What Happened in September, 2014

Reviews

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks

Two Christmases ago, my daughter gave me Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks.  The movie was coming out, and the plan may have been to trick me into taking her to see it by giving me the book first.  The plan didn't work, and Safe Haven sat in my nightstand  unread for a year and a half.  In August, my family rented a house in North Carolina, and I decided that it was the perfect time to give Safe Haven a try.  I expected it to be a good beach book, with the added benefit that my daughter would see me reading it and appreciating her gift.

I have to say that Safe Haven was pretty much exactly what one might expect from a Nicholas Sparks book.  The main character, Katie, has left her abusive husband and fled to a small North Carolina town.  There she meets the recently widowed Alex, and falls in love with him and his two children.  All is going well until, yep, you guessed it. 

While the story was predictable, it was a page turner, and I found myself oddly unable to put it down.  Sparks played some hokey name games, and threw in an unexpected but equally unbelievable twist at the end.  Still, if you are renting beach house and looking for something to bring along, you might as well bring this one!

Challenges:  Rewind

Tags:  Light and Fluffy

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

I'm a pretty persistent reader.  Most of the time, if I can make it through the first hundred pages, I'll finish the book.  Last month, I put down . . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer after over 400 pages.  This month, I'm quitting The Finkler Question, despite being 2/3 through.

The Finkler Question is the story of three men living in London, Julian Treslove, Sam Finkler and Libor Sevcik.  Julian and Sam are about the same age as each other - mid 40s, and Libor is in his 80s.  Libor and Sam are recently widowed.  They are also Jewish.  So what, you ask?  Jewishness is all that they talk about.

Julian is mugged, and believes that he was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack.  Although he is not Jewish, he then experiences a huge case of Jewish envy, and tries to become Jewish by changing his manner of speaking and actions, without actually converting.  Libor is seemingly happily Jewish, although he spends a great deal of time thinking about whether attacks on Jewish people and places are understandable, if not justified.  Sam Finkler, on the other hand, joins a group who identify themselves as ASHamed Jews and are opposed to the Israeli state.

Much of the dialogue in The Finkler Question is focused on what it means to be Jewish, whether one can be Jewish and be ashamed of other Jewish people, and whether Jewish people who disagree with what other Jewish people are doing, especially in Israel, are anti-Semitic.

If you are Jewish, and are questioning your beliefs, this might be a great book for you.  I was actually not aware that some Jewish people don't support Israel, which I probably should have known.  So much of the book is about Jewish people as a group, and then the opinions of particular Jewish people.  All of this is great, but it just got old.  I was looking for another dimension to the characters.  Being Jewish, or being jealous of people who are Jewish, shouldn't be all that they are.

The Finkler Question won the Man Booker Prize for 2010. 

Challenges: Rewind, Audiobook, and I Love Library Books

Tags: British Stories, Man Booker Listed, Questioning Religions

. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

Well, I picked it up again.  This time I read from where I left off, at page 413 in 1880, until page 613 in 1887.  Some more club members have died, others have married, and the kids are mostly grown.  There are some hints that someone might be a lesbian, but I'm not sure if that was a topic discussed in popular fiction in 1982 when the book was first published, so I'm not expecting anything explosive.

The other members of The Typical Book Group are also struggling with this one.  We usually discuss our summer Big Fat Book in August, or possibly in September if everyone is out of town at the end of the summer.  This year, we have decided to move the meeting back until October.

Although this book is taking me forever, I am liking it.  It has a nice, soothing rhythm.  There's not a ton of action, but there is something about it that I like.  I'm taking a break again, but after I finish The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon, I'll try and knock out another 200 pages.

The Wife, the Maid and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon

In 1930, a judge in New York named Joseph Crater suddenly disappeared and became the "The Missingest Man in New York".  His wife, Stella was at their vacation home in Maine, while Crater went to Atlantic City with his mistress, Sally Lou Ritz.  He came back to the City, had dinner with Ritz and his lawyer, William Klein, then got in a cab, and was never seen again.  In her book, The Wife, the Maid and the Mistress, Ariel Lawhon offers a theory of what may have happened.

Lawhon's story focuses on the tangled connections between Stella and Crater and a cast of characters including a mob boss, Owney Madden, his unexpectedly friendly thug, Shorty, and the Craters' maid, Maria.  No one seems to actually have liked Crater, so there were lots people who might have preferred for him to disappear.  In fact, in real life as in the book it took 10 days for anyone to start wondering where he was.

During Crater's lifetime, there were rumors about how he secured his appointment to court. Lawhon speculates that Owney Madden was involved, and became worried when a grand jury was convened to investigate alleged corruption.  She then also guesses that the police investigating the crime may be indebted to Madden themselves.

Sometimes in a historical fiction book, there is something that happens that is so unbelievable that you know it must be true.  In this story, when it turned out that the Craters' maid was married to one of the policemen investigating the case, I knew that it must have been true, because there's no way that a police officer would be charged with investigating his wife's boss' mysterious disappearance, so no author would make that up.  However, when I got to Lawhon's end notes, it turned out that was a fictional twist.  The Craters did have a maid, but there's no indication that she was married to an investigator. 

All told, this was an interesting story, made all the more so with its morsels of truth.

Challenges:  I Love Library Books Challenge

Tags:  Historical Fiction   

In Other News

Pass it On

You might remember that I got my copy of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson from a Little Free Library.  I finished that book while I was staying that the beach house that I talked about in my review of Safe Haven, and so I left it there.  The shelves were crowded with more beach reads than literary fiction, but I found it a nice spot next to The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.  While Safe Haven would have fit right in, I wasn't done with it yet.  So, I'll return Safe Haven to my Little Free Library instead.  Pass it on!

Man Booker Short List

The Man Booker Prize Shortlist was announced on September 9.  To my surprise, David Mitchell's new book, The Bone Clocks, did not make the cut.  Instead, Joshua Ferris' book, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour made the list, along with books by Howard Jacobson, Karen Joy Fowler, Richard Flanagan, Neel Mukherjee and Ali Smith.  Despite an earlier so-so review, the Times published this almost glowing review of To Rise Again on September 15.  What brought on the reconsideration?  I just might suspect that they didn't want to be left on the wrong side of the hype if Ferris wins this one.  More power to him.

Blogging for Rivera

This month, I had dinner in the Rivera Court at the Detroit Institute of Arts.  No biggie really, I've been there before, and anyone in my tri-county area can go for free.  But it is pretty spectacular.  If you need a reason to visit Detroit, this could be it.

But anyway, sitting there, sipping wine, I was thinking about Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo, and I couldn't help but think about The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.  The thing about The Lacuna is that although I know that it was a good book, and it was about Rivera and Kahlo, I can't tell you much about it.  Unfortunately, I read it during the period when I had officially started my blog, but before my Parent Rant that got me really writing about what I read.  And this is why I'm still blogging.  I'm convinced that if I stop, I won't remember the details about the books that I read.  So, here I go, blogging toward another month.

October Preview

In October, I plan to read and review the following books:

On Paper or Electronic Format:

. . . And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer

White Woman on a Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey

Bread and Butter by Michelle Widgen

On Audio

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami



Going Along for the Ride

At one time about a year ago, my sister, my sister in law, and my sister's boyfriend's sister were all reading Where'd You Go Bernadette  by Maria Semple.  From what I heard, they all liked it, even though they are in 3 different states, and live completely different lives.  From that point, I knew that sooner or later I would be reading it too.  So this month I was excited when it was the pick for The Typical Book Group.

Where'd You Go Bernadette starts off as a series of emails between Bernadette, a stay at home mom in Seattle, and her virtual personal assistant, Manjula.  Soon, some memos from her daughter's school are mixed in, along with catty emails between some of the other moms about Bernadette.  The communications continue to escalate, painting a picture of Bernadette's life in Seattle, and her life pre-parenthood. 

Bernadette's husband is distracted while he's working on a big project for Microsoft.  Her daughter, Bee, is an overachiever, who has managed to talk her parents into a trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades.  Bernadette begins to feel some anxiety about the trip, and also about the state of her life in general.   Once again the situation escalates, and is soon spinning out of control. 

I loved the first 4/5 of Bernadette.  I tore through the pages, and couldn't wait to sneak away and read more.  Bernadette herself was such an interesting character, with her lost architectural career and her strange interactions with the other parents, who she calls "gnats".   The last 1/5 of the story was told in a more traditional narrative form instead of emails, messages and letters, and it slowed down, while staying interesting.  Bernadette would be a great book for a vacation read, but be sure to bring a back up book too.  If  you somehow found yourself with 3 or 4 uninterrupted hours, you could probably read Bernadette in one sitting.  Given that it was such an easy read, it feels mean to be critical, but I have a few issues with the story that I will mention on my Spoilers Page.  I'll also talk more about it later this month when we meet to discuss it.

I checked this one out of the Library, so it's one more book done for the I Love Library Books Challenge.

Next Up:  Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Still Listening to:  The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Grass Might not be Greener

So, if you had to lose your only child, would it be better if "lose" was a euphemism, or if you actually lost your child?  That question is central to The Lemon Orchard by Luanne Rice.  In The Lemon Orchard, Julia moves to Malibu to house sit for her aunt and uncle who own a lemon orchard.  Julia's life has been in turmoil since her daughter and husband died in a car crash 5 years earlier, and she is ready for a change.  In the orchard, Julia meets Roberto, who was separated from his daughter in the desert when he was trying to illegally cross into the US from Mexico.

Although Julia has to live every day knowing that her daughter has died, she doesn't envy Roberto's uncertainty.  Anything could have happened to his daughter, Rosa.  She could have been abducted by a sex trafficker, she could have been eaten by coyotes, or she could have made it safely to the US, but not known how to find Roberto.  Julia is very sympathetic to the plight of illegal immigrants, and wants to help Roberto find out what happened.

The Lemon Orchard was a page turner, and a great summer book.  I hadn't read anything about Mexican immigrants before, and I enjoyed this introduction.  I would think that anyone who liked Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah would like this book as well. 

I read The Lemon Orchard at the request of Lindsay Prevette of Viking/Penguin books.  No promises were made, no payments were received.  One odd coincidence was that there was a character in this book named "Lion", and a character with the same name in the last book that I reviewed on request, My Education by Susan Choi.  According to the Social Security Baby Name Index, Lion has not made their list of the top 1000 baby names any time in the last 100 years, so it's sort of strange that I've read two books with characters by that name in the last two months.  I'm not sure what book I will read as my "industry requested review" in September, but if there is another Lion, I'll take that as a sign.  Of what, I have no idea.

Next Up:  At Last by Edward St. Aubyn

Still Listening to:  The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schein.  I'm not sure I'm going to make it through this one - hopefully it will improve quickly!

Half Time Update

I am now officially half way through listening to Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.  This is the big fat book (BFB) that the Typical Book Group picked to read over the summer.  Right now, the characters are in The Great War, the Schlieffen Plan is failing, England is storming a German entrenchment, and the Lusitania has sunk, but the US has not yet entered the war.  The story is focused on a British earl and his sister, a Welsh family, two Russian brothers, a German who is in love with the earl's sister, and an American who is in love with the daughter of a Russian immigrant entrepreneur.

Follett has allowed the reader to see all of the angles of story of the beginning of World War I, without seeming to choose sides.  All of the key characters are questioning the reasons for the war, and the strategies of their respective countries.  For as much as I am learning about World War I, however, I have to say that the story is a little fluffier than I would have expected.  While I don't think that Follett has actually used the words "throbbing member", the sex scenes are of that caliber, and so far two hymens have been painfully broken.  I know this because those are almost exactly the words Follett used.  Hmm. 

Once I finish reading Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn, I am going to read Fall of Giants in addition to listening to it, which should get me through the second half a little faster than the first.  Not that I'm rushing.

Giveaway Update:  Each time that I give a book away through this blog, I also offer the winner the opportunity to write a review as a guest blogger.  I recently checked in with Mary who received a copy of  Glow by Jessica Maria Tuccelli, to see how she liked the book.  The news wasn't good.  Mary reported that in her 70 years of reading, she had finished all but a handful of books, but that she couldn't bring herself to finish Glow.  She found it confusing, and wasn't sure why it had received so many "glowing" reviews online.  Oh well.  Hopefully the more recent giveaway winners will have better experiences!

In Other News:  The Man Booker Prize Longlist is out.  The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin, which is next on my TBR list, is on the Longlist, and so are a few others that look interesting.  I know it's only a matter of time until I read TransAtlantic by Colum McCann, and I've also read good things about A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.  How can I not want to read a book by someone named NoViolet Bulawayo, especially when it's called We Need New Names?  She certainly does not.  I'll wait for the Shortlist to come out in September to narrow down my choices.

Still Reading:  Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn

Still Listening to:  Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

Omigod!

Recently I learned a new song.  My daughter will be dancing to it in her recital next month, so I have been hearing it every week while she is in her dance class.  It is called "Omigod You Guys", and it is from the musical "Legally Blonde".  To get the full effect, you are going to need to click here, and see a Youtube video of the cast performing the song. 

Now that I've set the mood, you are prepared to hear about The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella.  In Undomestic, Samantha, a high priced London attorney, is about to become a partner in her law firm.  It is nothing for her to work 80 hour weeks, and she rarely even visits her apartment, let alone cleans it.  Then it happens.  Samantha makes a big mistake.  In fact, she makes a fifty million pound (as in "quid" - I just don't have the right symbols to type this properly) mistake that can't be fixed.  Samantha is so shell shocked when she realizes what happened that she walks out of her office and gets on the nearest train, not knowing or caring where it is headed.  When the train stops, she walks up to a nearby home to ask for a glass of water.  The homeowners, Trish and Eddie Geiger, are expecting a new cleaning lady to be stopping by for an interview.  In a comedy of errors, you can guess what happens.  Samantha's competitive spirit comes through when she realizes that the Geigers are actually considering turning her down for the cleaning lady position.  She instinctively pads her resume until the Geigers are so impressed that they can't let her go.

The antics that follow would make Amelia Bedelia proud.  Predictably, the Geigers also have a hunky gardener.  It is at this part of the story where "Ohmigod You Guys" lodged itself solidly in my head, and the story gets a little too light and fluffy . . . Omigod, oh my God you guys, looks like Sam's gonna win the prize . . . . You remember that Elle Woods in "Legally Blonde" was a lawyer too, right?   Just when Samantha has grown accustomed to the English countryside, something clicks in her brain, and she realizes that her mistake might not be what it appears.  For me, the story picked up here, when Samantha started thinking like herself again.

This book was given to me by my former boss at the law firm where I worked when I first became an attorney.  I sort of wondered while listening to the story if she was trying to tell me that I had really screwed up when I was working for her, and that maybe I should give housekeeping a try.  Somehow I don't think she would have waited 15 years to tell me, if that was her intended message.

Are there flaws in the story?  Certainly.  But nothing that you won't be able to get past if you are looking for a light beach read.

This is the 10th book for the Off the Shelf Challenge!  5 more to go.

Up Next on CD:  I'm not sure.  I'm next on the list to get Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt, but it's not mine yet.  I checked out The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, but I'm going to hold off on starting it for another day or so to see if Wolves becomes available.

Still Reading:  The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz

Boy Band Drama

Several years ago, I read Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes, and I really liked it.  The best part about it for me was that the story was set in modern day Dublin.  Until I read that book, my idea of Dublin  involved maybe one or two stop lights, narrow cobble stone streets with walls on either side, and a friendly old man who could show me the way to the pub.  Sushi burst that bubble, and made me realize that Ireland really is in the twenty-first century, complete with office buildings, mortgages, and obviously, sushi. 

When Rebecca Lang of Viking and Penguin Books asked me to review Keyes' new book, The Mystery of Mercy Close I was excited to see what Keyes had been up to since I last read her.  I was a little concerned, however, to hear that Mercy Close was "a Walsh sister novel", since I didn't think that I had read any of the earlier Walsh sister books.  But, I dove right in nevertheless. 

Mercy Close is the story of Helen Walsh, a private detective working in Dublin.  Helen is hired by her ex-boyfriend, Jay Parker, to find a member of the boy band, The Laddz, who has gone missing just before the reunion tour is set to begin.  As you might expect, The Laddz are a little one dimensional.  There is the cute one, the gay one, the wacky one, the truly talented one, and the other one.  When our story begins, several years after their popularity peaked, the cute one has become the religious one, the gay one has gone straight, the wacky one, Wayne, is the one who is missing, the truly talented one has quit the band to find solo fame, and the other one is still just the other one.  Adding this second characteristic to each band member served to make them not two dimensional, but one dimensional in a different way.

A lot of the first half of the book is spent establishing the traits of the band members, and reminding the reader of the characteristics of each of Helen's sisters.  I found the sister side story completely unnecessary, and would have liked the story just as well if Helen was an only child. Helen is a quirky character.  Many pages are spent detailing the things that bother her, and the misfortunes that she has faced as a result of the Irish recession, rather than chasing the bad guys or looking for Wayne.

In the second half of the book, the story comes together, and Keyes' talent shows through.  We find that Helen is struggling with depression.  Her battle is really well written, with depression treated as a disease, like emphysema, and not something that one can get over with a pill and a call to a shrink.  As the deadline approaches, it is unclear whether Wacky-One-Wayne is missing, or trying to be lost.  There seem to be as many people who need Wayne to participate in the reunion tour as there are people who would profit if the shows were cancelled.  The suspense builds, and Keyes has us turning pages as quickly as we can. 

As always, with these "industry requested reviews", I received the book for free, but no other payment.  I promised to review the book, but did not promise a positive review.   My next industry requested review will be The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman.  I'll have an extra copy of that one to give away, so stay tuned!

Next Up:  Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz

Still Listening To:  The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

Lost and Found

Remember all of those things that we were never going to do or say when we had kids?  So does Alice Love.  In fact, that's all she remembers.  Alice fell and bumped her head at a spinning class, and somehow forgot the last 10 years of her life.  When she came to, she thought that she was pregnant with her child who was really in 4th grade.  Alice even forgot that she and her husband were in the process of getting divorced.

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty is the story of Alice, her sister, her mother, and her surrogate grandmother, all of their losses, and how they recover from them.  Alice has lost the most.  She has lost her memory, her marriage, her relationships with everyone who was close to her, and the ideals that she had as a 29 year old mother to be.  39 year old Alice is constantly busy, going from PTA meetings, to the gym, to after school activities, to drinks with her single friends.  After her head injury, Alice can't imagine why she would be doing all of these things, and neglecting the relationships with the people who were important to her.

The first night that I was reading Alice, I couldn't put it down and read almost 100 pages.  The next night I read less, then the next night even less, and so on.  The initial premise of the story was great, and had my attention.  As the story went on though, it became a little predictable.  There were still twists and turns, but the resolution was always in sight.  One nice thing about the story was that it was set in Sydney, Australia.  Hearing about the Christmastime barbecue, and the other reminders of the December summer kept me on my toes.

I read Alice for The Typical Book Group.  We'll discuss it in 10 days, and I'll report back.  All told, I liked it, and would recommend it to someone looking for a lighter read.  Moriarty sold the movie rights, but from what I can see, the movie has gotten lost in development. 

Next Up:  The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes

Still Listening to:  Ines of my Soul by Isabel Allende

Party Crashers

While the Torrington-Swift family was in the midst of preparing for the daughter, Emerald's, birthday party, they got quite a shock.  There had been a train crash on a branch line near their isolated old mansion in the English countryside, and the survivors were walking to the family home for shelter.   Thus the title of Sadie Jones' novel, The Uninvited Guests.

There is one uninvited guest who stands out from the others, and who works to ingratiate himself with his hosts.  This survivor, Charlie Traversham-Beechers, seems to have some relationship with Emerald's mother, Charlotte, which Charlotte is not eager to explain.  As time goes on, the Torrington-Swifts begin to think that there is something strange and a little frightening about the uninvited guests, and Charlie Traversham-Beechers in particular.

The Uninvited Guests is a ghost story, set in a crumbling estate in 1912.  The Torrington-Swifts are in danger of losing the home, and can no longer afford to heat a whole wing of it.  There are three children in the family, Clovis, Emerald and Imogene, who is more often referred to as "Smudge".  The guests who are actually invited to the party include Emerald's friend, Patience, Patience's suddenly handsome brother, Ernest, and a wealthy neighbor who seems to be interested in Emerald, John.

When I first read of the train crash on the local line, and the passengers needing a place to stay, I thought of Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, where the travelers found shelter in the Lake of the Coheeries when their train broke down.  In The Uninvited Guests, Jones worked to create the mystical, other worldly feel of  Winter's Tale, but the story was going in so many directions, that it didn't really work.  Why the kitten?  Why the pony?  Why the paternity question? Why, while we are at it, did we need an unused wing of the house?

If you are interested in reading a ghost story set in an old mansion, I would recommend that you try The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb, The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters or Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.  If you read and loved all of those and still want more, then give The Uninvited Guests a try.

Next Up:  The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

Still Listening to:  Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Another Guilty Pleasure

A couple of Augusts ago I told you about a few of my guilty pleasures.  Now I have one more to add to the list:  Jodi Picoult books.   I can't help liking them more than I want to.  In theory, I am opposed to reading any book that one can pick up at a grocery store.  However, there is something about Picoult's books that keeps me coming back, even though it's embarrassing to my inner literary snob.

Picoult books generally follow a formula.  A child does something wrong, or has an illness.  The family is traumatized dealing with it.  A lawyer gets involved.  A doctor gets involved.  There are predictable twists and turns, and the pages keep turning.  I talked about this formula earlier this year when I was wishing that This Beautiful Life  by Helen Schulman had been written by Picoult instead.  Change of Heart is another Picoult formula follower, and another page turner.

In Change of Heart, a woman, June, loses her husband and daughter in a double murder for which a handyman working at her home is convicted and sentenced to death.  Of course, June is pregnant at the time of the murders, and her baby is born with a defective heart.  One of the jurors is so affected by the death sentence that he helped to impose that he becomes a priest.  An ACLU attorney gets involved to challenge the death sentence, but the whole case gets complicated when the convicted killer decides not to fight the death sentence, and that he wants to donate his heart to June's child after his death. 

Did I mention that everyone thinks that the killer is performing miracles and may in fact be The Messiah?  I know, I know, that's too hokey.  But it worked.  Picoult takes the opportunity to inject a religious debate regarding one of my favorite subjects:  How can we take the Bible as the truth, if we don't know who edited it or translated it, or what they chose to omit or change?  She introduces the Gospel of Thomas which didn't make the final cut, and persuades me that I should really be Gnostic instead of Presbyterian.  All that from a book I could have picked up at a 7-11.

Someone who has read Picoult before will know that she doesn't waste words, and that if she is telling you something, it is for a reason.  Sometimes obvious foreshadowing shows that the author is an amateur, but Picoult foreshadows in such a way that the reader can feel smug about figuring out what is coming, and then keep reading to be rewarded for their good guessing.  It is somehow not disappointing to figure out the twists in advance, and in fact, it increases the tension as the reader waits for the characters to catch on.

Change of Heart is a great book, and I'm sure it would be a very quick read.  I listened to it on CD, which took about 15 hours, but that was due to all of the dramatic pauses.  I'm glad that I picked this up at last year's Typical Book Exchange - Thanks Laurie!  Oh, and this is another double-countsie for the challenges since I owned the book to begin with, but then listened to it on CDs that I check out of my library.

Next up on CD:  Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  I have already listened to the first disc and I am loving it so far!

Still Reading:  The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali

Approved for Beach Reading Only

The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer is not my typical read.  It bills itself on the cover as being the story of a presidential aide, Wes, who is injured when an assassin kills his friend, but who finds out that his friend is really still alive.  The cover also adds the tease that Wes tries to solve the mystery of what happened through "a decade-old presidential crossword puzzle, mysterious facts buried in Masonic history, and a two-hundred-year-old code invented by Thomas Jefferson."  After reading that, I was expecting the book to be the literary equivalent of the Nicholas Cage movie, "National Treasure".  That it was not.

The story in The Book of Fate is that of Wes, who feels responsible for his friend's death, only to find that the friend, Ron Boyle, is still alive.  Wes works for the former president, Leeland Manning, as his personal aide.  Once Wes realizes that Boyle is still alive, he wonders who he can trust, and who else knows the secret.  He finds himself chased by powerful people who would prefer it if Boyle was truly part of the past.

The Book of Fate is action packed, and is a great summer read, especially in an election year.  However, if you are expecting to learn anything about Masonic history, you should look somewhere else.  On the beach, the reader might gloss over some of the leaps that the characters make, like when they notice letters written next to a crossword puzzle and instantly conclude that it is a list of people working for the president, ranked according to who he trusted the most.  They might also fail to notice a fatal inconsistency in the assassin's storyline, or that Boyle's story is left unfinished.  So, if you want to read this one, get to it!  It won't hold up when winter winds are blowing, and your mind is devoted to the plot.

One more down for the Off the Shelf Challenge!  Now I'm half way done!

Next up on CD:  My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

Still Reading:  Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

What Could Have Been

This Beautiful Life  by Helen Schulman, is a book that Jodi Picoult should have written.  In fact, I am almost certain that Jodi Picoult is cursing herself for not coming up with its premise before Schulman brought it to print.  TBL fits Picoult's formula perfectly:  a kid does something wrong which raises moral, ethical and legal issues which affect the entire family and which threaten to tear the family apart. 

In this case, it is the son, Jake, who receives a video from an 8th grade girl in which she is naked and using a baseball bat inappropriately.  Jake, who is 15, forwards the video to one friend.  Within hours it is all over the internet.  Meanwhile, the dad has a high powered job which requires him to present a strong image to the public, and the mom is obsessing over an ex-boyfriend's blog.  Sounds great, doesn't it?  And it could have been.  If Picoult had written it. 

Schulman has an entirely different style from Picoult, where she seems to back down from the anxiety provoking moments.  She is able to find a suitable resolution for every issue, and the reader is never put into a position where he or she can't imagine a good way out.  Picoult would have pushed the limits.  In Schulman's world, even though millions of viewers know about this child porn (which it is a crime to even possess, let alone forward) the New York City police and prosecutors apparently don't own computers.  Jake's biggest problem is ending his suspension from school, which his dad adeptly manages.  The mom and the dad readily download the video, knowing that it is child porn when they do so, with no concern that an investigator might seize all of the household computers and prosecute all of the people found to have downloaded it.  The issue that Schulman presents is whether the girl is "bad" and whether Jake is the "victim".  I guess I wanted more.  We are told that the mom is reading an ex-boyfriend's blog obsessively, but we don't feel the obsession.  She doesn't wonder how their kids might have been different from her real life children.  Why wouldn't she?  And did you notice how I mentioned that they have children in This Beautiful Life?  The daughter, Coco, felt like an accessory.

Note to Jodi Picoult:  As far as I am concerned, this storyline is still available and ready for you to write.  There's a great story here, but it needs your formula to work. 

I'm sort of bummed that I picked this book for The Typical Book Group to read.  We'll see what they think, but we've read Picoult for this group before, so my guess is that they will feel a lot like I did about it.  At least that's one more book down for the Support Your Library Book Challenge - 22 to go!

Next up:  London Train by Tessa Hadley  OK, I admit it.  I saw the review for this one on the New York Times 2011 Notable Books List, and would have passed on it, if the author's last name wasn't Hadley.  I've got to give Hadleys a chance!

Still Listening to:  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Chicago Memoirs

Long time no blog!  I've been so busy getting ready for Christmas, that my heart just hasn't been into reading, let alone writing about reading.  Now that the gifts are unwrapped, but before the wrapping paper is thrown away, I'm back.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished listening to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.  I didn't immediately write about it, because although I was listening to it on CD, I also owned the book, and I realized that the book included an extra segment not read on the disc.  This segment is called Mistakes We Knew We Were Making, and is almost 50 pages long.  In this section, Dave attempts to make right anything that he got wrong in the first edition.  While most "memoir" writers would find this unnecessary given that half of their so-called memoirs are fiction, his efforts to make everything exactly correct make the reader feel closer to Dave and his brother, Toph.

Heartbreaking Work is the story of Dave Eggers raising Toph after their parents die of cancer within months of each other.  At the time that Dave became a quasi parent, he was 21, and his brother was 8.  Dave has another brother and a sister, both who are older than him, but for some reason, the family decided (against the terms of their parents' wills) that Dave would raise Toph.   The story in Heartbreaking Work starts with Dave caring for his mother while she dies, and then moves to California with all of the siblings after the parents are gone.  We flash and travel back to Lake Forest, IL, just outside of Chicago, where the family home was, and where Dave feels a need to return.

Dave is a pretty amazing faux father for Toph, despite his obvious and honestly reported flaws.  They cook tacos using spaghetti sauce, on purpose.  They run late for open houses at school.  Dave sleeps in each morning while Toph manages to get himself to school on a bike he can't pedal, and instead rides like a scooter.  But at the end of the day, they make it work.

In reading about Heartbreaking Work, I learned that Eggers is 12 days younger than me.  This is extremely disappointing.  I have read and appreciated other works that he has written and created, and would like to think of him as being much older than me, as an explanation for why my accomplishments are so lacking in comparison.  However, our small difference in age also helped me to appreciate the effort that he was making while raising Toph. When I was 21, my parents were paying my rent, and my time was spent working in the mall between classes and planning "progressive" drinking parties in my apartment complex.  I have no doubt that I would have raised Toph differently than Eggers,  but I can't say that I would have done better.

Meanwhile, back in the Hills of Beverly, I have been reading Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster.  Bitter is the story of Lancaster and her husband both losing their jobs, their standard of living, and their self respect, but then finding themselves again.  Lancaster and her husband were victims of the dot com bust, reminding me of the characters in The Cookbook Collector.  The first two thirds of the memoir is Lancaster going on and on about the things that she used to have, and scheming up ways to get them back.  The last third of the book is where she puts on her big girl panties and pulls her life back into shape.  In fact, that sounds just like something Lancaster would have said herself.  Lancaster has a sassy and funny way of telling a story.  She is also quick to point out her flaws, although she usually offsets them by naming 4 or 5 of her strengths for each weakness.

Lancaster's preferred Chicago neighborhood, where she once lived in her "dot com palace", is Bucktown.  When Lancaster is somehow lacking in adventures in her own life to relay, she reports on those around her, like her neighbors.  Coincidentally, my sister has just bought a house in Bucktown, where she'll be moving soon.  My fingers are crossed that Lancaster lives next door.  I feel like I know the neighbors who Lancaster wrote about in Bitter, and in her later book, Bright Lights, Big Ass, and it would be fun to read about my sister through the eyes of the self proclaimed "condescending, egomaniacal, self-centered, smart-ass" herself.

So what can Eggers and Lancaster have in common?  Probably a mutual loathing of each other, but other than that, I was surprised to find some coincidences.  Obviously, much of both memoirs takes place in Chicago.  Thematically, they both face challenges they never expected, and were unprepared to face.  Strangely, Dave auditions for "Real World San Francisco" and Jen watches a rerun of the show while she prepares for her wedding.  But really what Heartbreaking Work  and Bitter have in common is that they are each their author's first foray in memoir writing, and both authors hone their skills while telling great stories.

In other news:  Today's Christmas!  And my life is changing. . . my kids bought me a Kindle for Christmas, and my husband loaded The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides on it for my first e-reading adventure.  Although I am pretty much a book purist, and to be honest, a used or library book reader, I have to admit that there have been a couple of times this year when I have wished for a Kindle.  I have a feeling that I will take to it like a fish to water.  I also got a number of other books as gifts, including The London Train by Tessa Hadley, Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, and three great cookbooks!  One of the cookbooks is The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond, which is absolutely amazing.  Her spaghetti and meatballs recipe is already one of my favorites, and I can't wait to cook more. There are tons of photos in the book, with the obvious food photos, but also lots of Drummond, her family, her animals and her friends.  I think this is just enough to get me to add her memoir, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels to my TBR list.

Next Up On Paper:  Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami.  I requested this in audio form from Michigan's inter-library loan system 3 weeks ago, and still haven't received it.  I gave up and requested it in paper form, which I got in a week.  Hope it's worth the wait!

Next up on CD:  Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Haunted Island

Every year, my family spends some time on Mackinac Island, which is in northern Lake Huron, close to the Mackinac Bridge.  Note to people outside of Michigan:  Mackinac (the island and bridge) and Mackinaw (the city) are pronounced the same, both ending with an "aw" sound. 

The Island is a step back in time, as cars are not permitted, and horses pull carriages through the downtown shopping district.  Below is a shot of the downtown area, on a typical summer day.  During the day, endless ferries carry tourists to and from the Island.  At night, the Island becomes quiet, as the locals and the tourists who are staying overnight settle in, free from the day trippers.  After the last ferry leaves for the day, the Island can be a little eerie, if one ventures from the beaten path between restaurants and pubs.  There is a lot of history on the Island, with stories of old Indian wars, plenty of spooky graveyards, and Fort Mackinac, which the British captured in the War of 1812.

The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb is set on a fictional "Grand Manitou Island", which Webb admits is based on the true Mackinac Island.  In the story, Halcyon, or Hallie, as she is called, learns unexpectedly that she has a connection to the Island, and travels there to learn more.  In the course of her trip, she uncovers a haunted house, and a ton of family secrets. 
 
On the author's blog, she boasts that The Tale made it to the North West Michigan Bestsellers list last summer.  Really, although I can see how this book would be attractive to people vacationing in Northern Michigan, there is no reason why it shouldn't enjoy a wider audience.  The Tale was suspenseful, not too predictable, and is a good book for anyone who enjoys a ghost story.  There may be some aspects of Grand Manitou Island which seem too hokey to be real, like the lack of reliable cell phone service, the necessity of horses and bikes for transportation, the big old Victorian houses, and the close-knit relationships of the Islanders.  As someone who visits Mackinac Island, I can tell you that there is such a place.  I was left with a few questions, which I will post on the Spoilers page for anyone interested.

One of the events that Webb incorporates into her story is the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, which affected all of the Great Lakes, and the surrounding states.  I had never heard about this storm before, and liked learning about it. 

Interested in spooky stories based in Northern Michigan?  The Tarnished Eye by Judith Guest is based on a true crime that took place in the northern lower peninsula in 1968, where a family was murdered in their summer home.  The crime remains unsolved.

Next up on CD:  Hopefully Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon - I have a hold on it at the library, but haven't gotten it yet.

Still Reading - Contested Will by James Shapiro

The Missing Piece

Within days after I finished Still Alice by Lisa Genova, I was on the phone with my financial planner discussing disability insurance.  Still Alice is the story of an active, over educated woman, in the prime of her life, who develops early onset Alzheimer's disease.  What was really compelling about Alice was that the author, Lisa Genova, knew what she was talking about.  After all, she has a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard.  Genova managed to tell the story of Alice in a way that inspired compassion, and also educated the reader about the disease, while still keeping the story interesting. 

When The Friends Book Group decided to read Left Neglected by Genova, I wondered if I would be calling to increase my coverage.  Left Neglected is the story of Sarah, a super overachieving mother of three, whose life changes when she is in a car crash, and forgets that there is a left side of herself, or anything else.  Sounds bizarre, doesn't it?  As Sarah tries to explain her experience to her husband, the conversation goes like this: 

Sarah:  "Honey, tell me everything you see in here." 
Bob:  [names every item of furniture in the room]
Sarah:  "Is that everything?"
Bob:  "Pretty much"
Sarah:  "Okay, now what if I told you that everything you see is only half of everything that's really here?  What if I told you to turn your head and look at the other half?  Where would you look?"

Left Neglect is a real condition, which, as I understand it, is usually caused by brain trauma.  Left Neglected shows Sarah trying to conquer her neglect, both that in her brain, and that caused by her mother.  While it probably sounds like a medical story, it's really more of a story of a mom realizing that she was living a crazy life, and that she is more than her office persona. 

This book, like Still Alice, is a page turner.  Also, with a side story line of Sarah's struggles to face and manage her son's ADHD, it is a great book for Friends of Different Learners.  Now I just have to wait a month and 2 days to discuss it with them. 

For all you financial planners out there, here's an idea:  keep a few copies of both of Lisa Genova's books on hand and casually pass them out to clients who are on the fence about disability insurance.  Sales are likely to skyrocket!

Next up:  Contested Will by James Shapiro

Still listening to:  The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb

Close to Home and Far Away

As I started reading Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah, I was quick to criticize.  The story began with a woman, Meredith, who works with her father in their family business (just like me!), who lives 1/4 mile from her parents (my parents just moved, so they are at least a mile from me now), whose sister has a more glamorous life (duh!) and who is married with two children (ditto).  It is true - there are authors who develop fuller characters than Hannah and who are more convincing with their dialogue.  But some of my initial resistance to Winter Garden may have been more about how closely Meredith's life mirrors mine, and the challenges that she faces, which I could have to face in the (hopefully distant) future.

Winter Garden is actually two stories, one in the modern day, and one in the form of a fairy tale that may touch on some facts from a character's past.  In this sense, it is not unlike Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, but it reads more like something by Jodi Picoult.   The fairy tale is amazing.  I kept promising myself that I would only read to the end of the chapter, then I would go to bed.  But if the next chapter started with or continued part of the fairy tale, I couldn't stop reading.  The ending was a little predictable, but still a welcome resolution.

The fairy tale, while not at first giving dates, soon reveals itself to be the story of a family's struggle to survive the siege of Leningrad.  The Seige of Leningrad lasted from September of 1941 through January of 1944, during which period over a million civilians from Leningrad died. A million.  If you've read other posts, you know that the stories of the civilians of World War II is my favorite genre, and this one fits right in. 

The modern day tale is a story of learning about family members who you thought you knew.  To say that it is about communication within a family is way too simplistic in this case, but it absolutely is about that too.  Some of the blurbs I read about the book mentioned it being about how it is not possible to know one's self until one knows one's mother.  In this case, the daughters do know their mother in the sense that she raised them and they have regular contact with her, but they don't know her thoughts, motives or regrets. 

I never would have read this book if it hadn't been picked for The Friends Book Group.  This is reason #32 why I love book groups - discovering a great book that would have otherwise been missed.

Next up:  The Furies - Book 4 in the Kent Family Chronicles by John Jakes.  I've been putting this one off for a long time, since I wasn't too excited to pick up the story where Book 3 left off - with a 10 year old girl who had already been raped, kidnapped, sold to Indians, and was now married.  But, like Meredith, I will face some challenges to get to know my family better as well.  It will all make more sense soon.

Still Listening to:  The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory - I'm loving it!  No surprise there.

Quilting Q-tees

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The Devil Wears Brooks Brothers

I just finished reading The Story of My Life by Jay McInerney. So why, you may ask, did I just read a book of questionable literary value which was first published in 1988? Two words: John Edwards. As you know, John Edwards, while running for president, was having an affair with a woman who became pregnant, named Rielle Hunter. I mean Lisa Jo Druck. I mean Rielle Jaya James Druck. I mean Alison Poole. The baby was born, The National Enquirer figured it all out, and Edwards denied everything. Then he admitted everything. The question for me was how the mother of this child ever got close to Edwards in the first place.

Rielle Hunter was well known in certain circles before she became pregnant with John Edwards' child. Here is her Wikipedia entry now, although I don't know what it said before she had this baby. Thank God for Obama, because if The National Enquirer had broken the love child story with John Edwards as the Democratic Presidential nominee, it would have been like handing McCain/Pailn the election on a silver platter.

What does this have to do with reading books from 1988? Seriously, read the Wikipedia entry. Or better yet, read this. It seems that Rielle Hunter, or Lisa Jo Druck as she was then known, was the inspiration for a character named Alison Poole, who appears both as the main character and voice of Jay McInerney's The Story of My Life and as a less significant character in Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho. Both authors have included her in their later works as well.

I read American Psycho several years ago, and was so disturbed by it that I wanted to throw it away so that some innocent reader didn't stumble upon it at my garage sale or among books donated to my local library. Instead, my friend, Suzy, insisted that she was going to read it anyway, and that I might as well lend her my copy so that BEE didn't make any more money on it. I agreed, on the condition that she throw it in the trash as soon as she finished. I never followed up on that one. Still, the idea of two authors sharing a character was enough to make me want to read another book that included Alison Poole.

Is Rielle Hunter really Alison Poole? Or did Rielle Hunter feel pressured to act more like Alison Poole after reading about her supposed self? In many places, Jay McInerney seems to see the future. One of the passages that resonated with me was this: "When I was thirteen I started wearing my father's Brooks Brothers and now my standard outfit is one of those big old fat businessmen's shirts - sixteen and a half thirty-four, untucked of course - leggings, white socks, and loafers or sneakers." Don't Edwards' people read? The GQ people sure do. This is a photo that they published when they did a story on Rielle/Lisa/Alison.

Obviously the implication is that she is wearing John Edwards' shirt. I guess that she forgot the leggings, socks and loafers. And the underwear. I did a quick Google search to see if I could find out Edwards' shirt size. No luck but 16 1/2 34 doesn't seem out of the question. Then there is this passage, where Alison is surprised that the sex was good, even though they ". . . didn't do anything special. No video cameras, costumes, equipment or special effects. Just good old-fashioned sex, like the kind Mom used to make." Seriously. And I was shocked that someone would make a sex tape while enormously pregnant and leave it in someone else's house? That is definitely something that Alison would have done.

While The Story of My Life is nothing like American Psycho in terms of violence, it still won't be on my shelves for the long term. It is a book that was written for the 1980s, and just doesn't stand the test of time. I fell asleep several times while reading this book, which is unusual for me, especially with such a short book. The Story of My Life does serve, however, as a proper introduction to Alison Poole, whoever she may be. And now I do find myself replying "that's the story of my life" anytime anyone voices a complaint to me, like Alison would have. At least the only residue from my brief relationship with Alison is an annoying catch phrase.

Next up, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I've already started it, and can't wait to read more!