Room by Emma Donoghue.....

Thank you, thank you, thank you to my friend Jennifer (she's also my "boss" at my volunteer job) for mentioning this book.

Room by Emma Donoghue is about a woman who has been held captive in a room for seven years. The story is told from the point of view of Jack, her son, who is five years old and has never been outside this room.

Jennifer told me almost exactly that much information about the book as I have revealed, and I'm so glad she did. The story seems a tad bizarre at the beginning, and I might have been lost if I hadn't known part of the story's origin.

I think Emma Donoghue did a terrific job of telling the story through Jack's eyes. I think it was genius the way she revealed very adult themes through the language of a five-year-old.

A couple of examples of Jack's precocious (and precious) use of language:

"Houses are like lots of Rooms stuck together, TV persons stay in them mostly but sometimes they go in their outsides and weather happens to them." 

"The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it's going to be the next minute."

"The little cards with numbers all over are called a lottery, idiots buy them hoping to get magicked into millionaires."

I left out a couple of my favorite quotes from Jack because they might reveal too much of what happens in the book. I hate it when someone does that to me, so I don't want to spoil it for anyone else.

I love this little guy so much. And it's not JUST because he shares his name with my brother AND with one of my blogger pals. He's honest, he forces grown-ups to be honest, and he is true to himself. 

Definitely a good read. Make that a wonderful, awesome, well-worth-your-time read.

The Racketeer by John Grisham......

Image from jgrisham.com

I have been a fan of John Grisham's writing (and John Grisham the man) since his first book, A Time to Kill. Hubby got burned out on the entire legal profession, and especially Grisham's books, and he stopped reading him. I have remained loyal, though (as I am wont to do), and I have enjoyed all of his books.

The Racketeer is about a lawyer (surprise!!!) who is in jail for something he didn't do. (Aren't they all? But this one seems legitimate. Because he wrote it that way.) I won't give any more details, because I'm terrible at providing a summary of a book without giving something crucial away. I sort of started figuring out the end of the book, but I had to read all the way to the end just to make sure it didn't have a sudden twist a la The Partner.

Grisham's writing has a sense of humor, a sarcastic one at times, which is probably why I like it so much. Grisham isn't afraid to poke fun at the legal profession (probably because he doesn't have to play that game anymore) or the "judicial" system at large.

I saw Grisham on Jon Stewart's show last week, and he was not only charming and funny, but he also held his own with Jon Stewart, and not many people do that. I see so many people on that show who think they are going to be taken seriously, and they find out pretty quickly that Jon isn't there to be serious. Grisham was delightful and entertaining.

The only negative thing I have to say about this book stems from my own shortcoming. The narrator of the book plainly states that he is a black man at the beginning of the book, but I still kept picturing him as white. I'm not racist by any means, and his color was significant at several points in the book. Not only did I picture him as white, I kept seeing John Grisham himself when I pictured the main character. It probably didn't help that I had just seen him on television.

I just thought of another negative. Grisham switched back and forth between present tense and past tense depending on whether he was speaking from the narrator's point of view (present tense) or filling in some blanks by narrating action going on elsewhere (past tense). I'm such a purist that I think writers should choose one or the other, but not switch back and forth between the two in the same story. But maybe I'm just being picky. Oh, and he split an infinitive or two. Yes, I realize that IS being picky. Purist=pickiness?

Negatives aside, this book was very entertaining. Occasionally I even stopped playing Hay Day long enough to read several pages. That's high praise.

Flashback Friday - Dick and Jane........

I hadn't thought about the Dick and Jane books in YEARS. We used these in elementary school when we were learning to read.

I don't remember if it was first or second grade when we used these books. It seems there was a series of books as opposed to a single book. (Someone help me here!)

One reason I can't remember which grade it was is because I went to both first and second grades in the same year. They didn't know what else to do with smart children way back then. There were no gifted, SCOPE, challenge, or whatever classes. I thought for the longest time that they moved me up to second grade because I wouldn't go to sleep during nap time.

These books started my lifelong love of reading, and I'm embarrassed to say that when I saw the book advertised in a catalog, I got a little teary-eyed. Then I got on the computer.

I got off the computer approximately $130 later. (The book didn't cost that much, but I saw several other things I simply couldn't live without.)

I almost didn't want to take the plastic wrap off the book. But I wanted to see the pages, smell the newness.

It was just like the feeling I had when I was learning to read. I wanted to see what Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot, and Puff were up to. (These books are probably the reason my first dog's name was "Puff.") I couldn't wait to open the book and discover new things.

It's pretty much still like that today.

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner.....

Image from barnesandnoble.com

Image from nytimes.com

I don't usually include pictures of the authors when I write about books, but I was taken with this woman's beauty and wanted her lovely image on my blog. I would like to look just like her when I grow up.

In the Shadow of the Banyan is a novel, but it is Vaddey Ratner's story. It is told from the point of view of a seven-year-old girl whose family is uprooted by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in 1975.

I was woefully ignorant of the atrocities associated with the Khmer Rouge. Did we not learn about it in high school as a part of current events? (Damn, I hate saying that.) Or was I just not paying attention? Could it be that I was so immersed in myself that I was completely unaware that millions were dying on the other side of the world? Don't answer that.

This story is one of love, loss, unimaginable horror, and the resilience of the human spirit. Mostly it is about survival. It is beautifully written, and it is hard to believe that the author came to the United States at the age of 11 and knew no English. She not only learned the language, she taught herself the craft of writing, and her use of words is positively poetic.

I love books like this one because they teach me in addition to entertaining me. I learned a great deal about the Cambodian culture and about the strength of a mother when it comes to protecting and taking care of her children. I feel so much smarter.

Then I wonder why I can't write that well, when I've been speaking the language all my life, and I feel dumb all over again.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple.....

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple is one of those books that I want to write a review of REALLY FAST, before I stumble on a REAL review of it and find out I'm not as smart as I thought I was. That's the reason I never, never, never, never (at least not on purpose) read book reviews BEFORE I read the book. I'm too easily influenced (which must explain the reason I found myself in a bar in a college town long before I had reached the legal drinking age of 18), and I don't want my opinion of a book to be colored by someone else's opinion, even if that person is way smarter than I am and has ten more degrees than I do. (Pity the fool, as Mr. T would say.)

Keep in mind that I don't write official, literary book reviews. I don't go into too much detail about the plot because I don't want to give anything away, and I don't attempt any in-depth analysis of characters or literary worth. I just tell whether or not I liked it.

I liked it.

I liked it a lot.

This book was a quirky little thing, and I'm surprised that I liked it because I don't usually DO quirky. Well, I DO quirky, which is the main reason I don't appreciate it when anyone ELSE does quirky.

(What is UP with all these all-caps words? And the parenthetical comments? Puh-lease!)

The book is told through a series of emails, faxes, memos, handwritten notes (which might have had more oomph if they had actually appeared handwritten, which they may have in print but not in the ebook I read on my iPad), notes home from school, scientific reports, doctors' reports, investigative reports, and occasional narration from the point of view of 15-year-old Bee (Balakrishna, no wonder she goes by "Bee") Branch. Her mother is a genius MacArthur-grant-winning former architect (I only found out what a MacArthur grant was the other day), and her father is a genius who works for Microsoft.

This book is delightfully funny, and not in that forced way that authors sometimes use where the reader just knows the author was trying to make him or her laugh. I found myself laughing out loud and asking myself, "Was that SUPPOSED to be funny?" After a while I realized that yes, it was supposed to be funny. It was a lot of funny. Just one example: One part had a frantic email from one character to another, and she was using a computer in a cyber cafe in some not-technologically-on-top-of-things country. She was running out of time, the computer kept substituting "b" for "g" and "g" for "b" and the comma key kept repeating. I'm not telling it very well, but trust me, it was hilarious.

It wasn't just the humor that kept me reading, though. It was a can't-put-it-down that I really couldn't put down, and not JUST when I was sitting up late because I didn't want to die from carbon monoxide poisoning. (That's a blog post for another night.)

I plan to look up some more books by this author. I hope her other ones are just as entertaining as this one.

Mad River by John Sandford.....

Image from target.com

I think Hubby has read everything John Sandford ever wrote. I've read a few of his, and while I find them very well-written and entertaining, I sometimes get burned out on the whole cops-and-robbers (except they're usually cops-and-murderers) theme.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The main character is Virgil Flowers, a detective with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Minnesota. Virgil has appeared in several Sandford books, but to be honest I can't remember how many of them I've read.

In this book Virgil is on the trail of a trio of killers who have gone on a rampage after a seemingly-routine robbery (burglary? I'm never sure which one) goes bad. Signs point to one of the killers being paid to kill the first victim, and the domino effect after the first crime is astounding.

I like Virgil Flowers mostly because he comes across as very REAL. (I realize I put that in almost every positive book post I write, which may tell you something about me that even I don't know.) Some crime writers have a main character who can do everything except leap tall buildings in a single bound. Set upon by a whole gang of thieves/robbers/murderers/thugs? No problem! Give me a break.

Virgil, however, doesn't know it all and doesn't always come out on top. He gets the slop beat out of him, not entirely of his own carelessness but sort of, and he sometimes has to rethink his approach. He's a good guy, though, and doesn't come across as arrogant or a know-it-all. I kind of wish Sandford would keep Virgil's sex life to himself, but I assume he's writing for a mostly male audience, and they are apparently into that sort of thing. I mean reading about it. Obviously they're into the actual act.

I also liked the fact that Sandford switched his narrative perspective sometimes and allowed the reader to see what is going on with the killers. It was interesting to see the thought processes they go through (when they bother to HAVE thought processes) and see what motivated them. They are evil through-and-through, but they are also human, and Sandford allows some of their human emotions to show through. Not enough to make us LIKE them necessarily, but at least enough to believe they could be real. Yikes.

The best endorsement I can give this book is that I read some of it during the Georgia football game on Saturday. Sure, it wasn't much of a game, but the fact that I could focus on a book while it was on is a huge statement.

The Inn at Rose Harbor by Debbie Macomber....

I downloaded The Inn at Rose Harbor for my iPad. I didn't care much for this book, and I can't really say why. It was on the New York Times Bestseller List, and I can't really say why about that either.

I didn't find the characters fully developed; they were more one-dimensional. Maybe I'm just picky, but it seemed the author just threw enough of some literary characteristics in the book to appeal to different groups. A little mysticism (talking to the dead and having them talk back), a little religion, a little macho gruffness, a little romance a lot of romance, a cute little dog. They all had their place in the book, but they didn't FLOW with the book.

The main character, Jo Marie Rose (really? you need THREE first names? just kidding, I know one of them is her last name, and two first names are standard here in the South), has recently lost her husband and she impulsively goes out and buys a bed-and-breakfast, never having had any experience even remotely associated with owning and operating one. Yet she has time to knit, cook meals for herself and her (two) guests, adopt a dog, schedule a renovation project (or two), meet the locals, bake bread, spar with the local handyman, take copious naps, and talk to her dead husband.

Yes, I realize it's fiction and I'm supposed to ... what's the phrase? ... suspend my disbelief?

I also found a grammatical error when the author said the dog "...laid down in front of the fire..." ARRGGGGHHHH!!!!! How many editors does it take to catch that? I know I'm a boorish grammar snob, but finding an error like that in a book turns me off. Way off.

It's an easy read, but I could have derived as much pleasure from reading the four or five issues of The New Yorker Magazine that I haven't gotten around to yet. Maybe more.

The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman.........

Image from amazon.com

I marvel at the ironies (or coincidences, I'm not sure what the difference is) that occur in my life. I had this book on my iPad and decided I would start it on the long bus ride to Pennsylvania. Right before I started reading the book, I had a conversation with my mother about whether or not I would accompany her on a trip to Australia in April (I won't).

Then I settled in to read the book, only to discover that it is set in a remote place off the coast of Australia. Did it change my mind about going on the trip? Almost. But not quite.

This description comes from Amazon.com:

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby. 

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them. 


I can't tell you how gripping I found this book. It is emotionally powerful, one of those where it's difficult to condemn ANY of the characters for their behavior, no matter how conflicting and contradictory it is. 

This book has a spot on my top-ten list of favorite books ever. Possibly top-five material. I fully intend to read it again. Not only does it have a compelling plot with marvelous characters, the writing is beautiful, poignant, flowing, and thought-provoking. 

I wish I wish I wish I wish I wish I had a book club with whom to discuss this book. Please read it so we can discuss it virtually. Thank you!

Cousin Susannah by Hazel Hucker......

Image from walmart.com

I would classify this book as escapist literature, but I don't mean to imply that it doesn't have merit. It isn't a literary masterpiece, but it is certainly stellar in its genre.

Set in England in 1794, this book is the story of a young girl who finds herself in the very worst kind of trouble, at the hands (well, it wasn't exactly his HANDS) of a man above her social class. Susannah is sort of caught between social classes, not exactly a laborer and not of the upper class either. She serves as a governess for a family who treats her very kindly, almost as a member of the family.

To get out of her predicament, Susannah seduces a newly-arrived curate (I must confess a complete and thorough ignorance of the different positions in the English church), who marries her in the belief that the child is his. This makes her sound like a slut, though, and I think what actually happened was the curate practically forced himself on her, and she allowed it to happen as a WAY out of her trouble. I don't think she sought him out, because I think that would make her a different sort of person.

I know this description sounds like one of those bodice-ripping Harlequin romances (not that I have any personal familiarity with THOSE **cough cough**), but it was a step above that. While the ending was somewhat predictable, it wasn't clear HOW the characters would arrive at that ending, so there was enough intrigue to keep me reading. Even past my bedtime, and even during a football game. That's high praise right there.

If you want to indulge in something that will make you feel warm and won't wear your brain out but won't make you feel stupid for having read it either, this book is for you.

Beach House Memories by Mary Alice Monroe.....

I have almost completely converted to reading solely on my iPad (or my Kindle if I'm outside in bright light). Every now and then when Hubby goes to the library, though, I tag along with him, and I feel guilty if I leave empty-handed. I mean, Hubby checks out four or five books at a time, and he is always finished with them before they are due back. The man is a voracious reader.

I went with him to the library the other day, in spite of the fact that I have about seven or eight unread books already downloaded, mainly because it was too hot to sit in the car, and this book caught my eye. I almost passed on it just because it had the word "beach" in the title. I love a good beach read, and I like reading ABOUT the beach, but I've been burned too many times by books that were proclaimed "excellent beach reads" and turned out to be major disappointments. Just because something is considered good beach reading doesn't mean it has to have a plot that is trite, writing that is adolescent, and characters straight out of a sitcom.

The main reason I DID check this one out is because it is set on Isle of Palms, an island right outside Charleston that is dear to my heart. It's where one of my high school pals has a condo, and where four of us got together and spent a magnificent weekend back in 2005. That weekend produces bittersweet memories now, as one of my friends died very unexpectedly from a heart attack just six months later. She was only 45 years old.

The main character, Olivia ("Lovie"), is from old-money and is married to the equivalent of old-money Charleston gentry. While the beginning and end of the book are contemporary, most of the book is a flashback to one summer (and part of another one) when her children were young. Lovie has always had a love/interest/passion/obsession in the island's sea turtles, and she becomes involved as a volunteer in an official study to determine the effects on the turtles if proposed development of the island comes to fruition.

I loved almost everything about this book. The characters are well developed, and they are REAL PEOPLE. We might not always agree with their decisions or the things they say, but they are as unpredictable and capricious as the real people in our lives are. There were just enough things left unanswered to make the story more intriguing but not frustrating. For example (and I don't think this will be giving anything away if any of you should decide to read this one), at the beginning of the book there is a brief mention that Lovie and her now-grown daughter, Cara, have been recently reunited after being estranged for a period of time. I was eager to find out at the end of the book what had led to the estrangement, but it is never revealed. And that's okay.

Even the "villain(s)" in the book aren't 100% detestable. Just like normal people, they have redeeming qualities even at their worst, so we are forced to tolerate them. Just like normal people.

This one had me teary-eyed, although it doesn't take much to make me weepy over a book. Even more significant, though, is the fact that I stayed up until 1:00 AM to finish it. Definitely put it on your list.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens......

Image from moonlightbookreviews.com

I wouldn't be so arrogant as to do a true review of this book. Truth be told, I don't do true reviews of ANY of the books I read. I just say whether I liked them or not, what I liked about them, what I didn't, whether or not I think anyone else should invest the time to read a book.

I said a while back that I wanted to intersperse my reading of contemporary literature with some of the great classics I either missed out on or stubbornly refused to read even when they were assigned to me. I also said after my last book review that I wanted to give my brain a rest and read something a little more uplifting.

This wasn't it.

I take that back... It WAS uplifting in that the story ended the way it should have, with wrongs righted, questions answered, good rewarded, evil punished, and everyone living happily ever after. At least the ones who deserved it.

I don't think I was ever assigned to read Oliver Twist, because I should have remembered at least the Cliffs Notes version if I had been. I THINK I was assigned to read Bleak House in college, but I couldn't make it through it.

I've probably related here the story of being assigned A Tale of Two Cities when I was in high school. It was for a social studies class, which I was naive/immature enough to find "not fair" or something equally stupid, and I put off reading it until the night before the test. Then I tried to cram it all in, flipping pages rapidly and skimming my way through. Feeling smug, I turned the last page, only to read, "End of Volume I." What an idiot.

I became a fan of Dickens the next time I encountered A Tale of Two Cities, when I had to teach it to ninth graders. (Is it a sign of what has happened to our educational system that I don't believe there's a group of ninth graders anywhere on the planet now who could/would understand A Tale of Two Cities? Or is that just my cynicism showing...again?)

The language of Dickens can be hard to decipher sometimes, and his punctuation and sentence structure drive me crazy. Did they change the rules at some point regarding commas, semi-colons, and colons, or did he make up his own rules as he went? However, Dickens is so obviously tongue-in-cheek sometimes and downright sarcastic at others that I am forced to admire his work. I especially appreciate the fact that many of his books were first published in installments, and he couldn't even go back and change his mind about a plot line. Talk about commitment to the structure of a novel...

Anyway, I enjoyed Oliver Twist, and I may take on Bleak House. But not tonight.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion.....

Image from joan-didion.info

I know it may appear that ALL I've been doing lately is reading book after book, and that is only PARTLY true. I've also been playing Words with Friends not only with friends, but with random opponents from the Internet. I sometimes latch onto things... One of my games today was with someone I'm pretty sure was a 7-year-old girl, and I know I should feel guilty about beating her 252 to 96 (or something similar), but I'm just competitive enough not to feel bad at all. I made two 7-letter words back-to-back (that's never happened before in the history of mankind), and I was going for the jugular. Please recommend a good, cheap, nearby therapist.

But I digress.

I have been doing more reading than I did when I was teaching (did I mention I'm retired now? ha ha), but a couple of the books have also been relatively short ones.

Blue Nights was another of the books in the Summer Reading list that appeared in The New Yorker. Out of all the ones of those that I've read so far, this is the one that I almost put down without finishing.

First of all, I didn't know Joan Didion from my next door neighbor (in fact, I know a little bit more about Joan, since I at least know her name), and I didn't realize this book was a sort of memoir. How much is too much to know about a book before one begins reading it? I don't typically read book reviews, even AFTER I've read it. I don't want to risk having missed the whole of the book's meaning and feel stupid. I certainly don't read reviews BEFORE I've read a book, because I either feel obligated to love the book or hate it, depending on the style, voice, and reputation of the reviewer.

The part that made me almost put the book down was a long section of questions. I don't know if I would classify them as "rhetorical" questions, but they went on for so long that I started looking for answers. Even if I had to use a cheat sheet.

The style was almost stream-of-consciousness, and sometimes that's too untidy for me. I don't want the story to be formulaic or predictable, but occasionally it needs to go in a straight line without looping around and around and back and forth.

The theme of the book is the author's efforts to cope with the death of her daughter, close on the heels of the death of her husband, and her introspection about a parent's love for a child and the whole process of aging. I'm afraid I'm not saying this very well.

Another thing I didn't like about the book was the fact that I never could figure out exactly how her daughter died. She had been diagnosed with both manic depression and borderline personality disorder, so I wondered if she committed suicide. The author mentioned multiple stays in ICU units, so I thought perhaps there were multiple suicide attempts. A review I read after I started this blog post, however, said she was hospitalized once with a viral infection that turned into pneumonia, from which she recovered, and then she fell ill with acute pancreatitis, from which she did not recover. (The review was from The New York Times, so I tend to trust the research.)

I realize it's a memoir and the author could choose how much to disclose. She is up front from the beginning about the fact that her daughter was adopted, but it is unclear why. I don't mean I need to know in intricate detail a couple's efforts to reproduce normally, but she tells just enough of it to be confusing. She says she was at a party on a boat when she mentioned to a friend that she and her husband were trying to have a baby, and the friend says (paraphrasing), "Oh, you should talk to Dr. ______, he's here tonight, he can get you a baby." Maybe it wasn't integral to the story (obviously it wasn't to her, and it is, after all, her story), but it made me feel like I hadn't been trusted with the whole story.

I don't mean to sound so negative. It wasn't a heart-warming story by any means, but I may also read the memoir she wrote after the death of her husband, The Year of Magical Thinking. First, though, I need to give my brain a rest with something more lighthearted.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.....

Image from http://www.julianbarnes.com/bib/senseofanending.html

Two book reviews back-to-back. I know, right?

I'm almost through with all the books I downloaded (and paid for) from the list I found in The New Yorker. Just in case you needed additional evidence of some of my (mild?) OCD tendencies, I have to read all of these books together - as a unit, like they were assigned for a class or something - before I can read anything else. But cheer up - I didn't read them in alphabetical order. So rest assured. (However, I did read this one after The Night Circus and before Blue Nights because I didn't want to read two books in a row with the word "night" in their titles. Sigh.)

The Sense of an Ending is told from the perspective of an English boy (later man) and his school chums. (Because they're English, I felt obligated to call them "chums" instead of "friends.") It is another very well written and highly descriptive book, but this one deals with the actualities of human thought and relationships as opposed to the fantasy world of the last book I reviewed.

Tony and his buddies muddle through school together and vow to remain BFFs (my term, not the book's, as I'm sure you could have guessed), but naturally BFs go their separate ways and there is no F. 

This book made me question many things about life and human nature.

• Lashing out verbally in moments of disappointment/anger
• Having said lashing outs come back to haunt one years and years later
• Friendships
• Jealousy
• Memory and memories
• Regret
• Aging, gracefully or otherwise
• The power of words to harm and damage, the scope of which can never be repaired with any number of additional words
• Relationships

Very thought-provoking and enjoyable to read, this book leaves a few loose ends that I've come to appreciate in my (hope hope hope hope) adulthood. I used to hate a book that didn't tie everything up neatly at the end, but only recently have I come to realize that's not the way life works. 

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern....

Image from indiebound.org

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern was another book in the summer reading suggested list I found in The New Yorker.

It was a very, very, very different book from those I usually read. And I'm so glad I read it.

Except for the fact that the author makes me feel like an abject failure as a writer. I can never reach her level of vivid description and imagination.

The Night Circus is a venue for a challenge between prodigies of two men with magical powers. When the book opens, a young girl is being delivered to one of the men, and she has a note pinned to her dress. When the man looks at her, it is like looking into his own face, and he utters the words more than likely spoken by a billion men in the same situation, "Oh f***." (I thought at that moment he and Hubby might be related.)

This book is part love story, part mystery, part fantasy, part science fiction, and wholly enjoyable. I'm very glad I branched out from the familiar and experimented with reading something outside my typical choices.

I have just read a few reviews of the book, and most people did NOT like the book, for the same reasons I enjoyed it. So you'll have to decide for yourself whether it's worth your time or not. As one reviewer said, it's not like it's going to change your view of the world or make you realize something tremendous about yourself. I found the imagery and fantastic (in both senses of the word) description very entertaining.

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan.....

Image from articles.chicagotribune.com

This book was another summer reading selection recommended by The New Yorker. If I PAY to download a book, you better believe I'm going to read it. I'm just sayin'.

Maine is about several generations of a family, told from the viewpoint of four of its women, who own a beach house on the coast of ... you guessed it ... Maine.

Alice is the 83-year-old matriarch of the family; Maggie is her 32-year-old granddaughter; Kathleen is Maggie's mother and Alice's daughter; Ann Marie is Alice's daughter-in-law.

This is one of those books that changes narrator with each chapter, seeing a different woman's point of view in each chapter. I'm not a fan of that method, because it makes me feel a little foolish. Just when I've begun sympathizing and identifying with a character, the viewpoint switches and I see that character from a different woman's point of view. I suppose the author's intent is to allow the reader to see some good in each of the characters. Instead I wound up hating them all.

Not really, but I did want to reach into the book and slap some of them around.

This book didn't leave me feeling warm and fuzzy, but it was very real. It portrayed some family dynamics so well that it felt a little ... raw. Like she had read my diary or something. Or worse, my daughter's.

Definitely worth reading, though.

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje ......

Image from goodreads.com

I downloaded (and paid for) several books on my iPad simply because they were featured in a "Summer Reading" list in The New Yorker magazine. I love The New Yorker, but it doesn't take long for me to get behind on issues.

This book was among those mentioned, and the first of the group I've read.

I hope the rest of them can live up to this one.

The Cat's Table is about a sea voyage from Sri Lanka to England and the events that occur among the passengers on the ship. The story is told from the point of view of Michael, who was 11 years old when he made the journey to join his mother in England.

I think I would characterize this book as a calm thriller. (I just made that term up. Can I keep it?) There is enough action to keep you turning (swiping?) the page, but it's not the shoot-em-up variety.

The action isn't what makes the book for me, though. It's Ondaatje's command of the English language. There were several instances where I stopped just to let a sentence roll around in my head for a few minutes, sort of like you would savor a piece of chocolate instead of gobbling it down. (If one were capable of such a thing, that is.)

Here are a few examples. They are taken out of context, obviously, but I'm focusing on the language itself.

"Punishment, it turns out, never did train or humble some of us into complete honesty."

"...she breasted her cards about her motive for travelling with them." (I had never considered the word "breast" as a verb before.)

"I could not tell whether everything taking place was carefully legal or a frenzy of criminality."

"So we came to understand that small and important thing, that our lives could be large with interesting strangers who would pass us without any personal involvement."

"For he also had witnessed the people I saw that night, with whom we had felt so oddly aligned, whom we would never see again. Only there. In that night city of another world."

"We keep wanting to save those who are forlorn in this world. It's a male habit, some wish fulfilment."

"There is a story, always ahead of you. Barely existing. Only gradually do you attach yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your character. You find in this way the path of your life."

"There were four or five cottages overlooking the sea, and she snuggled the car beside one." (One word - "snuggled" - made this a completely different sentence. It could just have easily said "parked," but I prefer the word he used.)

"She said the marriage had been a cautious one, and she had stepped out of it, recognizing it was 'too cold a building' to live in for the rest of her life."

"A twenty-minute ferry ride that felt like an echo, a small rhyme from the past, as my cousin Emily had been to me during this last day and night."

When I downloaded this book, I didn't realize it was by the same man who wrote The English Patient. I haven't read that one either (but I've since downloaded it), and I didn't see the movie. Perhaps I will also watch the movie, but only after I've read the book.

This is definitely worth the read. The characters, the plot, the mystical setting of the ship, everything about this book is top quality.

Usually when I read a book, I think to myself, "I could write that." Not this one. I found myself thinking over and over, "I could never come up with that melodic phrase." What a pleasure to read.

Summer People by Aaron Stander....

Image from amazon.com

From Amazon: "It is late June in Michigan's gold coast resort area. The summer residents are settling in for the season and the tourists are beginning to flood the highways and beaches. But the idyllic vision of a summer at the shore is suddenly shattered by a gangland-style shooting. This murder is quickly followed by the deaths of three more summer residents, each taking place under suspicious circumstances. At times hindered by local politics and the proverbial tension between the summer people and the natives, Sheriff Ray Elkins searches for the possible links between the four victims. As he probes into their tangled lives and dark histories, he finds both the motive and the possible murderer."

I would have read this book anyway after reading this description, but as it is I only found it AFTER I read the book. And the question that jumps to my mind is, "Did we read the same book?"

I mean, the details are the same, but I would certainly argue with the last sentence.

Let me back up a bit. The book begins with what appears to be a professional killing, but no one appears to have any suspects or a motive. Then there is an automobile accident, a heart attack/drowning, and a fire at the marina, all seemingly unconnected. The sheriff has his doubts, as the book description says, and he begins to try to piece things together.

The problem for me is with the writer's point of view and style. He uses the omniscient point of view to allow the reader to see some shadowy person behind the wheel of a boat involved with the heart attack/drowning victim. We see another (or the same) shadowy villain in a vehicle behind the one that crashes, killing its occupant. Same with the fire at the marina.

Only these are never connected in a coherent way. They are sort of explained by the sheriff's theories at the end, and he thinks he knows who the killer is, an Indian woman who was victimized by some nebulous group of "white boys" years and years ago. One of the sheriff's acquaintances, a woman, sets off on her own to find the woman the sheriff suspects, and after spending hours with her, comes back to report to the sheriff, "You'd like her." The book ends with the deaths unsolved, the woman in question returning to wherever she lives now, and no one the wiser for the possible connection.

I guess you could say it was a real-life ending, since not all crimes are neatly explained with loose ends tied up and the good guys living happily ever after and the bad guys either getting what they deserve or spending their remaining days behind bars. But it was a BOOK for Pete's sake, and it should have ended better than this.

Some authors tend to describe things to death, and for the most part Stander wasn't one of THOSE. It did seem, though, that every now and then he would catch himself and think, "Oh crap, I'm supposed to throw some description in here," and he would fire off a torrent of adjectives. His description wasn't BAD, but it wasn't used consistently.

I did like his characters, though. They seemed real, no larger-than-life sheriff, no handcuffed confessions, no unlikely epiphanies. For the most part they were just normal folks going through their normal routines, and they were likable sorts.

But the elements of the plot weren't connected well enough for me, and the ending pretty much sucked. Skip this one.

Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess by Dvora Meyers.....

Image from unorthodoxgymnastics.com

I would be willing to bet my next paycheck (and I only get two more, so you know I'm confident) that almost no one reading this blog will also read this book. Now don't go seek it out and read it just to get my next paycheck, because due to the wonder of direct deposit, that ain't happening.

I read a comment about this book on one of the many gazillion several gymnastics blogs I keep up with, and just the title was intriguing enough for me to pay $2.99 to download it to my iPad. The write is an admittedly obsessed gymnastics fan, and that means we have something in common already.

The similarities pretty much end there. Unlike me, the author of this book actually DID gymnastics, although she says she wasn't very good at it. She writes about the conflicts between her practices and competitions and her family's orthodox practice of Judaism, so I learned a lot more about that religion than I did when I dated a (mostly unorthodox) Jewish guy in college. (His family WAS orthodox enough that his mother hated me, so there's that.)

Dvora Meyers has a good sense of humor and is adept at interjecting it into her writing. (Is that redundant?) I laughed out loud a few times while reading this book. Her descriptions of turning dolls into gymnasts and "competing" them until they completely tore apart (some would say the same is true of actual elite gymnasts under Marta Karolyi these days) were particularly humorous, as were her episodes with her mother.

A couple of things disappointed me, but not so much that I cast the book aside unfinished. For one thing, I would have liked to read about her personal experiences with gymnastics. I would like to know which skills she mastered, which gave her fits, what skills made up her routines (if she progressed that far - in the early stages of gymnastics training, every girl's routine is exactly the same). I would have liked to read about her personal triumphs and failures and what made her stop doing gymnastics. She jumped from a section on streaming gymnastics videos online (she compared it to people who watch porn, something else to which I could relate and that made me laugh out loud) to her experiences with break dancing, during which she also broke away from her orthodox observation of Judaism and began competing and practicing on the Sabbath. Either she left out the connection or I missed it completely, although I can see how the two activities would be related.

I also caught several grammatical errors, which may have slipped through because I believe this book was an electronic-only publication, and it may not have been held to the same strict standards as a print book would have been. She misused the verb "to lie" on two occasions ("laying on my bed..." and one other similar error), and the word "it's" was used in the possessive where it should NOT have had an apostrophe. These are two of my pet peeves, and if she considers herself a writer to the point she chooses poverty in order to pursue it (according to the afterword or whatever it's called at the end of her book), then she needs to pay closer attention to details like that one. The other one I can almost forgive, because she misspelled a gymnast's injury as "tendonitis" when it should be spelled "tendinitis." I realize it's a tenDON, but for some reason the "o" changes to an "i" when it becomes inflamed. I wouldn't know that if I hadn't had a job as a medical transcriptionist at a veterinary college, where a physician's dictionary was my very best friend. But if I know it, and I'm a lowly blog writer with as many as three devoted followers, she should know it too.

This was a light and easy read, something to give the brain a rest from the heavier stuff I've read lately. At least this one didn't have any killing in it. Even the Barbie dolls (barely) survived.

The Abduction by Mark Gimenez.....

Image from barnesandnoble.com

This is the second book by Mark Gimenez I've read, and the second one I've downloaded from the library's ebooks. I'm getting pretty good at this (cheaper) method of reading books.

(I still don't understand how that works. I go to my library's site, it sends me to Amazon, which sends me the book, and says I have two weeks to read it, but it doesn't go away from my iPad. And why are there a limited number of copies of ebooks available anyway, if they are digital?)

This book is about the abduction (duh) of a pretty young girl whose mother is a high-powered Dallas attorney and father is the next Bill Gates-type technogeek. HIS father is ex-Army Green Beret from the Vietnam days, and the plot gets pretty complicated with everyone connected to everyone else involved in this story.

I liked the plot okay, especially since everything worked out the way it was supposed to. Even the falseness of the "happily ever after" ending didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the book. Much.

There was a lot of foul language, which I suppose should be expected from ex-military types and high-powered attorney types, but it still gets my hackles up just a bit. (Is that the correct expression?) I think foul language has its place, but it can be overdone. I don't think it was a case of laziness in this book, as I've accused other authors of, and I would probably say some of the same words in the same situation. But maybe not so many times in the same sentence.

My main gripe with the book was that the characters were overcooked. The bitchy mother, attorney at law, was a bitch through-and-through. She not only belittled her husband and physically attacked him, she beat the crap out of the man they arrested for abducting her daughter. I mean she did some damage. (Side note: That man was NOT the man who had abducted her daughter, and he committed suicide in jail, and that bothered me a great deal. So many everything did NOT turn out like it was supposed to.) She had very few redeeming qualities until the very end of the book. It was hard to pull for her even then because she had been so 100% not likable through the rest of the story.

The father technogeek was a technogeek through and through. He flashed back to days of his youth when he was repeatedly beaten up by bullies at school and on military bases, and the flashbacks were all the same. He was videotaping his daughter's soccer game when she was abducted, and when law enforcement officials were scrutinizing the video for evidence, the father was heard talking on his cell phone to ... someone ... his broker maybe? ... about his company going public and becoming a billionaire and even refers to himself as a "geek." Isn't the first rule of geeks that they don't KNOW they're geeks? Of course he snaps out of his geekiness right when he's supposed to, and he becomes a manly man overnight. Forgives his wife, she forgives him, they live happily ever after.

The bad FBI people are thoroughly bad, the good FBI people are thoroughly good, even when they know they might lose their jobs. The former Green Beret manages to overcome his nightmares about the Vietnam War and his failures there in his quest to save his granddaughter. Oh, and he kicks his alcoholism too. And reunites with HIS wife.

Even Gracie, the little girl, is just too cute. She's athletic and smart as a whip and loyal to a fault, and there's nothing not to like about her. How many REAL ten-year-olds can you say that about? Hmmmm? I'm not trying to be mean, but she just wasn't real. Cute and lovable, but not very real.

One more thing: I think the author tried to step out of his true voice every now and then and interject some humor into his writing. Grisham can get away with that, and this guy probably could too, if he chose his moments. Here is an excerpt, taken from a high-drama moment when the kidnappers are being surrounded and it's do-or-die time for the heroes:

"The suspect was crouched behind an old truck and loading a goddamned grenade launcher! On the ground beside him was an MP-5 fully automatic machine gun! And FBI Special Agent Pete O'Brien was betting that truck didn't have an up-to-date vehicle registration on file with the Idaho DMV!"

See what I mean? And the exclamation points...excuse me?

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. I hope I haven't ruined the ending for anyone who had entertained thoughts about reading this book.

I will probably read another Gimenez book, but I'm going to take a break for a while. Read something with less drama

Canada by Richard Ford.....

My apologies, but I interrupt my look back into my skydiving days with a review (sort of) of the most recent book I've read.

Image from frogenyozurt.com

I don't remember what made me want to read this book. Possibly I saw it mentioned in some magazine or the other, but I wouldn't have read a complete review of it. (It's against my personal philosophy to read a review before I read a book. And I hesitate to read a review after I've read a book, because too often I find myself thinking, "Hmph. Didn't get that out of it AT ALL." And I don't need additional reminders that I'm not as smart as I think I am.)

Whatever compelled me to read this book, though, it was important enough that I was willing to PAY for the digital version of it as opposed to A) checking it out of a virtual library; or B) waiting until the price came down. In fact, I PRE-ordered it and then forgot about it until I saw a charge on my credit card statement that I didn't understand. Sigh.

This book is the story of a 15-year-old boy, Dell Parsons, and his twin sister, Berner (isn't THAT a cool name?) whose parents rob a North Dakota bank. Not only do they rob the bank, they do it in a very inexpert manner, getting caught immediately and throwing their children's future lives into chaos and uncertainty. The story is mostly about Dell and how he copes after his parents are imprisoned and his sister runs away.

One of the things I like about this book is the way Ford drops an important piece of information rather unexpectedly at a time when it doesn't fit. For example, he has Dell, the narrator, mention rather offhandedly and informally that his mother committed suicide in prison, but it is pages and pages and pages (or clicks and clicks and clicks) later that it is mentioned again. These tidbits aren't exactly spoilers; I guess in an odd way they have the opposite effect, to make you want to keep reading.

I couldn't quite put my finger on how I would characterize Ford's writing throughout most of the book. His sentence structure and word choice were challenging but not frustrating. Here are a couple of examples. Keep in mind, I chose these not for the meaning they impart, but for the structure.

There is much to learn here from the game of chess, whose individual engagements are all part of one long engagement seeking a condition not of adversity or conflict or defeat or even victory, but of the harmony underlying all.

I learned that things made only of words and thoughts can become physical acts.

 

It finally occurred to me when I was almost finished with the book that the style (at least to me) is very similar to Faulkner. Except that Ford didn't create sentences that went on for pages and pages on end, thank you very much for that. His descriptions are thorough - very, very, very, very thorough. Similar to one of my favorite writers, Anne Rivers Siddons, Ford has a knack for making a story's setting become almost one of the characters.

I haven't read anything else by Ford, but apparently he has written a series of novels including The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day - the first novel to win the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award (SURPRISE!!) - and The Lay of the Land. I may try to read that series, but I need to give it some time first. My brain is tired.