PPL Book Blog

Strange Piece of Paradise

2008-08-26T09:58:00.000-04:00

Book Review Submission
Author: Jentz
Title: Strange Piece of Paradise

Review:The book starts off in a wandering, misleading fashion, and then bites down onto the bone of the story. The climax, however, comes early - she is attacked. It is followed by denoument which oscillates in intensity but generally heads in decline. The decline of the remainder might be inevitable, due to the nature of the remaining content: what in most tales would be spent on a climax (the attack) is presented early. The ensuing hundreds of pages focus on painstaking and editable interviews. To her credit, many of these interviews are eye opening and well presented. The remaining action, the trial, is well placed at the end - but due to the nature of the event this is only partially satisfying - if read from a tale telling point of view. As history however it must simply be accepted. I'm not certain I - or anyone - could have offered a better organization. However having covered the weakest parts of the book, some of it's strengths were unforgiving details, and for the most part excellent use of language. As for difficult words, I have always been in the "look it up" camp, and tend to overlook misused grammar as the fault of the editor. (To which any self respecting editor would agree.) I have yet to meet a perfect grammarian. Overall, an excellent read with logistical flaws that would challenge any writer.
Name:Michael

Strange Piece of Paradise

2008-05-15T15:44:00.001-04:00

From Joanna of New Haven:

Author: Terri Jentz
Title: strange piece of paradise
2006
Review:Let me agree with the author of the original review. I think this review was not only accurate, but generous. This is the only book I was frustrated enough with to give up on in ten years (excepting college coursebooks, of course). The story was so compelling for about one hundred pages. If this had been a 300 page book instead of 700 pages, it may have become an important memoir. Instead, it seems to be an exercise in self-help disguised as literature. Some of the ways she described the people of central Oregon (ie, non-Yale-educated people) was offensive to me. And she must have used the word "meticulous" upwards of fifty times.

Inconvenient Truth by Glenn Beck

2008-02-11T15:18:00.001-05:00

from guest reviewer Sheryl from Florida:

BECK’S BOOK INCONVENIENTLY TOPS BESTSELLER LISTS A nuisance to some and a godsend to others, radio host Glenn Beck is sitting comfortably near the top of the bookcharts with his book on backorder at multiple outlets. Although snubbed by reviewers except for a conservative website or two, “An Inconvenient Book” can grab readers with its “you must be kidding - could this possibly be true?” factor in some sections, and the frenetic yet entertaining graphics. It’s alternately funny, sarcastic, dead-serious and cynical and purposefully mirrors Beck’s radio voice. He’s more congenial than Ann Coulter but still certain to grate on the sensibilities of political correctness enthusiasts who prefer Stephen Colbert’s similarly strident but more popular rants in “I Am America (And So Can You!)”. However, this pundit of the airwaves raises very intoxicating points and makes the reader want to research certain facts, since there are no supporting endnotes. For example, Beck talks about the existence of a North American Competitiveness Council made up of “eminent persons from outside governments to provide a public voice for North America”. Beck sees this organization as a direct threat to U.S. national security, as it calls for a “freer flow of people” between Mexico, the USA and Canada – i.e., we’ll never know who’s illegal, who’s a legal immigrant or who’s a citizen. Other scary examples of secret socialist-leaning U.S. agencies participating in covert world organizations make it questionable whether we want our country to be that tolerant. At times, Beck targets both sides, conservative and liberal, like stating that polls from either pulpit can be unreliable but are still used to move public opinion. He hits up on “big oil”, American narcissism, parenting, sex, and of course the current wartime problems. Beck illustrates that political correctness has been taken to outrageous extremes to make allowances for terrorists who threaten to take over governments. He verifies his position by revealing remarks like Anjen Choudary’s in London, “Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment”, being shrugged off by the media for the sake of tolerance; and this followed by the BBC merely labeling suicide bombers as poor “misguided criminals”. He hilariously “exposes” the new politically correct term for the people starving in Zimbabwe – they’re “food-insecure”. And then earnestly states things go too far when kids aren’t being taught about the Holocaust for fear of offending all Muslims. Addressing the “staying positive” philosophy of bringing up children without any negative feedback, Beck charges PC-talk with being instrumental in helping us raise “generations of sissies”. He cites trustworthy articles about bosses being instructed to speak only affirmatively to their youngest employees and this, combined with kids never being told they’re wrong, has created addicts of praise8 who can go postal at the first sign of criticism. Social class divisions in America aren’t left untouched, with Beck intimating that the Democrats in Congress, always claiming to make life better for the little guy, know full well most company CEO’s make in two hours what the average worker makes in a year, and they’ve never worked at changing that. Beck turns to his favorite topic - free speech - claiming Americans need to have more of a passion for taking the First Amendment back; that freedom of religious speech should be guaranteed, but the more we call for diversity it is ironically being excluded. An Al Franken quote on the back of the book says, “Glenn Beck shouldn’t be allowed on the air”. This statement lends credence to Beck’s seeming paranoia that free speech in America as seen by today’s liberal thinkers isn’t open to anyone with viewpoints opposing their own. For both those who share Beck’s viewpoint and those who enjoy trying to prove him wrong on claims that sound eerily true, this is an indulgent read.

The Da Vinci Code

2008-01-22T13:52:00.000-05:00

from guest blogger Tanya:

The Da Vinci Code: A Masterful Novel Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code, exhibits a setting intertwined with theological viewpoints and controversial lies. The plot forms about the premise that Christ held a royal bloodline. According to the novel, the ancestry of Jesus Christ survives through the Holy Grail. The truth of this holy existence, however, was shrouded by lies put forth by the Vatican. In an attempt to protect its sovereignty, the Catholic Church used bribery and torture to silence those who held the potent truth. The storyline is impelled by a newly sparked interest in the grail that initially consumes the ambition of its primary characters. The narrative is partially told through the viewpoint of Robert Langdon, a symbology professor at Harvard University. Langdon is unwittingly accused of murdering Jacques Saunière, a curator at the Louvre museum in Paris. While a suspect at the Louvre, Langdon meets Sophie Neveu, a cryptologist and granddaughter to Jacques Saunière. As Saunière’s connection with the grail becomes clear, a pace is set that continues throughout the rest of the novel. Although the plot is a net of careful fabrication and constructive rhythm, it is lacking is minor areas. The protagonist of the plot, Robert Langdon, is depicted in a manner more obscure than complex. Brown exhibits his character with qualities cliché of fictitious literature. For example, Langdon is portrayed with idealistic traits from both an intellectual and behavioral standpoint, yet is characterized with a single weakness- claustrophobia. This portion of the novel is bound to leave readers baffled. Not only is Landon’s weakness reminiscent of Achilles and his heel, but it is almost unnecessary and does not form any contribution to the plot. Brown amends the flaws in characterization, however, through the construction of an immaculate plot. The narrative often alternates between primary and secondary characters, a refreshing change to the customary novel. Although most of the novel outlines the journey of Robert Langdon, the reader is also introduced to the perspective of antagonists. The most prominent of these is “The Teacher”, an unidentified character whose pursuit of the grail remains unrelenting. Under his influence are Bishop Aringarosa and Silas, both members of the church Opus Dei. The transitions in the plot provided by the distinctive characters builds the supsense projected by the novel. The concept of the plot itself is effectually flawless. Each chapter adds to the readers understanding of the novel, while still maintaining a sense of anticipation. The #1 New York Times Besteller certainly holds manifest to its title. This novel is bound to entertain and impress the most vigilant reader.

Mister Pip

2007-09-13T21:25:00.000-04:00

The short list for the Booker Prize has been announced. I've read just one of the nominated books, Mister Pip. I found it disappointing. It is set on an island near Australia that has had some contact with European culture, but a civil war has disrupted contacts and supplies. One white man remains on the island. One day the children are told school is resuming, and he begins to read to them from Great Expectations. As life becomes increasingly precarious, the children are drawn to Pip and his adventures. After parental criticism, he asks the children's parents to come and share their knowledge, which yields a mixture of the intensely practical, mythological, and Christian. The violence is not sugar coated, and the author never suggests that Dickens is a cure for civil war. However, I never felt the island was a real place, or that the characters mattered. Somewhat ironic in a homage to Dickens! The narrator of the book is a young island girl, who sounds like an English professor. Finding out at the end of the book that she has in fact become an English professor does not make up for the tone of this book. It is well-meaning but bland.

The Bloodstone Papers by Glen Duncan

2007-09-10T13:05:00.000-04:00

Owen's life is a mess. He's still obsessed with a woman who left him years ago and he finds himself unable to continue writing erotic romances under his pen name. Most discouraging, he has not been able to pull together his Work, a novel based on his parent's life as Anglo Indians at the time of independence. There are two stories, Owen's misadventures, and his parent's experiences in India. Duncan's attempts to put his life back together are amusing. The description of his parents life, neither Indian nor English, Muslim or Hindu, was moving. A description of a massacre on a train and the sense of innocent bystanders caught up in the violence was harrowing and all too believable. Somewhat similar to Everything is Illuminated, this a quieter and memorable book.

Spook Country

2007-08-28T16:45:00.000-04:00

William Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his novel Neuromancer. In "Spook Country" he suggests that cyberspace has turned inside out. Instead of projecting a consciousness into cyberspace, artists create locative art, using 3D helmets and GPS units to bring cyberspace to the physical world. Once at a predetermined site, the virtual reality headgear is put on and picks up nearby wifi to present art based on the location. It may be a room full of flowers or a recreation of River Phoenix's last minutes. It's fascinating and after a quick consult of wikipedia, does not appear to yet exist on anything like the scale that appears in this book.

So what does all this have to do with Spooks? That gets complicated. This book is full of characters with ambiguous goals. A shadowy billionaire, who hires a former rock star for a special project with no goals. A man who has kidnapped a drug addict and keeps him close at hand by doling out pills one at a time. The drug addict himself, obsessed with a book on medieval cults. Tito, young and talented, who has been given a strange mission by someone to whom he cannot say no. And then there's the secretive genius behind the locative art, Bobby. As all converge on a shipping container that may or may not be traveling the globe, motives and identities become clear. The result is a book that is more spy novel than science fiction, but full of fascinating ideas and characters on every page, and well worth a read by fans of either genre.

The Fly Truffler by Gustaf Sobin

2007-08-15T14:42:00.000-04:00

Gustaf Sobin’s The Fly Truffler is a delicate little novel about a man besieged by a truffle-induced dream life. Set in Provence, Cabassic “fly-truffles,” the seasonal ritual of collecting the valued truffles of southeast France. Consumption of the truffles subsequently invokes vivid dreams of his departed young wife, Julieta. So lucid are his dreams that Cabassic is convinced that they do not merely revive old memories, but that he continues an earthly relationship with his beloved night after night. Nightly hallucinations give way to maniacal day-long hunts for the fleeting truffles as Cabassic’s career and ancestral home fall to the wayside. This descriptive novel is clearly written by a poet. Sobin tantalizes the readers’ senses with his description of pungent truffles, earthy scents, charming scenery, Provencal dialect, and elusive seasons, lovers, and life. A simple story that is beautifully written; definitely worth reading.

Contributed by Melissa L. of Portland, Maine.

Kurt Vonnegut

2007-04-17T16:39:00.000-04:00

There have been many tributes to Kurt Vonnegut in the days since his death. The New York Times has a nice page with reviews of his books. Stumbling on his work as a young teenager had a profound effect on my outlook on life as well as my reading tastes. I feel very sad that he is no longer in the world.

Dream of Scipio

2007-04-02T10:31:00.000-04:00

From Ruth and Chris Bode:

The story took place at roughly 500 years intervals in the same geographic location. The battle between sectarian and religious or fascist dominance, was needlesly confusing as it went from one period with its bunch of characters to another period. This became the mystery that detracted from concentration on the stories in each period. It was a challenging and memorable.

The Dream of Scipio

2007-03-20T12:00:00.000-04:00

Our March Third Saturdays book discussion meeting was cancelled due to the storm. I probably would have been very happy about this had it happened when I was halfway through the book and struggling. After finishing it, I found there were alot of ideas that I would like to hear discussed. So, as an experiment, Paul and I thought we would try an online discussion. I'll post my thoughts, and please reply in comments or click the "submit book review" link above to start a new thread. Also note that comments are moderated (due to the vast quantity of spam) so they will not show up right away, but we will check for comments often during the course of the day.

I really struggled through this book through the first half or so. However, I found the second half very interesting. The characters started to seem more real, the ethical dilemmas challenging. The characters that seemed so good at the beginning were challenged by the real world in a way that they were not prepared for. The ending introduced some very satisfying ambiguity. In the end, all three men, Manilus Hippomanes, Olivier de Noyen, and Julien Barneuve try to do what they feel is right and end up betraying someone close to them. I think the book wisely shys away from presenting this as good or bad.

I also liked the way that the book created an atmosphere, in three different cultures, that civilization was about to end. Although I am not sure this book worked as fiction, I think you do get a sense that, say, Julien truly believed his culture had ended and he needed to collaborate to make the new culture better.

Those are some thoughts that I've had, I hope others will chime in. There is a reading group guide online that brings up some interesting points as well.

The Diviners by Rick Moody

2007-02-13T20:36:00.000-05:00

It's hard to make fun of Hollywood and the movie and television industries, as they so often seem to parody themselves. The recent movie For Your Consideration is a case in point. Funny, but without the biting edge of, say, Best In Show.

The Diviners by Rick Moody could have fallen into this trap. How could an independent film producer be portrayed as more over the top than we already imagine her? Fortunately, there is more to this book than a satirical look at a television show.

An independent film company decides to venture into television. A hastily written treatment concerning the epic story of diviners throughout history from the Mongols to the present day is presented. Mix with a hastily hired former cab driver who feels that television needs more epic histories in miniseries form. Add the pressure cooker of a distracted producer whose mother is in rehab for a slight drinking problem, and dowsers are ready for prime time.

The deal's the thing, and takes precedent over all other considerations. Considerations such as, is the American public really ready for a twelve part miniseries on dowsing? The show takes on a life of its own, with the insecure industry players busy looking for an angle.

The American public may not be ready for a miniseries on dowsing, but this behind the secens story of trying to make one is completely enjoyable.

Suspense for a cold winter's day

2007-02-04T20:34:00.000-05:00

Given the temperatures outside, my inclination has been to heat things up with suspense novels. There's quite a variety to chose from!

The Thirteenth Tale builds suspense the old fashioned way, with a Gothic look at a crumbling mansion and its eccentric occupants. Margaret Lea is working in her father's rare bookstore when an invitation arrives. Vida Winter, a reclusive writer, has summoned Margaret to write her biography. Vida has given many conflicting versions of her life story to journalists over the years, but promises to tell Margaret the truth. The slow revelation of secrets and sense of tragedy build up the spooky atmosphere. The literate and fascinating main characters are wonderfully drawn. My only quibble is that Jane Eyre and the Turning of the Screw are mentioned a bit too frequently. Okay--we get it! That aside, this is a great suspense tale for book lovers.

Following this with The Cloud of Unknowing was like traveling in time. It is sparsely written, and the suspense comes from the very little information we are given. It is clear a tragedy has taken place, and as the narrator tells his story to an investigator he reflects on his guilt. We grope along with him as he struggles to make sense of what's happened and his part in it. This book is beautifully written, and I was unable to put it down.

Of course, there are other, less subtle ways of creating suspense, such as an unseen beast eating your crew mates. The Terror, based on the true story of the Franklin polar expedition, has such careful character development and such great detail on the everyday horrors of an ill equipped polar expedition that you truly feel you are there. Is the mysterious creature a giant polar bear? Something supernatural? The men, ill nourished and half frozen, can't tell and neither will the reader.

To the Edge of the World

2007-01-03T20:02:00.000-05:00

I just finished 'To the Edge of the World', and it is amazing. It is the fictionalized story of the relationship between Charles Darwin, and Robert FitzRoy, the captain of the Beagle. It is mostly told through the eyes of FitzRoy, an accomplished man in his own right, but who suffers from manic depression, and who finds his own well-intentioned religious beliefs increasingly at odds both with Darwin's developing ideas, and the pious hypocricies that he witnesses carried out in the name of religion.

It was exciting, moving, and philosophical, and comes highly recommended by me. For those who loved Patrick O'Brian's style of writing, this book will be a joy to read. Thompson doesn't imitate O'Brian's style, so much as he gives it a historical continuation, out of the Napoleonic wars, and into the early Victorian era.

Necessary Beggar

2006-11-03T00:52:00.000-05:00

This is a book that defies categorization. It starts on another planet-is it science fiction? Or fantasy? It's an immigrant coming of age novel with immigrants coming from much farther away than usual. It's also the most beautiful and heart breaking romance I've read in a long time.

Darotti has been accused of murdering a holy beggar. The punishment is exile for his entire family. They find themselves in a refugee camp in Nevada, in the near future and struggle to adjust to American ways. It's easier for the younger generation, and young Zumi excels at becoming an American girl. She has a secret, a beetle that she believes contains the soul of the murdered beggar. There are other secrets in the family, including a towel that never dries, and a mysterious necklace. Acting from love for each other, the family piles up secrets and lies.

This book has a little bit of everything and succeeds brilliantly at finding its own unique style.

American Psycho, American Classic

2006-10-16T09:17:00.000-04:00

My banned book of choice this year was American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. I’d read it in 1991 when it was published, when it almost wasn’t published, when it was so controversial that the National Organization of Women set up a hotline so they could read you passages from the book, so you could be as offended as they were, and so support their boycott of the book.

Certainly the book contains some of the most harrowing scenes of violence ever written, but it should be noted that women are not the only victims of American psycho Patrick Bateman. Men, children, and small animals don’t fare much better, except to the extent that their bodies are disposed of quickly, rather than cannibalized or used as domestic ornaments.

Equally hellish is the catalog of designers, brand names, and products. If I were to choose the most obscene passages with which to offend you, I would include a lengthy description of the objects in Bateman’s Wall Street office, from “the life-size Doberman that’s in the corner ($700 at Beauty and the Beast in Trump Tower)” to the “reproduction Black Forest umbrella stand ($650 at Hubert des Forges)…in another corner without…any umbrellas in it.”

Horrifying, yes, but herein lies Ellis’s genius. Patrick Bateman, the all-American psycho, is the perfect embodiment of his times, the greed-is-good, let-them-eat-ketchup Reagan years, in which the children of privilege dine in decadent restaurants, snort coke in the bathrooms of exclusive nightclubs, and taunt homeless people on the street, even as they entertain themselves with the soundtrack from Les Miserables. Heartless, shallow, materialistic, ignorant—Bateman and his friends are all so much alike that they literally cannot tell each other apart. In fact, Bateman differs from his peers only in that he alone appears to feel any emotion at all. That this emotion is murderous rage almost speaks well of him, under the circumstances.

water for elephants

2006-10-11T11:24:00.000-04:00

This book starts with a fight in an assisted living facility. In his nineties, still sharp, and frustrated with his physical limitations, Jacob watches a circus set up outside and listens to his fellow residents speculate about circus life. He's soon reminiscing, and the story of his current life alternates with his memories of being part of a third rate depression era circus. Circus life isnt' easy, and he's soon involved in a romantic triangle, complicated by a fourth participant, Rosie the elephant. There's nothing profound here, but the book features wonderful depictions of a struggling circus (think Carnivale without the battle between good and evil), interesting characters, and an intelligent elephant. The ending is a bit too neat and tidy, but overall, a warm inviting book.

Memoirs by two Maine geezers

2006-10-11T07:56:00.001-04:00

I recently, and quite by accident, read two memoirs by Maine men of a certain age -- full middle age that is -- the fifties to early sixties. Portlander Phillip Hoose's Perfect, Once Removed: When Baseball Was the World to Me (St. Martin's Press, 2006) and the second Baron Wormser's Road Washes Out in Spring: A Poet's Memoir of Living Off the Grid (Hanover, NH: Univ. Press of New England, c2006) are the books in question. I recommend them whole-heartedly and NOT just because I too, inhabit that nether region of the human chronology where memories begin to stake their competing claim your attention and nudge the hear-and-now off its solitary perch on the top of one's mind.

The two books could not be more different, one; Mr. Hoose’s is all about suburban adolescence of the 1950s in the city of Speedway, Indiana, within earshot of the famous racetrack, and centers on the author’s experience as a nerdy, loud-mouthed kid who's trying to find his place in a new and somewhat hostile school—and how baseball and especially being the cousin of perfect-game-pitcher Don Larsen helped. The other, Mr. Wormser’s book, contains his lyrical recollections of his Thoreau-like escape from a conventional American youth to a homestead he built in the woods of Mercer, Maine and his finding a vocation as a poet. Both struck me as true evocations of the American life I lived then and do now. And really, the books are not just for the budding geezers among us.

Water for Elephants

2006-10-10T13:13:00.000-04:00

I finished Water For Elephants this weekend and thought it was a wonderful book. For anyone who has read this book and fallen in love with Rosie, as I did, I recommend a New York times article,
An Elephant Crackup? It's a long article about elephant psychology, looking at both elephants in captivity and in the wild, where social and family groups have been disrupted.

The Ruins by Scott Smith

2006-09-25T16:53:00.000-04:00

This is the scariest book i've read in a long time. It takes a while to get going, but it's worth being patient here. Two couples are in Mexico for a lazy vacation after graduating from college. They drink, sit on the beach, and drift through the days. They meet some other young people including some Greeks who don't speak English, and a German named Matthias. Matthias is very worried about his brother, who has gone to find an archaelogical expedition and hasn't returned. He has, however, left a map, and so they set out to try to find him. Soon they are trapped, and the true nature of the horror they have stumbled upon sinks in gradually. The author wisely keeps the story simple, which emphasizes the feeling of being trapped. I couldn't put this book down.

Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen

2006-09-23T17:59:00.000-04:00

It didn't seem like things could be much worse for Jacob Jankowski when his parents were killed in a car crash and he was too distraught to take his final exams at Cornell Vet School. But it was the Depression, he hopped what turned out to be a circus train, and there he met characters more strange, and even sadistic, than he ever could have imagined. Conditions were harsh for people and for animals in the gritty circus world of the 1930's. Looking back at this early experience from age ninety-something, Jacob tells us honestly about his shock and fear when thrown into the irrational world of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, and his embarassment when he didn't at first try to defend human or animal victims. He relates the cruel events through which he journeyed as a young man, and we watch him take another journey as a very old man. This is a humorous, romantic, realistic coming-of-age and coming-of-old-age story, with strong characters and scenes so well drawn one can just about smell the cat cages and stock cars - or maybe it's a metaphor for life.

Shoalwater Voices: Shoalwater Book Two

2006-08-29T11:44:00.000-04:00

Here's a post from guest blogger JC of Portland:

Even before I read JUST PAST OYSTERVILLE, I knew Perry P. Perkins was an amazing writer from reading his short stories. Now SHOALWATER VOICES (book two in the Shoalwater series) has placed him permanently within the group of authors whose books I will buy immediately upon release. These books are so much more than the usual hyper-censored, unrealistic story to be found in Christian fiction. The characters are real people with strengths and weaknesses, and they live real lives filled with anguish, love, mistakes, and triumphs. And the underlying message of God's love is relayed so effortlessly and so poignantly that it comes through loud and clear and leaves the reader with such a wonderful feeling of hope--just the way I believe Jesus would have done it. I encourage everyone who loves a good story to read these books, and I can't wait to read the next installment in the series! Perkins has posted the covers and first chapters of each of his novels on his website at perryperkinsbooks.com -Jack

The big why : a novel / Michael Winter.

2006-08-21T21:29:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while, I'll start a book and fall in love with the writing on the first page. That happened with "The Big Why", a novel about the year Rockwell Kent spent in Newfoundland. There's not much of a plot here, Kent's self absorbtion leaves him barely aware of ships sinking, a disasterous seal hunt, even the start of the First World War. Tired of the New York social scene, he makes an attempt to fit in with the tiny community but gives himself away in matters big, like the figurehead he installs over the doorway of his house, and small, by buying only 4 potatoes. He gradually finds himself at odds with the town. Throughout, he reflects on who he is. The question of the title comes near the end, and not suprisingly, involves identity.

Cellophane : a novel / Marie Arana.

2006-08-10T08:54:00.000-04:00

Don Victor Sobrevilla has a dream--to manufacture paper in the Amazon rain forest. This turns out to be a successful venture, and he ignores the contradictions in his life.He visits both a Christian priest and a local shaman for his spiritual guidance. His adult children continue to live in the hacienda, and although not really happy, life is smooth on the surface. This life is shattered when Don Victor discovers the formula for cellophane. The cellophane itself proves to be an aphrodisiac. At the same time, the household is infected with the truth, everyone, even visitors, find themselves unable to lie about even the smallest thing. Meanwhile, the political turmoil in 1950's Peru finally comes to the rain forest. The consequences are funny and sad, joyful and tragic.

Although I found the magical realist style of this book a bit forced at the beginning, it soon took on a style all its own. "Cellophane" deserves some sort of special award just for the many descriptions of cellophane. It is impossible to ever look at cellophane the same way after reading this book. This is a beautiful, moving book.

Glasshouse by Charles Stross

2006-07-29T11:03:00.000-04:00

Charles Stross writes both science fiction and fantasy that are full of intriguing ideas that question just about everything. His last book, Accelerando, was just a bit too disorienting for me—post-humans uploading their brains, zipping around in space, and then creating a new body as necessary. Then I read Counting Heads by David Marusek which literally had heads in jars (Futurama style?). Don't the Future People see any advantages to bodies?

In Glasshouse, bodies come and go like clothes, and might be anything from "ortho" (orthodox human) to a "tank" capable of existing in space. A horrific war, sparked by a virus called Curious Yellow that hijacks personalities as they are uploaded, is coming to an end. Memory wipes are a common way of dealing with the past. Robin wakes up with almost no memories, but soon discovers that someone is trying to kill him. He decides that an experiment simulating dark ages earth (1950-2040) is just the place to hide out. (This time period is referred to as the dark ages because the storage of data in proprietary formats has led to its near complete loss). Robin comes to as a woman, circa 1950. Now we dark age ortho humans can have a good laugh as Robin struggles with a microwave, the concept of being a "housewife" and many other "new" concepts.

There is, of course, more going on here than a history experiment, and Robin will have challenges more difficult than the microwave. But along the way, Stross questions all sorts of old earth conventions about gender, identity, personality and how people know who they are in the world. This is what's best about science fiction, helping us look at our world in a new way.

Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts and Nerve Took a Team to the Top, by Seth Mnookin, 2006

2006-07-18T13:19:00.000-04:00

This is the book all Red Sox fans will want to read. Realizing that the story of the Red Sox’ acquisition by the Henry/Werner ownership group and the 2004 World Series victory would be a great book, author Seth Mnookin pretty much lived with the team from October '04 throughout the '05 season. He conducted hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with players and management, learned wonderful details about Theo's Thanksgiving dinner with the Schillings, Nomar's paranoia, Pedro's pride, and David Ortiz' favorite words(!). There is a somewhat sobering account of Joe O'Donnell, one of the losers in the bidding "war" for the team, inviting John Henry to take a walk on Boston Harbor's Pier 4 at 1 AM, just to show him the spot where O'Donnell's group had planned to build a new Red Sox baseball park. John Henry was sufficiently unnerved by the invitation to call some staff members just to let them know where he'd be...or might be found later. When questioned about this story after the book came out, Mnookin has pointed out that O'Donnell labelled it "farcical" but did not dispute a single fact.

Feeding the Monster begins at the beginning with the history of a century of Boston baseball, from the Beaneaters and Babe Ruth through Ted Williams, Tom Yawkey, Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner, Dan Duquette, and the Curse. He covers the 2003 playoffs, the tragic end in Game 7, and the reasons for Grady Little’s subsequent departure as manager (Grady’s intuitive approach just never meshed with management’s Bill Jamesian by-the-numbers mantra and there were numerous times throughout that season when mild-mannered John Henry wanted to fire him). We re-live the struggles of 2004, right through being down 3-0 games to the Yankees in the ALCS, the triumph of the bloody sock, and, finally a Game 7 victory. We rush through the anti-climactic 4 games in St. Louis and re-live Joe Castiglione’s opportunity to finally say, “After 86 years, the Boston Red Sox are World Champions!” We watch the 2005 team struggle with something new: actually BEING World Champions. We learn about Theo Epstein's efforts to identify and acquire undervalued players. We're made privy to participants’ accounts of Theo’s departure from the team, their various assessments of the reasons for it, and their stories of his return.

Mnookin did his research very well, so if the book did nothing else it would be a good history of the Red Sox. But he also understands the character (and characters) of the team and its place in the hearts of New Englanders. He explains “traditional” game strategies and newer player analysis trends, especially the Bill James approach favored by the new Red Sox management, but he does it all in the context of the real participants with their own real attitudes and foibles. Because management gave him exceptional access (he had a key to Fenway Park and an office there) Feeding the Monster feels like an insider’s look.

The king of lies / John Hart.

2006-07-14T14:48:00.000-04:00

More exciting summer reading--and this time good writing goes hand in hand with a stay up all night story.

"Work" Pickens is a lawyer and a self described "bottom feeder", working as a court assigned defender for clearly guilty clients. When his father's body is discovered in a closet, Work is caught up in the investigation. Work is forced to look at what he truly values in life while trying to outwit the homicide detective who suspects him. Reminiscent of other noir legal thrillers, like The Lincoln Lawyer, for example, Work is an original character, and well worth losing a little sleep.

Fun and Different Mysteries for Summer Reading

2006-07-12T19:21:00.000-04:00

If you like mysteries or you are looking for summer reading with an international flair, there are several new investigators you might like to “check out.”

First is Erast Fandorin, hero of a series of detective stories set in Czarist Russia in the late 1800’s. Written by Boris Akunin, pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, the books are tremendously popular now in Russia, where crime novels had been reviled under Communism and detective novels with any literary merit virtually unknown since then. We find Fandorin first in The Winter Queen, as a young police detective investigating the apparent suicide of a university student. He soon discovers it’s all part of an international conspiracy – in fact, he’s involved in international conspiracies in each of these books. The tale is well told, helped along by the humorous picture of this earnest and somewhat naïve young man juxtaposed against the decadence of pre-revolution Moscow, and by Akunin’s nineteenth century writing style. Fandorin is clever, he’s romantic, he romps in disguises and attends society events. His powers of intuition remind us of Sherlock Holmes at times. Murder on the Leviafan begins with the murder of ten in Paris, followed by a shipboard investigation, and evokes Agatha Christie. The Turkish Gambit is set during war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, includes a young woman dressing like a man to fool the army and visit her fiance, there are some bandits and many spies run amok. In The Death of Achilles, a somewhat more mature Fandorin returns to Moscow after several years abroad and is immediately drawn into the investigation of the death of a war hero.

Our next entry in the new or unusual detective category is Investigator Yashim the eunuch, hero of The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodwin. This tale takes place in the Ottoman Empire in 1836 and Yashim is engaged to solve the murder of a harem girl in the Abode of Felicity, the most forbidden part of the sultan’s Topkapi Palace, and separately to solve the disappearance of four soldiers of the elite New Guard. There aren’t too many plot surprises here, but there are interesting details about life in Istanbul and international politics at the time, and there are wonderful characters. In addition to Yashim, the eunuch, we meet the Polish ambassador, Palewski, whose embassy is financed by the sultan even though there is currently no country for him to represent; Preen the transvestite dancer; and Valide, the Creole-born queen mother who reads French novels. This is not too taxing but it’s fun!

Tommy Akhtar, hero of City of Tiny Lights, by Patrick Neate, is a contemporary Ugandan-Indian-Brit private investigator living in London. Starting off his day with a prize-winning hangover, his next client walks in before he even finishes his coffee. She is a silicon-enhanced prostitute who is searching for her missing prostitute-roommate. Sound like a spoof? Well, maybe, but the twists and turns in this plot are worthy of Dashiell Hammett and the characters are reminiscent of Raymond Chandler. Patrick Neate gives us a believable view of the war on terror through the eyes of Tommy, who is frequently called a “Paki” by everyone from “the Bill” to his neighbors at the unfashionable end of Chiswick. This is well-done and at times thought-provoking.

Brookland

2006-07-12T12:48:00.000-04:00

This book got a lot of great press,it deserves every bit of it. This is a fantastic book.

The story starts as the American Revolution is winding down. British troops are still in Brooklyn, but the future seems clear enough. The owner of the tavern The King's Arms repaints his sign (the best artwork in Brooklyn)and changes the name to the Liberty Arms. For Matty Winship, however, the question of the day is who will take over the distillery when he has only daughters. Eventually Prue and her sister are trained, and Winship Daughters is highly successful. Prue dreams of a bridge to New York, and trains herself in engineering until she has a plan she believes will work. The plan becomes an obsession, and she must decide what she is willing to sacrifice. Prue's story is interspersed with letters to her grown daughter that give an aura of sadness and regret to her life.

I was lost in this book, the details brought the era to life in a completely non-obtrusive way. I found myself cheering Prue's successes and cringing at her all too human mistakes. There's lots here about distilling gin and designing bridges, but the details add layers to Prue's story. This is historical fiction at its best.

Salon's Literary Guide to the World

2006-07-06T14:48:00.000-04:00

Salon has an interesting series up with guest authors describing the literary landscape of places they know well. John Banville writes on Ireland, Alexandra Fuller on Zimbabwe. The articles are short, and of necessity, leave a lot out. David Gates writes on New England, and harkens back to the Puritans. Of Stephen King, he writes:

Stephen King's Maine, where Evil leaps out of the shadows and rips out Innocence's innards, is a little more like it, but King lacks that good old Calvinist stoicism -- his people really seem aggrieved when their innards get ripped out. Haven't they read the Book of Job?

Although it's great fun to quibble with the choices, the series offers a fascinating guidebook to a literary trip around the world.

If you do not have a subscription to Salon, you will need to click through an advertisment to read the articles.

Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz

2006-07-04T16:52:00.000-04:00

Years ago I used to volunteer on a crisis hotline. My regular shift was the Saturday overnight, which suited me for a variety of reasons. By 2 a.m.,
usually, everyone had a bed for the night and the drunks had stopped calling, and if the phone rang again it was likely to be a particular type of caller, the person who couldn't sleep.

"I just need someone to talk to," they would say, but what they really meant was that they needed to tell their story, and the story was invariably about some terrible thing that had happened to them, or to a loved one. The event would have happened some time in the past, but for some reason it was preying on the caller's mind that night, and they just needed someone to listen.

This is all by way of saying that I've heard a survival story or two, and aside from the content of the stories, I've always found something very moving about the simplicity of the language people use to describe the most unimaginable horrors that could ever test the limits of human endurance. Short sentences and simple words have the power to convey unspeakable truths.

Terri Jentz is a professional writer, and one, I'm sorry to say, on whom the power of simple language is lost. Rife with metaphors and similes and other literary devices, Strange Piece of Paradise is overwritten and overwrought, and it's a shame, because Jentz's story is fascinating.

You may remember it from the headlines. In 1977, Jentz was just a few days into a cross-country bike trip when she and her traveling companion were attacked by a man who deliberately ran over their tent with his vehicle and then assaulted them with an axe. Amazingly, Jentz not only survived, she got up and ran for help, thereby saving her own life and the life of her friend.

The man was never caught, and Jentz claims that, at the time, she didn't care. She never saw his face and never thought of him as an actual person, but rather as a force of nature, a raging storm in whose path she happened to be. That she should think him inhuman is understandable; that she was able to recognize the random nature of the attack relieved her of any fear that he might come after her again.

But fifteen years later, after struggling with anxiety and depression, Jentz decides to revisit the crime and its aftermath. She returns to Oregon, where the assault took place, and, outraged now that the crime was never solved and the police refuse to reopen the case because the statute of limitations has run out, Jentz decides to conduct her own investigation. Strange Piece of Pardise is a chronicle of her quest for the truth.

A painstaking chronicle. A chronicle that creeps along as she explores every nuance of every bit of information she uncovers, and shares every thought she has, every feeling she has, and every word of every conversation she has regarding the crime. A chronicle that is bogged down by clumsy attempts to put the event in a sociological context, and clumsier attempts to find significance in every detail. The tipping point for me occured on page 164, where she notes that Cline Falls, where she was struck by an axe, is a name somewhat similar to Fall River, the home of Lizzie Borden.

I have sympathy for Jentz and her quest, I do. But I found this book difficult to read, and not because of its emotional content. Jentz has done volunteer work with victims of domestic violence, so she should know: sometimes the power of a story lies in the simplicity of the telling.

And, as a colleague so helpfully pointed out, surviving a trauma may get you a book deal, but it doesn't necessarily make you a writer.

Joann Sfar--graphic novels

2006-06-29T14:05:00.000-04:00

I just read a wonderful graphic novel called "The Rabbi's Cat" by Joann Sfar. A cat eats a parrot, and gains the power of speech. This is wonderful, except the rabbi is worried that no good can come from an act of murder. The cat and the rabbi argue philosophy, are visited by a cousin with a lion, travel to Paris, and return home (Algeria). A great story for anyone who has wondered just what their cat is thinking.

Also by Joann Sfar, the funny and touching graphic novel "Vampire Loves". Ferdinand is a vampire looking for love but in classic "slacker" fashion doesn't seem able to do much about it. He hangs out with his friends, including trees, golems, vampires, and detectives from 30's noir movies. The illustrations are beautiful and seem both current and nostalgic.

A million nightingales / Susan Straight.

2006-06-29T13:58:00.000-04:00

I read this book on Patti's recommendation, below. It really was one of the best books I've read this year. Beautifully written, with an emotional impact you won't soon forget. It tells the story of a determined, intelligent slave girl without glossing over the hardships she faces. I have a small quibble with this book--some of the language, especially at the beginning, seems a bit too self consciously poetic. I'm glad I did not let that deter me from continuing with the book.

The Big Bam : The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, by Leigh Montville, 2006

2006-06-22T09:10:00.000-04:00

What better time to read the latest Babe Ruth biography than when the Red Sox are looking like contenders?! Curse that!

Babe Ruth was bigger than I realized – bigger in every way, in baseball, in size, in appetites, as a popular hero. He was as big in popular culture as Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford or Al Capone or even the president during the 1920’s. It’s not too much to say that he changed the way baseball was played. Before him, a player who hit 20 home runs was having an exceptional year. When he hit a record 29 homers in 1919 many whole teams didn’t hit that many in a year. Then he proceeded to break his own record with 54 home runs the next year! No wonder crowds of 4,000 would gather at train stations in 5,000-person towns in the middle of the night just to catch a glimpse of him as the Yankees’ train passed through. Crowds of fans and “papparazzi” followed him everywhere, and his “extracurricular” activities were the stuff of some men’s dreams.

But Leigh Montville says the events of the Babe’s early life occurred in a “fog.” His father took him to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys in Baltimore when he was seven. We don’t know why he was taken there – was he “incorrigible”, could his parents no longer care for him? These details are all in a “fog.” So much of his life is surrounded by myth and legend but, rather than choose one of any number of competing legends and try to prove why it is the real story, Montville admits that some details are lost. He says things like “perhaps it happened this way,” or “circumstantial evidence would suggest that something happened” when talking about many events related to the Babe’s early personal life and some later events not directly documented in baseball statistics. Recounting a famed “called shot” when Babe-legend says he pointed to a spot dead center field and proceeded to slam the baseball out of the park between the right field bleachers and the scoreboard, right over his spot, Montville says, “Did it happen exactly that way? Probably not. Did it happen? The Babe always was predicting home runs.” Montville has been criticized by some for this approach but to me it seems honest and refreshing.

I can’t say if this is the definitive Babe Ruth biography – it’s the first I’ve read. Montville did extensive research and even was given access to the research of several earlier Babe biographers. It is not as personal as Montville’s biography of Ted Williams because he could not interview anyone who lived, worked or played with the Babe. He provides a great deal of information about the good and the bad in Babe’s life, including the controversy about his first wife and their daughter. “No, No, Nanette”, the musical financed by Babe’s sale to the Yankees is covered, of course. And Montville provides his own speculation that the Babe may have suffered from ADHD because he never could concentrate on anything. It is comprehensive and well-written. Try it – before the play-offs!

Great Fantasies

2006-06-15T12:30:00.000-04:00

In the summer, I like to read escapist fare. A good fantasy that offers a plausible world is my favorite escape. Here's a few good recent fantasies, I'd love to hear recommendations from other fantasy fans.

Widdershins by Charles DeLint is a story of good fairies gone bad. Some of the characters are carried over from the author's Onion Girl. I haven't read that one, and I can vouch that this book works as a stand alone. Human characters get dragged into a war between the European fairies now living in towns, and the older spirits inhabiting the natural areas. This book has complex characters both human and otherwise and an exciting plot.

A blurb on the back of His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik describes it as a cross between Patrick O'Brien and Anne McCaffrey. It's definitely on the McCaffrey end of that scale, and reminds me of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. There's no magic, just dragons that add an aerial dimension to the sea battles of the Napoleonic War.

A Secret Atlas by Michael Stackpole is an epic fantasy in a world where magic becomes toxic waste. Devasting magic wars long ago have left parts of the world unpassable,and the powerful Royal Cartographer sends his grandsons off to chart unknown areas. With lots of court intrigue, adventure and constant danger, this is an exciting book.

Maranis' Clemente: A Better Baseball Book

2006-05-30T14:47:00.000-04:00

I can have a contrary reaction to books that come highly recommended; I often don’t read them or frequently feel let down when I do. But, even though dubious when a colleague praised it to the skies, I read David Maranis’ Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero and I loved it.

The book satisfies on many levels. As a baseball book, it brought brightly back to life, baseball and the baseball heroes of my youth -- Yankee greats like: Yogi Berra, Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, and Moose Skowron, and also less heralded but fantastic players like Cleveland Indian players Vic Power and Mini Minoso (whose real name was Saturnino Orestes Armas Minoso Arrieta, the book tells me) and with them it brought back my enjoyment of the game as it was played forty or more years ago. But it is a much more than just an ordinary baseball book, giving you an insider’s view of the game with background on the deals and maneuverings of the legendary baseball owners in a period in which baseball underwent huge change. The story of how Roberto Clemente got to the Pittsburgh Pirates is an important story superbly told. And there are countless other stories large and small that will delight even the most knowledgeable baseball fan, like the detailed accounts of the International League and Puerto Rico’s Winter Baseball Leagues, as well as meticulous, game-by-game and play-by-play recreations of Pittsburgh’s glory seasons.

Clemente was the first Latino to make it in the big leagues, the Puerto Rican Jackie Robinson, breaking down race barriers when baseball was still almost totally white. As a work of social history the book shows what it was like for a sensitive minority entering and succeeding in an American profession unwilling to change. Clemente was a hero on the field and off and his work to help disaster victims in Latin American finally killed him when his plane crashed en route to deliver relief supplies to Nicaraguan earthquake victims.

It would have been easy for David Maranis to take the raw materials of Clemente’s remarkable life and make of it the story of a baseball saint, but the Pulitzer Prize winning editor at the Washington Post looks behind the mythic curtain that has been drawn around him and shows us the edgy, temperamental, somewhat difficult man. This is a great biography, social history, and most of all a wonderful baseball book. By the way, the colleague and friend who recommended Clemente also said the Maranis’ book about Vietnam They Marched into Sunlight was not to be missed. I don’t think I’ll read that one either ; )

The accidental / Ali Smith.

2006-05-27T14:17:00.000-04:00

A mysterious stranger arrives at the summer house of a dysfunctional family, and insinuates her way in. She throws a spotlight on on each family member's feeling of alienation. The plot seems familiar, almost a cliche. Yet the excellent writing and finely drawn characters lift this book above the ordinary.

A Million Nightingales, by Susan Straight

2006-05-18T10:51:00.000-04:00

For those of you who like historical fiction, this is a well-researched and elegantly written book about a 14-year-old slave girl named Moinette who is sold away from her mother. Moinette was born after her mother was raped by a white man, and her mixed blood marks her as someone to be desired or scorned, or in some cases, both. This is a book about race, class, and oppression of all kinds, and yet the language is so beautiful that you may actually feel a million nightingales on the branches of your heart, singing freedom.

The Best Thing that can Happen to a Croissant

2006-05-13T16:34:00.000-04:00

Faithful readers of this blog will have noticed my attempt to read all books that have some similarity to the Da Vinci Code. I took a break from this impossible task, or so I thought, by reading The Best Thing that can Happen to a Croissant by Pablo Tusset. I was quite surprised when, after 400 pages of sex, drugs and, well, more drugs, there was suddenly (and this is a major spoiler alert) a secret society and ancient manuscript. To be fair, I probably missed some clues to the plot of this book, as it appears on Booklist's "Best Crime Books of the Year" list. When Pablo's brother is kidnapped, his sister in law asks for his help and gives him his brother's cash card and sports car. It's fun hanging out with Pablo as he and his network of Internet philosophers discuss the case. The book has a good humor to it, and might appeal to Christopher Moore fans, although its not quite like anything I've read before.

The world to come : a novel / Dara Horn.

2006-05-11T09:14:00.000-04:00

I have always loved books that nest stories within stories, change narrators, and show a story from many perspectives. The World to Come uses those techniques brilliantly. Quiz-show question writer Benjamin Ziskind steals a Chagall drawing from a museum, convinced it belongs to his family. As he tries to elude the museum employee who suspects him, the story of Benjamin’s family and its connection with the drawing unfold, beginning in an Russian orphanage in the 1920’s where Chagall and the Yiddish author Der Nister collaborate. Throughout, the novel touches on deeper questions and how the answers can be approached through art. This is a beautifully written book with many interesting characters and settings.

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

2006-05-09T14:02:00.000-04:00

Another excellent entry in the Da Vinci vein. This book intertwines the story of modern day Alice with that of Alais in 13th century Carcassonne. A volunteer on an archeological dig, Alice falls into a cave with strange symbols and two skeletons. This brings her to the attention of powerful people who are determined to discover the cave's secrets. Alice begins to have visions of Alais, who is a member of a Cathar community, and whose father is one of the guardians of three books that lead to the Grail. Under threat from an invading French army with no mercy for heretics, and betrayed by those close to them, Alais and her father must try to get the books to safety.

Short stories - James Salter's - Last Night

2006-05-02T11:45:00.000-04:00

Anybody out there like short stories?

I work at Portland Public Library’s reference desk, and work with people looking for new things to read and I’m continually reminded that a taste for short stories, at least book-length collections of them, is a rare thing. And at meetings of the library’s book discussion group the Third Saturdays Group, we get ongoing comments around the fact that most people don’t like them. When in January we finally did choose a book of stories (Runaway by Alice Munro) our Saturday group meeting, we had a great turn-out (new people to the group) and a strong discussion. So I’m hoping that some of you that enjoy short stories will SPEAK UP and comment in this blog.

I just finished reading James Salter’s slim new volume of stories called Last Night – a collection of ten tales, mostly rather dark, all about passion and the tangled relations between men and women. They are written in a clear and fluent style with carefully imagined characters. I read them greedily and yet I felt something was a bit off. I’m not quite sure I know why my enjoyment (and I really did enjoy reading Last Night) of the book was qualified, but it may have something to do with the characters – too rich, too accomplished, too unfamiliar as types? Or perhaps it was because each of the stories describes the intimate, tense, and sometimes sad negotiations that take place between men and women. Has anyone read the book – have any ideas?? I’d love to hear comments.

Smoked, Patrick Quinlan, St. Martin's Press, 2006

2006-04-23T19:34:00.000-04:00

Now THIS is a page-turner! With good characters and plenty of action it would be a fun read, anyway, but it is set right here in Portland, Maine, and one character is a librarian at Portland Public Library! It’s filled with really bad guys, threats of violence, some blood and gore, and a great car chase through downtown Portland. So the question for Patrick Quinlan is: which shy, retiring, bodice-ripper-reading librarian was the model for Pamela?!

Curse of the Narrows, Laura MacDonald, Walker & Co., 2005

2006-04-22T12:47:00.000-04:00

We've heard a lot about disasters, both natural and man-made, recently, but very little ever about a ship collision in Halifax harbor in 1917 that nearly destroyed it and neighboring Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Halifax Harbor was a natural port for military ships during World War I. When a dangerously laden munitions ship, the Mont Blanc, collided with a Belgian relief ship, the Imo, the resulting explosion, tidal wave and fires injured and/or blinded thousands, killed hundreds, and destroyed or damaged nearly every structure. The blast was so intense it was felt 200 miles away and was later studied by Robert Oppenheimer to help predict the result of an atomic bomb. Laura MacDonald has done a masterful job of documenting this tragedy from the events leading to it through the heroic work done by rescue workers and medical people to the rehabilitation of towns and individuals. She studied reports written at the time, including those done by social workers, many of which hadn't been read in 80 years. It will make you wonder if the stories of 9/11 and Katrina will be recorded as well.

The Secret Supper

2006-04-18T12:35:00.000-04:00

I recently read another book featuring Leonardo Da Vinci, The Secret Supper by Javier Sierra. This is my favorite so far. It is set entirely in the past, in 1497. An anonymous note is sent to Rome accusing Da Vinci of heresy. Moreover, his current project, The Last Supper, includes symbols that could encourage others to his misguided faith. An Inquisitor is sent to investigate. The fear is palpable on both sides, fear of the inquisition, fear of the destruction of the true faith, and above all, fear for one's immortal soul. The stakes are high as Da Vinci's followers and the Inquisitor race to decode the meaning of the Last Supper in this thoroughly enjoyable book.

The Da Vinci Sweepstakes

2006-03-22T10:27:00.000-05:00

It's no coincidence that there are two books on the NYT bestseller list with the word Templar in the title. The Da Vinci Code read-alike sweepstakes are well under way. I recently read two contenders,appealing to two very different aspects of The DVC.
The Last Templar has a plot that may seem familiar--a stolen artifact, the Vatican willing to go to extraordinary lengths to regain it, intimations of descendants of Jesus. As one character states "It doesn't just happen in best sellers". Or maybe it does, as this book currently sits on the best seller list. This book may disappoint DVC devotees as it veers away from the conclusions of that book, but it is a well written, exciting read.

The Seven Deadly Wonders has the breathless quality of the DVC, but ramps it up a few notches. Exclamation points, italics and ellipses abound. The plot focuses on the missing capstone to the pyramid at Giza. If no one finds it, the earth will suffer severe sun scorching! But the country that finds it will rule the earth for a thousand years! The race is off! The heroes are the scrappy misfits from such small countries as Canada and Australia. By page 50, two are already dead and a third falls...
...into the only non-crocodile infested part of the lake. I ultimately found this book unreadable, but it might be a fun beach book for the action addicted. Everyone else, wait for the movie!!!

How many people does it take to write a Jodi Picoult novel?

2006-03-14T12:59:00.000-05:00

Looking at the acknowledgement pages of her latest, I count ten research assistants, seven consultant-types, and an illustrator. That's eighteen people--nineteen if you count Jodi herself--plus a team at her publishing house and a multitude of people who inspired and encouraged her, and told her what she needed to hear. Well, I suppose if you're going to crank out novels at this rate, you need a little help from your friends. (Still, TEN research assistants?)

And Jodi's fans will love, love, LOVE this book, The Tenth Circle. It is, I think, her best yet. It follows one family's journey through hell after the fourteen-year-old daughter is date-raped at a party. Or so she says. Talk about drama, this book has it all: adultery, drugs, lies, secrets from the past, and, although I wouldn't really call it a body count, there's a whole bunch of dead people. Oh, and there's self-mutilation and sex games for the kids. There are lectures about Dante, descriptions of the Alaskan landscape, and some truly wonderful insights into the culture of the native Yupiit people.

But Jodi doesn't stop there, she has more treats in store for us. Because the hero of the story is a comic book artist, each chapter features pages from his work-in-progress, a story which mirrors the story he's living, which is itself a version of Dante's Inferno. Clever, huh?

AND--how fun is this?--Jodi has a game for us to play. There are letters hidden in the illustrations which, when discovered, will spell out a quotation revealing the theme of the book, in case we didn't get it when she was beating us over the head with it for 385 pages.

Oops, did I say that out loud?

Okay, I hate her, and the ugly truth is that I only read her because she makes me feel superior. I read her because her writing isn't so bad as to be unreadable, but it's bad enough to be instructive. As a writer I learn, by her example, how not to write. Plus, I hate her--did I mention that?--and I love to hate her.

I hate the way she patronizes her audience with heavy-handed metaphors; I love the way she undermines her own literary pretensions with faulty usage. (I'm usually pretty forgiving when people mess up their subjunctive tenses, but when one of your characters is studying them in French class, perhaps you--or one of your research assistants--ought to learn a little something about them.)And what literary pretensions she has. Was Dante's Inferno incomplete with only nine circles? Has it been languishing, these many hundreds of years, waiting for Jodi Picoult to come along and improve upon it?

I could go on and on, but I'll just say this: I once visited Jodi's message board, and a reader had questioned her about the cavalier attitude of one of her characters. She responded by pointing out that it was just the character's humor, and then she condescendingly provided the reader with a definition of COMIC RELIEF, and added that this was just a little trick she picked up from Shakespeare.

Madam, you are no Shakespeare.

2006-02-28T11:12:00.000-05:00

Working With Roosevelt: FDR and the Era of the New Deal, by Samuel Rosenman, Harper, 1952
One reviewer of this "neglected book" (http://www.neglectedbooks.com) said, "When the US invaded Iraq, I was moved to reread Working with Roosevelt, Samuel Rosenman's memoir of his years as FDR's speechwriter." It IS a wonderful account of Roosevelt's political career from 1928 on, written by an insider who understood and loved him. Viewed a half century later only gives increased appreciation for the wisdom of many of FDR's programs and for his genius in presenting such new ideas and having them accepted.

2006-01-12T15:31:00.000-05:00

Most of my favorite books were nonfiction. They are, in no particular order:

Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell
Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls
Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
America, the Book, by Jon Stewart (a smart guy, and therefore much sexier than Matthew McConaughey)
The Shame of the Nation, by Jonathan Kozol (ditto)

My favorite book of fiction was Tooth and Claw, by T.C. Boyle

The Year of Magical Thinking

2006-01-11T15:21:00.000-05:00

I've really been enjoying everyone's posts and plan to add my own readership comments once I finish Joan Didion's compelling new book. Didion is a writer who makes better sense out of things for me -- the political and the personal. Will be back with more, but thanks everyone for your intriguing posts.
-- Wendy

2006-01-09T18:30:00.000-05:00

The Last Grain Race, by Eric Newby
Maybe everyone but me knows about Eric Newby, a wonderful British travel writer. I was introduced by our own Tom Wilsbach, and highly recommend Newby's The Last Grain Race. In days of yore sailing ships raced each other to bring the grain harvest from Australia to Britain. Newby was eighteen and aboard Moshulu, a 316 ft., 4-masted steel barque, on the very last such run in 1938-39. As he put it, "I knew then that I would never see sailing like this again. When such ships as this went it would be the finish." It's an amazing adventure, told with passion.

2006-01-07T21:28:00.000-05:00

Favorite Books of 2005
Here are a few of my favorite books of 2005 (not all are fiction, but not all are about baseball, either!): Pocketful of Names, Joe Coomer; On Beauty, Zadie Smith; Our Mothers' War: American Women at Home and at the Front during World War II, Emily Yellin; Birds without Wings, Louis de Bernieres; Dancing with Cuba: a Memoir of the Revolution, Alma Guillermoprieto; Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball, Howard Bryant.

Best Books of 2005

2006-01-06T11:59:00.000-05:00

I've updated the list of "Best Books" lists on the web site, at http://www.portlandlibrary.com/research/bestbooks2004.htm. I thought it might be fun to come up with a PPL Book Blog favorite books of 2005 list. To start off, here are some of my favorite books of the year: Kafka on the Shore, Never Let Me Go, History of Love, Small Island, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The two books that I read this year that completely amazed me were older--Atonement and The Known World.

I'd love to hear what others have enjoyed this year, and I'll compile a list.

Until I Find You, by John Irving

2005-12-23T14:33:00.000-05:00

John Irving should take a hard look at the people he's acknowledged as providing help and encouragement for his latest novel, Until I Find You. These so-called friends and well-wishers have done him no service in helping to produce this embarrassing piece of work. I realize there are sensitive issues involved, but friends don't let friends publish bad fiction.

Irving's public disclosure that the novel is autobiographical only makes it worse. If the man wants to write about his sexual abuse then he's certainly entitled to do so, but to publish this fictionalized account was ill-advised. A memoir might have served him better, although I personally have always preferred Irving's fiction to his nonfiction.

But not this fiction. What distinguishes Irving's previous novels is their tidiness. They are long and extensively detailed, but not excessively so, because they are so intricately constructed that every minor event serves its purpose, every detail is necessary--there is nothing wasted and nothing left over at the end.

Until I Find You, on the other hand, could have been subtitled A Series of Pointless Events. The plot, such as it is, is far too thin to support the cast of characters, which consists mostly of the narrator and a world of horny females who seem to exist for the sole purpose of affirming his universal and unceasing desirability. Literally hundreds of pages are devoted to demonstrating how women and girls of all ages just can't keep their hands off his "little guy." Other characters who, in another Irving novel, might have been lovingly drawn in all their endearing quirkiness are here reduced to blanket-sucking sound effects. Even the tattoo artists seem interchangeable, although the details of this subculture make for the best reading in the book. The most appealing characters are the bikers who appear--all too briefly--at the narrator's mother's funeral. I found myself wishing Irving had written a novel about them.

Garner / Kirstin Allio

2005-12-14T15:07:00.000-05:00

Garner is a small New Hampshire town with lots of secrets. The postman, who is writing an idiosyncratic history of the town, knows more than his share. The town is in decline, and, unable to make a living farming, residents search for other ways to get by, such as taking in tourists from New York City. When the postman discovers the body of a young girl, all of the secrets are brought to the surface.

This is a beautifully written book.

Pigtopia/Kitty Fitzgerald

2005-11-29T15:36:00.000-05:00

A beautiful little book. Born with a giant head, Jack has been called a freak all his life. After his father's disappearance, he completes his father's plan to build a secret Pig Palace underground. The pigs provide the love and comfort he cannot get from his cruel and alcoholic mother. Lonely for human contact, he decides to share the secret with Holly, a teenager who seems sympathetic. The two form a friendship, but threats from the outside world soon spiral out of their control. I highly recommend this book to all humanpigkind.

Knife of Dreams

2005-11-25T14:41:00.000-05:00

This is Volume 11 in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. The last few volumes in this series have been disappointing and this was no different. I stayed up all night reading the first 4. I loved the characters and the world they lived in. Then, as the characters got older, they got less interesting. Millions of new characters (or so it seemed) and an equal number of subplots meant that each doorstopper volume covered about a day after catching up with each character. Things start to move forward again in this volume, but all of the strong female characters are imprisoned, kidnapped, drugged, or pregnant (the kind of pregnancy that leaves you incapable of making decisions). The male characters are now hardened killers and one dimensional. Occasionally, the women around them will exchange sad glances. It really makes me appreciate Harry Potter, for all that he has gone through, he remains recognizably Harry.

I might still recommend this series to someone starting out, in the hopes that they are a slow reader and will never make it to volume 11, but not without reservations.

2005-11-10T14:19:00.000-05:00

Doctorow's "the March" was a decent civilwar novel but still didn't feel to me that it broke any new ground in that genre, despite its press

2005-11-05T17:24:00.000-05:00

We had a very good discussion Thursday of the book Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, part of the Opening Windows series. I really enjoyed the book, set in Rhodesia in the late 1960's. Tambu is a young girl in a traditional family determined to get an education, and must struggle against her relatives who don't feel girls need education, and the white society that sees her only as an African.

One of the participants suggested coming up with a list of recommended Indian and African fiction. We'll compile a list and post it on the web site. Any suggestions?

2005-11-03T18:14:00.000-05:00

Screwball, by David Ferrell.
Morrow, 2003
Screwball is a tale of the Boston Red Sox (nonfictional team with fictional players), set in those dark days before the 2004 World Series. Hard to believe but the Red Sox are experiencing a horrendous losing streak. All of this changes when a miracle player joins the team. Ron Kane is a 110-mile-per-hour pitcher who can also hit, and the Sox management finally let themselves hope that they have a chance at the CHAMPIONSHIP. Unfortunately, Kane has one small problem: he’s a serial killer who likes to decapitate elderly fans and carve their heads up. When Sox management learn this, through a series of dark maneuvers, they have a moral dilemma. Turn Kane in and lose the chance of finally becoming world champions, or throw the cops off the scent until the season is over? What a fun way to ease out of the baseball season!

2005-11-03T10:23:00.000-05:00

Innocent by Harlan Coben 2005
Audiobook from Books-On-Tape
Read by Scott Brick
Twisting, turning emotionally charged story. Once Matt innocently intervenes in a fight and ends up a killer...things begin to unravel. People show up dead and all signs point to Matt. Matt and his wife Olivia fight to save their future together. Compelling tale of the choices we make and the repercussions that are forever with us.

2005-11-03T09:38:00.000-05:00

A catch of consequence
A very readable historical fiction, this book doesn't have the most original plot, but makes up for it with detailed settings, and interesting characters. The book starts in Boston, the day after the Boston Tea Party. Makepeace Burke is checking her lobster pots amongst the flotsam of the previous day's chaos when she rescues a British aristocrat from drowning. The Sons of Liberty are not pleased to find a Tory in the tavern they use for secret discussions. Makepeace flees Boston, marries the aristocrat, and has the usual difficulty finding acceptance by his family and acquaintances. If you enjoy historical fiction with a little romance, a little suspense, and a lot of triumphing over adversity, give this a try.

2005-11-02T16:28:00.000-05:00

Unpardonable Crimes/Andrew Taylor
This is an excellent historical mystery set in 19th century England. It reminded me of The Quincunx, but with a sharper focus on solving the mystery. A young schoolteacher befriends one of his students and becomes tangled in a web of secrets and lies. A murder puts the teacher at risk, and it becomes urgent that he clear himself, without knowing who to trust. The young Edgar Allen Poe makes an appearance, and is the link that ties the characters together. In addition to the mystery, this book is a fascinating look at the class system. The teacher travels between the upper and lower classes and fits in neither. Highly recommended.