the typical Bryson humor is there, I grew weary of his overused hyperbole. Sometimes it just felt like he was trying way too hard to be funny. Some of the humor was even annoying or offensive, like the frequent cutting references to the "fat kids" he grew up with, or the parts about constantly trying to persuade his classmate Mary O'Leary to disrobe.

After reading other Bryson stuff, this book felt like a disappointment. Like a quick, thrown-together patchwork of some of his childhood memories, with no real point to the story. If he hadn't already made a name for himself with his previous work, I don't think this book would be that big of a seller.

How to Be Lost

written by Amanda Eyre Ward

This is perhaps the first time since high school that I've read an entire novel in under 24 hours. But I guess anyone could pull that off if trapped on a tour bus for most of a day. I brought this book along on the one-day Grand Canyon excursion that Janet and I signed up for while we were in Las Vegas for a few days. (The heck with Girls' Night Out — how about a Girls' Weekend Out!) Since the drive time between Vegas and the Grand Canyon is a staggering 4.5 hours across a barren desert, this book is what prevented me from going catatonic while listening to the torturously bad jokes of the tour bus driver.

I'd first heard of this novel from Cindy, who read it during our backpacking trip through Great Smoky Mountain National Park last spring. I remember her being both engrossed in this book and shocked by some of its twists. It sounded to me like a good "chick" book.

It's about a girl named Caroline Winters whose younger sister Ellie vanishes at age 5. The family basically falls apart in the ensuing years. Much later, when Caroline's an adult, her mother shows her a page out of a magazine, and in the background is a woman who the mom thinks is the missing sister. Caroline ends up going on a quest to Montana to find the woman.

Of note:

• The style of this book is very Jodi-Picoult-ish, which Janet and I decided is a pretty common theme lately in new novels. You get a fairly close and disturbing look at a dysfunctional family with many layers of problems, and there's not a necessarily tidy ending. You also get to see things from multiple people's perspectives, which I always find kind of cool.
• There are some wandering side plots that go nowhere. (The following might be a spoiler if you plan to read this book.) A major example is when Caroline finds the woman she thinks is Ellie but it ends up being someone who just looks a little like Ellie. The mistaken identity becomes obvious to the reader pretty early on, yet the story lingers way too long on this. Other annoying tangents that take up too much of the reader's time include the premature birth of Caroline's niece, her (other) sister's rocky marriage, and the sudden death of Caroline's mother.
• The ending was abrupt and lame. Definitely a lot of unfinished business and loose ends. I got the feeling that the author's publishing deadline was looming or something, and she just stopped writing.
• I loved the character of Agnes Fowler and the way the author revealed her personality through letters. I'm a bit embarrassed to say that Agnes reminds me a little of myself. Trusting, naive, very un-savvy in many ways, yet fairly competent in other ways. For the record, though, I must clarify here that, unlike Agnes, I have never visited a website called AlaskaHunks.com.

Reading Lolita in Tehran

written by Azar Nafisi

My friend and stepsister Terry gave me this book. Back in January we endured a very long day together at St. Joe's hospital as we waited for the ER doctors to figure out what to do with my very ill, very frail stepmother. (Which, believe me, is another story for another blog altogether.) As a diversion, we began chatting about what we'd been reading lately, and Terry found out that I had this book on my must-read list because I'd heard good things about it from Jay's mom. She promptly ran out to Borders and bought it for me.

It's a compelling true story about Azar Nafisi, an Iranian professor of literature, who weathers a turbulent and socially repressive period of political upheaval in Iran. Sadly, she quits her job at a university in Tehran due to the rampant Islamic authoritarianism and the rigid restrictions placed upon women. As a means of promoting and affirming the right to independent thought, she assembles a small group of women who believe in the power of literature, and conducts a makeshift class once a week in her home. The book is a memoir of those difficult years, told through a discussion of the novels they read together.

So the book is really a combination of literary criticism and poignant memoir. Woven throughout is Nafisi's political commentary about the transformation of Iran from a vibrant, progressive nation to one where much of the population is manipulated through repression and intimidation. It's a sad, disturbing glimpse into a society that attributes very little value to women.

Of Note:

• Overall, I felt very uneducated as I read this book, mainly on two levels: (1) I know very little about the political and religious history of Iran, and this book places you smack dab in the middle of the Iranian revolution. (2) I used to think I knew something of great literature, but after reading this book I realize I know next to nothing. Of the many novels that the author weaves into her memoir, I recognized the titles of maybe two in ten. Maybe.


• The one big take-away that I LOVED in this book is the message that literature, even if it portrays immoral people or bad behavior, does not in itself corrupt the reader. The Islamic regime in Iran wanted to prohibit citizens from reading such controversial stories as Pride and Prejudice and Lolita because the assumption was that if you read that stuff, you become just like the main characters (i.e., you read about sin, you become sinful). Interesting that some ultra-conservative Christians would say the same thing! I'm not saying that I necessarily recommend or embrace the particular novels Nafisi mentions, but I do believe that reading literature can only open our eyes and our minds, helping us to contemplate issues of truth and justice in a way that allows us to see for ourselves what is right.


• She makes reference several times to "her magician" -- a man who was a champion of free thought but who had intentionally withdrawn from the educational and social system in Iran. He is her sometimes-friend, sometimes-counselor, sometimes-colleague. I found it weird that she portrayed him as some kind of mysterious, Yoda-like being. He was underdeveloped and too murky of a character for me to understand or connect with.


• I found it interesting that there was not a lot of Persian pride, language, or culture woven into the story. Have you noticed that some stories that take place in non-English-speaking locales are filled with the language and imagery of the protagonists' ethnicity? Not this one. In fact, I would even say that the author goes to some length to show that she and her proteges think and act very much like the typical Western citizen, except that they live under a restrictive totalitarian regime. There are very few references to Persian foods (she does mention eating Western goodies, though, such as sandwiches and ice cream) and very few instances where she uses Persian epithets or Persian words. Rather than drawing attention to the uniqueness of Iranian culture, it feels to me like she instead draws attention to the fact that Iranian people, if left unrepressed, would be essentially the same as American people. I'm not saying this is a bad or incorrect view; just notable different than the style of many other foreign authors.


• The story meanders; there's no nice way of saying it. There were several points where she lost me with her long and complicated dissections of literature such as The Great Gatsby, Lolita, and Jane Austen novels. I get the fact that there are parallels to be drawn between some of those books and the plight of life in Iran... but at times the literary criticism started to annoy me. I would've been happier if she had focused more on the lives and personalities of her students and herself.

The Broker

written by John Grisham

I've been out of the Grisham scene for a couple years. Not because he fell out of favor with me, but because I ran out of his books to read. I thought I had read all of them except the newest one (the one based on a true story). So when I ran across this one at the library I was surprised I had missed it. John Grisham novels are like an old shoe - sometimes overworked and weary but always comfortable - so I couldn't not pick it up.

Portions of the book are formulaic Grisham: he builds sympathy for a crooked but amiable protagonist, and drops him in an unknown place where he (and you) have to get to know the town (in this case, Bologna, Italy) and the culture in order to fit in. There's a little bit of legal and political stuff thrown in, because that's what Grisham does best. But most of the book is about espionage and an American man trying to reinvent himself in another country after a sudden and inexplicable release from prison and a presidential pardon for the treasonous dealings he engineered in Washington six years prior. Several covert agents from four different countries want his head on a platter, and the CIA (who also wouldn't mind him dead) leaks his whereabouts to these enemies, so the poor guy's on the run from the get-go.

Of Note:

• At times throughout the book, you almost get the feeling you're reading about Grisham's notes from an Italian vacation. There's a lot of travelogue-type stuff in here that you won't necessarily appreciate if (like me!) you've never been to Italy. There's also a fair amount of annoying insertions of Italian phrases as you observe the main character, Joel Backman, trying to learn Italian.
• At a few points in the beginning of the novel, you get a glimpse of the bumblehead president who pardons Backman. Something familiar about that...
• Unlike other authors in this genre, Grisham is pretty tasteful when he chooses to blend in romance with his plots. In this book, Joel Backman has an Italian language tutor, Francesca Ferro, who ends up helping him escape Italy. You get the feeling there could be a nice little little happily-ever-after brewing, but then he abruptly leaves Italy on the lam and at first it doesn't look like he'll be returning. On the last page, though, Grisham brings Francesca back into the picture. I like the way he did that. No raunchy side plots were needed.
• The book could've gotten a lot more mileage out of the relationship between Backman and his son Neal, who helps him escape the foreign villains who are out to get him. Neal was a very flat character.
• The action really cranks up in the last hundred pages or so. If you can bear with the Fodor-esque tour of Italy in the middle 25 chapters, you'll like the ending.

Murder in Foggy Bottom

written by Margaret Truman

It's appalling that I haven't blogged a book in so long. No excuses, except that I just haven't been reading a lot of fiction in the last few months. Actually, I haven't been reading a lot of anything — unless you count the newsletters from the kids' schools, and benchmarking stuff for work. Fact, lately I've been feeling like it's a good week if I can sneak into a corner for a few minutes to read a magazine article here or there. It's a bad sign when you start looking forward to your kid's orthodontist appointments because it could mean a solid 20 minutes of uninterrupted reading time!

Murder in Foggy Bottom caught my eye in early January as I was perusing the shelves at the library, waiting for Joe to pick out a book about trains. I noticed a spate of books by this author, all titled with the same theme (Murder on the Potomac, Murder in the White House, Murder at the Kennedy Center, etc.) Closer inspection revealed that all the novels are set in the D.C. area, which is a little familiar to me. It's always kind of fun to read fiction that's set in a real place that you've been before.

The novel follows two intertwining story lines: the unexplained murder of a Canadian embassy worker, and the sudden and simultaneous bombing of three civilian planes in three different parts of the country. An investigative reporter (Joe Potamos) ends up uncovering the connection between these two crimes.

Of Note:

• It was a little spooky to me that this novel was written in 2000, prior to the September 11th attacks. There are some eerie similarities (terrorists downing three civilian planes) that made me swallow hard.
• The author, I found out after the fact, is the daughter of President Truman. No wonder so much of her fiction centers on the goings-on in Washington, D.C.!
• I love authors who can quietly and casually inject incredibly cool but little-known words into their story line, driving me to http://dictionary.reference.com/! Betcha don't know what "imbroglio" means. And if you do, try using it in a sentence as seamlessly as Truman does on p.264 — I dare you!
• The book's a little annoying in the first 150 pages or so, because there are just too many seemingly unrelated people and relationships to keep track of. Or maybe that's just my impression and is indicative of my inability to devote more than 20 consecutive minutes of attention to any one piece of writing at a time. Never mind that I started the book in January and it took me over six weeks to complete it...
• There's nothing super-complex or controversial here... just a decent, simple read with some interesting twists and a minimum of offensive language. A good book to take on vacation with you.

The New Work of Dogs

written by Jon Katz

Okay, okay, I know I just blogged about another dog book a couple entries ago. I can see all you cat people rolling your eyes and pursing your lips, and I promise that this blog will not become all dogs all the time. But when my librarian sister-in-law Michelle told me about this book I really wanted to investigate. Plus, something silly in me just couldn't resist a dog book written by a person named Katz.

It's a social commentary, not a novel — although some of the characters could easily be something out of strange fiction. Katz gives you a snapshot of several dog owners in and around the spendy suburb of Montclair, New Jersey. His intent is to illustrate anecdotally how we as a culture depend on these "social parasites" (his phrase, not mine) to fill all kinds of emotional and social needs that, once upon a time were fulfilled by other humans. No big surprise there, right? I mean, anyone who's ever loved a dog knows that these animals provide the kind of companionship that truly does earn them the nickname "man's best friend."

Some of the dog owners he shadows are downright pathological. Others are a bit more "normal" but reveal some of the foibles we've all seen in certain dog owners (and maybe in ourselves): for example, the lonely, childless dog owner who treats her canine as a surrogate child. Or the manly-man dog owner who connects easily and naturally with his gargantuan Labrador yet can't connect in a significant way with his wife or kids. Or the tireless dog-rescue lady who spends every spare moment and dime caring for discarded pets and finding them new homes. All of the dog lovers he describes, though, share a common dependence on dogs that begs some hard questions: Are dogs capable of filling the social and emotional expectations we have of them? Are we better off for forcing them into these roles? Are they?


Really cool elements:

• It's an interesting idea, this concept of dogs taking on a "new work" in our culture — where their job is to satisfy humans' social and emotional needs. In a postmodern society that no longer relies so much on family and other human relationships to cement our social network, I can totally see how dogs have found themselves filling an almost-human role. (Heck, look at me! I'm the one who acquired a family dog just weeks before my youngest kid started attending full-day school! Coincidence?)
• In his portrayal of a dog-rescue operation, Katz brings up a good point: howcome there are people out there who will lay down their very lives for dogs — showing mercy and acceptance even for animals who are aggressive and dangerous — yet we have trouble doing the same thing for people?
• Katz sends a message that it's not necessarily healthy to humanize our animals — to attribute all kinds of complex expression and emotion to a dog is to really make the dog into something bigger than life. It's a good reality check to remember that no, they really are animals. Beasts. Nice beasts, sure, but not people.
• Several stories in the book underscore the problem of "throw-away pets"—animals that are abandoned or mistreated because the owners had no idea what they were getting themselves into. I'm all for raising awareness of that problem, in the hopes that it might convince readers to adopt homeless animals rather than add to the problem by purchasing or breeding more dogs.

Not-so-cool elements:

• Katz believes that dogs really are not the fiercely loyal, undyingly loving creatures that many of us dog people make them out to be. In fact, he suggests that if your dog is separated from you for a couple weeks and is given a comfortable place to live and lots of food, he'll promptly forget you ever existed. I'm sorry, but Buster and I both object to that sentiment. :)
• There is an off-color statement near the end of the book that refers to physical training tools (such as choke-chains and invisible fences) as torturous. Katz even implies that those who use such tools are lazy and irresponsible pet owners. Now that felt pretty judgmental! I care for my dog, I walk him several times a day, and I do not take shortcuts in providing care for him. I would even go so far as to say I love my dog. I also know that, because of our proximity to a very busy road, I cannot risk him darting out of the yard after a rabbit or a squirrel. So I use an invisible fence. I won't defend here why I think it's appropriate, but suffice to say that not all pet owners who use them are lazy, irresponsible, or inhumane.

The Bean Trees

written by Barbara Kingsolver

A while back, I had read Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and although I found parts of it disturbing and sad, I did like her writing and had sort of been wanting to read some more of her fiction. So I picked up this little beauty at the library, not knowing at first that it was in fact her first novel. As you might expect, the plot's definitely a little thinner than what you see in Poisonwood, but I must say, it's a witty and touching little story. Whimsical and entertaining, with just enough depth.

The book's narrated from the perspective of Taylor Greer, a young woman who leaves Kentucky (with almost no money and a car that's barely functional) to make her way in the world. Shunning the hillbilly lifestyle of many of her former classmates, some of whom ended up pregnant before their eighteenth birthdays, she figures she'll head west and see what kind of life she can make for herself. By the time she gets to Arizona, her new unfettered lifestyle has already come to an end. She has become, quite unexpectedly, the unofficial custodian of a mysterious, nameless, baby girl — the infant was hurriedly and desperately handed to her by a frightened Native American mother who obviously feared for the infant's safety.

The rest of the book is a story of resourcefulness, friendship, loyalty, and sacrifice. You follow Taylor as she develops some amazing relationships in her new surroundings and gets her bearings in the unfamiliar world of motherhood.

Really cool elements:

• I love first-person narratives where the protagonist is so colorful. And Taylor's youthful but streetwise manner is so entertaining and easy, you feel like you're sitting right there listening to her as she tells her story. I especially love her folksy grammar and vocabulary; it's kind of like a Junie B. Jones book for grownups.
• Taylor's friendship with Luann is just beautiful — a mirror image of the many real-life friendships among the zillions of women out there who find themselves in trying circumstances and help to hold each other up. Though I've never been in such dire straits as Taylor and Luann, I can definitely say that I've had some similar friendships that have seen me through some hard times.
• There is a heart-tugging side plot here about an immigrant-smuggling Good Samaritan and some of the things she teaches Taylor, by example, about doing the right thing and laying down your life for your friends.

Not-so-cool elements:

• I really wish there had been more closure to the story of Esperanza and Estevan, an immigrant couple that Taylor ends up helping to transport to safer territory. Their story became so intertwined with Taylors that I would've liked to know more about the outcome of their struggles.
• Am I beginning to relax my standards, or is it just a coincidence that I don't have much to whine about in the books I've read lately? No other complaints on this one!