"The Smoke Lives" The Bookmooch TBR Club Blog!

Ill Wind, Nevada Barr

2009-01-12T10:19:00.001-05:00

Third Anna Pigeon, Park Service law enforcement officer currently stationed at the dwellings of an ancient Navaho peoples. Excellent mysteries and educational, too.
http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0380723638

Margot

A Sleeping Life, Ruth Rendell

2009-01-09T13:13:00.002-05:00

Inspector Wexford searches for London identity of a woman found in Sussex wood. Not hard to guess, but a cozy read.

Margot

Members of the Tribe: On the Road in Jewish America, Ze'ev Chafets

2009-01-09T13:11:00.001-05:00

An Israeli journalist, raised in Detroit, returns to travel the U.S. and learn what American Jewry is really like. Perceptive, instructive and entertaining.

Margot

Blue Blood, Edward Conlon

2009-01-09T13:07:00.002-05:00

A third-generation cop's memoir. Conlon writes for The New Yorker and his book reads like a 500-page piece from the magazine; i.e., beautifully.

Margot
Inventory: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/1594480737

Book Review: A Voice in the Wind (Mark of the Lion Series #1) by Francine Rivers

2008-07-18T16:00:00.000-04:00

Do not start this series unless you intend to finish it. Do not read this book unless you want to be haunted by the characters for months to come. Francine Rivers’ A Voice in the Wind (Mark of the Lion Series #1) is hauntingly written, with powerful archetypal characters that will linger in your subconscious. Once you come to know them they will surface in your thoughts repeatedly to remind you of important lessons in Christian character.

Powerfully written, this first in a series of three works of historical/biblical fiction transports us to a time shortly after Christ’s death. Hadassah is a young Hebraic Christian girl whose father knew Jesus during His time here on Earth. We first meet her during the fall of Jerusalem to the Roman armies. Losing her entire family during the siege and attack she finds herself taken hostage and eventually sold as a slave.

Throughout A Voice in the Wind we are able to watch Hadassah mature in her faith and come to trust in the Lord completely. The book chronicles the challenges she faces as she strives to love those she serves in a Christ-like way. The Roman family who owns her is immersed in the idolatry and widespread sin common in their society. Despite, and indeed because of this fact, Hadassah is driven to love them and serve them beyond her personal limits as she seeks to show them Christ’s love relationally.

Her mistress Julia embodies the self-centered and morally decaying Roman society. Through her example we come to see that all types of sin have been with us ever since the fall, including modern ‘hot spots’ such as abortion and homosexuality. At times one would think that the book was written in a modern setting due to the relevance of the issues dealt with throughout.

Julia’s older brother Marcus is a Roman playboy, disaffected and empty, seeking fulfillment in all the wrong places. His emptiness draws him to Hadassah when he begins to see Christ’s light shining within her. Rivers was a romance novelist prior to her conversion, and as Marcus is drawn to Hadassah we encounter some highly sensual scenes as he attempts to engage her physically. For those who prefer to avoid sensual, romantic novels, I can assure you that though Marcus is persistent Hadassah holds firm to her Christian values throughout. It is a delight to watch her placing God before anything else in her life, difficult though that may be.

I found myself challenged by Hadassah’s integrity and seemingly never-ending love for those she served. As I watched her place her own needs and desires aside time and time again in order to serve I found myself challenged to examine my own performance in the role of servant-mother. Observing her walk with the Lord inflamed my desire to know Him intimately, and I sought to draw nearer to Him. Would that my light could shine as brightly as hers! Believers will come to love Hadassah as they are encouraged by her Christian example, strengthened in their faith, and challenged to go deeper – to give all.

Francine Rivers has developed a name for herself as a modern master of Christian fiction. I can see that her reputation is well deserved. While the characters can appear too archetypical – black or white, it is their clear struggles, weaknesses and strengths that make this novel a valuable tool for Christian growth. This tenth anniversary edition includes a new foreword, an introduction from the author and a book discussion guide. The discussion guide features probing questions for individual or group study of the characters’ natures. I was, and remain strongly moved by their individual journeys; they continue to live on in my heart.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FIRST CHAPTER AND AUTHOR BIO

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!

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Jennifer Bogart blogs about christian parenting, family living, homeschooling and more! She loves writing Christian book reviews.

Book Review: The Five Senses of Romantic Love - God’s Plan for Exciting Sexual Intimacy in Marriage by Sam Laing

2008-07-16T22:11:00.002-04:00

The Song of Solomon, also referred to as the Song of Songs, has been a mystery to me in my walk with Christ as a new believer. What exactly was this book of the Bible talking about? My gut instinct told me to take it literally, hearing preachers refer to it as descriptive of Christ’s love for believers. Parts of it are certainly suggestive, and indeed, graphic – I have a difficult time thinking of Jesus in those situations and terms. For me it would take some fancy talking around the scriptures for this approach to make sense to me.

Enter Sam Laing and his book, The Five Senses of Romantic Love - God’s Plan for Exciting Sexual Intimacy in Marriage. Laing takes a literal approach to the Song of Solomon, examining it as an encouraging text written from God to married couples as a model for the joys of marital intimacy. Laing has authored his book for married couples only, so if you are single you should wait to read it, and this review as well unless you have an impending marriage in your future. Indeed, Laing opens his book with this caveat, which I greatly appreciated. He appears to be a Christian man of integrity and would not see single believers stumble or be led into temptation by contemplating the marital act of intimacy that they cannot rightfully enjoy.

The topic of sex within the confines of marriage (where it rightfully belongs) is often neglected in conversations and preaching concerning the Christian life. Thankfully, there have been several books authored in recent years that seek to equip Christian couples with a view of sexual relations from a biblical perspective. For a new believer such as myself, I have wondered what God finds pleasing in this area, what His take on marital intimacy is. The Five Senses of Romantic Love is a highly practical guide for those seeking an answer to similar questions.

Laing writes enthusiastically on the subject, expounding upon God’s design for love within marriage; the joy and pleasure He intends for our spouses and us. Using the Song of Solomon he provides practical ways to enhance our love life through engaging each of our five senses. The book is divided into 8 chapters. The first addresses God’s general intent for delight in the sexual union of man and wife. The following five each address one of the five senses: sound, sight, fragrance, taste and touch. The last two offer advice specifically to women and men based upon the two main characters of the Song, a wife and her husband.

While he uses the Song as his basic text for his work (NIV scripture mainly), this title does not provide a comprehensive overview or analysis of the Song (though he does include further resources for an in-depth study). His concern is rather to aid married couples through practical, openhearted suggestions to add to, and increase the delights of marriage. His words are friendly and kind, never pushy or insistent, and he is fairly discreet in his use of language throughout the book – nothing explicitly graphic or crude here.

His advice is very personal, and at times he shares general principles that have been enjoyed within the context of his own successful marriage. Along with this personal perspective, we at times find Laing using very short, or somewhat vague passages in the Song to launch into a discussion of his own personal feelings on a topic. Often there is not much information given in the scripture, nor is it as detailed as the author’s recommendations – some examples of this include his conclusions on cosmetics, jewelry, and clothing. Many of these recommendations seem to be based largely on his own preferences, as not much is said on these topics within the scripture itself. I didn’t find this objectionable however, as this book seeks to provide practical advice and insight from the author rather than serve as an authoritative commentary. Laing also makes disclaimers throughout the work that couples should use what works for them, and not feel bound to any suggestions that are made.

As a woman, I enjoyed reading his frank and open perspective as a man, both on the Song, and on what men appreciate and long for within a marriage. His insights based upon the characters revealed to us in the Song, their actions and attributes form the basis of the last two chapters; the first specifically addressed to women, the second to men. These chapters summarize personal characteristics and traits based on the word of God that we should seek to cultivate within ourselves in order to enhance our marriages.

The Five Senses of Romantic Love fills an important niche in Christian literature – equipping married believers for love. I particularly recommend this work for Christians who may mistakenly believe that sex within marriage is an unpleasant duty that is even somehow displeasing to God. Readers interested in a literal, joyous, and practical approach to applying God’s wisdom from the Song of Solomon to their marriage will find this offering a unique treasure. Excellent devotional reading for bedtime, couples will benefit from reading this book together.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FIRST CHAPTER AND AUTHOR BIO

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!

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Jennifer Bogart blogs about christian parenting, family living, homeschooling and more! She loves writing Christian book reviews.

Book Review: Beyond the Reflection’s Edge, Echoes from the Edge #1 by Bryan Davis

2008-06-18T21:55:00.001-04:00

Can Christianity and science fiction be successfully blended in one work? That is the question I found myself asking as I read through Beyond the Reflection’s Edge. Before my conversion I was an avid fantasy and science fiction reader; after my conversion I set the genre aside due to the extreme un-godliness of many of the themes. It was with interest that I read this entry into the Christian, young-adult, adventure-fantasy field (I think it would be better classed as science fiction however).

Bryan Davis is certainly an accomplished author, who draws his readers into the world that he has created and keeps them reading through a series of high-paced scene (and dimension changes). His main character, Nathan, is an honorable Christian young man. I appreciate the model that he provides for young readers when dealing with standards of modesty, respect for women and sexual purity. Nathan also has a heart for those who are lost, and do not know the love of Christ in their own lives. Examples such as this are difficult to find, and often lacking in contemporary fiction written for young adults. It is obvious that the absent father figure has trained his son well, as his influence continues to be felt on a daily basis in practical, real-life decisions. This is a father who has trained his son well. Nathan’s deep love, obedience and respect for his parents are also refreshing in the sea of youth fiction, where parents are either emotionally absent or disregarded by their children.

Some of the characters could have benefited from a deeper level of development so that readers could empathize with them more fully. At times when they found themselves in desperate situations I found myself feeling emotionally neutral in regards to their predicaments. Solutions to various conflicts involve physical force and violence, which is not discouraged, but rather lauded as skillful by other characters. I doubt that I would encourage young teenage children of my own to read it due to some of the darker events that occur.

After reading this novel I’m still not certain if Christianity and science fiction can be successfully blended. I am certainly thankful for the Christian character examples provided, as well as the acknowledgement of God as creator throughout. God is certainly never absent, and is often referenced by several of the characters. While I doubt this title will draw you nearer to Christ in your walk with Him; if you are interested in some light summer reading, that is quick paced and entertaining without compromising your Christian values, then this would be an excellent choice for you. I did find the reading enjoyable, and quick paced, I had a difficult time setting the book aside.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!

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Jennifer Bogart blogs about christian parenting, family living, homeschooling and more! She loves writing Christian book reviews.

Book Review: She Always Wore Red, Fairlawn Series #2 by Angela Hunt

2008-06-18T20:45:00.002-04:00

I’ll be the first to admit that the wide and wonderful world of Christian fiction is still so new to me. Since the time of conversion most of my reading has been dedicated to parenting, homeschooling, children’s and various non-fiction and reference works in the very large Christian books category. I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy this title – after all, how could this sort of women’s fiction draw me closer to Christ? I thought I’d give it a try – and let me tell you, this book blessed me!

Jennifer Graham is the owner of a funeral home, though she is still very new to the business. We have the delight of following her as she learns the ropes of dealing with the dead and their families; fascinating details are provided for those of us who are interested in human anatomy. We are able to meet the members of her family and see them move through challenging situations where faith in God carries them through.

This title is the second in the Fairlawn Series (I’m now eager to read the first installment as well as future titles), and reads very well on it’s own if you aren’t familiar with the rest of the series. Angela Hunt quickly brings us up to speed with the circumstances of the main characters without the need for lengthy expository passages. She quickly endears these quirky individuals to us by including the miniscule details of their lives that make the book all the more realistic.

It seems as though there is a rash of books in Christian women’s fiction where the leading ladies are divorced, and then become entangled in romantic involvements, and even remarriage with other men. My mind was set at ease to learn that Jennifer, though she had been divorced, was now a widow. Now I could relax - even if romantic situations developed without worrying about sin on the main characters part, whew! Thankfully any potential romantic interest was also very subtle and free of sensual overtones.

Hunt confronts controversial, contemporary social issues from a Christian viewpoint where the rubber hits the road - within the family. While dealing with the issues of peer pressure, abortion and racial prejudice the themes of God’s love, grace and sovereignty shine through. Hunt was extraordinarily successful at engaging my emotions - I gasped in joy as I rejoiced with them, and I wept with them in their times of sorrow and doubt.

I have now been opened up to the possibility that well written Christian fiction can indeed, draw a believer’s heart closer to Christ, can lead them to examine themselves in the light of His love, can teach us how to relate to, and love each other. How could I ask for anything more? I look forward to reading more of Angela Hunt’s work now that I have discovered her.

Watch for the upcoming blog tour post this week, including more about this title, the author, and the first chapter!

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!

Originally reviewed by Jennifer Bogart at http://www.quiverfullfamily.com/blog

A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca

2008-06-01T13:07:00.001-04:00

I'm so glad I got this, as I'd never heard of Jimmy Santiago Baca. This is the first book I've ever read where someone has the introspection, the vocabulary and the memory to remember how he really felt as a kid and what turned him to crime.

What is equally interesting is that he is completely unable to see himself as a criminal. And he still sees his alcoholic and drug-addicted family, his parents who abandonned him, and his criminal friends as "good" people.

Highly recommended.

Book Review: Bringing Home the Prodigals by Rob Parsons

2008-05-30T23:22:00.002-04:00

I am also giving away a copy of this title on my blog. Come and enter before June 02nd if you enjoy this review!

Most of us know a family that is struggling with a prodigal child – seeking to draw their hearts back to Jesus. Watching these families and their grief over the children they love - the children they raised to seek Jesus – awoke a concern for my own wee ones in my heart. Though our children are still small: 5, 2, and one on the way – it is my heart’s desire for them all to come to know and love the Lord. As Christian parents this is the deepest desire of all of our hearts for our children. But what happens when they turn their back on Him and His ways despite our best efforts? What do we do when they become prodigals?

In Bringing Home the Prodigals author Rob Parsons addresses the heart of the issue of prodigal children. It may not be what you think the heart of this issue is either. Instead of focusing on the “why’s”, Parsons goes past the wondering “What did I do wrong? What could I have done differently?”, there are other titles available that focus on keeping our children’s hearts - Parsons is here to encourage. He focuses on what we can now do - as parents of these prodigals - to gently guide them home to us, and more importantly, to God.

Engagingly written, this short book of 119 pages can be read in a day, but it will bear re-reading at a slower, more devotional pace to reap the riches to be found here. Though I am not the parent of a prodigal, Parsons ponderings on how we deal with prodigals as individuals, and as a church led me to examine my own spiritual life and dealings with others. I thank Parsons for drawing us back to the heart of God for the lost as demonstrated in the parable of the prodigal son.

As much as I enjoyed reading this title, I would have enjoyed seeing some more scripture directly in the text – for a non-fiction Christian title there seemed to be relatively little scripture presented. The main scripture that the book is based on, the parable of the prodigal son is not once included in the text of the book, which did seem a bit odd. Most of the scripture presented is from the NIV, though some is also taken from The Message (which is not properly scripture, but rather – a paraphrase), and The Amplified Bible. Our family prefers the text of the KJV for accuracy and completeness, however it is becoming more and more difficult to find books that include KJV bible references. Due to the difficulty of finding authors who still work with the KJV I don’t choose my reading materials by this criteria, but I do read with my bible beside me.

Parsons writing voice is warm and encouraging; his years of walking with and teaching the relations of prodigals shine through in this book through the prayers, reflections and testimonies presented. I am thankful to have this book available to lend to the families I know who are dealing with this issue, to let them know that there is hope if we lay our prodigals at the feet of Jesus. Bringing Home the Prodigals encourages us to love, to pray, to stay open, to always be watching and to always keep a light on.

CLICK HERE to BUY NOW!

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Jennifer Bogart blogs about christian parenting, family living, homeschooling and more! She loves writing Christian book reviews.

When I Am An Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple

2008-05-25T10:57:00.003-04:00

I was so looking forward to being uplifted by this book -- or even resigned to aging. Instead, except for the title poem, I found it depressing.

Some good writing, though.

Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver

2008-05-18T15:39:00.001-04:00

Have you ever had one of those Blair moments when after weeks of being nice to everyone you have to finally make a decision which means that enemies are made as they see a must have dismissed? Well this is one of those moments. I have been struggling with Raymond Carver’s “Where I'm Calling From” a collection of thirty-seven stories chosen from several previous collections published over 20 odd years which should therefore be an ideal introduction to his work. And… wait for it… I am going to abandon it unfinished half way despite him being seen As "the American Chekhov or the laureate of the dispossessed”

Let me say up front, that his prose, ear for dialogue and depiction of the ordinariness of every day life masking unexpressed pain and joy is the best. His stories are like photos that capture the moment frozen with no past or future with all the ambiguity that the unknown allows the reader/observer. The opposite of Norman Rockwell homeliness, more akin to the photos of Walker Evans of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. But they have no plot, twists, surprises, or surface complexity of character. These are often blue collar workers in small-town or rural settings struggling with jobs, partners, children and booze and it’s the unsaid that reveals more then the fractured words.

The stories reflect his own drink problems and failed jobs and marriage in his 20s so he turned to writing to escape and short stories could get something in quickly to pay the rent and get food on the table. His life did begin to turn around and his work started to get critical alarm in his 40’s before he died of lung cancer. His accessible prose, realistic situations and comprehensible characters are seen as a counter to egghead experimentalism

But for me, I was left all too often thinking yes and what happens next even while the image created hung in my head. I also think that stories ripped from their original magazine context make the stories work harder then they needed to. I would have welcomed an edition that merged the stories with a set of photographs worthy of the writing. However, if you want to dip in and perhaps read a couple a stories a week or if you enjoy short stories then this is a book for you. As you say at the end of a failed relationship its not you it’s me, and lets remain friends. Knowing it’s really about the lack of passion. Yet the spurned has the chance of real love else where…will that be you?

The Contractor by Charles Holdefer

2008-05-18T12:34:00.002-04:00

To appreciate this book you have to ignore the misleading hype on the cover that suggests that The Contractor by Charles Holdefer exposes the secret detention and interrogation system expanded and ran by the Bush Administration outside of US and international law. It is political book but not at the level of who is doing what to whom. Instead, it goes to the heart of the western moral and ethical war aims as raised in this passage:

Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?" And he said, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?"

It is clear that George Young, civilian interrogator contractor and a veteran of the first Gulf war would say no. His reaction when he comes across the burnt out remains of the Revolutionary Guard convoys is to argue:

…Because that day, I learned the price. Sure, I was shaken and sickened, and it is something I’d rather not think about or dwell on, but it also taught me something, steeled me, gave me the resources necessary to understand politics in the grown up world and later to become a contractor. This is what I learned: what we take for granted, hold precious, and celebrate remains viable because of our willingness to do this…To let those men get away would’ve been a serious strategic mistake…Any other description is special pleading or making excuses. Or simply lying to oneself. It gives me no satisfaction to say so, but not only will innocents die-they must die.

The story starts with the consequences of this when in a powerful opening scene we discover what how prisoner #4141 dies. The humanity of the Prisoners are denied, as they are merely oranges being crated when they arrive or faceless numbers.

George Young is not a monster, which would let us off the hook so the story needs to show us why a good man would get to that position. It does in that we discover that economic and family pressures that lead systematically to that meaningless death. We learn about his poor business track record and happy second marriage (which is being slowly killed by his need to keep secrets). The political playing out of the theme is also examined in his personal life as his big brother is his keeper at key points in George's life.

Away from the heat of the desert island and in the cold of a mid west winter on a family Christmas visit we have the amusing and poignant scenes of having to tackle the Father in Law,( think of Spencer Tracy at his most grumpy) a minister of a struggling flock and a die in the wool fundamentalist. The family idea of fun is Bible Baseball ( questions are asked with the harder they are the more runs they are and George and his son are clueless). At one level this as they are trapped by the snow falls this illustrates the horror that the prisoners have to face. Unlike them, he escapes and answers a call by his brother, which sets of a chain of events where he finally does decide that he is his brother’s keeper.

The story moves between George’s professional and family life in the now and with flashbacks so that we understand his actions. The other characters are sketched in nicely that make the horrors of the camp and the choices he has to make even more chilling. The use of language and jargon is also clever and the first person POV gives you the reader chance to understand his world whilst questioning it. If it makes more of us more aware of the travesty of a war on terror for Democracy, and Human Rights based on lies and torturing rather then the politics of being my brother’s keepers then I hope it gets the wider readership it deserves.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

2008-05-11T17:22:00.001-04:00

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was an instant popular and critical success when it came out in 2000 being nominated for a raft of awards. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 and Hollywood has been sniffing around it ever since. Michael Chabon the author wrote the only known screenplay, which struggled to reduce a 635-page book to a 2-hour film. At one point, the cast was Toby Maguire (Peter in Spiderman) to play Sam Clay, Natalie Portman (V for Vendetta) to play Rosa Saks and Jude Law to play Joe Kavalier.

The difficulties for the film is what makes the book a joy as it starts in 1938 as Superman bursts on the scene and ends in 1954 as the Kefauver Senate hearings delivers the death blow to a declining comic book industry. A central theme is the roles of the Jews in the comic book industry: it explored the mythology of comic hero and its impact Joe and Sam own struggles and personal journeys form the stories of the Escapist which in turn shape their lives. Sam struggling to come to terms with being Gay and Joe trying to rescue his family stuck in an increasingly bleak Nazi run Prague. It also explores the historical rip off the artists and writers of the period. Superman’s creators did not come into the real money until the blockbuster Superman movies and a court case prised the money out of Hollywood’s coffers. Historical characters from the period from the comic industry and the movie, art and political world some in and out of the story. The Escapist also draws on Joe Kavalier’s training and experience of magic and Houdini type tricks and the impact this has on his life.

The writing is a tour deforce so that you hear, touch and smell the period. Each character has their own voice and even minor characters when they enter the story in a few paragraphs you have their back-story and motives seamlessly woven in so they become real characters. The point of view moves from character to character and no easy option or resolution is allowed as the story builds to the magic trick ending. Scenes are comic one minute and bitterly tragic the next as you join in the roller coaster of their lives. Yes I am going say it…if you only have the chance to read one book this year make it this one, you wont be disappointed.

Night's Landing by Carla Neggers

2008-05-08T12:00:00.003-04:00

The novel is typical of this author, romance + suspense combined in an easy writing style. A quick read.

Sarah Dunnemore, an archaeologist by profession, returns home after having finished her latest project, a biography of the president Poe's family, roots and house, and is now wondering what should she do next. The answer comes right away with a phone call that her brother, a deputy marshal has been shot and is in the intensive care in the hospital. She immediately takes off to New York to visit him, and in the process meets her brother's colleague, Nate, who has been also shot, but not as gravely as her brother.
Of course Nate is the typical male so eloquently described in these sorts of romances, all rugged and rough, with that wicked sexy smile and direct look at you which undresses you to the soul.

The action also unfolds from here. Urged by her brother, Sarah goes back home to Night's Landing, where (of course) Nate follows her almost immediately.
The rest is left to your imagination and invites you to read the book :)

Several copies of the book (including mine) can be found here.

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

2008-05-05T14:23:00.000-04:00

Ella Minnow Pea is a first novel by Mark Dunn who is in fact a successful writer of over 25 plays. The novel structure is epistolary, which means that the story unfolds via letters between the characters. This is supposed to add greater realism to the story and demonstrate differing points of view without recourse to the device of an omniscient narrator. The approach was a popular 18th century device but mostly abandoned for most of the 19th and mid 20th century with the notable exceptions of Dracula by Bram Stoke and the Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. Recently it has a bit of a popular revivable with works such as The Boy Next Door (2002) by Meg Cabot and We Need to Talk about Kevin (2003) using the format.

Ella Minnow Pea is a slim 200-page book about Nollop, an isle off the coast of South Carolina, and home to Nevin Nollop, the supposed creator of the well-known pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." The island folk are best imagined as a type of Amish or Plain People who are happy to be in a pre industrial idyll. Then one day tiles fall off Nevin Nollop’s statue knocking off a letter. This sets in train events in which that letter is forbidden in speech and writing on pain of punishment and eventual banishment.

The story is more then wordplay although the letters read aloud are a joy to hear. It also explores how an open accepting community gradually falls apart as neighbours turn on neighbour and as willing followers gradually also become victims. This is explored politically as free speech is lost and an increasingly power hungry elite take over and theologically as rival cults emerge and the emptiness of worshiping idols is shown. Alongside these important themes, we also see a love story unfold and a race to find a new pangram before all freedoms are lost that will reveal that Nevin Nollop’s is a fraud.

In the end, you will either like the book because of the fun wordplay and important themes or you dislike the format and the limited characterization. I am of the former camp and so strongly recommend it.

The Wanderers by Richard Price

2008-05-05T10:21:00.001-04:00

The Wanderers by Richard Price was a first novel written in 1974 and draws on his teenage years around the Bronx street gangs of the early 60’s. It became a successful movie in 1979, which like the book went on to be a cult classic. Richard Price went on to write many other street crime stories such as Clockers and many successful screenplays as in The Colour of Money..

The story follows the last months of members of a teenage street gang called The Wanderers. These are an all-Italian gang comprising of 27 members. They wear bright yellow/brown jackets and blue jeans. Their leader, Richie, is dating Despie Galasso, the daughter of an infamous mobster, so The Wanderers have connections We also get involved with the fights and alliance of the other local gangs such as

The Fordham Baldies: As their name suggests, they are all bald, reportedly to prevent their hair from getting in their eyes during a fight.

The Del Bombers: The toughest all-black gang in the Bronx.

Ducky Boys: An all-Irish gang , all short- 5'6" and under and the most vicious

The Wongs: An Chinese gang, all with the last name of "Wong" and highly skilled in Jiu-Jitsu

But it’s more then being in a gang as we explore their relationships, schools, neighbourhoods and often dysfunctional families. Its not a book for the politically correct or maiden aunts, you get unfiltered real street language and behaviour and no moral judgements by the author. The bad aren’t punished and the good rewarded, its left messy as in real life. The story whilst a novel is structured like a series of inter connected short stories so characters pop in and out of the set events as we move through the lives of the gang members. I should add apart from the high energy dialogue many of the scenes are funny,( ask me about the lasso, stone and what was tied to the rope when thrown over a bridge!) sad and even chilling. Well worth reading

The Giver by Lois Lowry

2008-05-05T07:40:00.002-04:00

The Giver by Lois Lowry a children’s SF for 8-12 year olds written in 1993 is part of a loose set trilogy set in the same imagined world but not necessarily with the same characters. It deals with a world where your life is one of conformity and happiness. The short novel honestly faces why a society such as this would arise with its benefits and essential failure explored. The core of that failure is that…grief is the price you pay for love. Without sadness, can love and laughter really exist?

We discover a community of unlimited happiness and good manners set in a green and pleasant paradise of high but largely hidden technology. In this world, only 50 children per community are born from genetically approved placements in birth mothers. Regulations define your clothes, toys and your role in society from your first year. From eight you have to volunteer for a range of community duties so that your life long occupation from twelve can start. We join Jonas as the ceremony for 12’s is near for the allotment of his calling. Much to his and the communities shock he is not allotted a job but is selected to be the Receiver. In learning what this is, he discovers the hidden pain and dark side of unlimited happiness. This sets off a chain of events as Jonas discovers what being released really means. He faces what growing up means, and consequences whose meaning you have to decide.

The book has over 3000 ratings on Amazon.com alone so we are talking popular and critical success (it won the Newbury Medal- the USA children’s literature award). Even so, it is banned in several USA State’s School and Library systems because of the dark emotional issues dealt with. Surprisingly doesn’t to have attracted the same attention in the UK. If you or your children have not read it then you have missed a classic. But if you have read it then you know why it’s enjoyable and highly recommended!

Book Review: I Dared to Call Him Father by Bilquis Sheikh

2008-04-26T15:40:00.004-04:00

A modern classic in Christian biography, this title was originally published in 1978, and has been continuously reprinted since then. I am reviewing a UK edition from my personal home library (that I mooched from a UK bookmoocher!) dated 2005. The version you will commonly find in bookstores today is the 25th Anniversary Edition. For a book to go through so many re-printings and to be continuously in print for over 25 years you can tell that there is something special about such a book, some stirring within the human spirit that continues to draw us to it.

I Dared to Call Him Father, 25th Anniversary Edition: The Miraculous Story of a Muslim Woman's Encounter with God By Bilquis Lohse / Baker
At a time when new questions about Islam arise daily, the miraculous story of Bilquis Sheikh will help you understand and reach out to Muslims---with compassion and the gospel. A wealthy Pakistani woman, the outspoken Sheikh came to know God through a dream, turning her world upside down---and putting her life in danger. 192 pages, softcover from Baker.

*Start of Review*

At first glance I thought that perhaps this book would better enable Christians to understand the mind of a Muslim, their point of view, helping them to better witness to Muslims. I can tell you that this book is definitely not focused upon apologetics, nor is it full of ‘how-to’s’ on reaching out to the Muslim community. Rather it is the intimate story of one woman coming to know Jesus as her Lord and Saviour, and her resulting walk in obedience with Him, and His faithfulness to her. It just happens that she was a wealthy Muslim in Pakistan, but truly, this story could be the testimony of any person that the Lord has drawn to Him, out of any circumstances.

I was so moved to read of how God reached into the life of Bilquis and drew her to him.

John 6:44 - No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

And indeed, my own testimony, and that of others bears witness to the truth of that verse as well. Without any overt evangelism God can still speak to us through the circumstances in our lives and draw us to His son. The author experiences a rather dramatic and prophetic conversion, the story of her coming to the Lord is quite striking, unique and moving. Her resulting early walk in faith with Jesus and of striving to live in the presence and power of the Holy Ghost every waking moment is so inspiring. Would that I, myself, had such a clear witness of the Spirit in my life on such an ongoing basis rather than in glimpses here and there.

For our family we do have one doctrinal disagreement with the book. The matter of her baptism is one that we will have to discuss further in terms of doctrine when we re-read this book together; I'm not about to argue with the validity of her baptism, because she was in trying circumstances, and felt she had a word from the Lord, but our family does hold to believers baptism by immersion performed by a believing man. I obtained this book to add to our growing homeschooling and personal home library, as I intend to acquaint my growing children with notable Christian biographies throughout their years in our home. Since our children are only 5 and 2 it will be a few years before we read this book together (sorry, I won't be re-listing) due to some of the complex social themes presented, those of ostracism namely, though this is definitely a social phenomenon that we as Christians, and our children should be prepared to face as we follow Jesus.

Jhn 15:18 - If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before [it hated] you.
1Jo 3:13 - Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.

A moving and true personal testimony of one womans desire to obey the Lord Jesus Christ and to walk in His Spirit, and by His power, every waking hour, to be obedient in even the smallest details of her life, is one that we can use as an example in our own walk in faith with Jesus Christ, our saviour. The book also includes a very touching after-word (which brought me to tears) by a missionary wife who was used of the Lord in Bilquis' quest for the truth, and her later discipleship. The author is now with the Lord, and continues to serve as a shining example of a personal relationship with Jesus for us today.

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Jennifer Bogart blogs about christian parenting, family living, homeschooling and more! She loves writing Christian book reviews. This review may be republished in its entirety.

Jasmine’s Tortoise by Corinne Souza

2008-04-25T11:03:00.000-04:00

Jasmine’s Tortoise is the first novel of Corinne who has written non fiction books about her family’s involvement in spying and her experiences as a lobbyist during the Major-Blair years. It is clear that much of Corinne Souza life is woven into the novel’s mix of fictional and historical events that unfolds from1965 to 2002. Souza’s father is clearly used as a source for Jasmine’s father and she like Jasmine owes her British passport to the spy trade.

The book covers 40 turbulent years from the ellipse of the Puppet Hashemite monarchy by secular Arab nationalism to its eventual challenge by Islamic militancy and Kurdish nationalism. These local changes are shaped if not controlled by the ebb and flow of the big three imperial powers: Britain, America, and Russia, who gradually became the big two and then finally in the 90’s just the big one. These complex social and political changes are explored through the fates of three families: the Palameries- Roman Catholic Indian traders, the Solomon’s, the last of Bagdad’s old Jewish families and the El-Tareks- a well heeled Muslim family with a presence in the old and emerging social-political elites.

The story starts in Bagdad when the British niceties of Masonic lodges, Horse Racing, dances and formal parties, are in the final throes of death with a family party. Tragedy is triggered when Jasmine is given by her grandfather. Peter Ligne, the local MI6 bureau spymaster claims it from him. This hurts her grandfather’s feelings so his friend Nico Stollen, the KGB spymaster, is pulled into a rivalry to protect Jasmine. Thus starts a struggle for her “soul” that will see betrayal and death rip the families apart mirroring the wider betrayal of Iraq. Forty years later the younger generation and older family survivors fight for Jasmine’s redemption as Nico Stollen and Peter Ligne pull the strings to the final moments.

The book is structured with a prologue setting out all the main characters and their relationship in 2002 before diving back to Bagdad in 1965. It then jumps in linear stages to 2002 and we follow the twists and turns of the characters as they die, marry, betray and manipulate with bitter and unintended consequences. Expect lots of twists and unexpected turns as the plot sets a good pace as you keep a track on who is who. If in doubt dip back to the prologue as the characters and their relationships are set out as if a route map.

Clearly an ambitious and multi-layer story so does it work? Only partly has to be the honest answer. The flaw is that the writing does not match the ambition of the story. The characters are often two-dimensional, and clichés with barely distinguishable voices but they do serve as effective pegs to move the plot on at a quick pace. And who complains when Fleming and Agatha Christies characters serve the same purpose?

We also have a POV that switches character within the same page as well as an irritating habit of the writer as untended narrator explaining words and actions. This would have been fine in a historical account but not in a novel as it all adds to effect of the reader being distant and observing rather then participating in the story. Again fine as long as the reader is interested in plot rather then character driven stories.

So is the plot credible? The opening prologue is over complex and slows the introduction to the story; this could have perhaps been better handled perhaps as a press interview of Jasmine so become a narrative that intrigues us. Nor do we have the back story of why key central characters are so loyal to each other. The importance given to British Intelligence, Masons and Employer associations stretches credibility. But Lodges were in the British Middle East until closed down in the mid 60’s, and until the 90’s employees with a radical past were black-listed and British intelligence did play dirty tricks with the Labour Party. And as for the corruption of the Government sponsored arms trade just read the latest news headlines! So the story is an exaggeration and simplification of the truth which will irate some readers but not all.

In the end, the potential fatal flaw of the novel is who is the intended readership? In wanting to explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, it suffers in comparison with Graham Greene who managed to combine serious literary acclaim with wide popularity. Yet it lacks the technically detailed espionage and military science storylines of say a Tom Clancy or the focus on one heroic man, or a small group of crusading individuals, in a struggle against powerful adversaries of say a Robert Ludlum. Despite these reservations and limitations it is still a good holiday read but given a good cast, and screenplay it would really work as a mini commercial TV series.

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

2008-04-18T13:54:00.003-04:00

Which do you think will be read and savoured in 100 years time, the fairy stories of the Grimm Brothers with their roots in the old darkness of firelight nights or the latest Jodi Picoult about a life that the children of parents yet to be born will have no knowledge or interest in. Yet the same children when meeting the stories of world long faded even when written down by the Grimm Brothers will still be amazed and scared. Don’t believe me? Well I do story telling in pubs to adults and have known an entire bar go quiet and listen intently as a story of woods, princes and monsters enfolds in their mind.

It is from this deep well that John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things draws on as he tells the story of 12 year old David’s losing fight to keep his mother and family he knows a alive. His anger and grief causes him blackouts and a wish for revenge as his father deals with grief by marriage and work. David discovers the presence of the Crooked Man who can move between the world of living and story. Books start talking to him and boundaries blur so that when his anger and that of his struggling step-mother collide it sets into train his explosive entry into land of story.

Once there we meet traditional fairyland characters but from an adult and darker angle… Red riding Hood hunts out the wolf for sex and worse! It becomes clear that the adventures reflect David’s fears and the choices he must make as he struggles to deal with his grief and anger. To make the wrong choices will leave worlds destroyed but so will the right ones as he learns that happy endings are for fairy stories. But as heaven is what we make it, his death when it comes is not the end of the story.

This is not a children’s story but an adult story about when childhood ends and what life is made as we grow up. Its portrait of David trying to keep his mother alive and his feelings made me cry in the first 10 pages such was the lyrical nature of the writing. The stories within stories are not distractions as some reviewers suggest but insights into the characters that David meets and his own feelings and choices that he has to make. It has lots of comic moments as well as the Snow White and communist dwarfs’ episode shows. However, ultimately it’s a story about growing up and letting go of illusions, which makes it very sad and poignant. So if it gets to be a film think David Lynch or Tim Burton rather then Disney and you are on the right track about the tone of the book. Recommend for an easy enjoyable and moving read.

The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes

2008-04-15T13:57:00.002-04:00

The book has its roots in stream punk or gothic horror with a dark brooding picture of late Victorian London full of grotesques, human monsters, corruption, dystopian nightmares and sharp contrasts of poverty and wealth. It draws on Dickens and Wilkie Collins with character names drawn. Another clear homage is Arthur Conan Doyle as the set up of Private Investigator (Edward Moon with loyal assistant (The Somnambulist) and long suffering housekeeper (Mrs Grossmith clearly draws on Sherlock Homes. A clear nod to 19^th century literature is a narrator who judges and questions the actions of the characters and your motives as the reader.

It has three major plot lines: first is a murder-mystery in which Moon tries to discover how a rich wastrel died at the foot of a strange tower which leads him deeper into a vast cultish plot to remake London; the second is a political thriller in which the English secret service( The Directory) is locked in a deadly struggle with the Russian Secret Service and for its own survival and the third is an historical fancy with London itself as a character as well as a key character who is living back into time from the future. Each of the stories interacts and shapes the other until the climatic struggle for the soul and future of London of the final chapters.

The characters in The Somnambulist are just as much fun as the story. Obviously, Edward Moon the magician detective, the Somnambulist a milk drinking giant, the creepy Human Fly, the cold but cunning Albino, the curdling supernatural Prefects, the 100 year old Chairman of love, Mr Cribb, the embodiment of London, Barrabas, the bearded-lady whore... the list goes on and on. Each has a part to play in the story from beginning to end, and each person's story is, for the most part, tidied up by the end of the story.

But many of these characters are broad-brush stroke and as the plot lurches in all direction without given time to settle they often fail to engage. The novel could have been done best as a three book series or one 800 page book. The relative shortness of the story leads to lots of issues not being explained or to sudden resolutions. One of the approaches of suggesting a back story of some 20 years of work and fame now fading especially since the failures of the Clapham case (hint Jack the Ripper) is one of the few area of depth in the story. As you can see, it’s not a conventional story by any means and you do have to read carefully in parts. But to the relief of many I must make it clear that this is not in any way literature but rather pure escapism or “eye candy for the brain”. So want to switch off and dive into over the top escapist fun then this is the book for you!

Looking for Carroll Beckwith by Robert L. Snow

2008-04-13T08:13:00.002-04:00

The non-fiction book is about a Captain in the Indianapolis Police Department called Bob Snow, a very down to earth, no-silly type of person, for whom anything 'spiritual' is something not to spend or waste time on.

Due to some strange circumstances, he ended up one day making an appointment with a past live regression therapist. Highly skeptical, he kept putting off this appointment until eventually he went for it.

Once the regression was over, he was shocked to realise that he had indeed experienced past lives. But still, not convinced that the memories weren't really pieces of good old imagination, he went ahead to find proof that the lifetimes (particularly one lifetime as a painter) he recalled were just memories of some paintings he has seen somewhere before, and his mind simply put a story together of him painting them.

Next we go along with him on his journey to find the proof that past lives do NOT exist.
And much to his total surprise, what he found was exactly the opposite: not just clues, but proof that he was, indeed that not so famous, actually quite obscure painter, that hardly anyone knew in his time or after.

Not to give away any further storyline, all I can say is the book is worth reading, as much for the strong proof of reincarnation, as for his style of humorous writing, which left me chuckling several times.

The link to the bookmooch book (when available) is here.

Fresh by Mark McNay

2008-04-13T04:14:00.003-04:00

This is Mark McNay’s first novel and clearly draws on first hand knowledge of the day to day grind of a certain working class life where a full belly, a warm fire and a good woman is perfection. It fits within a British tradition of “kitchen sink realism” kicked of by John Osbourne’s “Look back in Anger” in the 50’s that looks at the dreams and anger of the working class man and woman. Think of Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday night and Sunday morning or the film work to the current day of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, both of whom continue to create powerful films unafraid of tackling head on current social problems.

The story follows a day in the life of Sean working in a chicken packing factory**, who discovers that his Brother Archie has come out of jail early ( in for violence and drugs related crime). This sets up a chain of events with tragic consequences as Sean has spent most of a money clip he was banking for his brother. He desperately struggles during the course of the day to borrow the money from family and from the firm. The novel also by flashbacks reveals Sean’s and Archie’s childhood and life up to the events of the day. Sean is no angel; he gambles, takes a more or less willing part as a pick up in his brother’s drug’s network and will use his fists. But unlike his brother does with his family needs in mind- his own and that of his uncle and aunt who gave him a home when his father left and mother died. And it’s for his family that he has to fight for as the day develops.

The story unfolds through a lot of dialogue and switches between first and third person perspectives rather then description although we get’s Sean’s flights of imagination for colour. The dialogue is written in Glaswegian but it doesn’t jar and often it’s in the silences between characters that speak more. The speech patterns (expect sentences where F**k can be a noun, verb, adjective and have several meanings from love to hate! and the mundane events of the day convey tenderness, violence and humour in scene after scene with warm believable characters.

It’s remarkable that the author started a creative writing course in his late forties in 1999 which lead to this award winning (Arts Foundation New Fiction 2007) novel. Hope for all us yet! It is by no means perfect, as the ending is a little flat and the characterisation of Archie teeters on the edge of caricature but it’s an easy page turner and I can’t wait for the Ken Loach channel four adaptation that surely must be in pre production talks as you read this!

** and you may want to rethink eating cheap value chicken after reading the book!

The Tidewater Tales by John Barth

2008-04-06T16:28:00.000-04:00

Peter is a working class successful writer who has become blocked and so begs his well heeled wife (Katherine) who is 8 ½ months pregnant to set him a task. She does which is to tell stories as they sail around the Chesapeake Bay (a 200 mile long estuary on the Virginia and Maryland coastlines) in their boat called Story. During of which we discover how they fell in love in the 60’s but not met up until the 70’s and why they are having babies now as they hit 40. But this is only one of three other love stories in the novel. One is the love of landscape and the other is of sailing. Both of which are powerfully evoked throughout the novel. Their love story, landscape and sailing are then effectively linked to their families. Hers being local old money who have shaped the land since before the USA was founded and his being boat builders who have shaped access to the water since coming over in the 19^th century.

Katherine’s family are open, generous friendly and sophisticated so accept and support the whims of Peter and Katherine to sail around the Bay. Likewise Peter shy and intense and Katherine open and bright are deep friends and in love so we like the characters and join in the physicality evoked by the writing. However these are but three of several strands in the novel, two others are a political thriller and an eco-mystery. The first explores the CIA-KGB spy games as the SALT talks dirty tricks play out in the local area. The second looks at the environmental damage being done by illegal dumping. Both story lines are linked firmly with Katharine’s ex husband and her charming but wastrel brother but not as you expect.

But all this are themes for the real focus of the novel which is about the art and mystery of writing and story telling. So over the 14 days of sailing we move in and out of the stories of Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, 1001 nights of Arabian Tales, Odyssey as they shape and are shaped by the love story landscape and sailing. We meet the narrators as characters finishing their own stories and shaping the novel as we do as reader-characters. This means that the narrative moves through a whole range of formats (plays, short essays, monologues, puns, wordplay etc) and genres (love story, social comedy, thriller, family saga, etc) with us and the unborn babies as narrator commentators along with the characters who know they are in a story. And we know their fates outside the story itself.

Don’t expect a quick read as its 655 pages and small print but do expect an intellectual tour de force and a page turner for what is mediation on writing that races along driven by the reader’s identification with Peter’s writers block, and their immediate parenthood while the multi-layer story entertains and stretches. Clearly a banquet that lingers in the memory when many beans on toast novels have been long forgotten so highly recommended.

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

2008-04-06T05:33:00.001-04:00

My first thought upon opening the book and seeing the author picture was, "Her parents named her Lionel? No wonder she writes about dysfunctional families." And an interview with Shriver confirms that the book stems from her own fears of motherhood.

For anyone who has been hiding in a cave for the past couple of years, this is the story a mother trying to come to grips with the reality of her son, who has killed seven of his classmates along with a teacher and a cafeteria worker. The story is told through a series of letters from Eva to her "estranged" husband.

Unlike many people, I didn't find Eva an unsympathetic character. She is brutally honest with herself and Franklin, and exhibits the not necessarily balanced faults and virtues of a real person. In her letters, reviewing her life with husband and son, she reflects on their familial history in minute detail (the paperback edition I read is 468 pages long), trying to understand why she and her family have been struck by lightening and how she might have made things different.

Although I found Eva an interesting character, her husband is portrayed is someone so unobservant, so emotionally blind, so deaf to reality, his wife's needs and his son's peculiarities, that it is hard to believe he can live outside an institution. In the end, there is no answer for Kevin and much as I might like to have made Eva's journey with her, I couldn't do it in her husband's company.

As for the "twist" to come, promised in the reviews, I'd pretty much figured that out by the second or third letter, so there wasn't much point in waiting around for it.

This is another DNF for me; I read half of it.

Fire and Ice - Part II

2008-03-26T12:15:00.002-04:00

When the news broke about Dr. Jeri Nielsen being trapped at the South Pole with breast cancer, her name did not at first make the papers, but "the media's appetite for news about the 'mystery woman' with the lump in her breast had become insatiable. I was still hoping that I could remain anonymous. . . the last thing I wanted was to be remembered as the 'woman with the lump."

No danger of that from anyone who reads this book. It should be self-evident that a woman who signs on to be the sole doctor for a team of researchers at the bottom of the earth, where six months are spent in darkness, planes can only get in and out four months of the year, and you don't need deodorant because you wear so many layers of extreme weather garments, it is unlikely that anyone will smell you, such a woman is likely to be above the norm.

Dr. Nielsen was an Emergency Room specialist, opting for the life of medicine in the war zone of Saturday nights. After freeing herself from an abusive marriage, which lost her her children, she needed to make a clean start. That's when she saw the ad for a doctor.

Her equally adventurous parents and two brothers supported her in this new venture and were provided the emotional support that she needed when she needed it most: from the time four months into her mission, when she discovered the lump.

The book is not a "how I got cancer and survived" story. It's the story of The Ice, the people who are drawn to it and the comradeship that develops in their little, closed society. It is also a description of day to day life at the Pole.

The book was written by Maryanne Vollers. Ms. Vollers has several bestsellers to her credit, one of which was nominated for a National Book Club Award. She has written for Time, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Rolling Stone, GQ, and many other magazines noted for excellent writing.

Fire and Ice - Part I

2008-03-26T11:48:00.002-04:00

Many moons ago, I mooched two books from Becky, Sebastian Junger's Fire and Dr. Jerri Nielsen's Ice Bound. Becky thought they made a nice mooch pair and so did I. They were also excellent books.

I've noticed some Amazon reviewers who were disappointed by Fire. I wasn't disappointed, but it did come as a surprise that the book is a collection of pieces written for various magazines, not a full-length narrative.

The first two pieces are on wildfires and the men and women who fight them. It is very much in the vein of The Perfect Storm, except that Junger was there with the firefighters and most of them are still alive. It is an exciting story, presenting the techniques and dangers of fighting wild fires and recording the successes and failures of the 20th century. Oddly, one of the great successes, the ability to attack and control small fires before they get out of hand, has been a major factor in the increase in the number of fires. I leave it to you to find out why.

The remaining pieces were written as Junger moved from one war zone to another. Again, very well-written and interesting articles, but it does get depressing to realise how many zones there are and how long Junger and others could go on writing about them.

Lang by Kjell Westö

2008-03-21T15:47:00.001-04:00

Lang by Kjell Westö was published in 2005 for English readers and his is first crime/suspend novel. Kjell is a Swedish speaking Finlander author of several novels and books of poetry since 1986. Lang is psychological mystery with its polar opposite being Roseanna which is a Police Procedural story by the husband-and-wife writers Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. In Lang a crime is committed but the focus is on the why and its consequences rather then on its detection. The story is driven by the question what redemption is possible if your life is driven by fame and success rather then by love.

Lang is the host of Finland’s premier chat show-think Michael Parkinson crossed with Jeremy Paxman and started his rise to the top of the cultural heights by being a successful highbrow novelist. But his second marriage has just failed, and his son from his first is on drugs. He hasn’t written in over ten years and his TV ratings are slipping as viewers switch to new Friday night formats such as Big Brother and How to be a Millionaire. Worse still, he is in is 40’s going grey and fading physically.

A chance encounter with Sarita in a bar starts an obsessive lust affair complicated further which it becomes clear that she is equally locked in an unhealthy relationship with the violent father of her son. Yet it’s like a drug that initially gives the high of a revitalised career but then destroys it as the addicts needs to have more of what he craves leads to murder…but also redemption.

The story is not told by Lang but his best friend who is contacted in the opening scene for a spade to burry the body. Lang browbeats him to get the spade but when arrested keeps his friends involvement secret. The story then unfolds with the friend trying to discuss and write up Lang’s version which we gradually see is more his then Lang’s. We lean more about their friendship and Lang’s abuse of it and how he neglects his mentally ill sister. It also becomes clear that whilst Lang is clearly a charming but nasty piece of work, his friend and Sarita are not merely victims as they are playing their own games. Even Saritia’s violent drug-seller ex husband has more redeeming qualities then first appearances would suggest.

So does it work? Well don’t expect a nice simple bad-guy versus good-guy as nothing is easy or simply resolved and you are left with perhaps more questions then answers. It rings psychologically true and the writing and structure works well with memorable characters that haunt you even when you are not sure if you enjoyed or loved the story. Strongly recommended.

Baby Proof by Emily Giffin

2008-03-16T21:06:00.006-04:00

Baby Proof explored an interesting topic for a chick lit book. Ben and Claudia are in their 30's and get married with the shared feeling that neither of them want kids. Then a couple of years into their marriage, Ben has a change of heart. Claudia has no interest in changing her mind, so the marriage breaks down, and after a big fight Claudia leaves and moves in with her best friend. Thus begins the question of will she change her mind and get back together with Ben, or will they stay apart. There was not nearly enough emotion in this book for a couple who otherwise loved each other deeply and were perfect for each other, but were ripped apart by this one issue, albeit a huge one. And in the end, the issue is not even resolved. There is hint of a possible resolution but overall there is no answer. It's like the author couldn't make up her mind one way or the other. I wish I could have cared about Claudia more, but I just wasn't feeling much of what should have been heart-wrenching grief over having to part with Ben. I cared more about her best friend Jill, who was in a long-term affair with a married guy. There was too much filler in the book as well that just didn't add to the story, and I think this contributed to caring less about the couple we're supposed to care about. The sub-plot of her sister who was having trouble conceiving was relevant to the story, but her other sister who had a cheating husband was not, and took away from the story. The last third of the book was worth the read, but overall I was disappointed. This book didn't meet my expectations, and didn't sufficiently flesh out the topic at hand, nor resolve it. Emily Giffin's first book "Something Borrowed" I thoroughly enjoyed and thus have sought out her other titles, but the second book "Something Blue" was disappointing along with this third one. I will not be rushing to get her fourth book that's due out in May 2008.

Closely Observed Trains written by Bohumil Hrabal

2008-03-16T11:26:00.002-04:00

Closely Observed Trains written by Bohumil Hrabal is considered one of the greatest Czech and European writers of the 20th century. His books are translated into 27 languages. The short novel was the basis of one of the most popular new wave movies made in the 60’s. He died in the late 1990’s possibly by suicide and had to struggle through the long oppression of the communist regime with many of his books having to be smuggled out to be published.

However this is not some worthy political diatribe but an earthy sensual satire that contrasts the bumbling humour of the Czechs and the crudity and repression of the local Nazis as the German front collapse at the end of the war. The opening scene is of a shot down aeroplane wing fluttering into the town and causing panic in the streets. From this we learn about the Hrma family, Great Grandfather who had a war pension from 18 and would drink a bottle of rum and smoke a pack of cigars a day in from of the local workers to show how easy he had it until finally beaten to death in his 80’s, a grandfather who tried to hypnotise the Germans invaders to stop, and a father who had served on the railways for 25 years before he retired to be the village holder of lost and abandoned objects.

And finally we meet Milos Hrma the teenage railway apprentice on the way to work at the local railway station after a 3 month sick leave. He is acutely aware of the town’s view that the whole family are scroungers and wastrels. The sick leave was because he had tried to commit suicide after failing to “rise to the occasion” with his first love as he feared that the eyes of the town were on him.

Milos is one of Hrabal's "wise fools" - simpletons with occasional or inadvertent profound thoughts - who are also given to coarse humour, lewdness, and a determination to survive and enjoy oneself despite harsh circumstances. As he rejoins work he walks into a crisis. It appears that the station dispatcher –a sex mad woman’s man had used the entire official stamps one night to stamp the bum of the female telegraphist. As these were in German, this prompts the investigation of the way that the station was being run much to the frustration of the bumbling pigeon fancier station master ambitions. In the resulting chaos of events Milos gets to achieve sexual maturity and political maturity as he finally makes a moving and heroic stand against the Germans.

The novel is less then 100 pages but each of the characters spring of the page and the underlying politics are hinted rather then laid on with a trowel. For example the horror of this time is mainly conveyed with subtle quiet descriptions of the trains and their passengers passing through the station- a hospital train from the front passing a train with fresh troops on the way to the front or the state of the animals stranded on delayed trains. Its real targets were off course the Communists and the need to take a stand against them which the Czechs did in 68 and in the 90’s to gain their freedom in the velvet revolution. But don’t worry about the politics. Instead enjoy the story and writing that paints pictures in your mind with memorable scenes and humour leaving you desperate to see the film and read more of his books. Highly recommended.

Shoeless Joe by W.P.Kinsella

2008-03-16T08:03:00.000-04:00

Well it’s supposed to be about dreams, magic, life and not about baseball...wrong it’s about baseball and an American understanding that baseball is a way to unlock dreams, magic, and life.

But I am not an American follower of Baseball so along with Underworld by Don DeLillo it went over my head (although DeLillo’s books first chapter was a stunning, lyrical depiction of the centuries’ baseball World Series final moments). So is Shoeless Joe...stunning, lyrical writing? No, assume wooden, workaday.

Think I am being harsh? Well I look forward to a story based of a brickie who puts a goal up in Norfolk. George Best then appears to help him build the football pitch and gradually all the world ** players appear (Lev Yashin as goalie, Carlos Alberto Torres, Nílton Santos as full backs, Franz Beckenbauer, Bobby Moore as centre backs etc for one last game with the Brickie’s long lost father as the ref. That I would understand so Nick Hornby get writing it.

But for the moment I am sticking to the film of the book-Field of Dreams. And making a mental note to be wary of any book that has a sports theme!

** run past me again how in Baseball one country = a world series whilst the 2006 World cup has 198 counties competing and over 700 million people watched the actual finals

Slow River by Nicola Griffith

2008-03-12T18:59:00.001-04:00

Slow River is British writer Nicola Griffith's second science fiction novel, first published in 1995. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the Lambda Literary Award in 1996. Her first novel, Ammonite explored the notions of gender and sexual identity and also won the Lambda Literary Award as well as the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. So we are talking about a sound writer with a poet’s sensibility for language who tells a good story. One of the roots of her writing has stated in interviews is the grief and rage over her sisters' deaths (one was killed during a police chase).

Nicola also uses her experience of being a lesbian to shape the themes and events in these two books. Click on to her site if you want to know more about her http://www.nicolagriffith.com/. This is not an unusual theme in SF. As a genre it is very open to exploring sexuality in all its forms say as in the Culture novels of Ian M Banks or in several of Ursula K. Le Guin's novels.

We start the story with the daughter of one of the richest and most powerful families naked, hurt and running in fear in the deep of the night. Her family are rich from biotechnology- the use of bacteria in waste disposal, water purification etc. And we are in the near future of a surveillance society with DNA finger tip electronic money economy.

A stranger (another woman and no angel) offers help. The story then splits three ways. We go into the past to follow why Lore’s childhood and family history lead her to her abandonment in the streets. It moves into the future to follow the consequence of her getting a job in a bio water purification plant whilst the middle strand explores the consequences of accepting the stranger’s help.

Nicola Griffith's changes tense according to which story line is being follow so for the childhood she uses 3^rd person so we are observers and when at the Plant she uses 1^st person so we are directly involved in the action. The focus of the story also changes according to the level. So when exploring her family life it’s the consequences of any teenage whine that your mum and dad fuck you up. In the help from the stranger story line we explore the criminal world of this imagined future and a less then perfect relationship. And the last story line is action driven as it becomes clear that the plant is in serious danger from internal and external forces. And it’s not clear who is friend and who is foe. This last section has a lot of very realistic detail…as does the lesbian sex. In the final chapters each of the story lines merges and gives twists you don’t see coming.

So Slow River is a feminist, lesbian SF novel with cyberpunk/ biopunk leanings. And shame on you if you went yuck as you will miss a cracking good read. Highly Recommended.

The Book of Erotic Failures by Peter Kinnell

2008-03-09T08:35:00.001-04:00

Some amusing anecdotes. English bawdy humour with its roots in working class music hall. Read George Orwell's famous essay if you want to know more on this tradition of humour
-http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Art_of_Donald_McGill/0.html

Scenes from a Revolution: The Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris

2008-03-08T09:51:00.002-05:00

Scenes from a Revolution: The Birth of the New Hollywood is traced through the events that lead to the production and nomination of “In the Heat of the Night", "Bonnie & Clyde", "Doctor Doolittle", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "The Graduate” for the best picture in the Academy Awards Ceremony of 1967. As you read it you become painlessly enmeshed in the practical nuts and bolts of movie making as well as the political, social and technological changes affecting their production and distribution. It is clearly based on meticulous research and interviews so you get both the contemporary take on things and the older and perhaps wiser reflections on events of many of the main characters.

The context is that Hollywood in the mid 60’s was still mainly organised as factory-studios with the exception of United Artists that was a publisher-distributor (a producer put a creative package together and agree costs and profits and UA marketed and distributed.) But the whole system was in reality the walking dead. Before the mid 50’s back to the 30’s 5 of the 8 big studios also controlled the theatres. This link was broken by a 1948 Supreme Court ruling that required exhibition to be separate from distribution-production. This system had allowed the studios to do block booking which was usually a package of 5 films- one good and the rest a range of A and B stinkers. It was this practice that the judgement had ruled on. The solution was seen a divorcement which RKO as one of the weaker studio had jumped on for its own advantages so forcing a chain reaction of separation. Ironically, it was the first to be broken up by an outside conglomerate, stripped of its film assets and finally came out of the movie industry completely.

The studio’s economic model was churning out colour, bright light big screen westerns, war and sex-comedies (think John Wayne, Doris Day) and the occasional musical aimed at families. TV was seen as the big competitor and a destroyer of its mass market so they resisted allowing films being distributed to TV. Directors would even sue them because the commercial breaks were affecting the artistic balance of the film. The big earner in this economic model was to have a road movie. This was a film that would open in the big theatres with booked seats charging above average prices and would only be released to the next range of theatres when the income started to fall. In this way a film could be an income stream for 2 years. However in the 60’s the big road movie had been the Sound of Music so the studios were falling over to produce the next big expensive musical most of which were to be box office turkeys and become the final nail in the coffin for the studio-factory system.

Another factor in this light fare was the aftermath of McCarthyism with the Studios steering away from anything political despite the obvious major social revolutions taking place due to the Civil Rights movement, the growing anti war movement and the baby boom generational cultural revolutions. The production code also imposed self censorship and meant that films were increasingly at best out of touch or at worse reactionary. For example, afro-Americans appeared in films as servants and nowhere behind the scenes with the exception of Sidney Poiter as the “good Negro” had which itself reflected the racism of the time of which Sidney Poiter was fully aware.

Yet by the 70’s this whole economic model had changed. All the studios had become distributor-producers with close links to TV’ production and distribution. They were all on they way of being absorbed into conglomerates. The summer blockbuster had arrived, and franchises (think Bond, Jaws, Planet of the Apes, StarTrek) were integral to profits. The key market was no longer families but the 15-21’s, censorship was replaced with ratings. Integration behind and in front of the camera took off as Hollywood realised the economic power of its black audience. And they embraced European film making and styles.

Don’t think this is a dry history book as much of this context is woven into the real heart of the book which is to look at the twists and turns of the stages of the films production. The structure is like a novel in that you read so far in the events of a movie before switching to another often by following how the events in the one gave or frustrated opportunities in the other. This list gives you a flavour of the complexities of making a move and the serependity of the results.

Screenplay- Bonnie and Clyde by writers who wanted the film to be the start of American New wave. Or ones that started as novels adaptations such as the Graduate. What is hot or not then depends on what is seen as the next big book office which what drives the Doolittle project

The Producer-Doolittle and the Bonnie and Clyde film had a rocky ride before this became clear. What is hot is not depends on how well you did so Kramer could get a package for Guess who coming to dinner but Warren Beatty could not but his charm proved to be the winner

The Director. Bonnie and Clyde had a very bumpy two years before Penn agreed to come on aboard. And the graduate Director had never shot a film and had only just become known as a Theatre Director after years of being part of a famous comedy team. What is hot is not depends what was hot in the book office so knowing a turkey was on the way a number of projects were driven to get things moving before the money moved away.

Casting-biggest breaker and maker of the process as the bankable star could prove a disaster in making or distributing the film as Rex Harrison for Doolittle. Or make as in the case of Hepburn and Tracey in Guess who’s coming to Diner. You also see the turkeys that might have been- Doris Day as Mrs Robinson and Robert Redford as the boy in the Graduate

Production-pre, filming and post production. It becomes clear the importance of lighting, choosing locations, editing all had a powerful impact on the final films and how the decisions taken were shaped by the civil right struggle, the power of the studio, changes in the production code etc

Distribution and the critics- Warner Brothers tried to bury Bonnie and Clyde- it had got as far as it did because Jack Warner in the last few weeks of being the last old time Studio Boss had been distracted by the making of Camelot. But a powerful critic going into print acknowledging that he had been mistaken in his first review gave Warren the chance to start the year long campaign to get an eventual successful national release

And before you now think that this is a nerd’s book, added to the film history, social and political context and analyses of how films actually get made (kills dead any auteur theory which holds that a director's films reflect that director's personal creative vision) a detailed biography of the key actors, producers, studio bosses directors, writers, technicians etc and their relationships to each other as the films finally get made and shown is woven into the story. For example: Scenes from a Revolution: The Birth of the New Hollywood is traced through the events that lead to the production and nomination of “In the Heat of the Night", "Bonnie & Clyde", "Doctor Doolittle", "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "The Graduate” for the best picture in the Academy Awards Ceremony of 1967. As you read it you become painlessly enmeshed in the practical nuts and bolts of movie making as well as the political, social and technological changes affecting their production and distribution. It is clearly based on meticulous research and interviews so you get both the contemporary take on things and the older and perhaps wiser reflections on events of many of the main characters.

Screenplay- Bonnie and Clyde by writers who wanted the film to be the start of American New wave. Or ones that started as novels adaptations such as the Graduate. What is hot or not then depends on what is seen as the next big book office which what drives the Doolittle project

The Producer-Doolittle and the Bonnie and Clyde film had a rocky ride before this became clear. What is hot is not depends on how well you did so Kramer could get a package for Guess who coming to dinner but Warren Beatty could not but his charm proved to be the winner

The Director. Bonnie and Clyde had a very bumpy two years before Penn agreed to come on aboard. And the graduate Director had never shot a film and had only just become known as a Theatre Director after years of being part of a famous comedy team. What is hot is not depends what was hot in the book office so knowing a turkey was on the way a number of projects were driven to get things moving before the money moved away.

Casting-biggest breaker and maker of the process as the bankable star could prove a disaster in making or distributing the film as Rex Harrison for Doolittle. Or make as in the case of Hepburn and Tracey in Guess who’s coming to Diner. You also see the turkeys that might have been- Doris Day as Mrs Robinson and Robert Redford as the boy in the Graduate

Production-pre, filming and post production. It becomes clear the importance of lighting, choosing locations, editing all had a powerful impact on the final films and how the decisions taken were shaped by the civil right struggle, the power of the studio, changes in the production code etc

Distribution and the critics- Warner Brothers tried to bury Bonnie and Clyde- it had got as far as it did because Jack Warner in the last few weeks of being the last old time Studio Boss had been distracted by the making of Camelot. But a powerful critic going into print acknowledging that he had been mistaken in his first review gave Warren the chance to start the year long campaign to get an eventual successful national release

Hepburn and Tracey may have been gay or bisexual and in a protective relationship- being adulterous being the better option!;

Rex Harrison and wife were very fun of the sauce- she when drunk would do flipovers wearing no knickers;

Sidney Poiter was used as an Uncle Tom by the film industry but his films shown on the TV( sold by the studios as worthless negro films) widened his audience appeal and encouraged TV companies to Black Actors in positive roles as in Mission Impossible and Startrek);

Dustin Hoffman went back onto welfare until the Graduate was released and capitulated him into and stardom and the Midnight Cowboy; and

David Webb the author admits how priggish he was in the film’s changing the scene so the wedding is distributed after the vows and not before the vows as in the book

This was an extremely enjoyable book that enabled me to see these 1967 films and films in general in a new light. Its 500 pages flew by as I managed to read it over 4 days and was left begging for more. Highly Recommended.

In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami

2008-03-01T08:48:00.002-05:00

In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami is on the surface a gritty hard boiled thriller set in the Kabuki-cho red-light district of Tokyo as the approaching New Year leaves near empty except for the human wreckage of the city. Jimji a young illegal sex tourist guide makes a good but shady living from taking westerners around the girlie bars, peep shows, hookers that allow foreigners.

He meets up with Frank who hires him for three days but from the start Jimji feels something is wrong and he starts to be sucked into an ever deepening nightmare that threatens his and his girl friend existence.

The story is told in the 1^st person from Jimji perspective and is based on clear fluid writing equal if not better then Haruki Murakami, which evokes the place and time so that you have a movie in your head. Not necessarily a good thing given some of things that happen.

Beneath the surface is a very different story which leads to conclusions and beginnings that can be misunderstood if psycho thriller is the readers’ sole expectation. We are instead being lead into mediation through the events affecting two desperate characters on what the Western and Japanese experience of loneliness is. The key passage for me is this one.

I remember the American making this particular confession, and the way his voice caught when he said “accept it”. Americans don’t talk about just grinning and bearing it, which is the Japanese approach to so many things. After listening to a lot of these stories, I began to think that American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born Japanese. The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different from the sort you know you will get through if you just hang in there. I don’t think I could stand the sort of loneliness Americans feel.

Reflect on what is being said here and you will enjoy a taut psychological thriller whose outcome makes perfect sense. Highly recommended

2008-03-01T04:56:00.002-05:00

The pirates! : in an adventure with scientists by Gideon Defoe has a humour based on a mix of slapstick,( pirates trying to use Jellyfish as a bouncy castle)Monty Python( pirates disguised as scientists disguised as women), Carry on( peering down on ladies missus) and Blackadder. The book is not aimed at children, as much of the humour relies on an adult appreciation of cliché and irony, though children may well enjoy it.

When they're not belting out a lusty sea shanty or arguing about the best way to prepare ham, there's nothing pirates like more than a rousing adventure. And this is what the Pirate Captain, (the best leader in the Pirate world because of his beard and rugged good looks but perhaps not the sharpest cutlass in the armoury) and his shipful of variously named pirates--the scarf-wearing pirate, the pirate with an accordion, the ill-fated balding archaeologist pirate are going get.

They are tricked by the dastardly Black Bellamy into scuttling the Beagle and so stop Charles Darwin from bringing a manpanzee back to defeat his evil rival the Bishop of Oxford. To make good their mistake the pirates decide to help further the cause of science, getting treasure and peering at girls from above and go to London where with a very loose historical accuracy the Pirates struggle to solve the mystery of the Circus Ladies nights.

It also only 130ish pages long in a hand size hardback so its not going to be a heavy long term read. Highly recommended first of series and according to Aardman Animations website, author Gideon Defoe is working with producer/director Peter Lord on the screenplay and with writers Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil Hyperdrive (TV series) to turn the first two books from the series into a movie.

The Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner

2008-02-24T17:20:00.001-05:00

Well could be fancy and say its a post modernist novel with a form that counters the tyranny of the outdated narrative and naturalist tradition. Its plot: son at father's failed execution; father enrolled in the State's lotto prisoner execution programme, son writes a screenplay is merely a rack for lots of streams of conciousness/montage pieces.

I love books that break with conventions but when they engage me and not being just fun for the writer. I loved 253 or The Saddlebag for example. This is supposed to be his most novel like book but it reads like he lacks the discipline to write for the reader. Or at least not the sober drug free reader...it must be a profound read if stoned

Uncle Petros and Golbach’s Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis

2008-02-22T14:42:00.001-05:00

Uncle Petros and Golbach’s Conjecture was originally a best selling Greek novel and has now been published over 20 languages so don’t get switched off by the title and subject matter. Forget about it being about maths and in fact think of Moby Dick to place this book. It’s about obsession and pride in chasing the impossible dream. You understand the thrill and terror of chasing impossible dreams.

Right now let’s get the maths out of the way. Golbach’s Conjecture first stated in the 18th century suggests that:

Every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes.

But mathematicians lack proof that in all circumstance it would hold. For example think about Physics where if dealing with the very big or the very small ordinary scientific understanding ceases to work. So could this be the case in Mathematics? Yes over my head as well! But the author is a childhood mathematical genius who submitted original research at 15 before even starting his degree and also an acclaimed film maker and writer. So he both understands the mathematical issues and can write so that we understand and care.

We first meet Uncle Petros in the 1970’s through the eyes of the beloved favourite nephew as a teenager. Petros is dismissed as the family failure that supports him through the family business while he does nothing but read books and plays chess. He leaves his home only once a month to do the books of a charity founded by his father. The beloved favourite nephew is met by a wall of adult silence when he tried to find out what the anger of the family is about. A chance phone call and a subsequent letter lead him to discover that far from a failure Uncle Petros had been a professor of mathematics in the 20’s and 30’s at a prestigious German University. This makes him as obsessive as his Uncle as he struggles to discover the Truth of the family scandal.

He tries to become a mathematician to help him challenge and understand what had obsessed his Uncle. This causes huge family problems- this is a Greek family remember where honouring your family and Father is a top rule in life. He finally manages to get the story of his Uncles obsessive hunt out in the open but at a high personal cost to his own ambitions. It is clear that Uncle Petros is a genius who will never be known as his hopes are dashed in the 30’s by the publication of Kurt Godel’s Theorem. Yes more maths but not much so don’t leave. This solves the problem of completeness by showing that any theory of numbers will contain unprovable propositions. Alan During (him of how do we know a computer has human intelligence- asked before computers were developed- now that’s what being clever is about) then demonstrates that theorists have no idea which proposition is merely hard to prove and which are impossible to prove.

Hence, Uncle Petros has no way of knowing if spending all his life in trying solve the Golbach’s Conjecture is a possible but hard task or impossible task. He gives up, his dreams and hopes ended. The beloved nephew is finding the truth is released from his obsession and so escapes the fate of his Uncle but then realises that a psychological lie has taken place which he needs to lance but this has tragic consequences.

Uncle Petros and Golbach’s Conjecture is highly recommended Greek tragedy in less then 200 pages about theoretical maths and why love and life is about how you answer the Bette Davis Theorem:

Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.

My Soul to Keep by Melanie Wells

2008-02-22T03:48:00.000-05:00

Melanie Wells is a Texan and a psychotherapist in marriage and family therapy and comes from a musical family which contributes to her rhythm of writing. She is also clearly a traditional Christian as this shapes the book imagery, plot and narrative. As a consequence don’t expect natural street talk as the bad guys don’t curse although this is not handled in a clumsy way.

The novel seen as psychological thriller/mystery is the 3^rd in a series: the first was When Day of Evil Comes when the 30 + redhead female hero, Dylan Foster a psychology professor in a Christian University, is framed for a murder and the second is The Soul Hunter which deals with a Psychotic stalker. The events and characters of first two are echoed and hinted at throughout this novel but it does stand alone. A constant theme in the three books is the fight between good and evil which is reflected in the every day fact that she is plagued by a demon called Peter Terry and helped by a guardian angel. She also prays and talks to God, has psychic insights from dreams etc. And to be fair it’s hinted at and suggested rather then clichéd white robes and wings or red eyes and horns.

To be honest not my type of Christianity but think TV shows where angels drift in to people’s lives and help them resolve emotional and ethical concerns rather then Buffy the vampire slayer. You don’t have to see this traditional Christian view as real and true as I am sure many bible-belt Americans would but as part of a narrative world to which you the reader enters. No difference really in entering the peculiar 1950’s Agatha Christie’s English social world of country houses, weekend parties, dressing for dinner, afternoon teas etc.

The story starts with a picnic in a park (the smart park rather then the local run down one) with Dylan out with two friends and their young children. Nicholas’s mother had been raped by the stalker from The Soul Hunter but had kept the child (anti abortion and forgiveness message). Christine the little girl is deeply sensitive to the supernatural and her parents are rich but caring- father and brothers out delivering aid and the bible to the staving masses (a rich man can enter the kingdom of heaven). Then Nicholas is snatched from the park and the hunt begins to save his life. USA statistics show that more then 76% of abducted children are killed within three hours of the abduction so tension amounts as time seeps away

Christine the little girl was also snatched but then rejected as the wrong one as we find that she is psychically linked to the fate of Nicholas. Dylan struggles to make sense of the events as they unfold whilst dealing with her stalled career and hapless love life. And the past comes back facing her to deal with issues left hanging in the previous stories.

Don’t expect big plot twists as this is a narrative and character driven story. Both of which are done well in a made for TV movie sort of way. It’s not cutting edge existential metafiction…and thank god for that I hear many of you say. Would I recommend it? Well it’s not a book I would have chosen to read as it was an Advanced Readers Copy sent to me for a review. I am not a fan of Mystery/Crime writing or supernatural going on so was I the wrong person to be contacted!! But actually I enjoyed it and may even read the first two as I warmed to the Dylan Foster character and can see the potential for a good TV series along the lines of Ghost Whisper.

March by Geraldine Brooks

2008-02-18T13:43:00.003-05:00

A brilliant novel about Mr. March, the father of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. March is a dreamer and idealist thrust into the brutal action of the Civil War. As the year unfolds, he writes loving letters to his family while shielding them -- but not us -- from the worst of his war experiences. To himself and us, ruminates on his early life and shares his moral concerns.

The book would be a great story even without the Little Women connection, but it does manage to flesh out the character of Marmee who, as Brooks' mother noted, was too good to be true in the original. The other characters are there, too, the little women, Laurie, the neighbour boy and his tutor Mr. Brooks, Aunt March and others, peripheral to the story, but bringing a pleasing sense of recognition, something like greeting old, childhood friends.

March is based on Bronson Alcott and, in his reminisces we meet the New England intelligentsia/abolitionist community, the Thoreaus and the Emersons, encounter passengers on the UnderGround Railroad and get taken in by John Brown's schemes.

Did you know that Henry Thoreau invented an improved pencil? And I had certainly never heard of "contraband," slaves who came under Union control and fought for the Union or worked the plantations for pay under Northern lessees. I love novels like this, where you can trust the history because what isn't true is set out by the author.

And somehow it pleases me to find that Brooks is married to Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic and Blue Latitudes, and one of my favourite writers.

http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0007165870

Thoughts on reading The Saddlebag by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani

2008-02-16T17:32:00.000-05:00

You are resting in the bath, lavender bath salts wafting away, candles flickering and as you doze your mind wanders to the big question of the day…how do you judge if a book is literature or not? Is Judy Astley’s Pleasant Vices or The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger on the same level? You enjoy one and not the other and that’s that some of you may say. But why do you enjoy the one rather then the other? Why is one on all the “best of” lists and in print for over 50 years whilst the other is forgotten once sold and read? Reading The Saddlebag by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, which was published in 2000 and featured in Britain's Good Book Guide "Fiction Book of the Month”, got me thinking of ways to answer this.

Bahiyyih Nakhjavani is a Persian writer living and educated in the West and a follower of the Baha’i faith. This is important as a founder of Baha’i plays a momentous but hidden role in the story set in the mid 19th century. We follow nine characters over a 24 hour period as a caravan bound for Mecca and Medina is raided by bandits. The events prior and post the raid are told from the perspectives of each character so the meaning of events and behaviour alters as we visit and revisit. A connecting thread to all the stories is a saddlebag and its contents passing around each of the characters so driving some to death and ruin and others to salivation and joy.

So how do I start to judge or interpret this highly individual first novel? Once upon a time you read a book and its literary standing was its relationship to the great books that impacted on or shaped western thinking. Liberal Humanism argued these were your Vigil, Homer. T.S.Elliot, Shakespeare etc. In an affect a good book was what a group of elite academics said was good based on the authors intent and writing in relationship to western values and concerns.

In reaction was New Criticism with one of its roots in Russian formalism that ignored the authority of author or the cultural context but saw the words, syntax grammar, imagery, metaphor, rhythm, meter, etc of more importance in understanding a book then its subject matter. So yet another bunch of experts telling you what literature was.

So Liberal Humanism would judge The Saddlebag on what it said about what the big moral or political issues. Whereas approaches such as New Criticism would judge it on how it used language and literary techniques. So what you may say? But think cooking here: the first looks at how good say an Italian dish is as part of the rules and principles of good western cooking whilst the second examines how good the chopping, use of herbs, balance of colour was in preparing the meal irrespective of what the final dish is.

But what is missing is that a meal has a final act of judgement- I eat it! This is linked to a third way of looking at the problem in that books are a form of performance that needs an audience to make it complete. This gave rise to Reader-response criticism which seeks to understand literature by emphasising the reader's role in creating meaning and experience. So it would judge The Saddle for what it means to me the reader and what I bring to its interpretation. So I as reader become equal with the writer as both are necessary for the transaction to have social meaning.

Many other ways of “reading” a book exists so for example what does The Saddle say or not say about class, gender, sexuality? Or from the perspective of Eco-criticism how does it view and treat the environment and nature? Yet a book and reading are also material cultural events -think about all the factors behind reading a Dickens book printed on paper in the 19th century and reading the latest e-novel published on the internet and read via a portable electronic screen. And don’t get me started on Freud or Jung!

To put my cards on the table, I am always dubious of anything that says you understand from one perspective only. I prefer asking what this reading adds to the meaning of the novel so you build fresh and ever changing experiences. Judging becomes a journey of open ended discussions with peers defending the perspective(s) they prefer generating insights and ever deeper overlapping meanings. In affect a book is literature the more it is capable of sustaining this interaction.

To start the discussion on The Saddlebag by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani let me ask three questions drawn from the perspectives discussed. These are as follows.

How do its ideas connect or resonate with the intellectual concerns of both the West and the East?

What does its use of language and literary devices suggest over and above the cultural ideas it plays with?

What do I bring to the book and what does it bring to me to make the experience whole and complete?

How do its ideas connect or resonate with the intellectual concerns of both the West and the East?

Bahiyyih Nakhjavani takes the core incident of the plot from a Bahá'í historical narrative titled "The Dawn-breakers" which mentions briefly that a saddlebag belonging to the Báb - the prophet-herald of the Bahá'í Faith - was stolen during His pilgrimage to Mecca. She then used the language, metaphors, symbols and traditions of the major world religions to create her archetypal characters. They the Bedouin thief (a pagan), the Arab chieftain (an atheist), the Zoroastrian bride, the Indian moneychanger (who switches from Hindu to Moslem to whatever else the occasion demands), the Felasha(Jewish Ethiopian) slave woman, the pilgrim who has amalgamated Confucian, Buddhist and Moslem beliefs, the Persian Shi`ah Moslem priest, the English spy (a lukewarm Anglican Christian), and the corpse of a rich Persian merchant. Their fates reflect the impact of Bahá'í and it inner meanings: the pagan dies at last free, the chieftain abandons power, the Shi`ah Moslem priest torn between stamping out heresy and falling the driving force of Bahá'í love.

Another strand of the story is less explicit in that we are in the time period that western modernity starts to challenge and undermine the traditional elites in the Middle East. Copying the West and modernising became a central intellectual strain which was to lead to the modern Turkish State. But with the English spy and some of the other stories we see the political interference in the Middle East that lead to the carve up countries for western interests and so supporting the puritanical anti modernising practice of Islam that continues to be fuelled by the West’s attitudes and practices. It suggests indirectly that if each of the main religious traditions went back to their roots of ethical practices and love in action then the 21st century nightmare would end.

What does its use of language and literary devices suggest over and above the cultural ideas it plays with?

It has a lyrical prose style, and is a fable that skilfully weaves together nine tales by ensuring that the surroundings and characters are given a physical and sensual depiction. The Thief's story is perhaps best of the collection, in terms of the lyrical quality of the prose as well as the evocation of character but each story has a back story so we build up a richer understanding of each characters circumstance.

We have a glimpse of the next character in a story and echoes of previous characters so for example we hear a lot of the actions of the fanatic priest but then discover why he is so hard on himself. Each story is told from the inner dialogue and view point of the main character but the voice of the author is felt as she comments on the fates of individuals.

As in any fable the characters serve to illustrate the moral point of the storey so don’t expect naturalist dialogue or larger then life characters. But they are more then coat hangers for ideas/arguments so it reads well.

What do I bring to the book and what does it bring to me to make the experience whole and complete?

I have read and studied many of the key religious and political ideas of the different faiths and remain very interested in the West’s role in the political and historical roots of the region’s instability. I am also a keen story-teller so respond well to the ideas and structures of the story. I could see it working as an emotional and powerful play.

It’s clear from this review format what it has brought me. If you like the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho you have feel of the approach taken and if you can’t stand his books, fear not as this is much better. The author suggests that she wanted to write a book to show

how it was possible to weave the different threads so that the paths of a group of people from different races, cultures and backgrounds could cross and re-cross by perfect accident while making perfect sense. It seemed that if one could achieve this in a narrative form there was no reason why it could not be recognized as a valid metaphor at other levels: political, religious, economic.

I think she succeeds brilliantly and clearly demonstrates that it is literature in the way that I have argued. So get out of the bath, smother the candles, dry yourself, put on a warm cotton wrap and type a response. Become part of the democratic process of defining of what is literature. Even better lets hear what she says and build a more ethical and loving world. Highly recommended.

Slabrat by Ted Heller

2008-02-10T10:55:00.001-05:00

Slabrat by Ted Heller is wicked satire of office politics is based on his experience of work at magazines such as Vanity Fair. The title is a slang term for high rise office workers, Think 9-5 with Dolly Parton or the Devil wears Pravda if you want to place its genre. The novel plots all the insane office status power politics and then some you have ever experienced

It follows the life of Zach an associate editor who is stalled at the stage in his career of either rising or falling. His best friend is falling and his work colleague has just lifted off. The problem is that he is lazy and wont do the brown nosing needed to get ahead apart from sleeping with what ever boss (female) he can. He is also a complete fake- not a Harvard rich kid but someone from the sticks. In the superficial world of IT this is a death warrant should it come out.

A new associate editor arrives who soon starts working the system and raises so causing panic. They start fight back with all the underhand tricks you can imagine. At the same time his love life is torn between lust, love and ambition and three different women.

Its fall of comic moments and a character list of truly appalling people that you feel must be based on real characters and you hope they read the book. Don’t expect the ending you may think but it’s the one Zach would have wanted.

Strongly recommended as a wonderful dark and oh so true depiction of office politics at its worse and describes what you would like to do…come on admit it you would.

Crash by J.G.Ballard

2008-02-09T11:43:00.001-05:00

In reading most works by J.G. Ballard you need to be prepared for dystopian modernity, with bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments. Crash 1973 is central to that view of his writing. It is a phonographic depiction of sexually fetished car crashes and the resulting body deformities. You know you are in for a bumpy ride(yes I know) when one of the scenes is about sex with a willing invalid car driver (remember the little green boxes on wheels) who because of wounds and missing or damaged limbs has more holes capable of penetrative sex.

The story starts with a couple that have an open sexual relationship so sleeping with different partners carrying out any type of penetrative sex imaginable and more you haven’t. And get their kicks in telling each other etc. On the way to work “Ballard” kills someone in a head on car crash gets drawn into a sub world of men and women who get their sexual kicks from sex in crashed or crashing cars and attending car crashes. He had noticed Vaughan photographing him at the accident and the hospital. Through him “Ballard” gets drawn into ever more violent sexual activity, including becoming aroused and having sex with him using his scars as a scaffold to…

A central story line is the plot by Vaughan to die having sex while crashing into a car containing the hottest top female film star of the day. “Ballard’s” wife in between a lesbian affair gets the hots for him and gets xxxxed in the backseat as “Ballard” drives at dangerous speeds watching them in the rear mirror.

How much of this is about Ballard’s own sexual kicks is unclear as in 1970 Ballard organized an exhibition of crashed cars at the New Arts Laboratory, appropriately called "Crashed Cars". The crashed vehicles and their sexual potential were displayed without commentary, inspiring vitriolic responses and vandalism. The main character of Crash is called James Ballard living in Shepperton as did the author. And he suffered a serious automobile accident shortly after completing the novel.

The book must not be confused with the 2004 film Crash which is an Academy Award-winning drama film directed by Paul Haggis. This film seeks to depict and examine not only racial tension, but also the distance between strangers in general. The film of the book is 1996 film directed by David Cronenberg. It was praised and attacked in equal measure and won a special prize for daring, audacity, and originality at the Cannes film festival.

So why ,if you are still with me, would you bother to read what appears to be such a distasteful book? The clue is in the structure and descriptions of the book repetitive phraseology of medical sexual teams and the descriptions of the car and body parts. It means that you the reader experience the alienation and emptiness that is the heart of the story. The story is not erotic in any sense as it point to the emptiness of lives that depend on more and more extreme highs and drugs to keep the sexual tension going. Death then becomes the ultimate sexual act. Nowhere does love and community figure in a world of motorways, airports, roundabouts and technological emptiness. What ever the feelings and motives of the writer, the story serves as a warning of a society that obsesses objects and appearances over personal relationships and social community-who cares for the children in this vision of our lives?

I didn’t find it a easy read and was reluctant to spend time reading it but would recommend it for the importance of us seeking to avoid a reality that could become our world if we cease to love.

The success of love is in the loving; it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done.

Mother Teresa

The New York Trilogy: by Paul Auster

2008-02-06T17:37:00.000-05:00

This is a series of subtle interlocking novellas set in New York published over 85 and 86: City of Glass, "Ghosts" and "Locked Room with the first set in the period, the 2^nd in the 40’s and the last one in the 70’s. They use mystery conventions of the gumshoe detective (think Humphrey Bogart) but in a subversive way as an existentialist reflection on writing, and story creation and communication but at the pace of a thriller; it more Kafka then Chandler with haunting imagery and surreal coincidences. But it also has deep emotional and psychological depths.

To give you a flavour of the book, in the City of Glass the main Character is Daniel Quinn a writer who has abandoned writing except for mystery writing owing to the death of his wife and child. He is successful enough to only need to write one novel a year which he has just done and then he drifts. He is clearly depressed and only feels alive when he is the private eye of his novels. One night he receives a midnight phone call asking for a detective called Paul Auster( yes the real author is also a later character in the story) and after several rejections he decides to act as if were his private eye character. His clients are a child-man who is a survivor of a dreadful abuse by his father (he was deprived of language as part of an experiment in discovering the natural language of man before the fall of the Tower of Babel) and his wife a nurse who had married him so that he could leave the hospital. The father now elderly is being released from Mental hospital and they fear that the son will be killed and want protection.

The story then takes many twists and turns and ends with the author as character being criticised by a final narrator who may be one of the characters from the other stories for what happens to Daniel Quinn during the course of the story.

In the Locked Room all the characters are named after colours and it’s a classical stake-out story but is it? Or is it a reflection on the lives of characters once that have been created and written about?

The final story is of two friends who have drifted apart, one wanted to be a writer and is now a critic unable to create works of his own imagination. He discovers that his friend has disappeared leaving a wife and baby and a locked room of manuscripts. These turn out to be masterpieces of novels, plays, and poems far beyond his capability of writing. In preparing those for publishing he re-enters and re-evaluates his life long friendship and what it meant but at a cost as he faces a secret that tests him and his relationships to destruction.

Paul Auster’s draws on his own colourful work life in his struggle to become a writer so the stories have a grain of gritty realism. But they are interlinked by an interest in the impact of coincidences and lives lived in minimalist even ascetic ways against a background of a loss, failure and absent fathers and reflections on writing and storytelling. If you want a painless way into postmodernist metafiction then this is the book for you. Highly recommended

Facing the Wind by Julie Salamon

2008-02-02T12:17:00.000-05:00

This is the story of a murder, a club for mothers of handicapped children, and a love story.

From the back cover:

Bob Rowe and his wife Mary worked hard to build their American dream. A suburban home, barbecues in the summer, and a fast track corporate job made their life look ideal to outsiders. Yet they faced one of the most difficult challenges for a couple: their son Christopher was born severely handicapped and disabled. As a family, they managed to navigate through the tough times by being hands-on parents. Their efforts were emboldened by a group of extraordinary women - all of whom also had disabled children - who acted as a support system for one another.

Then, one day, Bob killed first the three children and then Mary.

I found this book gave me real insight into a state of mind that could lead someone to kill his family "out of love." It also made "temporary insanity" something more than a legal plea.

I find it strange that not one reviewer was struck by what surely must have been the effects on Rowe of his driven nature and his harridan, carping mother. From a young age, Rowe was determined to be successful in his career, to achieve middle-class status, and have a storybook home and family. With perseverance and focus, he achieved his goals. He must have been a breakdown waiting to happen even before the trauma of dealing with one sick child and one severely handicapped child began to pile on more pressure. Adding public role model and a job crisis not of his own making to the stew, it could only have been a matter of time, And, unfortunately, it was.

http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/1587881608

Money by Martin Amis

2008-02-01T15:24:00.000-05:00

This is a novel written in the early 80’s and is one long monologue about money and what chasing money, having money( and not having money) does to John Self the central character. He is a successful Ad director but at heart a fast talking East end boozing womaniser addicted to fast food and porno. And if you still like him, he beats up women, tends to be a racist, and hates gays… and horror of horror smokes. But he does have a turbulent broth of family relationships to deal with!

This could be an echo of real life as Martin Amis had a troubled relationship with his father Kingsley Amis. Who incidentally was critical of the device of having the author as a character in the story which allows Martin to take some sly digs at the pretensions of writers and writing.

John Self meets a producer in New York and spins him a story based on his own life (drunkard father, two timing mother, time waster son) and is then embroiled in the nightmare of putting the money, script and casting together. He lurches between New York and London loving money and suffering from excesses of drink, food and sex and looses girlfriend, friends and family along the way in a glorious buffoon way.

As he tries to deal with actor’s egos, money men demands and scripts he is also hounded by a stalker . Or is he? We can only understand what john understands and as he is drinking several bottles of whiskies on week long benders he is a little hazy some times on the details. During the story we get to find out what the truth of his rise to the Money as well as family secrets and who cheats who.

As the novel is set up to be a long suicide note you can sense the depths of his pain. So is this a gloomy, slash your wrist Leonard Cohen fun feast? No it’s a very funny and savage satire on money, money and money and oh the film industry. Normally, I dislike first person novels but I strongly recommended this one.

What Have We Lost and Where Did It Go? by Michael Baywater

2008-01-27T02:59:00.002-05:00

Failed the first chapter test...irritating chattering classes book that no doubt enables amusing dinner party conversations...clearly I am too common to appreciate its wit...sigh back to the scullery where I belong. See the reaction when I told them!

2008-01-23T18:20:00.000-05:00

You are a good person, pay your taxes, honour your parents, do an honest’s days work…so nothing in common with whores, drug addicts, boot-lickers, queers, hustlers, drunkards, jail fodder. You are a good honest citizen looking out for others.

Last week I was on a train that got stuck outside of Bristol by the floods for several hours, we moved up and down the tracks and stopped before moving up and down the tracks. Eventually we returned to Taunton and were dumped at the station. The promised coaches did not turn up, it was bucketing down rain and no one from the rail company took any responsibility to tell what was happening or to manage how and who got access to the coaches when they arrived. When they did in dribs and drabs 300+ people ran as if we were fleeing a doomed city. No thoughts given to parents with babes in arms, to elderly passengers struggling with heavy cases. I bet you that we were all good people, who pay our taxes…

In Walk on the Wild Side, Nelson Algren asks “why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives. Why men who have suffered at the hands of other men are the natural believers in humanity, while those whose part has been simply to acquire, to take all and give nothing, are the most contemptuous of mankind."

The book was written at the on set of the cold war in the 1950’s but is set in the Deep south of the early 1930’s. Algren himself went into popular and critical decline soon after in part due to the abuses of McCarthyism and in part to his own hard drinking, gambling and drug taking.

The story starts with Dove a Southern trailer trash illiterate 16 year old in the Mexican-Texas border. His grandfather is traveling preacher…described by Dove as the type that makes you want to throw your Bible away. He is barefoot, and in country yokel jeans. At the end he is in the height of fashion albeit bedraggled due to prison sentence for being drunk and disorderly.

Along the way we see the ins and outs of hustling, working in a peepshow, making and selling rubbers. We meet the women he loves or has sex with and one who keeps her humanity perhaps to love him. This unfolds as he jumps trains to New Orleans and then tries to make a living.

The narrative can at time feel like a series of short stories threaded together but its both naturalistic and funny. See Dove as an innocent abroad who walks where others fear to tread and so sails through danger that passes over his head. It also has lots of little passages of songs scatters throughout the book. Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed is based on the book and was going to be part of a musical of the book- want to see that if it ever happens!

It has to be said it’s a flawed masterpiece but still better then many other writers best work so give it a try and get a sense if you could believe in humanity if crushed at the bottom of the pile.

Bones Would Rain From the Sky by Suzanne Clothier

2008-01-22T11:06:00.000-05:00

Well, lookee here: Books and dogs.

An old Turkish proverb says that if a dog's prayers were answered, bones would rain from the sky. Subtitled Deepening Our Relationships With Dogs, Clothier expects that if we pay more attention to our furred friends, we can interpret their feelings and emotional states, achieving our training ends more easily and with the cooperation of our dogs.

Clothier, although she never calls herself that, is truly a dog whisperer. She can intuit a dog's logic and state of mind and form fast friendships sooner than we can say, "Fetch"!

Since I hardly know my own mind (something that she points out in the book) nor is my life my animals (besides umpteen dogs, Clothier and her husband farm cattle, goats, chickens, pigs and other critters), it is unlikely that I will be a star pupil. Still, I found the book useful.

The first half and the last quarter are mostly an account of Clothier's philosophy; Bones is not meant to train the trainer. The middle section, though, does have fairly concrete examples of some of her experiences with "aggressive" dogs. Between the examples and the philosophy, she gives the ordinary owner something to strive for. And she can be very amusing.

I would recommend that anyone with a dog read this, preferably before you are, again, seized with the urge to shout or, worse, hit. Not only will your dog make more sense to you, you will make much more sense to your dog.

Eric by Terry Pratchett

2008-01-16T11:08:00.000-05:00

Faust, uh, Eric is the Discworld's only demonology hacker. He manages to summon up Rincewind, the most incompetent wizard in the universe, along with The Luggage, the most faithful -- and scariest -- suitcase in literature. In an effort to fulfill Eric's three wishes -- to be immortal, rule the world, have the most beautiful woman in the world (the usual) -- their adventures take them on a journey through time and space.

Maybe not quite as good as some of the Discworld novels, but, in the Discworld, the adventure is not in the adventure; it's in Pratchett's knowledge of just about everything and the way he plays with it. A good ride through Faust, time travel and the big "bang." And other stuff.

Abandoned book: Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker

2008-01-14T19:06:00.000-05:00

I am reading 50 cult books this year and this would have been the third but its on the to be swapped pile now!

This is a book first published in 1978 and is an experimental novel. To put it context imagine an 18th century painting of a landowner and his family under a tree. At first glance this is natural but it’s a construct from both the style of the sitting to the painting techniques used to artificially create naturalism. If you deconstruct this then you draw on a range of counter images or techniques. Say having the landowner be a woman and the landscape constructed from dead bodies reflecting the true nature of the power illustrated.

This book is based on post modernist assumptions of deconstructing narrative; form etc to expose the oppressive nature of being a woman defined by men or being in a system then robs individuality- libertarian feminism as it were. One of the approaches that Kathy Acker takes is to take a brutal pornographic view of men and have the women adopt the same view to expose how a feminine romantic view of sex is part of the oppressive suppression of female sexuality.

The book does not follow the rules of dramatic narrative but is a montage of pastiches, poems, play scenes, pornographic drawings, dreamscapes that are not about telling a story but creating images and feelings that deconstruct the social view of say education, the state, religion etc. The opening few pages are written as a play dialogue with inner monologues between a 10 year old girl and a father who has sex with her. But from the context its not a 10 year old girl(the language and the content is of an older woman) so one reading is that this is a inner monologue along the lines of Transactional Analysis of stern parent and child which reflects how women are infantilised by men.

So why abandoned the book? Two reasons, the first is its relentless politics. It’s a book best read by young students who have the advantage of seeing the world in black and white: all men are bastards; your parents *** you up; police are pigs; education is fascism etc. The second is the format whilst containing many powerful nuggets tends to drag and not engage me as it is essentially a series of diverse pieces of writing and drawings thrown together it feels at random. Life is too short…which was first put into print in May 1877, The Morning Oregonian included a story with this opinion:

"Oh I say, drawled Gerard; 'life's too short to be wasted talking about a woman. Let's go and get some beer."

Oh dear…

The Best American Sports Writing (2004), Ed. Richard Ben Cramer & Glenn Stout

2008-01-14T09:05:00.000-05:00

The best sports writing is generally not about the game, but about the people, the challenge, the struggle against inside and outside forces, the context, and occasionally, the great play, Great American Sports Writing has it all.

I'm game to go for the next one.

How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es by Walter Abish

2008-01-13T17:57:00.000-05:00

When should victims and their descents stop being victims and when do the crimes of our ancestors stop being our fault? This is territory of How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es by Walter Abish published in 1981 but set in the 70’s when the post war generation were having to come to terms with their futures and the pasts it was built on. Abish is an American but whose family had fled Europe during the Hitler years.

The central character is Ulrich a writer who is the son of a former high ranking German military officer executed for his role in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. He and his brother a modernist architect are from the aristocratic elite who supported Hitler’s anti-communist stance as a political necessity. We first meet Ulrich having returned to the new post war town and discover that he had been caught up with a terrorist cell who were imprisoned based on his evidence so he and his wife are free. This has serious consequences as it clear that his wife who leaves him believes in the terrorist cause as may one of his girl friends. His brother, Helmuth is helping to build the new Germany and is in cahoots with the Mayor and has a chaotic sex life causing his marriage to fall about. This again ripples through the novel and helps to shape the climax of the story.

A servant who saved the family in the fall of Nazi Germany lives in the new town and serves in the best restaurant and is known and loved by the two brothers. But it’s clear in the web of relationships that build up that not all is as it seems. As the character’s relationships build up a picture of who Ulrich is and why he must react in the final count in the way he does, we also start to discover that the new town is built on the ruins of a concentration camp and a willingness to try and ignore the past. To the point that we begin to see that the terrorists may well be the moralists except they are as much a failure as the bright new town.

It is a political thriller and more as Abish is an experimentalist writer who uses German stereotypes and a central character, Ulrich, who is initially a cipher to builds up the story by switches in narrator, by the author questioning the action or intention of the character or situation etc. As the story unfolds the interaction with the other characters builds in to real psychological studies. The climax and its consequences for Ulrich seek to answer the question of the novel’s title.

The novel is highly recommended and for all it being experimental is not a difficult read. It won the American book award(PEN/Faulkner) in 1981 and deserves a wider readership.

Pardonnable Lies by Jennifer Winspear

2008-01-13T13:20:00.000-05:00

Oh, how I wanted to love this! A friend has been trying to get me to read a Maisie Dobbs mystery for a year and I wanted to please her. Lucky me, someone started a BookCrossing ray (post the book from person to person; last person decides what to do with it) and I joined.

If you wonder how I got through since yesterday (I wrote this the day after my last review, but am trying a new system of "publishing," so it didn't show up until now), the answer is: I didn't. The story is O.K. -- for all I know it's fantastic -- but the writing is awful. Winspear needs to re-read the text book chapter on "Show, Don't Tell." And especially don't tell me things that are obvious. Plod, plod, plod.

Another minority opinion from Margot

Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah

2008-01-09T13:45:00.000-05:00

My first read of the year arrived as part of the Not So Secret Father Christmas BookCrossing Exchange. I'm not sure what I've said that would indicate that this would be a good book for me -- most of the fiction I read is crime fiction -- but it was an excellent choice.

Paradise is a story of Africa, subtly told as a coming of age novel. Yusuf is sent away from home to live with his "Uncle" Aziz near the sea and to tend his shop along with Khalil, another boy pawned to Uncle Aziz for his father's debts. As the book follows Yusuf from age 12 to late teens, he learns about the complicated relations between master and servant, trader and villager, Islam and animist religion, learns the landscape during trading journeys, sees the effects of colonisation on the Africans, watches the coming of war.

This will be in my inventory after a short BookCrossing ring.

This novel is a good companion piece to Alan Moorhead's histories of early African exploration and colonisation, all of which I also loved. Here's the African side of the story.

Dreamers of the Day: A Novel: by Mary Doria Russell

2008-01-07T10:59:00.001-05:00

Mary Doria Russell has created another winner in her new book Dreamers of the Day. It is the story of a school teacher Agnes Shanklin, who survives the great influenza and left without family embarks on a trip to the Middle East with her 'flawed' but beloved dachshund. Here she encounters some notable historic figures such as Winston Churchill, Mrs. Churchill and T. E. Lawrence. While the plot is not as intricate as her complex historical tale A Thread of Grace where we follow the Italian resistance at the end of WWII, we do however find Agnes at the Cairo peace conference attended by notable historic presences. Agnes is a well developed character that I found myself rooting for, as I watched her transformation. But I wished for more of the friends I had found in her other novels such as Emilio Sandoz, the Jesuit priest in The Sparrow, or Sophia, the AI expert in the Children of God. These characters, like Agnes and her dog Rosie, will linger as friends in the back of my mind for a long while. I felt as if I knew them all personally. All in all it was a good read, the disappointments were in comparison to the fabulous historical complexity of Russell's A Thread of Grace and in searching for traces not only of the old friends I had found in The Sparrow and Children of God, but in the sheer level of inventiveness that I found in this pair of books. Mary Doria Russell is one of those authors that I find myself eagerly awaiting their next new work. She writes with an intensity that captures and holds you throughout the book, and leaves you waiting for more. A recommended read! This review was based on the Advance Reader's Edition.

Mary Jones

Corpse in a Gilded Cage

2007-11-12T10:02:00.000-05:00

Did someone say cosy? It's all here: the Stately Manor, the not-quite-functional family, the long-lost relative, the solicitor, the butler (!), murder with a blunt instrument, and the classic denouement with all the suspects (that is, everyone) gathered for the pronouncement of whodoneit.

An offshoot a rich family, the new Earl and Countess of Ellesmere (formerly, Elsie & Perce Spender) arrive at Chetton Hall following the deaths of the two previous Earls. But Elsie and Perce don't like the massive and drafty (draughty) stone pile. They want to go home to Clapham. They instruct their man of affairs to sell the lot and they'll distribute the proceeds among their 3 children.

Mr. Lilywaite, though, is a traditionalist. He tries to persuade the Earl and Countess of their responsibilities: to the family; to Engand; to the law of primogeniture.

While sorting out the affairs of the estate, Perce and Elsie's children arrive to celebrate the Earl's 60th birthday. The children are divided on what is to be done. Phil, the eldest and new Lord Portsea, has three weeks to serve on his sentence, but his harridan wife, Elsie, fighting her corner, sees herself as the next Countess. Trevor, the youngest, is easy, although he does think the house would be a fine setting for his next starring porno role with his girlfriend, Michele. The new Lady Joan and her husband, Digby, are busy calculating what the sale will bring.

Then comes the murder.

Enter the rural, but intelligent, inspector and his, self-effacing, but intelligent, sergeant.

A perfect setting and a perfect vehicle for Robert Barnard's sly humour. Highly recommended.

Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill

2007-10-25T11:03:00.000-04:00

Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Audiobook -- Unabridged -- 9 CDs -- ll hours -- Narrated by Stephen Lang

Awesome.

Reminisent of Stephen King at his best, his son Joe Hill has written an awesome ghost story. Aging rock star, Judas Coyne, buys a ghost from the internet. The dead man's suit arrives in a heart shaped box. The ghost has business with Jude. He claims his step-daughter, Anna, killed herself because of him. He says he is going to kill Jude and everyone who helps him.

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

2007-10-14T23:49:00.001-04:00

I was sent this book by Barnes & Nobles as part of their "First Look" program. It is an Advance Readers Copy and the book is scheduled to be released February 2008.

Willie Upton is one of the last decedents of the original founders of her hometown, Templeton. She hasn't been home in years, but she returns, pregnant and scared that she is in much deeper trouble for trying to run over her lovers wife with a small plane.

She has always thought herself the child of her hippie mother's years in a commune and that her father was one of the three male members of the group. Soon after Willie's return to Templeton, her mother confesses that Willie's father is actually a local man. However Willie's mother refuses to tell Willie the name of her father, only that he is someone Willie knows and that he is most likely also descended from the town's founding fathers.

I really liked the book and am happy that I was selected to read and discuss the book with it's author.

Ella Minnow Pea, by Mark Dunn

2007-09-30T06:36:00.000-04:00

Back in May, Kristin reviewed this book; I promptly added it to my wishlist, eventually managed to win the wishlist race (yay! :-)); and finally got around to reading it this month.

I have to say I agree with Kristin: I truly loved this book. It's clever, original, and brilliantly executed.

Quick plot: Ella Minnow Pea lives on the island of Nollop, where the creator of the pangram sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" is revered. Disaster strikes when letters begin falling over the monument to Nollop - the government, in a fit of bureaucracy to rival none, declares that if Nollop had wanted those letters to remain in the language, they would not have fallen from the monument. Therefore, the fallen letters will be banned from use in speech or written form, with draconian punishments meted out to those who offend - the first offence receives a warning; the second a choice or whipping or exhibiting in public stocks; the third banishment.

The first letter to fall is z; surprisingly common once it's no longer allowed, but after all, not so great a loss. However as more and more letters fall, communication - and the remaining population of the island - become more and more strained. Eventually, the High Council - forced to rename themselves through the loss of 'C' - issue a proclamation: if a new pangram, shorter in length than Nollop's infamous sentence - can be found by a given deadline, all letter-related statutes will be reversed, and life can resume it's normal flow.

It's a quirky idea; and brilliantly executed. As each letter falls, the author banishes it from his own arsenal of letters, so by the time the remaining poor citizens of Nollop are left with a mere five letters, so is Mark Dunn. It's a fun book, a quick read, and a darkly sarcastic satire on the abuses and misuses of government. I enjoyed it immensely.

Link on bookmooch is here: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0385722435. It's not currently available (my copy was mooched pretty quickly); but it does come up frequently. Good hunting!

Dwellings, by Linda Hogan

2007-09-30T06:17:00.000-04:00

Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World is an interesting book, lyrical in places, full of the author's impressions of nature and the world, and the spiritual conclusions she's drawn from this. Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw poet, and her view of things is heavily influenced by native american tradition. She's travelled extensively, and very clearly loves her world and believes in the strength of her traditions.

I found this a fascinating read, and a good insight into the author's beliefs and world. Despite that, a lot of this book left me appreciating the beautiful writing and the ideas she was trying to express; but essentially unmoved. I don't think this is a fault in the book. I think this is simply because, unlike Linda Hogan, I'm not an earth person. I don't see the world in the same terms she does. She says it herself, in a chapter on the Voyager spacecraft: "There seemed to be two kinds of people; earth people and those others, the sky people, who stumbled over pebbles while they walked around with their heads in clouds. Sky people loved different worlds than I loved; they looked at nests in treetops and followed the long white snake of vapor trails." If, like me, you trip over dirt because you're too busy watching the sky - well, this is a good book, definitely worth reading, and a very good look into a beautiful world; but it's not going to resonate.

If you're an earth person, fascinated by our world and the creatures who live in it - mooch away. I don't think you'll regret it.

Book available here: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0684830337. Please note the condition notes - there's some (minimal) writing in this book, and a lot of marked passages; don't mooch if this will bother you.

Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow, by Dedra Johnson

2007-09-30T05:38:00.000-04:00

This book takes place over the course of a year or so; and is a harsh, uncompromising view of growing up in New Orleans as a light-skinned black girl, not accepted by her family or her peers, harassed by men on the street, and unwanted, abused, and lied to by her mother and her mother's family. Sandrine is a bright and motivated child, but there's little she can do to please her mother or earn her love - she apparently only notices Sandrine to criticise her and put her to work, and Sandrine learns early that if she wants to remain safe on the streets of 1970's New Orleans, she has to devise ways to defend herself. Her life is anything but ideal.

Her only refuge is summers with her father's mother, Mamalita; but these are abruptly taken from her when one summer her father remarries, and instead of going to spend the summer with her father and Mamalita, she ends up slaving for her new stepmother and watching out for her younger stepsister, Yolanda. What nobody bothers to tell her, including her distant doctor father, is that Mamalita is sick, and in no shape to have her visit - although given how self-sufficient Sandrine is, if anybody had bothered to mention this to either Sandrine or her Mamalita, I suspect that would have been no barrier to visiting. We learn why Sandrine's lost her only refuge when she does - long after she's given up hope and run away back to New Orleans for the remainder of the summer - when Mamalita dies. Then to make matters worse, her new stepmother sends her new stepsister Yolanda to New Orleans on the bus; and it's obvious very quickly that Sandrine's mother prefers the far-more-disobedient Yolanda to her own daughter. Now Sandrine's left with a bleak existence; left to care for Yolanda, who despite being only a year younger is far less self-sufficient; and with no hope of a way out any more. Unsurprisingly, she starts to rebel.

This is a beautifully written book, but emotionally draining. The setting is a very bleak one; her one friend suffers a fate that could easily have been Sandrine's own, but effectively abandons Sandrine to her own devices in the process. Sandrine however maintains a core of courage and strength through a litany of horrible situations and dawning revelations about herself, her mother, and her life, peaking when she realises that, if she wants to get out of her situation and of New Orleans, then she's just going to have to do it herself.

Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow is enthralling, and despite the horrific events, manages to impart some good lessons: decide for yourself what you are worth; rely on yourself, but don't lock yourself away from trusting other people; the world can be what you make of it.

It's also one of the most disturbingly racist books I've read in years. Many of Sandrine's problems stem from the fact that she is black, but could 'pass' for white if she chose to - and that everyone (including her mother) then assumes she chooses to, when in fact all she wants is to be allowed to be who and what she is and not be ostracised for it. This part is explicit in the text. More subtle, and therefore more disturbing, is an underlying 'white people are bad' theme, which Sandrine herself - despite mentioning that all she knows of white people is what she's seen on a television she's rarely allowed to watch - subscribes to. One wonders how, with such an attitude so prevalent and unnoticed, our world will ever cease to judge people by the colour of their skin.

Book is available for mooch here: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0978843126. Note it's an uncorrected proof edition.

This Body: A Novel of Reincarnation by Laurel Doud

2007-09-22T21:51:00.000-04:00

A 39-year-old mother of two teenagers dies of a heart attack and wakes up a year later in the body of a 22-year-old drug- and alcohol-addicted girl. This story had me totally hooked, and I read it voraciously until it started to get less gripping (in my opinion) in the second half. I would still recommend it, though, especially if you’re a middle-aged woman with children (as I am), because I found myself relating to the heroine and imagining what I would do in that situation. It’s about family relationships, addictions, the choices we are faced with, the courage to make changes in our lives, and the acceptance of things we cannot change. One thing I found kind of annoying, though, is that this woman finds herself in this family of Shakespeare nuts, who frequently speak only in lines penned by the Bard. http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0316196614

I'm Not the New Me by Wendy McClure

2007-09-22T21:46:00.000-04:00

Wendy McClure found, in a box in her mother’s basement, a collection of Weight Watchers recipe cards from the 1970s. The foods pictured on these cards are unbelievably unappetizing, and Wendy’s commentary on the food and the settings in each picture is laugh-out-loud funny. She features some of the photos on her website at www.candyboots.com, and writes a blog on her other website, www.poundy.com ("pound" was already taken). In this book, “I’m Not the New Me,” she tells some of her story. It’s about being overweight, about dating, and about relationships with family and friends. Wendy has a great wry sense of humor, and women (especially those who have struggled with their weight) will enjoy this book. http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/1594480745

A Round-Heeled Woman by Jane Juska

2007-09-16T11:38:00.000-04:00

Six months before her 67th birthday, Jane Juska, a semi-retired English teacher, placed a personal ad in the New York Review. It read:

Before I turn 67 -- next March -- I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me. NYR Box 10307.

Round-Heeled Woman is Juska's account of the men she met (and slept with). It is also a memoir of growing up in a small Ohio town, marrying, having a child, divorcing, moving to San Francisco and being a mother and a teacher.

Having placed her ad, she sorted the replies into Yes, No and Possible, and set out to have an adventure. And sex. And so she did. Except for an initial disaster, the men were intelligent, educated and interesting (as you would expect from readers of the New York Review), and happy to meet an intelligent, educated, interesting woman, and jump into bed with her. But they did talk, even about Trollope. Juska discovered New York and fell in love with the city, its libraries, museums and music -- and the man she went to meet. It was not mutual. She was saddened, but moved on to the next on the list.

This is not a sexy book. Juska is not shy about the details of what went on in the various beds she jumped into, but does not dwell on them. Still, the sex binge seemed to me sad and unfulfilling. Real passion can't limit itself to one-night stands; she ended up asking herself, "Once you've had a lot of sex with a man you like, how can you stop wanting him?" The answer appears to be, "You can't". When someone shares your interests, is kind and funny, and gives you what you want in bed, women generally fall in love. Juska fell in love with one soul-mate after another, but her ad had dictated terms that did not encourage a lasting relationship.

It is only in the last few pages that she identifies the true impulse behind her ad. There is the obvious: one big fling before age and infirmity rule. But more, she needed an outlet for the passion she had poured into teaching. And it is when she describes teaching -- her high school English classes, the writing courses she teaches at San Quentin, and her students -- that her book sings. Love, enthusiasm, and her gift for her vocation pour off the pages. What I wouldn't have given for such a teacher!

Round-Heeled Woman is a funny, witty and somewhat sad memoir. Did I say that Juska is a fine writer? I'm looking forward to the sequel.

The Color of Water by James McBride

2007-09-16T11:34:00.000-04:00

This is the book I expected Vikram Seth's Two Lives to be: a joining of alien cultures. Two Lives, in fact, recounted the story of two ordinary people moving through extraordinary events. The Color of Water is an extraordinary story.

Orthodox, Southern, Jewish girl marries Black man in 1942. Her parents say the prayer for the dead for her. Her husband is a good man and religious. Ruth converts to Christianity, not because of her husband, unless indirectly, but because she's drawn to Jesus. They live in one room in Harlem and have 4 children. This is probably the most prosperous period of her life until her kids are grown.

They move to the projects and have 3 more children. He becomes a minister and they start a church (still existent). When she's carrying their 8th child, he dies from cancer. She has nothing, but somehow keeps going, although the kids are always hungry.

Eventually, she meets another man, a city worker, also Black, and they get married. They have 4 more children. He has a stroke and dies. She's alone, has 12 children, refuses anything like welfare. She has the church, a menial job and a small pension from the city worker. Here's how her kids turned out:

Andrew Dennis McBridge, BA, Lindon University; MD, University of Pennsylvania Medical School; MA, Public Health, Yale University, Director of Health Department, City of Stamford, Connecticut
Rosetta McBride, BA, Howard University, MSW Social Work, Hunter College; Staff Psychologist, New York City Board of Education
William McBride, BA, Lincoln University, MD, Yale University School of Medicine; MBA, Emory University, School of Business; Medical Director Southeast Region, Medical and Scientific Affairs, Merck and Co., Inc.
David McBride, BA Denison University, MA History, Columbia University, PhD, History, Columbia University, Chairman of Afro-American History Department, Pennsylvania State University
Helen McBride-Richter, RN, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, GONP, Emory University School of Medicine, Graduate Student in Nuse Midwifery, Emory University School of Nursing
Richrd McBride, US Army veteran, BA Cheney University, Chemistry, MS Drexel University; Associate Professor of Chemistry, Cheney State, Chemistry Research Associate, AT&T
Dorothy McBride-Wesley, A. A. Pierce Junior College, BA La Salle University, medical practice office manager, Atlanta, Georgia
James McBride, BA Oberlin College, MSJ Journalism, Columbia University; writer, composter, saxaphonist
Kathy Jordan, BA Syracuse University, MS Education, Long Island University, special education teacher, Ewing High School, Ewing, New Jersey
Judy Jordan, BA Adelphi University; MA, Columbia University Teachers College; teacher, JHS 268, Manhattan.
Hunter Jordan, BS, Computer Engineering, Syracuse University; computer consultant, US Trust Corporation, Ann Taylor.
Henry Jordan, junior at North Carolina A&T University; customer service and purchasing, Neal Manufacturing, Inc.,

Creepers By David Morrell

2007-09-12T23:03:00.000-04:00

From Back Cover:

On a chilly October night, five people gather in a run-down motel on the Jersey shore and begin preparations to break into an abandoned hotel nearby. Built during the glory days of Asbury Park by a reclusive millionaire, the magnificent structure, which foreshadowed the beauties of Art Deco architecture, is now a decrepit, boarded up edifice marked for demolition. The five are "creepers", the slang term for urban explorers - city archaeologists of sorts who go into abandoned buildings to uncover their secrets. And, on this evening they are joined by a reporter who wants to profile them - anonymously, as this is highly illegal activity - for a New York Times piece. Balenger, the sandy-haired, broad-shouldered reporter with a decided air of mystery about him, isn't looking for just a story, however. And, soon after the group sets forth into the rat-infested tunnel leading to the building, it is clear that he will get even more than he bargained for. Danger, terror and death are awaiting the creepers in a place ravaged by time and redolent of evil.

My Thoughts on the Story:
All I have to say is really "WOW" what a story! My first instinct when I got through the first few chapters was that I was reading a ordinary "haunted building kills everyone in a bloody mess" story but boy was I wrong. Instead I got this amazing roller coaster ride that kept me turning page after page long after I should have gone to bed. I can't go into why the story kept me on the edge with out spilling the beans and giving away tons of spoilers needless to say... you must read this if you like on the edge of your seat thrillers. I started reading this book at lunch, continued after dinner and finished long after I should have been in bed. I simply can not imagine anyone being disappointed with the action in this story. Mind you there are a few unanswered question to the story that I feel if were answered would have made the story even better. There is a book two out to this series but I have not read it yet. It is on my mooching list for bookmooch. It is called Scavenger.

Happy reading.

Enchanted Forest Chronicles

2007-09-08T03:38:00.000-04:00

By Patricia C. Wrede

Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult

About the Series:
Journey into a world where fairy tales are a fact of life and life sometimes is just plain boring. Follow the adventures of Cimorene, an unconventional princess as she discovers what it means to follow your own path and not the one set out by others.

Book 1: Dealing with Dragons: Meet Princess Cimorene the youngest daughter of The King of Linderwall. Cimorene is a princess who wants to do un-princess like things like sword fighting, magic and even cooking! Each attempt to learn a new skill is put to a halt by her parents. Finally in desperation to escape the drudgery of being a princess she takes the advice of a magic frog and soon discovers herself belonging to a dragon. Between caring for the dragon's needs and chasing away knights and wizards Cimorene discovers the life she always wanted to lead.

Book 2: Searching for Dragons: Kazul is missing and it is up to Cimorene to find her but she can't do it alone. Along with Mendanbar, the King of the Enchanted forest she embarks on a hilarious expedition to discover what is killing the forest and who has stolen her dragon.

Book 3: Calling on Dragons: The Enchanted Forest is dying and the King's sword has gone missing. It is up to Cimorene to join forces with a hedge witch, a magician, a dragon and a rabbit called Killer in order to discover the scoundrels behind the plot to destroy her new home.

Book 4: Talking to Dragons: Skip ahead a generation. Daystar is a young man who lives outside the enchanted forest with his mother. When he turns 16, a wizard shows up to his house to his surprise his mom melts him. Then wanders into the forest, returning with a magic sword she hands him then tells him to get out and don't come back till he discovers what he is supposed to do with it. Confused Daystar stumbles into the Enchanted forest to discover his fate. Luckily for him he stumbles upon a few friends that join in as he discovers his path.

My Thoughts on the Series:
This is a good series. Wrede writes quite well had her story is chalked full of humor. Her twists on the age old fairy tales is enjoyable and she does an amazing job of satirizing them. Even though they are geared toward Young Adults they are quite appropriate for us "old" Adults and didn't drag at all. With each book you discover more strange and unique characters that help the story grow and flourish into an excellent series.

Stephen Coonts : Saucer: The Conquest

2007-09-07T22:58:00.001-04:00

About the Book:
Charley and Rip are back once again in a high flying UFO thriller. In this sequel to Stephen Coonts's Saucer, Rip and Charley have gone their separate ways. Charley leaves to join a expedition to the moon and Rip is left at home to work on refining the technology they recovered from the Saucer's computer banks. What they don't know is that Charley's new boss, Artois has a master plan for taking over the world using the Moon base as a weapon. Along the way it is up to Charley and Rip to save their family and the world from the malevolent madman.

My Thoughts on the Book:
This story smacked of a "James Bond" movie genre. I absolutely loved this book as much as I did the first, though I did find the first half to drag out too long. It felt like they were trying to fill up page space with details on the space trip. But once the action started the book took off in a flying leap in which I did not want to put it down. Coonts is a master at writing great action stories with a lot of humor splashed through out to keep you smiling.

BM LINKS:

Book One: Saucer

Book Two: Saucer the Conquest

Happy Reading :)
Tesse aka blissful2beme

The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill

2007-09-06T08:55:00.000-04:00

I'm not normally inclined to compare a book to the film, but it's hard to believe that everyone in the world hasn't seen the film. For those who haven't, this is the true story of how more than 600 men in a German POW camped worked together to achieve an extraordinary break-out.

I have to say this is the first book I've even seen made into a movie where Hollywood didn't screw it up. Granted, they invented characters, but the situations and events are the true story. The book, naturally, gives more detail on the mechanics of digging, providing clothes and documents, tools and food for the escape, which I found fascinating. You also get more sense of the grimness and hunger which can't be provided by well-fed actors.

Highly recommended and already mooched.

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

2007-09-06T06:10:00.000-04:00

This book made me feel so good. Obama always makes me feel good. He is positive and optimistic without being unrealistic. He can explain the great divide in American politics and how it came to be, and make you understand that it's not just meanness of spirit that has brought us to this pass. He talks about values without making you feel that there are quote marks around the word. He discusses the constitution with love and intelligence as might be expected from a professor of constitutional law. He talks of race and religion without making you feel threatened by either. There are chapters on Family, Politics, The World. He identifies problems without malice and lays out ideas for solving them; ideas that are down to earth, practicable and appeal to the common sense of most Americans.

Vote for who you want, but read this book. You can feel good, too.

The Society of S by Susan Hubbard

2007-09-03T21:01:00.000-04:00

Arielle Montero never knew her mother. She disappeared shortly after Ari was born and never returned to the house in New York. Ari is home schooled and rarely ever is allowed to leave her house. Shortly after she makes friends with the housekeepers daughter, she begins to notice how different she is from others and how different is her household. Her face is always blurred in pictures and in one taken of her father, he doesn't show up at all. She begins to suspect her father is a vampire. After her best friend, Kathleen, is savagely murdered, she demands that her father tell her why they are different and where is her mother. He doesn't know where her mother is and yes, he is a vampire. Is Ari a vampire also? What happens when a mortal and a vampire have a child together?

This is an amazing book. I did not expect to be this good!

Star Guards by Andre Norton

2007-09-03T20:22:00.000-04:00

From Back Cover:
They were Terrans, considered by Central Control to be the ideal mercenaries of the galaxy. Divided into "Hordes" and "Legions," the former serving on primitive worlds with hand weapons, the latter indulging in technical warfare on more advanced planets. These men of death followed orders perfectly -- until rumors of whole unit annihilations began to spread. . .
Kana Karr was just a Swordsman of an extraordinary planet to quail a common rebellion. A simple assignment -- until Kana discovered teh awesome truth behind the inter galactic rumors and realized that not only his life but the fate of the whole human race was irrevocably entwined with the outcome.

My Thoughts on the Story:
This book sat in my TBR pile for almost a year, I would pick it up then put it back never really moving to read it till today. I find that I am glad I did pick it up and finally read it. The narrative starts out this an informative preface that sets the mood for a story along piquing your curiosity about what the main character did to set the galaxy on it's ear. I found the main character Kana, to be a believable character and one who grew as the story did. The interaction between the different alien races were interesting and kept you guessing as to what was going to happen. I found the ending to be satisfying and made me instantly want to see if there was a sequel to it. I would recommend reading this book to others. Since this is a 2 book series you may want to start with book one . Star Rangers first.

BM LINKS:
Star Rangers http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0449240762
Star Guards http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0449236463

Happy reading.

Tesse

Threshold by Caitlin R. Kiernan

2007-09-03T10:22:00.000-04:00

This story is set in Birmingham, AL. The story centers on Chance, a 23 yr old paleontologist, who is dealing with the grief and guilt of loosing her friend and family; Deke, Chance's ex-boy friend who has psychic powers, which gives him the ability to see the past from touching items and Dancy, a pale albino runaway who can see monsters and is the catalyst in the story. Dancy tells Chance and Deke about the monsters that are tied to Chance's family and the fossils they are researching...from there it becomes a tell of intrigue and horror as they discover how futile it can be to struggle against something that has no answers to an ending that can only be called ..."what just happened?"

I personally should have put this book down when I hit about mid way. The style of this writer is annoying and disjointed. I had trouble following the story because it was so mashed together with quick bursts of visions/dreams/character thoughts in the head, I was never sure what was actually happening or what was being imagined by the characters. There is no clearly defined reason for the creatures to be assaulting the family or if they were defined I missed in the disjointed dreamy prose the writer used. And the ending was very unbelievable, anti climatic and a jump to making me say " What the hell?" I personally will not read another book by this author, I found it annoying to the very end.

BM Link: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/045146124X

Review by Blissful2beme
http://www.bookmooch.com/m/inventory/blissful2beme

Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert

2007-09-02T00:53:00.000-04:00

A young man is missing and an old friend of Gabriel Blackstone calls in a favor. “Frankie” Whittington asks Gabriel to help her husband find his missing son, Robbie. Gabriel has a talent few others have, remote vision. He can enter someone’s mind, see what they see, hear what they hear, and experience what they experience. Using his talent, he discovers that the young man is dead and has most likely been killed by one of two very extraordinary sisters, Morrighan and Minnaloushe Monk. Hacking into their computer, he reads a diary. He also discovers that one of the sisters has his same ability, only she is much stronger. He falls in love with the writer of the diary. He fears the sister with remote vision. Which sister is which?

This was a really good book. I was almost not able to put it down once I started reading it.

The Whole Truth by Nancy Pickard

2007-09-01T14:48:00.000-04:00

The book opens on a courtroom scene. The defendent Raymond Raintree is about to be convicted of killing 6 year old Natalie Mae McCullen. In the courtroom watching the proceedings is Marie Lightfoot who is writing a true crime book about the case. After the verdict is read a scuffle ensues and the now convicted killer escapes.

Little is known about the defendent and this is especially troubling to Marie Lightfoot who needs more information about Ray Raintree's past and motives to finish her book.When media attention is focused on the manhunt for the escaped killer, information about his background comes from an unexpected source. As Marie delves deeper into Ray's past it also brings up issues with her own past which disappointingly are not resolved. A setup for a sequel perhaps?

The author swiches back and forth between live action sequences and chapters from Ms. Lightfoot's "book". This works well to propel the story forward while providing background information about the case and the main characters. she ties everything together nicely with a nice twist at the end.

Housekeeping vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby

2007-08-30T16:45:00.000-04:00

Nick Hornby quotes his good friend Sarah Vowell from Take the Cannoli, "Asked by a magazine to review a Tom Waits album, she concludes that she 'quite likes the ballads,' and writes that down; now all she needs is another eight-hundred odd words restating this one blinding apercu." And now here I am, quite liking the essays and needing to do the same thing.

Nick Hornby's collection of articles written for Believer magazine on his struggle between the books he brings into his house and the ones he's actually able to read is so relatable that it made me believe that I too could be a wildly successful pop novelist if not for the lack of talent, time, and friends in high places. In endeavoring to write these reviews for the TBR blog I resolved that I would only read and review books I've accumulated (and not yet read) through BookMooch and PaperbackSwap. The number of books coming in vs. the number being read has gotten to a point that my wife has demanded I stop requesting books altogether. I've agreed to stop adding books to my wishlist.

"Housekeeping vs. The Dirt" is the second volume of these collected articles following "The Polysyllabic Spree." The running theme through the essays month after month is a choice that all of us readers must make every time we decide to crack open a book and resolve to finish it: meaningful, difficult, classic literature or pop, easy, pulp fiction. He says in the preface, "One of the problems, it seems to me, is that we have got it into our heads that books should be hard work, and that unless they're hard work, they're not doing us any good." I relate. I love his honesty and ability to drop his guard that we'll think he's lacking depth. In fact, I believe his depth is quite evident when he actually begins writing the essays.

He eventually happens upon "Housekeeping" by Marilynne Robinson which he describes as "this extraordinary, yearning mystical work…" At this point, November 2005, the collection of essays take a turn, and he heaps unprecedented praise on Marilynne Robinson including calling her "one of America's greatest living writers." At the risk of contradicting much of what he's built his thesis around with this collection he says, "I have always prized the accessible over the obscure, but after reading 'Housekeeping' I can see that in some ways the easy, accessible novel is working at a disadvantage…" Oh Nick, say it isn't so. He goes on to equate how long it took him to read the book as one of these advantages: "If you are so gripped by a book that you want to read it in the mythical single sitting, what chance has it got of making it all the way through the long march to your soul?" In the space of two pages he flips his hypothesis on its ear and convinces me in the same breath.

I've never read any of Nick Hornby's fiction or purchased Believer magazine, but this collection of essays has made my own quest to read the avalanche of books crashing into my home feel noble in its own way. To find meaning in my life and connection between books simply because of where they sit on the shelf or the juxtaposition of two books being read simultaneously is all part of the wonderful experience of reading.

I'll leave you with another great quote that we can all remember when we're just not up for reading that classic behemoth and just want our best-selling, genre novel to sit on the beach with:

"…here's something… no one will ever tell you: if you don't read classics, or the novel that won this year's Booker Prize, then nothing bad will happen to you; more importantly, nothing good will happen to you if you do." Thanks for the reassurance Nick.

Talking With Serial Killers, by Christopher Berry-Dee

2007-08-25T15:46:00.000-04:00

Christopher Berry-Dee researches serious crime: specifically, in this book, serial killers. He's apparently spent a lot of time corresponding with them, and for each of the killers he profiles in this book, has interviewed them in prison. The book is set up with a chapter per serial killer (or serial killing team, as a couple operated in pairs), and attempts to cover the killer's history (childhood, etc), crimes, capture, and possible motivations.

To be honest, I was disappointed with this book. I'm not quite sure what I was looking for from it - I don't normally read true crime - but whatever it was, I didn't find it. There's no real insight here - all Berry-Dee manages is to recount (badly) some fairly horrific crimes, and push a couple of pop-psychology buttons. If any of those years of letters and interviews have told him anything about these people, it's not evident here. There are a handful of excerpts from them, but they're the exception, rather the rule. In a book subtitled 'The Most Evil People in the World Tell Their Own Stories", this is definitely a disappointment.

The writing itself is uninspired, and could use a good editor - one who knows how not to abuse commas would have been a plus. The chapters themselves are either too ambitious or not ambitious enough - he either glosses over details, or goes into so much detail he manages to turn what should be shocking into merely tedious.

If you already know the stories of the serial killers he covers here, there's nothing new added. If you don't and are interested in such things, Berry-Dee does cover the basics. That's about *all* he does, and he doesn't remain unbiased - he clearly thinks two of them are innocent (of the particular serial killings they're accused of) and framed by police, and he spends the last few pages of the chapter on Aileen Lee Wournos attempting to make excuses for her - but if you want a short and unimaginative rundown of a dozen or so serial killers and one mass-murderer, this is the book for you.

Talking with Serial Killers is currently available for mooch here: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/1904034535. Note the condition notes. ETA: now mooched

Saucer - Stephen Coonts

2007-08-24T21:35:00.000-04:00

From the Back of the Book:
A relic from the past. A bridge to the future.

After 140,000 Years?
Seismic Surveyor Rip Cantrell has made an exhilarating discovery-a flying saucer embedded in the Sahara sandstone. Buried for eons, it's not the invention of modern man. Computer-equipped, it can't belong to ancient man. Rip's betting his life on the only alternative. If the ship's memory bank holds the proof he needs, it's going to rock civilization, and make Rip a very famous man.

Its Time Has Come.
Once the secret's out, Rip's outwitted by an enterprising billionaire set to steal the saucer's profitable technology-and outnumbered by the Libyan army looking to lay claim to history. But it's in a skeptical UFO investigation team that Rip finds an unlikely ally: test-pilot Charlotte Pine. Together, they come up with a plan to protect the saucer's secrets.

But Where In The World Is It Going?
Under a hail of bullets, in an exhaust of white fire, Rip and Charlotte are off. Accelerating on a fantastic journey across continents and oceans, they're about to experience the mystery of what once was, and explore the possibilities of what could be, on an adventure 140,000 years in the making.

MY REVIEW: What would you do if you were lucky enough to find a flying saucer in flying condition and had several armed forces chasing you all over the world for possession of it? Why, buzz a baseball game for the fun of it of course! I found this book to be one absorbing story. Reality would just slip away as I was reading it. The story was written in a serious tone highlighted with humor throughout and a smattering of romance. There was not a whole lot of character development in a deep inner sight sense. The book was like a excellent action flick. Once event leading to the next in a loud beautiful bang... I enjoyed the book so much, that I have put all of Coont's books on my TBR list, he's that good.

BM Link: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0312983212

Reviewed by Tesse aka blissful2beme

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

2007-08-20T21:11:00.000-04:00

Jacob Jankowski is ninety, or maybe he is ninety-three, he can’t remember for sure. What he does remember in vivid detail is his life the year after his parents died and he missed his final exam in veterinary medicine at Cornell. He walked out of town, leaving everything behind him and jumped the first train that passed by. This one just happened to belong to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. His life in the circus was hard work, little or no pay, and a political structure that rivals any college campus. He falls in love with Marlena, who is married to the abusive animal trainer. He also falls in love with Rosie the elephant whounderstands Polish and is often the target of Marlena’s husband’s torturous abuse. This is one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time. I did not like the ending, but what I mean by ending is the very last paragraph. I did not like the very last paragraph. It made no sense, but the rest of the book was awesome! I listened to the unabridged audiobook. It was 11 ½ hours on 10 CDs. It was read by David LeDoux and John Randolph Jones.

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

2007-08-16T16:24:00.000-04:00

The dead all lived together in one city. They stayed as long as one person left living remembered them. Luka was one of the dead. He printed a newspaper and passed it out among the other dead that grouped together at the coffee shop. Soon, there are less and less dead. More and more were going to that "other place", the place you went when no one living remembers you. A virus has spread and was killing off millions of people. It was a rapid virus, people died within the day the symptoms started. Fewer people were remembered and more and more were going to the other place. Laura Byrd was alone and trapped in Antarctica. She had been working on an exploration team for Coca Cola. The radio had broken. Her two team mates had taken one of the sledges to see if they could make it to the main camp. They had been gone three weeks, far longer than it should have taken them to get there and back. The cabin’s heating was failing. It was getting colder. She finally takes the remaining sledge and makes it to the camp only to find it deserted and twenty burial mounds in back. Where had her team mates gone? What had happened to the team that was stationed here? Back in the city, more and more people were disappearing. How long before they all disappear?

I really liked this book. It was very well written and all the elements of the story tied together in surprising ways.

Welcome to the Ark by Stephanie Tolan

2007-08-15T22:37:00.001-04:00

Imagine if you would, being so smart you are totally misunderstood and feel completely alone. Imagine if you would how you would perceive the world and the world would perceive you. This is the story of 4 children who were labeled geniuses by society and how they struggled to fit in only to find that they couldn't and self destruct in the process. This is the story on how they unraveled and how they were selected for a unique group home project, where they are brought together to heal and discover that there is really a place for them in this world. And perhaps through healing themselves they might be able to heal the world.

I found this story to be a quick read and found the ideas presented in the book to be thought provoking on many levels. It addresses a lot of social issues and is on the verge of being an apocalyptic tale but just doesn't really follow through. When I read the final chapter a part of me thought "Oh, only if that really could happen in real life".Though I did feel the ending was rushed. On a scale 1-5, I would give it a 3-4 rating. I am sure a teenager would like it better than I since it is written for a youthful audience.

http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0380733196

Review by Tesse(blissful2beme)

A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry

2007-08-15T12:43:00.000-04:00

Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way has received a lot of good press, and it was short-listed for the IMPAC award administered by Dublin City Libraries this year. So I picked it up not sure what to expect, since I tend to find literary book award nominees to be either excellent reads or excellent sleep aids, and it's pretty much a complete coin toss as to which road any given book takes.

A Long Long Way is an excellent sleep aid. Unfortunately, I was trying to read it on the bus, where falling asleep just makes you miss your stop, rather than in bed, where falling asleep gets you a good night's rest.

This book is the story of young Willie Dunne, born in the closing years of the 19th century, son of a Dublin policeman. We get the story of his childhood in a few short pages at the start of the book; then we jump straight into Willie's volunteering to go and fight in the British trenches in 1914. He then proceeds to spend an interminable number of pages (and years) sitting in trenches scratching lice and seeing fellow Irish die. This appears to be interspersed with randomly spaced visits home, where he argues with his father over the events in Ireland at the time - the Easter Rising, and all the political tension both leading up to and arising from the British screwups handling it. Although to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how that impacts the storyline, because by the time it showed up, I was skipping fifteen to twenty pages at a time, skimming through to try and pick up any threads of storyline that might actually be worth reading through the intervening pages for. I didn't find any.

If you're looking for a good read, don't pick up this book. If you're looking for a cure for insomnia - might as well try it, it's surely not good for much else.

I'd put it up for mooch, but I got it out of the library.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

2007-08-12T10:16:00.001-04:00

No spoilers!

In my opinion, J. K. Rowling is the best thing that has happened to children's literature since Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, Louisa May Alcott and Frank Baum.

And Rowling finished up the Harry Potter series in fine form. After beginning to lose her way as her books got longer-- No. 6 was veering toward the leaden -- No. 7 is as good as it gets. We meet many of our old friends, the adventure rattles right along, and all is revealed in the end.

Thank you, Ms. Rowling.

Fun Run and Other Oxymorons by Joe Bennett

2007-08-12T10:02:00.001-04:00

Bennett is an expat-Brit, living in New Zealand where he writes a newspaper column and teaches English. Both occupations are evident in this collection of essays. He has a love for language, words and grammar, that make you savour his writing, especially if you're a person who thinks there is no one left in the world who knows an adjective from an adverb.

But that isn't to say that this is a heavy read. He is a funny and observant man and many of the columns made me laugh out loud. It is evident however, after the first couple of essays that they have been written as newspaper columns, and, like a year's subscription to the newspaper, are not meant to read at one sitting. They quickly become like being assaulted with a series of one-liners. Small doses are better, so it has taken me a couple of months to read a very light book, which I highly recommend.

Fun Run has been added to my inventory.

Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited

2007-08-11T19:07:00.001-04:00

Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited by Elyse Schein, writer & film maker & Paula Bernstein, freelance writer, is both an interesting and provocative memoir. These twins, separated as infants and raised in different homes, were unaware of each other's existence as were their adoptive families until their mid-thirties when Elyse contacts the prestigious Jewish adoption agency Louise Wise Services, that handled her initial placement, in an attempt to find her biological mother. The news is stunning to both women and while Elyse is eager for this reunion, Paula is unsettled and ambivalent about having her life turned upside down just when everything was going so well. Hearing of their similarities is engaging, as is the idea of meeting your doppelgänger but what is really fascinating and never quite resolved is how and why this separation happened to both of these women and to other twins placed by the same agency. We learn that Dr. Viola Bernard a psychiatric consultant for the agency believed that it was best for twins to be reared apart, a lone voice in the psychiatric literature of the time. We also learn that Dr. Peter Neubauer a prominent psychoanalyst and director of the Freud archives at the time, took advantage of this belief and conducted a 'twins study' funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health. If twins and triplets were going to be separated, then this study would follow their development, all the while without full disclosure to the prospective adoptive families. Elyse and Paula and other affected twins, did make an unsuccessful attempt to view their records from this study, which now belong to the Yale archives and will remain sealed until the year 2066. While none of this was strictly illegal at the time, the monstrous scientific license these doctors took with both the children's and the adoptive families lives is in my opinion unconscionable.
Note: this review is based on the Advance Reader's Edition of the memoir.

Mary Jones

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

2007-08-11T08:42:00.000-04:00

This is an historical novel set in 1665-1666 in a small village in England. Based on fact, it tells the story of the Black Plague coming to this village, possibly carried by fleas in fabric which has been shipped to the village tailor. As the members of the village start to die horrible deaths from the bubonic plague, the village’s rector makes a bold and frightening, but altruistic, proposal that the village quarantine itself, so that no one leaves and no one enters. This way, the plague will not spread beyond the village’s borders, and once it has struck whoever it is to strike, it may end there. Most of the people agree to this plan, and a system is put into place to receive necessary supplies from outside the village without the risk of spreading the disease.

The main characters are the Rector and his wife, along with their maid, Anna—whom the author learned from historical documents survived the plague, as did some of the villagers, though I won’t give away too much here! What happens to our human nature when we are “trapped” with fatally ill, contagious people? What happens when your beloved family and friends are suffering and dying all around you, and you are helpless to cure them?

I thought this was a fascinating account of the period. They lived a very difficult life in those days, and we have no right to complain about our easy lives in comparison! As a warning to the very squeamish, some of the details are quite gruesome. Toward the end, it got a bit like a “romance novel” to me, of which I’m not a big fan, but I enjoyed the novel nonetheless.

Cage of Stars by Jacquelyn Mitchard

2007-08-11T08:39:00.000-04:00

Jacquelyn Mitchard is most famous for her first novel and Oprah’s first pick, “The Deep End of the Ocean.” She lives in my home state (Wisconsin) and writes a newspaper column, of which I’ve been a fan. But I’ve never read any of her novels, until now.

Cage of Stars is about a Mormon family who suffers a terrible tragedy. A schizophrenic man wanders onto their small farm in Utah, and kills the two youngest girls. Their 12-year-old sister, Ronnie, is there when it happens, and the rest of the novel deals with her and her parents’ grief, guilt, and subsequent attempts at healing from this awful event.

The parents eventually decide, for their own emotional well-being, to forgive the murderer. This decision shocks and horrifies Ronnie, who develops a very different plan of her own for dealing with him, which will keep you in suspense until the end.

I learned a lot about Mormon life (beyond the stereotypes), and felt compassion for not only this lovely family torn apart by this tragedy, but also for the murderer and his family. Sometimes the dialogue between Ronnie and her parents and friends doesn’t ring true—everyone is too mature and articulate about their emotions. But it was an interesting and different novel.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

2007-08-11T08:37:00.000-04:00

Quoting from amazon.com . . . “This life-affirming fable ironically opens at the end of the life of a seemingly ordinary man. Known as ‘Eddie Maintenance’ to those he works with at Ruby Pier, Eddie led what he saw as a disappointing life working as head of maintenance at a seaside amusement park. Upon his death, he learns that heaven is a place to make sense of his time on earth and that he will meet five people from his life who will help him understand its greatest lessons.”

I really liked this book, by the author of “Tuesdays with Morrie,” and found myself (embarrassingly) sobbing at the end. It’s a simple tale, and can be read quickly. It’s comparable to “It’s a Wonderful Life” or to “The Christmas Carol” because of its theme of looking back at the life of a man, and seeing moments where his life intersected the lives of others, and what those moments meant in the larger scheme of life.

It would be great if this is how things really happened—you die and meet up with the spirits of select people in heaven, who help you to make sense of your life, so that you can find peace in the afterlife; and then your spirit, in turn, helps others make sense of their lives.

Even if you do not believe in an afterlife or a higher power, it’s worth thinking about how your actions here on earth affect others in ways you may never know, positive or negative.

Do White Whales Sing at the Edge of the World? by Paul Wilson

2007-08-07T14:48:00.000-04:00

I admit it: I mooched this book purely for the title. It's a totally awesome title.

But, you know? This is maybe my best mooch to date. That includes a couple of books I've been looking for for a couple of years now, and a few wishlist books I still don't believe I won the race for. Those were great to get; but this... this is the perfect present you didn't know you wanted. I love this book. The writing sucked me in on the very first page; it's beautiful, lyrical and just sings.

So, the story is this: Gabriel Emerson is a resident in a colony for the feeble-minded somewhere on the Cumberland fells. The colony is in its final days; the residents are slowly being shuffled out and reintegrated into the outside world, and only the hardcore cases are left. As the last weeks of the colony draw to a close, Gabriel embarks on an epic journey: in a disused icehouse on the edges of the colony he sets out to re-imagine and re-trace the steps of the doomed - and disputed - discovery of a Northwest Passage by his namesake two centuries earlier.

Intertwined with Gabriel's dream - a dream powerful enough to carry three of his fellow residents through the Arctic ice with him, and be clearly visible to a fourth, watching from above and narrating the story for the rest of us - is Gabriel's story; and that of his family (unorthdox as it was); and the story of the mining town of Laing, that bore and shaped him; and that of four internees bound to the town by the detention acts for foreign nationals during WWII; and of the ways these all rubbed against each other and exloded one night in a tragedy horrifying enough to haunt Gabriel straight into the colony in the first place.

Ultimately, this is a book about dreams. It was a dream that built Laing; it was dreams that kept the internees going; it was the lack of dreams that cursed the town; it was a dream that Gabriel and his fellows followed in the last days of the colony. In Paul Wilson's own words: "But we were men who, like most poor men, fought and fought, and scrapped for life -- for pieces of the stuff in crevices and dreams. Our story is not in the leftover bones of our lives to be found bleached here in a heap on some shelf of ice, but our hearts that brought us here, and the dreams that drew us on."

I really can't recommend this book highly enough. If I ever find any more copies (priced reasonably!), I'll be buying them up to mooch out, because this definitely deserves to be out there - but this one I'm keeping for me :-).

Blood Memory by Greg Iles

2007-08-06T03:26:00.000-04:00

In Blood Memory Greg Iles deals with the complex issues of repressed memories and child abuse in an open and insightful manner thet some may find disturbing.Outwardly Cat Ferry is a brilliant woman - a well respected forensic odontologist and a valuable member of an F.B.I. task force investigating a series of grisly murders in New Orleans. But beneath this professional demeanor lies another Cat - an alcoholic manic-depressive with a penchant for affairs with inappropriate and/or married men. To make matters worse she has just discovered she is pregnant with her married lover's child. After a panic attack at the latest crime scene causes her to blackout, she is supended from the task force. Battling to stay sober for the sake of her baby she returns to her Mississippi hometown. When an accidental chemical spill reveals bloody footprints in her childhood bedroom, long repressed memories of the night her father was killed start to resurface. Desperately she delves into her past to save her sanity and ultimately her life. For as determined as she is to learn the truth about that night and her traumatic childhood someone else is equally determined to keep it secret.
Iles weaves two mysteries that seem inexplicably connected though separated by nearly 25 years into a compelling story. Though quite long this book grabs your attention and doesn't let go until the end. Through all the twists and turns of Cat's quest to learn the truth about her family's secrets the suspense builds to an explosive conclusion.

http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0743454154
http://www.bookmooch.com/m/inventory/cheribomb/0/80/0

Only Strange People Go To Church by Laura Marney

2007-07-30T19:41:00.000-04:00

Maria works at a day program with mentally and physically disabled adults. She is mandated by her agency to include her clients in the larger community.  Unfortunately she is finding it a challenge to get the Scottish working-class town where she lives to welcome her clients.  She decides to put on a community variety show and invite participation from all the community groups.  With the help of her spiritual guides, Madonna and Nelson Mandela, and a fascinating group of eccentric characters, will Maria succeed in creating a hit show?

This is a funny and endearing book.  The community of Hexton is full of wonderful characters.  Maria’s  clients are all fully realized individuals.  Also helping with the show are Ray, the mysterious and charismatic furniture maker who lets Maria use the deconsecrated church he is using as a workshop to hold her show, Alice, the leader of the senior citizen can-can dancer group, an evangelical Pastor, and a transvestite Madonna impersonator.  Maria has some challenges, some romance, and some moral choices to make as she tries to fulfill her mandate to include her charges in the larger community.

Having worked with children and adults with special needs for over 25 years, I can relate to Maria’s situation.  The humour and humanity of this book make it a very enjoyable read.

Sourcery by Terry Pratchett

2007-07-30T04:46:00.000-04:00

I love these books! They are funny fantasy/adventure and marvelous social commentary. Pratchett, as noted by The Times (London) is the Jonathan Swift of our day. This isn't the best of the lot, but that's like saying it isn't the brightest diamond in the pile.

A child is born and is invested with great powers. Eight years later, he arrives at Unseen University where all the wizards are happy to follow him for the greater glory of their kind. (The general population tend to ignore them.)

Almost all are happy. Rincewind, who failed most of his wizardly studies, and the Librarian, who, by mistake, was transformed into an Orangutan and prefers to remain one, are not happy. Together with Conina, daughter of Cohen the Barbarian, Nijel, a hero-in-training, and The Luggage, they set out to save the world from the Apocolypse of the Horseman and Three Pedestrians.

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

2007-07-29T14:22:00.000-04:00

Mistress of the Art of Death opens with a clever parody of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It describes a group of pilgrims traveling toward Cambridge in Medieval times. Among the group is a doctor, trained in Solerno Italy in the art of examining the bodies of the dead. More unusual even than the doctor’s specialty in these superstitious times is the fact that she is a woman. She is traveling incognito with an investigator/spy to look into the deaths and disappearances of children in Cambridge. The children’s deaths are being blamed on the local Jews and King Henry has asked help from his cousin, the King of Italy, to solve the murders before all the Jews in Cambridge become victims of an angry populace.

Franklin’s novel is both an engaging and suspenseful murder mystery and a detailed historical novel. The mystery of the children’s deaths, and the uncovering of the identity of the perverted child killer, is intriguing. But it is the exploration of the character of Dr. Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar that is central to the novel. Adelia is a woman of science in a time of superstition. She is an independent woman in a time when women have no power and no rights. She is an agnostic and a humanist in a time when the Church and the Crown are struggling for supremacy: when Thomas a Becket’s death is still fresh.

To do her work as a doctor Adelia must pretend that she is just the assistant to one of her male companions. Much of the fun in the book is reading how she holds her own with the men around her. As the mystery unfolds there is political intrigue, religious controversy and even a little romance. The novel has a satisfying ending yet leads me to hope there will be a sequel and another opportunity to spend time with this fascinating character.

Dragonwyck by Anya Seton

2007-07-27T10:39:00.001-04:00

An oldie but goodie, this is the first time I've ever read anything by Anya Seton. This book was first published in 1944 and was a national bestseller that was made into a movie in 1946.

I would classify it a gothic romantic tale, complete with the clueless heroine, Miranda Wells, and the lord of the manor, Nicholas Van Ryn. Miranda lives on a farm with her parents and a lot of younger brothers and sisters. She is fanciful and prefers reading and daydreaming to churning butter or milking the cows. Her mother receives a letter from a distance relative who lives in a manor in upstate New York. The relative, Nicholas Van Ryn, needs a governess for his daughter. Nicholas is involved in a loveless marriage and Miranda soon falls in love with him. The book is full of the usual dark secrets, tenant unrest, and dark overtones.

I enjoyed reading this book, but it was a bit predicable. Perhaps it is because I read so many similar books when I was younger (Gothic romance held my attention for all my junior high and high school years).

Light on Snow by Anita Shreve

2007-07-27T00:06:00.000-04:00

12 yr old Nicky was taking a walk in the forest with her father when they heard the cry that would change their lives. The cry of a baby abandoned in the snow. Follow the events which cause the shadows and questions that laid still and quiet since the death of Nicky's mom and little sister surface, as does the mother of the abandoned child. Discover the choices which lead each person to be where they are and the little details which enable them to grow to be who they destined to become.

I found this book to be completely engrossing and could not put it down until the last page was turned. I could feel the emotions emanating from the characters. I was impressed with the vividness in which Anita Shreve was able to bring them to life. I found myself on a wild emotional roller coaster ride as I turned the pages. A must read.

BM Listing:
Light on Snow

Review by Tesse aka blissful2beme

Maximum Ride by James Patterson

2007-07-26T23:18:00.000-04:00

Imagine for a moment that you genetically engineered as a child with avian DNA grafted to your human DNA by some really really bad scientists. The results of the experiment are superhuman strength and with wings that can even fly. Imagine for a moment that you were not the only successful DNA mixing experiment, instead of wings the other specimens were mixed with lupine DNA and were created to hunt and kill you. Imagine what kind of life you would lead if you escaped from the labs only to find out you were supposed to save the world in some manner no one is nice enough to tell you.. then what would you do....especially if you were also responsible for the care of your 5 siblings in your flock. And to top it all off you were only 14 years old to boot. Well this is the story of Max who just happens to be all of what I just asked you to imagine.

My reaction to the story: I ate it up in one day, well the first two books. The third is still on my wish list. I found the story to be full of action suspense and mystery. The story was refreshing and almost movie like. I would not be surprised if they did end up making a movie out of it. I found the characters to be believable as children and was happy with the character development. I liked it so much that I am considering to go buy book 3 just so I do not have to wait for a wish list hit...lol.

Books in series are:
Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment (Maximum Ride)
Maximum Ride: School's Out Forever
Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports (Maximum Ride)

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

2007-07-25T10:39:00.001-04:00

The Bean Trees is the story of Missy Greer from Pittman County, Kentucky. She graduates high school, buys an old Volkswagon and leaves. She doesn't have a plan, she doesn't know where she is going, just that she wants a change. She drives till her car runs out of gas in Taylorville. There she decides to change her name to Taylor. Later, she stops for a burger and coffee at an old bar in the middle of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. As she goes back out to her car, a woman approaches her and puts a baby in the front seat of her car telling her to take it. When Taylor protests, the woman tells her she is the sister of the baby's mother. Then she leaves. Taylor takes the child with her and calls her Turtle because she clings to things like a mud turtle. Taylor's car has a blow out and she has no money for new tires. She has made it as far as Tucson, Arizona. She finds a job and rents a room from LouAnn Ruiz, another native Kentuckian. LouAnn has a brand new baby and they have been abandoned by LouAnn's husband. The story is about how they make a family out of themselves and the people around them that they grow to care about.

I really liked this book and I want to read the follow-up book "Pigs in Heaven". I went to a book talk by Barbara Kingsolver a couple of months ago and this was one of the books I purchased. I had never read anything by her before seeing her, but now have audios of several of her books and a copy of her newest book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" on my list of TBRs.

Cloud Nine by Luanne Rice

2007-07-25T03:10:00.001-04:00

Cloud Nine is a tender very moving story of love and loss.
After a near-fatal battle with cancer Sarah Talbot gets a second chance at love. When a friend arranges a ride in a chartered plane for her birthday, she meets Will, a man still grieving the death of his son several years ago and his teenage daughter Susan. When she later hires him to fly her to the remote island where she grew up to reconcile with her father and son, Susan stows away.
The story of Sarah and Will's romance is as sweet as it is heart-wrenching. It is a testament to the life-changing power of love.