WHEN THE KILLING'S DONE by T.C. Boyle

T.C. Boyle is one of my favorite writers. He has an amazing way with words, being able to really capture the essence of a point in time, often with multiple senses, without bogging down the story or making it feel overbearing. He also does a great job with character development and dialogue. His works, though fiction, seem real. His novel about Frank Lloyd Wright, The Women, is my favorite book of his I have read.

When the Killing's Done is typical Boyle. The story takes place around the Channel Islands off of California. Alma Takesue is a National Park Service biologist who is out to eradicate invasive wildlife from the islands. Dave LaJoy is an owner of a chain of successful electronic retail stores who has issues with Alma killing off animals of any kind. He heads an organization called For the Protection of Animals that tries a variety of techniques to stop Alma from going through with her plans.

Although Alma and Dave are the main characters, there are also a number of secondary characters, the most notable being Dave's girlfriend Anise. The reader is taken into the past and learns about Alma's mother and grandmother as well as Anise's mother. These little forays help in the understanding of the characters and their motivations. The narration of the story also jumps around from character to character presenting the viewpoints of each character and making it unclear as to who is the good guy and who is not.

While Boyle paints pretty literary pictures, there are some negatives with this book. First, it is extremely stressful. The antagonism between Alma and Dave is obvious and incessant. They think of each other so much, they should be lovers instead of enemies. Both are committed to saving the environment, each in their own way. The way Boyle depicts their reasoning, it makes it difficult to determine who is right on an issue and who is wrong, or even if there is a right or wrong. The ending has a twist that even throws another entire viewpoint into the discussion; does either side even matter?

Another potential negative for some people is Boyle's vocabulary. I always learn new words reading his books and this one seemed better than most. I wasn't running off to look up new words as frequently as I did with other works of his. But it's like they say, why use a big word when a diminutive one will do?

Finally, and maybe it is just me, I really hate reading about smells. I think my sense of smell is my least developed sense and maybe that's why I get irked reading about smells. For better or worse, Boyle writes about smells.

A well-told story with great writing and developed characters outweigh the negatives. Of the Boyle books in our library, I'd probably put it third, behind The Women and Wild Child. The Women is very hefty and not a book that is a casual read. Wild Child is a collection of short stories, a format that Boyle excels at, but one that is different from a novel. So that makes this book a good one to pick up if you're looking for an introduction to Boyle's work.

--Jon

ALAN MENDELSOHN, THE BOY FROM MARS by Daniel Pinkwater

What?!?!?! A review of a kid's book not written by JJ? What is this world coming to?

The time had come for me to re-read Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy From Mars. I first read this book when I was nine years old and as an adult, I tend to go back and read it every two or three years. I've always enjoyed the story and it holds up pretty well, even after all these years.

The story is told by Leonard Neeble, a short, portly kid with glasses whose family has just moved to the neighborhood of West Kangaroo Park. He attends Bat Masterson Junior High School where all the kids seem to be tall, tan and don't wear glasses. Leonard doesn't fit in and struggles with school as a result.

One day a new kid starts school there, Alan Mendelsohn, who is also "uncool". Mendelsohn is from the Bronx and the two become friends.

Leonard starts to see a psychiatrist who recommends he takes some time off from school. Alan starts a riot which results in him being suspended. The pair use their time off from school to go into Hogboro to look for comic books. They encounter Samuel Klugarsh, a purveyor of books on the occult. He convinces the boys to purchase a course in mind control. They take the course home and learn how to control the actions of others. The only thing they seem to be able to get anyone to do, though, is to make them take off their hats and rub their bellies (with an occasional dance).

Bored, they return to Klugarsh and trade the course in for one on Hyperstellar Archeology, which involves the study of lost civilizations like Atlantis and Waka-Waka. The course comes with Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary and seems like complete nonsense. It tells how there are chickens as smart as Einstein and that packaged pudding can be turned into a deadly explosive with the addition of an unnamed substance found in most households. The pair make fun of the course until it mentions them by name, saying one day they will read about the lost civilizations.

They meet up with Klugarsh at the Bermuda Triangle Chili Parlor where a member of a biker gang there having chili exposes himself as noneother than Clarence Yojimbo, a Venusian man and author of the aforementioned Dictionary. He tells them that Klugars hahs everything mixed up and gives them the true key to reaching "lost civilizations", one of which they travel to and save from a trio of Nafsulian pirates.

I love this story. It's a lot of fun and very clever. The original, pictured on the left, isn't easy to find. But Pinkwater relased a book of five of his novels, including Alan Mendelsohn, which is pictured on the right. I did not read all of the stories in there. I find Pinkwater to be uneven in his writings. The Last Guru, which is in Five Novels, also is good. I couldn't finish Slaves of Spiegel and didn't feel like reading the other two stories in Five Novels. My other favorite Pinkwater title is Lizard Music. Not quite as enjoyable as Alan Mendelsohn but a good one, nonetheless.

Some of you might recognize Pinkwater as he sometimes appears on National Public Radio as a commentator. He still writes children's novels. If you're looking for something off the beaten path for youngsters, check him out.

--Jon

CATCHING FIRE AND MOCKINGJAY by Suzanne Collins

So now I have read Catching Fire and Mockingjay, the last two books of the Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins.

After the first book, I wondered where the moral outrage against the leaders in the Capitol was. Well, it shows up in the second book. Unrest in a few of the districts is heard as rumor. Security is tightened in District 12, Katniss’s home. And a new hunger game is begun. This time the players are chosen from among the previous Hunger Game winners. So Katniss is back in the thick of things again, forming alliances with the other players and vowing to keep her friends from being killed.

And then fighting against the Capitol takes over in all the districts and Katniss reluctantly becomes the symbol of rebellion, the mockingjay, a bird that’s a cross between a mocking bird and a jay which can repeat the songs of humans.

Is Katniss in favor of the rebellion? Does she see it as a way to punish the Capitol leaders? Is she defending her friends and family? Is she guilty of the deaths of innocent people? Would she fight for survival if it meant killing her friends? Or is she being manipulated by the leaders of the rebellion who would repeat the crimes of the leaders of the Capitol?

In the end, all of what she was initially fighting for is lost, but for one steadfast relationship that leads her to a peaceful new life. Phew. At last.

SS

AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE by James Patterson and Hal Friedman

When I found Against Medical Advice by James Patterson and Hal Friedman while browsing the nonfiction collection, I decided to read it simply because a certain friend of mine does not appreciate James Patterson, a very popular fiction writer. Never having read a Patterson book, I thought it would be fun to try one. This story, which he co-wrote with Hal Friedman, is his first nonfiction book.

Cory Friedman woke up one morning when he was almost five years old with an uncontrollable urge to shake his head. His irrepressible movements and tics and unmanageable utterances began to take over his life. This book is the story of thirteen years of his life, living with Tourette’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder characterized by repetitive, involuntary movements and vocalizations called tics. His parents take him to many specialists and try different treatments. At some points Cory is taking so much medication, it is hard to distinguish whether his symptoms are caused by Tourette’s or by the side effects of the medicine.

The story is told in Cory’s voice. It is easy to read and very interesting. I was hoping for more information about the disorder, but this was just a surface tale of his day-to-day life of living with a very misunderstood illness. People were rude to him; he didn’t fit in at school; he felt like a failure most of the time. Throughout his life, his parents were supportive of him and took extreme measures to help him. At one point, Cory discovered that alcohol was the only thing that gave him relief from his tortuous and exhausting tics. His mom and dad intervened and sent him to a wilderness camp so he would escape all temptation and be forced to struggle through withdrawal.

Patterson’s co-author, Hal Friedman, is Cory’s father. He had to live through his son’s nightmarish teenage years, and has earned my respect.

The book ends on a good and surprising note, which is hard to believe, but full of hope. (Whether I’m going to read more by James Patterson – we’ll see.)

JJ

BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER MOTHER by Amy Chua

 

I read this book only after seeing Ms. Chua being interviewed on two different occasions on NBC’s Today. The first interview was with Matt Lauer who asked questions about her daughters’ musical accomplishments and why she wrote the book. Not an interview that made me stop making the bed to listen.  Meredith Vieira on the other hand, demanded explanation as to why she called her own daughter garbage and quoted demeaning arguments between Amy and Lulu from the book. As a parent of teenagers, this is what got me interested. My sons have never given me back talk, we have great relationships, but I’m always wary of this possibility looming in the background.

Ms. Chua point-blankly describes Chinese parenting versus Western parenting in very basic principles. Chinese parents treat children as resilient beings; they are innately tough and will rebound stronger as a result of struggle. Western parents treat their children as fragile beings who must be protected from emotional damage.  Western parents tend to encourage children to try out new things and cheer them on. “You never know if you’ll like it unless you try it.” Chinese parents assign their children to do something, set the bar high, and expect outstanding achievement while the parent cracks the whip to make it happen. Second best is unacceptable. Western parents are proud of their children while Chinese parents credit themselves for their child’s accomplishments. A Western parent would never do that! Yea,right!

Although a lot of the story is written to sell the book, with long dialogues of nasty arguments and cameo appearances of the girls’ father that leaves the reader wondering why he allows this to go on, the summation is that the task of parenting is daunting and there is no one perfect way. Learning from Amy’s mistakes – which she admits - and strengths can give a parent a new direction when working with their own child.

Amy let Lulu have control of her own violin playing and allowed her to try tennis.  Now my son practices his piano more and will continue to take lessons through the sport season (from a teacher less than a mile away, not a weekly 5 hour travel commitment), where in the past we took “time off” from piano to play.

Compromise.

--Kristin

THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC by Richard Russo

After reading Straight Man, I was looking forward to reading more of Richard Russo. I had heard good things about That Old Cape Magic and decided to read it. The two books share some similarities. The main character is a middle-aged male professor sort of going through a mid-life crisis. Whereas in Straight Man, the book is witty and entertaining, I thought TOCM was sort of sad and desperate. The writing was still terrific and I kept wanting to read it for that reason, but for that reason alone. I just don't know that a novel about someone else's personal problems is all that enticing.

Unfortunately, I don't there is much of a plot outside of the crisis. It felt like more of a character sketch. The thing is, and perhaps this is some of the appeal of the book to others, Russo's characters are very normal and mundane. Boring, even. The lack of anything special or positive about them made me not care about how the book ended or what happened to any of them.

I'm also not sure if I care whether or not I read more Russo. This wasn't quite terrible but it certainly wasn't Straight Man. Given the number of other books out there, I don't know if I feel like gambling on a third book by him.

KNOCKEMSTIFF by Donald Ray Pollock

This was a weird, crazy, depressing book. I'm going to steal a review from the author's website:

"Spanning a period from the midsixties to the late nineties, the stories in Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are woebegone, baffled, and depraved—but irresistibly, undeniably real. Rendered in the American vernacular with vivid imagery and a wry, dark sense of humor, these thwarted and sometimes violent lives jump off the page at the reader with inexorable force. . . . Donald Ray Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence and a bracing absence of value judgments. . . . Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place."

Knockemstiff, Ohio is a real place and the town from where Pollock hails. To me, the key words in the above review are "depraved", "sometimes violent" and "bracing absence of value judgments". Oh, and "sordid goings-on". Humor? Intelligence? If they were there, they were trampled by the depravity. I found this to be a rather disturbing book and although I read something somewhere where Pollock says that the stories are not based on real people, I'm not sure what is more disturbing - that the book might be based on real people or that Pollock thought them up.



Lest you think I'm kidding, that maybe I think of depravity as, oh, returning a library book late, here are some topic matters in the book: rape, incest, murder, drug and alcohol abuse.

While I did find the book to be weird, crazy and depressing (and sordid and disturbing), I thought the writing was pretty good. I just don't know that I thought it was good enough to say, hey, check it out but be aware of the content. There is plenty of good writing out there that isn't disturbing (like Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell which STILL sits on the Staff Picks shelf waiting for you, yes YOU, to pick it up and read it).

--Jon

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS by Rebecca Skloot

Okay, I need to admit that I was never one to excel at science classes. I made it to and through high school biology and then set my sights on more nonscientific pursuits in life (basically anything that did not involve cutting into frogs or stabbing pins through insects). So, I did not know much about cell growth or genetic science before reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Scientific smarts is not needed to enjoy this book. You can read it like a novel and fly through it, or you can read it like a textbook and learn more than you ever could from a class.

In 1951, George Gey cultured the first immortal human cell line using cells from Henrietta Lacks's cervix. Henrietta died in 1951 from cervical cancer. The HeLa cells (named for the first two letters of Henrietta’s first and last names) were a boon to medical and scientific research, soon becoming in demand around the world. With the HeLa cells, a polio vaccine was developed. They were also the first human cells ever cloned.

Rebecca Skloot learned about HeLa cells when she was young and eventually set out to uncover the history of the woman they came from. Years of research entwined Rebecca’s life with the embittered Lacks’ family, who received no financial compensation for the cells. In fact, it was not until 1973 that Henrietta’s family learned the cells were still alive. They later found out the cells had been commercialized, yet they received nothing.

  

The author’s Web site http://rebeccaskloot.com/the-immortal-life/ says: “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew. It’s a story inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we’re made of.”

Another great book!

JJ

RUNNING THE BOOKS by Avi Steinberg

Wow, wow, wow! Wow! Wow, wow, wow!

Did I mention wow? I loved this book. And yes, as a librarian, you'd expect me to be biased because this is about a prison librarian. Doesn't matter. This is just a great book.

The author, Avi Steinberg, is an interesting cross between successful and ne'er-do-well. He grew up in a moderately well-to-do family and graduated from Harvard. He's Jewish and was an absolute zealot in his childhood, studying scripture at all times. He lost his way in college, got involved with drugs a bit, wrote his senior thesis on Bugs Bunny, and found himself writing obituaries in his twenties, just sort of aimlessly going through life.

He attends a Jewish gathering where he is somewhat berated by his former mentor. Steinberg had recently seen an ad for a position as a prison librarian at a Boston prison. Motivated by his encounter with his mentor, he decides to apply and hopefully help those less fortunate than himself.

Steinberg gets the job and spends the next two and a half years in a sort of intriguing limbo. As a prison librarian, he is supposed to help the prisoners and provide them with books and resources to help them better themselves. He is, however, an employee and as such is supposed to keep himself detached from the inmates. The fine line he walks and the times he falls into one side or the other make up the majority of the book.

Steinberg's struggles is part of what makes the book so great. He is honest - with himself and with his readers. You can tell that there were certain inmates for whom he cared and wanted to see do well. But he knows also that these people are in prison for a reason and that most of them, if they get out, will return to a life of crime. Steinberg is even mugged at knifepoint by a former inmate at one point. The mugger recognizes Steinberg and comments that he still has books from the library. Their past together does not stop the mugger from taking what he wants.

This isn't the only encounter Steinberg has with former prisoners on "the outside". He runs into another inmate at a donut shop and sits and chats with him for a little bit. Suddenly, a former female prisoner comes out from the bathroom and the realization sets in that the male ex-con is now the woman's pimp.

It would take me a zillion edits for me to adequately express how I feel about this book. I like that Steinberg is not judgmental. There are some easy opportunities for him to generalize on race, economic and social status, etc. He does a good job at avoiding that and really is able to look at each individual as a unique person. He sees the good and bad and shares both sides with the reader.

Beyond that, the book is informative. You get an understanding of prisons from a very different standpoint. A prison librarian is in a special position. He or she does not have the authority of a guard. The librarian is usually a civilian employee. Because the librarian is often helping the prisoners, the guards aren't always on the side of the librarian. This can make for some awkward situations because, likewise, the librarian is not a prisoner and so the prisoners, too, are not always on the side of the librarian. It seemed like a tough job and ultimately, the stress of the job causes Steinberg to quit.

For me, one of the characteristics of an excellent work of non-fiction is the ability to make me want to learn more about something after I've read the book. Steinberg motivated me to want to learn more about a topic. There is a section where he delves into prisons and their history. That has prompted me to get a couple of books on prison architecture, which Steinberg gets into during the history section. It's not something I ever really thought much about but Steinberg made me want to learn more.

The only bad thing I can say about this book is the ending isn't quite satisfying. It's neither good nor bad. I guess it felt a little unfinished to me. Outside of that, this is an absolutely phenomenal book and one I will probably read again down the road. It has passed Unbroken for my top book of 2011.

Oh, I almost forgot. Love the dustjacket on this book, too. A portrait of Steinberg done with library date due stamps. Too cool.

--Jon

THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins

Katniss Everdeen and her family live in a futuristic country where districts are fenced off from wilderness and residents toil to provide the Capitol with all the food and energy that the leaders need. Conditions are spare and most residents go cold and hungry.

The Hunger Games are a diversion for the amusement of the Capitol. Two teenagers are chosen by lottery from each of the 12 districts. These 24 must fight to the death. When Katniss’s younger sister is drawn to represent her district, Katniss volunteers to take her place.

The Hunger Games is a fast-paced read which took me quickly through the set up and suspense of the games. I was expecting an outrage against the Capitol for forcing these teens into combat against each other. Instead, as is reasonable for facing death, Katniss deals with survival, humanity, and love at a personal level. I guess I’ll need to read the rest of the trilogy, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, to find out if enough rebellion exists to bring down the Capitol.

SS

THE MAN WHO LOVED BOOKS TOO MUCH by Allison Bartlett

Although the title suggests that this book could feasibly be about me, it is not. Sue recommended this to me thinking I would like this and boy, was she on the money. I liked this book a good deal.

The book, non-fiction, is about a man, John Gilkey, with an addiction. The guy loves to steal books. For years, he would acquire rare and expensive books illegally, usually by using stolen credit card numbers. He was aided by lax law enforcement who, by and large, often couldn't care less about the theft of a book.

Someone who did, though, was Ken Sanders, the security chair of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association and a bookseller himself. Sanders took his role as security chair seriously and managed to link several book thefts of Gilkey's together. By communicating with other dealers, he managed to catch Gilkey in a sting operation which sent Gilkey to jail.

Gilkey eventually got out (even though he had been jailed many times before) and went right back to stealing or planning to steal books. Gilkey was obviously a sick individual. He had no interest in reading any of the books, choosing to acquire them because he viewed them as symbolic of something more - wealth, power, intellect. He often talked with his father of leading a better life and creating an empire of sorts for them.

Sanders, however, was a much more interesting fellow. The more I read, the more I wanted to know about him and the less I cared about Gilkey.

In the end, it didn't matter because the book turned out to be largely about the author, Bartlett. I'm not sure why this was. She spends time trying to get herself interested in collecting books so that she might have a better appreciation of why people collect and what lead Gilkey to steal. Gilkey reveals a lot of things about his thefts to her which create some moral dilemmas for her.

I liked the book even though I didn't care for Gilkey or Bartlett. If not for Sanders, though, I probably wouldn't have liked the book as much. It's a nice light true crime book that I think would be a pleasant change of pace for most readers.

--Jon

THIEVES OF MANHATTAN by Adam Langer

 

I enjoyed and hated this book, pretty much simultaneously. On the one hand, it reads like a decent adventure story. Each chapter ends with a little bit of cliffhanger which makes you want to read more. It also is an interesting piece of metafiction. This is good and bad. On the one hand, it is interesting. On the other....

The book is about a writer by the name of Ian Minot. Young guy, can't catch a break and get anything of his published. He works as a barista in New York City and dates a Romanian girl by the name of Anya who has written a memoir of her life in Romania and her trials as an orphan in the United States. Anya is asked to do a reading at a spot known for finding breakout authors. Sure enough, Anya's reading is a hit and her memoirs are sold to a publisher.

At a publishing party, they run into Blade Markham, a former gang member turned bestselling memoir writer. Blade and Ian get into a fight, Anya falls for Blade and Ian is left more depressed than ever.

A fellow turns up at Ian's coffee shop with a copy of Markham's book. Ian hurls the book down the street which results in him being fired from his job. The man with the book (known up to this point as The Confident Man (a play on confidence man, no doubt)), is impressed with Ian's hatred of Markham. Turns out the fellow, named Jed Roth, was a former editor. Roth's assistant went over his head to get Markham's book published and rather than work on it with the assistant, Roth quit. He has a plan for revenge.

Roth wrote a novel many years before called The Thief of Manhattan. It is about a writer who visits this unique library run by a fellow called "The Hooligan Librarian". Hooligan has been stealing rare books from this library and selling them to a shady appraiser for whom he used to work as a research assistant in grad school when she was part of the school's faculty. The narrator of the book discovers this when an attractive redhead wants to look at a book on display and Hooligan doesn't let her. Roth's narrator breaks into the library and takes the book to give to the redhead. Hooligan finds out, burns down the library, and he and the appraiser try to find Roth's narrator. The narrator buries the book, gets into a shootout with the bad guys and wins. Finds the girl and lives happily ever after.

Roth's novel didn't get published. He wants Ian to try and pass it off as a memoir now in order to get it published. They get the firm who Roth worked for to publish it, it is renamed The Thieves of Manhattan, and Ian becomes popular. The plan is to then expose the memoir as novel to embarrass the publishing firm.

It turns out that the memoir is not a novel but a memoir. The Hooligan and his boss begin to hunt down Ian. As he is being chased, Ian starts to record what's happening to him as a memoir. So we end up with a novel titled Theives of Manhattan, subtitled a novel a memoir, which is about a writer who publishes a book called Theives of Manhattan, passing it off as a memoir instead of a novel when it is really a memoir....sort of.

So it's exciting and sort of clever in its self-referential treatment. What didn't I like? Well, some more of the self-referential stuff. When Roth writes his T of M, he uses made up words that are authors or character names that are connected to the objects whose names he are using to represent said objects. We don't know that, though, and as we're reading Langer's T of M, which is told by Ian, we come across these same references. The first I recall is Ian saying someone has a chabon of hair. Now, when I read it, being a huge fan of Michael Chabon, I immediately pictured someone who had his hair. My reaction, though, was "Huh, I didn't know chabon was an actual word". Then people start drinking fitzgeralds. Not capitalized. How strange. Drinks with names are usually capitalized. You don't see people drinking bloody mary's or long island iced tea. Then folks start wearing gatsbys and golightlys. When someone lit up a vonnegut, I really got irritated. Finally, when we get to Roth's character, we find that Roth likes to do that and that his T of M even has a glossary for these terms. Turns out, so does Langer's T of M. I thought it was a stupid mechanism and could not see the point outside of advertising Langer's literary background.

There's more self-reference. Ian says he will dedicate his real memoir to Joseph, his former boss who ends up helping him out. Langer's book is dedicated "to J. for reasons that should become somewhat clearer sometime after page 195" which of course is the page where Ian declares his dedication intent to Joseph.

At some point it all stopped being clever and just started bothering me. I also really disliked how the book wrapped up. The ending was goofy and far-fetched.

The book also reminded me of a novel I read in 2009 about the publishing industry, How I Became a Famous Novelist. I'd call it a tossup as to which I liked more. I remember Hely's book being funnier but Langer's is more captivating. Neither, though, are something I would particularly recommend. 

--Jon

THE GUN SELLER by Hugh Laurie

If you go back in the children's area of the library, you'll find a poster of Hugh Laurie, the actor known primarily for his title role in House but also for other acting roles, encouraging you and your kids to read.This isn't just the American Librarian Association using celebrity power for advertising. Laurie is a writer and The Gun Seller is his first novel.

I really enjoyed this book. It is sort of a spy thriller but yet, not really. The dustjacket calls it a spoof of spy thrillers though I didn't really view it as that either. The main character, Thomas Lang, is a former member of the Scots Guards who now takes on the occasional mercenary type gig to make some money. He is approached by someone wanting him to kill a businessman. Lang turns down the offer and decides it would be best to try and warn the target as well.

All good deeds go punished and Lang finds himself getting more and more entwined in a complex web of bad guys; an arms dealer, renegade government factions, a terrorist group. Why does Lang get caught up in this mess? Love. He falls in love with the daughter of the businessman he was supposed to kill and every time he seems as if he might be able to get out of the mess, thoughts of her drag him right back into it.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the language. It felt a bit like a Leslie Nielsen movie with the characters taking words too literally. Lots of sarcasm.

I didn't like how ridiculously convoluted the plot was. It felt like Laurie was trying too hard to make something special and new in the spy genre field and just went too far. I also didn't get how Lang fell in love so easily with this woman and was willing to risk his life for her when he barely spent any time with her. The ending is a happy, albeit unexpected one.

The Gun Seller is a very fun book It has flaws but they're not bad enough to ruin the enjoyment of Laurie's writing.

--Jon

AN OBJECT OF BEAUTY by Steve Martin

I'm a big fan of Steve Martin. More of his writings than his acting. I also like his humor and music. He's sort of an entertainment Renaissance Man. I really enjoyed his first two novels, The Pleasure of My Company and Shopgirl. Since then, though, I have been disappointed with his books Pure Drivel and, now, An Object of Beauty.

An Object of Beauty traces the life of Lacey Yeager as she makes her way through the art world during the 1990's and 2000's. The book is told by her friend who works as an art writer.

The novel starts as being about Lacey but as the book goes on, Martin spends more and more time talking about the conditions of the art world, especially in New York City. It gets to the point where the final third to half of the book almost reads more as non-fiction. In the final chapter, even, the narrator says that he may just make some changes and publish the book as non-fiction.

This is one of the reasons I didn't like it. It could have been a good novel. It could have been a good treatise on the business of art. Combined, it didn't work for me. I also didn't like how Martin portrayed Lacey. If you listed Lacey's interests in life, art would be first, sex would be second and everything else wouldn't make the list. She could have been made more admirable - woman works her way up through the male-dominated art world through skill, intelligence, charm and perseverance - but Martin's focus on Lacey's relationships with men covers up anything positive and makes her sort of sleazy (along with some other things she does). I didn't find her to be likable at all. I also didn't like the layout of the chapters. They were extremely short and did not flow into one another well in the least.

Martin is knowledgeable about art and it definitely comes through in this book. I almost wonder if he had to make it a novel because no publisher would take him seriously if he tried to do a work of non-fiction on art. It's sort of a shame because there is a lot of good stuff in the book. The book also is nice in that it shows many of the works of art that are mentioned in the story.

For me, the negatives outweighed the positives and I'm disappointed that after such a great beginning as a writer, I feel Martin has tailed off.

--Jon

CAMERA by Jean-Philip Toussaint

 

I just didn't get this book. It was short and quick and entertaining but I'm here, writing this review a few days after reading the book, and I find myself having a tough time remembering anything about it. I read a lot and I'm a fairly quick reader but I also tend to retain what I read. That just didn't happen here.

When the first sentence of the book is, "It was about the same time in my life, a calm life in which ordinarily nothing happened, that two events coincided, events that, taken separately, were of hardly any interest, and that, considered together, were unfortunately not connected in any way.", well, perhaps that explains some of my not getting it. I don't think anything really happened in this book.

The narrator is a man, of an age I could not determine. He's just learning to drive, which doesn't indicate much. He goes to get his permit and finds himself infiltrating the life of the "young woman" who operates the permit office. Some sort of relationship develops, although why and how isn't real clear (which is why I used the word infiltrating). The woman's father appears in the story and makes it seem as if the narrator is about the same age as the woman (which begs the question why the narrator refers to her as "young").

I guess it is supposed to be a bit of an existentialist book (given that the back cover blurb calls Toussaint , "A comic Camus for the twenty-first century", makes sense) but I'd call it self-absorption rather than existentialist. It isn't so much life that the narrator ponders but rather specifically, HIS life. And as he says, nothing happens in his life.

There were some funny points in this and it is really short. I didn't waste a ton of time on it. Maybe it's too highbrow for me but I just didn't get it and so can't recommend it.

--Jon

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE by Aron Ralston

I loved this book! (Your suspense is over – I’m recommending it.)

Aron Ralston writes of his experience of being trapped in a slot canyon for five days with minimal water and food. An experienced climber and hiker and over-confident adventurer, he set off on an easy solo day hike and ended up knocking a boulder loose which trapped (smashed) his right hand between the boulder and the wall.

He writes about his time trapped in the canyon, how he rationed his food and water and used his climbing equipment to keep warm at night. Every morning, a slice of sunshine reached down in the chasm and warmed slightly the tip of his leg for a few minutes. He logically thought through all escape and possible rescue options before coming to the conclusion that he was going to die in the canyon. Several times during his entrapment, he videoed himself talking to his family, explaining his predicament and saying good-bye.

I won’t spoil the book for you by telling you how he manages to live. If you have heard of or have seen the movie 127 Hours, you already know something about this book, on which the film is based.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place is beautifully written, with raw emotion and a passionate description of a ridiculously unbelievable situation. Aron Ralston includes painstaking details of climbing terminology, most of which I did not understand. And he weaves into the narrative many other aspects of his life, from his family to how he gave up an engineering job to work in the climbing industry to some of his many near death experiences, like almost drowning and getting caught in an avalanche.

His fresh and meticulous writing make his story riveting. I can’t wait to see the movie and am sad to place this book back on the shelf at the library.

JJ

HORSE RACING: FICTION

They say truth is stranger than fiction. That may be. But based on the horse racing books I've been reading recently, fiction is much more entertaining than fact.

I got started on this kick with Keith Dixon's The Art of Losing. I was fooling around with the "card catalog" at the library and decided to look for novels with the subject of gambling. In addition to 3,423 books by Dick Francis, this one came up. I requested it from one of the other branches and plowed through it.

The Art of Losing is a very dark book. One of the darker ones I've read. The main character, Michael Jacobs, is a documentary filmmaker who makes decent films but they do not generate enough interest to be profitable. This shouldn't really matter since Jacobs comes from a wealthy family who are encouraging of his occupational choice and who like his movies. Nonetheless, Jacobs cannot bring himself to rely on assistance from his folks.

Jacobs' friend and producer, Sebby Laslo, has a problem with gambling. He has indebted himself too much with the wrong kinds of people and comes to Mike with a broken thumb received from a fellow he owes money to and a pitch for how to get them both on track.

Sebby has a friend who is a jockey. The plan is to get another jockey involved and have the two jockeys conspire to fix a race on which Sebby and Jacobs have wagered heavily. In order to do this, though, and get the kind of odds they want, they have to place the wager with an illegal bookmaker. In order to get a bookmaker (or multiple bookmakers) to give them odds on a big bet like that, they have to establish that they are chumps and so have to lose a bunch of money in advance, money neither of them has.

If this doesn't bode well to you in my review, well, that foreboding feeling isn't going away if you read the book either. Dixon does not create an inspiring atmosphere. You have a sense that those best laid plans are certainly going to go awry.

Even with the bad vibe, the book moves you along. There is a glimmer of hope....maybe...or maybe it's the sense that you're about to view a train wreck. Something keeps you moving ahead with the book. And it's good. Surprisingly good given that I picked it solely based on a card catalog subject heading. Just don't go reading it on a day where you could use some optimism.

Likewise, I felt like I had to shower every time I put down Lord of Misrule. The 2010 National Book Award winner for fiction, it takes place at a podunk race track in West Virginia, the absolute bottom rung of thoroughbred horse racing. Every chapter is told from the perspective of one member of a motley crew of characters. The way author Jaimy Gordon writes, though, it often takes a few paragraphs to figure out just who is telling the story this time. The book is divided into four sections, each of them relating to a horse that intertwines all the characters.

The book is about all of the characters and none of them. They range from those struggling to eke out an existence to those trying to maintain their status as a big fish in a teeny-tiny pond. A puddle, if you will. The horses at this level aren't Secretariat. At best, they're Secretariat after he's gone infertile, suffered through injuries and can hardly run anymore.

I've always been fascinated by the lower levels of horse racing where the purses are such that owners almost have to win just to cover their expenses. I often have wondered about the people involved with these races; the track operators, the jockeys, the trainers. Gordon gives one possibility of those types of people. You have people who race at that level because they love racing. There are those do it because they don't know what else to do. Some have had bad luck.

Like The Art of Losing, you never shake that foreboding feeling. There are a number of outright bad guys and their presence, coupled with the conditions at the track, left me feeling dirty. That says a lot about Gordon's writing as much as anything. She doesn't quite use dialects but she captures the rural, uneducated essence of most of the characters.

Much more so than Dixon's book, this book is for readers who appreciate good fiction, regardless of an interest in horse racing. I'm not sure Dixon has the universal appeal. And although Gordon's story has a slightly happier ending, the overall darkness and the difficulties keeping the characters straight make it less than perfect. It's still great and worth reading.

--Jon

PRICELESS by William Poundstone

It's not often that a book leaves me feeling dumb. This book did. Subtitled "The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of it)", it talks about how completely irrational we humans are when it comes to price.

Having a background in statistics, I like to think I understand numbers and can't be duped by pricing schemes. I'll make a purchase sometimes and think I'm getting a great bargain and that it was I that duped the retailer. That's just what they want you to think.

The book is a summary of various psychological and economic studies that show how irrational human beings are.

For example, from page 146:
"Imagine that you are about to purchase a jacket for $125 and a calculator for $15. The calculator salesman informs you that the calculator you wish to buy is on sale for $10 at the other branch of the store, located 20 minutes' drive away. Would you make the trip to the other store?"

Most respondents said yes. In another study, the prices were reversed and the calculator cost $125 but was on sale for $120 at another store. The jacket was $15. Still a total of $140 being spent at Store A, $135 at Store B but this time most respondents would not travel to the other store. Even though five bucks would be saved either way, the respondents felt that it was worth making the trip for a 33% savings but not for a 2.5% savings.

Or how about this one? Students had to choose between two tasks. Either recall and write down a failure in their lives while eating a 15 gram piece of chocolate or recall and write down a success in their lives while eating a 5 gram piece of the same brand of chocolate. Most chose doing the negative task with the big chocolate. After the assignment was completed, the students were asked to rate their experience on a nine-point scale from extremely unhappy to extremely happy. Those who wrote about the success were happier.

As you can probably determine, the experiment was considered "a microcosm of life". We think the bigger piece of chocolate (or more money or more stuff) will bring us happiness when it's really what we do and how we lead our lives that brings true happiness.

Some of these studies I had read about before, either as statistical experiments or in other articles or books (such as Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational or Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics. Even still, I was educated and learned a lot. The downside of the book (outside of glimpsing my own irrationality) was that many of the experiments were glossed over, omitting details I would've thought useful. With 57 chapters over 288 pages, you're only looking at about five pages an experiment. I think some could have been omitted and others expanded.

Definitely a good read, though, and a must read if you like hanging out in the 330 section of the Dewey Decimal system.

--Jon

HORSE RACING: FACT

I'm on a bit of a horse racing kick right now, some fiction, some not. After reading a novel I'll review later, I decided I wanted to read about a jockey. The pickings are slim in our system and I opted for Yankee Doodle Dandy, about Tod Sloan. I felt good about this pick because within an hour after putting in the request for it, I checked Baseball-Reference's This Day In History section and there, on that very day, was something about jockey Tod Sloan buying a billiards parlor with New York Giants manager John McGraw. I figured if he was a business partner of McGraw's, he has to be an interesting fellow.

After reading the book, it's hard to say. Despite being touted as a biography on Tod Sloan, the majority of it is a history of horse racing through the end of the 19th Century. I think the author did this to flesh out the book since there wasn't a whole lot of source material on Sloan.

Sloan was most noted for supposedly being the fellow who popularized the current style of riding a racehorse; leaning forward and being up around the neck and head. Before Sloan, riders sat upright back in the saddle and rode like you see in Westerns.

Most of Sloan's success came abroad, even serving as the jockey for Edward, Prince of Wales's entry in the Epsom Derby. His success was rather short, though, as the British Jockey Club accused him of taking money from owners as gifts and wagering on races. He was banned from racing in England and the ban was enforced in America as well ending Sloan's career.

Sloan was such a popular figure that George Cohan wrote a musical, Little Johnny Jones, that was based on Sloan. This is the musical that gave the world the songs "Yankee Doodle Boy" and "Give My Regards to Broadway".

I found the book somewhat interesting but wish it had been honest in it's title. It's really only the last couple of chapters that deal significantly with Sloan. There's one chapter in which Sloan merits only a single paragraph. What bugged me the most about the book was the lack of citations and how it tied in to Dizikes' writing and research. I thought Dizikes' writing was pretty bland and a large amount of his writing is cobbling together fragments of sentences from newspapers. He then sometimes cites them (citations were really haphzard) in clusters in the endnotes. So you'll read a paragraph which contains four or five quotes of a few words apiece, turn to see from where they came, and just find a list of newspapers with no indication of what came from where. I thought it was really lackadaisical and unprofessional, especially from a college professor who also has won the National Book Critics Circle Award. While not an awful book, it annoyed me enough not to recommend it.

I then read Timothy Capps' biography on the horse Secretariat. It is part of the Thoroughbred Legends series that Eclipse Press put out. Unfortunately, the library system does not have any of the books in this series. These are really handsome books. I actually feel that the dustjacket detracts from the overall quality of the book. While the dustjacket is understated, the book itself contains the sepia-toned photo shown on the dustjacket on the cover which is a lovely red with a gold-embossed title and spine. Add a built-in ribbon bookmarker and it's a nice book. Sadly, they reissued the series of 24 books in softcover. I miss the days when books could be works of art. While I wouldn't go that far with this, it is mighty nice.

But books are for reading, and this was an OK read. The book has small dimensions and large margins which makes for a small amount of text for a 220+ page book. And it is about a horse so the content isn't dazzling. Secretariat was an amazing horse, one of a handful that transcended the sport. Mention the name and even non-racing fans know something. But still, what can you write about a horse?

Well, the author begins by talking about the farm on which Secretariat was eventually born and raised. He then goes into a chapter which reads like the beginning of the Book of Matthew ("Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren") only with horses. Then we get into Secretariat's career. This portion is the most interesting and Capps reports the races very nicely and discusses some of the rival horses that Secretariat faced.

Rival might be a bit strong of a word. The only time Secretariat finished outside of the top three in a race was his first race, where he finished fourth. The only time he was not the favorite in a race, he went off at 3-2 odds.

Of course, nothing demonstrated the lack of a rivalry better than Secretariat's romp at the Belmont Stakes:



Secretariat was retired after his three-year old season. The book talks about his career at stud and the relative lackluster nature of that career and then ends in a really goofy way with a fantasy race call between Secretariat and Man O'War. Lame way to end.

Not a bad book but not good either. It referenced Bill Nack's biography of Secretariat a couple of times, a book I own but have not read. Maybe sometime in the near future. The link I provided is to the newest reissue of the biography which the library system has. It was reissued in conjunction with the movie Secretariat.

Ah, yes, the movie. We just got that in at Strasburg and so I had to watch it. Didn't like it one bit. The movie was hardly about Secretariat but rather focused on his owner, Penny Chenery Tweedy. Instead of being about one of the greatest racehorses ever, the movie was about a woman succeeding in a man's world. That's fine, especially if you don't mind the Disnifying of facts, but then call it what it is. Secretariat was more a piece of scenery than he was the focus of the movie. I thought John Malkovich was entertaining as trainer Lucien Laurin. Otherwise there was little about the movie I liked. If you want to watch a better Disnified horse racing movie, I'd recommend Seabiscuit. Better story, better acting, better racing scenes, better everything.

--Jon

Special Guest Reviewer: Sports Illustrated's Joe Posnanski

Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated is both a prolific writer and reader. He lives in Missouri and like many throughout this country, his area was recently pummeled with snow and he was snowed in. He asked his Twitter followers for book suggestions and was amazed at the number of good books that others recommended that he, too, had already read and liked. He shared those in a blog post. I have read some of them and thought I would make mention of those in the post I've read that are in the system.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (at Strasburg-Heisler Library). This is one of the two books I have on the Staff Picks shelf right now. Yes, its size is intimidating. We'll happily give you some extra weeks for it. It is well worth taking the time. As Posnanski writes, "It's a novel about two very different magicians and there's some occult in there and some great footnotes and, well, it's just a wonderful reading experience." I've seen it called a Harry Potter for adults but I don't think that remotely does this book justice. In both my and my teenage son's top ten of all-time.

The Brothers K by David James Duncan. Posnanski doesn't like this but it was recommended by so many people, he thinks he'll try it again. Another long book, about family and baseball. Any book by Duncan is great in my opinion.

Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen (at Strasburg-Heisler Library). This will probably go up as a staff pick of mine some day. Interesting true story about a serial killer at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.

David Sedaris. (Several at Strasburg-Heisler Library). I reviewed an audiobook of his. Really can't go wrong with any of his books or recordings.

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold. Awesome, awesome, awesome book. In my top 25 of all-time. Gold's novel on Chaplin is on my to-read list. Also of note, Gold is married to Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones, among others.

If you don't believe me, Joe Posnanski, and his followers, check out the card catalog itself. Remember when the system was closed Wednesday of last week? Part of the computer upgrade that was done that day involved connecting the card catalog to Google Books and the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com). You can go straight to reviews from the catalog listing if you scroll to the bottom of the page after you have picked a title. Check it out.

--Jon

UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand

You could quantify my interest in reading a story about a WWII POW, or really that of any war's Prisoner of War, with the number zero. Just not something that interests me. On the other hand, if you asked me my interest in reading a book about paint drying, I'd say I'm totally for reading a book about that as long as Laura Hillenbrand wrote it.

I finally got around to reading Hillenbrand's book on Seabiscuit last year and it was the best book I read in 2010. Although I had no interest in the topic matter of her second book, Unbroken, I opted to read it because she is such a fantastic writer.

A good choice it was as I expect this will fall in my top ten books of 2011 come next December.

The book follows the story of Louie Zamperini. Zamperini was an obnoxious kid until he took up running. He developed into an incredible runner and became one of the world's best, competing in the Olympics for the United States in 1936 at age 19. He went on to set the collegiate record in the mile two years later and was training for the 1940 Olympics. The host city was Tokyo and with World War II, the games were initially transferred from Tokyo to Helsinki and then canceled. Zamperini joined the U.S. war effort in 1941 and became a bombardier.

One of the more fascinating things I read in this book was the primitive state of aircraft during the war. The number of crashes and injuries during training activities was incredibly large. Zamperini ended up a victim of such a mishap. He and his crew were sent out to look for a missing plane in the Pacific, their plane suffered a malfunction and they ended up crashing. Zamperini and two other crew members survived and were afloat at sea on a life raft for 47 days during which they were shot at by a Japanese plane, attacked by sharks and suffered from starvation and dehydration. The one crew member died but the other and Louie washed ashore in Japanese occupied territory.

The two were then placed in prisoner of war camps where conditions were probably worse than they were on the raft. Zamperini was regularly abused by a camp guard, the prisoners were starved and suffered from diseases, and when the Allies appeared to be winning the war, the Japanese killed many prisoners of war rather than letting them be rescued.

Somehow Zamperini survives all his ordeals and returns home. He marries but suffers from alcoholism and is tormented by his memories. Through religion, he overcomes his hauntings and he is still alive and well today at age 93.

Insprining though this book is, I also continue to be inspired by Hillenbrand herself. She suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome and is often bedridden. Her being able to conduct the research for this book and write this book is amazing given her condition.

As I said, I love her writing. She also does a great job with research and thoroughly cites everything. My one problem with the book is that it does rely primarily on interviews with Zamperini (over seventy of them in total, yet, amazingly, they have never met in person). Memories are tricky things and there were many times in the book where I had to question happenings as being exaggerations or faulty memories. The instances weren't too bad (Zamperini didn't invent the internet while he was a POW or anything) and primarily involved his youth. And I may be wrong and every bit of them may be true. I'm a documentation kind of guy, though, and would like to have some sort of corroborating evidence.

Nonetheless, this is an incredible book and is a definite recommendation.

VIVALDI'S RING OF MYSTERY

Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery is an audio (CD) story set to the music of Vivaldi. Not really sure what I was getting when I came upon this on the library shelf, I thought it worth a try since my ten-, seven-, and four-year olds all like audio books, and, though I am mostly ignorant about classical music, I do recognize and love Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

The music is a beautiful, goosebump-inducing backdrop for this tale, set in Vienna during Carnival, about an orphan girl. Katarina, a gifted musician, searches for her origins as she studies violin under the composer Antonio Vivaldi.

Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery is one of those rare things that parent and child can equally enjoy and appreciate.

JJ

THIS BOOK MADE ME DO IT cool things to make, do, and explore

This is the best book of children’s do-it-yourself crafts/recipes/games I have ever seen. I occasionally borrow or buy craft and recipe books for my kids, but they (we) generally find one or two things of interest in each book and then the book either goes back to the library or to the dusty, lonely world of kids' forgotten treasures.

I checked out This Book Made Me Do It  by John Woodward from the new juvenile nonfiction section of the library and now am quite conflicted. It’s a new book so I should return it for others to use, but it’s so jam-packed full of fun stuff that I (and my kids) want to keep it longer.

Published by DK Publishing, which specializes in illustrated reference books, This Book Made Me Do It is has some of the following activities:

Make an ice bowl

Make a piñata

Make a water bomb

Raise caterpillars

Dissect an owl pellet

Cook for birds

Pan for gold

Find constellations

Paddle a kayak

Jump higher

Squeak like a mouse

Avoid a shark attack

Climb Mt. Everest

And it goes on and on, with 192 pages full of intriguing ideas and neat illustrations. Even if your kids don't end up using this guide to climb a mountain (ha! I hope they don't!), they will most likely have a lot of fun exploring this book.

JJ

BLOCKADE BILLY by Stephen King

Blockade Billy kept drawing me back to it. I would see it on our new book shelf at the library, pick it up, see it's baseball theme and it's slim size, think about it, then set it back down. Stephen King has never done much for me. The only work of his I can say I enjoyed was Needful Things. I have his book on being a Red Sox fan on my shelf, Faithful (bought at the Strasburg-Heisler Library book sale before I became a resident of Strasburg!), which is co-written by Stewart O'Nan, another author of which I am not fond, and it will likely remain unread.

Getting back to Blockade Billy, I was transitioning it from the new book shelf to the general fiction shelf, changing stickers, altering the location of the book in the computer system, and I finally opted to take it home and read it.

The best thing I can say about this book is that it is a quick read. I read over half of it as I cooked dinner and knocked out the remainder soon after.

The book is perplexing. It is set during the 1957 baseball season and King mixes actual major league teams and players with fictional ones. In the opening game of the season, Ted Williams inexplicably steals a base. Williams never stole a base that season and rarely stole any over the course of his career. The timing of said stolen base is baffling and is followed up by him being removed by a pinch-runner who tries to score from second on an infield hit. Really? When does this happen? Oh, wait, in the movie Major League, the game is won in that fashion. Otherwise, I don't see it happening. It's not like the pitcher is in the on-deck circle. Even if he was, the game was in the ninth inning. Pinch-hit. You don't try to score from second on an infield hit. Ridiculous.

Needless to say, I wasn't keen on the baseball content of the story. I wasn't keen on the story in general. The book is told like one big oral history coming from the coach of the team who King has gone to interview at a retirement community, or as the coach likes to call it, a "zombie hotel". I worked for a firm that surveyed elder care communities and in thousands upon thousands of surveys, never came across anyone who called it a "zombie hotel". It almost seems like a phrase a horror movie writer might make up, doesn't it?

Since it is one big story, there are no chapters. It's 112 small pages that just run on. The story is about a catcher, Blockade Billy Blakeley, named so because of his blocking the above mentioned runner from scoring. Triple B is brought up to the big leagues from Iowa after both catchers for the New Jersey Titans are hurt at the end of spring training. Triple B is an instant star even though he's obviously not all there in the head. His dark secret is exposed which results in all the games in which he has played to be expunged from the official record (perhaps the stupidest thing I've ever heard).

You know what? I'm going to spoil it for you. If you don't want to read the big secret, just move on. I really didn't like the book and even given it's length, I don't want you bothering. Blakeley isn't Blakeley. He's a farmhand who kills the real Blakeley, his family, and their cows to take Blakeley's place and become a big leaguer.

Oh, I forgot. This book also has creepy black and white illustrations.

--Jon

THE NAMING OF TISHKIN SILK by Glenda Millard

I admit I chose The Naming of Tishkin Silk by Glenda Millard to read to my children based on the book jacket description, which says that Griffin is an uncommon boy who meets a once-in-a-lifetime friend, Princess Layla, and “just like the mythical beast whose name he bears, Griffin discovers that he has uncommon courage and the heart of a lion.” That lead me to believe the book would contain some magic and fairy-tale elements.

In that way, the book was rather disappointing, like it was oversold. BUT once I had digested three or four chapters and figured out it was a book based very much in reality, I began to be drawn in by its charmingly good writing and delicate story.

Griffin Silk is the lone boy in a family of girls. He had believed he was the last of the children until a new baby, another sister, was born. The sister and mother are gone away when the story begins and Griffin has a secret that he holds inside.

He meets a best friend who happens to be a girl named Layla. She is able to draw things out of Griffin that no one else even knows enough to care about. The innocent friendship of children is portrayed beautifully through Griffin and Layla’s frolics in nature and other antics.

Griffin’s secret as you may have guessed is about his mother and sister, but I’ll stop there so the ending won’t be revealed. This sentimental story’s end was enough to make my four-year-old cry. Bittersweet. Sad yet happy. Friendship and family give strength.

Typically, I read one chapter (out of eleven total chapters) a day to my three children. They BEGGED to hear more at each chapter’s finish, which confirms the appeal of this tale.

JJ

THE POSSESSED by Elif Batuman

If you like to read, there are few websites as wonderful to browse as The Millions. It was on there that I came across this review/interview with Elif Batuman, the author of The Possessed, that motivated me to read this book. Elif is a six foot tall Turkish woman who is a scholar of Russian literature. Her book is about her experiences as a graduate student in that particular field.

As a wee lad (OK, in high school and college), I enjoyed Russian literature. So I thought I would enjoy this book. The title comes from Dostoevsky's book of the same name (which also goes by the title The Devils or The Demons, depending on your translation) and Dostoevsky is my favorite Russian author so all the more reason to like it.

I was right. I really enjoyed it. Two thoughts kept running through my head as I read it, though. My first thought was, "How on earth did this book get published?". While it is incredibly entertaining and does not require a vast knowledge of Russian literature, I do think knowing a bit about Russian stories helps increase the enjoyment level. That being said, who would pick this up? Why would a publisher think this topic had enough appeal to be made into a book? I'm still not entirely sure but I know how it got published.

It got published because Batuman is a very talented writer who has written for a number of publications including n+1 and The New Yorker. As a matter of fact, some, if not all of this book, has been previously published in those publications. Batuman also knows how the academic system works. She seems able to finagle grants and funding for her projects and I don't think it's a stretch for her to be able to finagle a book deal as well.

Regardless, it got published and it is good. The book is part travelogue, part literary criticism, part autobiography. The stories are very entertaining, if sometimes a little self-absorbed. Batuman shares details about herself and her friends that sometimes seem a little too personal or a little too unnecessary.

I had also hoped that this would make me want to read more Russian literature. It did. Unfortunately, much of the literature unfamiliar to me that she mentions is unfamiliar because it hasn't been translated into English. That's a bit of a problem. And as usual, I'm disappointed that a non-fiction work is not cited. She lists references used at the end but I like citations, darn it.

Which brings up my second thought that plagued me during this read, "How good is this book?". I did like it a lot. It made me laugh. It made me want to learn more about the subject. It is well-written. I could, and did, put it down quite often, though, opting to move onto other books. Maybe it was the mindset I was in, maybe it was something lacking in the book. Ultimately, I think it's good, not great. But it's close. I think it's a fun read for anyone but a must read for fans of Russian literature.

Oh, and the magazine The Week, one of the few I enjoy, named it among their top-five non-fiction books of the year. So there's that, too.

--Jon

FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2010

I keep track of what I read. In 2010, I read 62 books. My ten favorite that I read this past year were:

10. Sixpence House by Paul Collins
9. Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
8. Wild Child by T.C. Boyle
7. The Art Detective by Philip Mould
6. A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
5. Straight Man by Richard Russo
4. The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
3. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
1. Seabiscuit by Lauren Hillenbrand

BONUS HOLIDAY CONTENT!!!

The reason we post these reviews is to hopefully provide some suggestions as to things to read (or avoid). So here are some of my favorites from over the past couple of years. Hopefully you'll find something you like.

My Favorites from 2009:
1. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
2. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Foer
3. Ballad of the Whiskey Robber by Julian Rubenstein
4. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safron Foer
5. Art of Possibility by Rosemund and Benjamin Zander
6. The Women by T.C. Boyle
7. The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd
8. The Soloist by Steve Lopez
9. Provenance by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo
10. Double Fold by Nicholson Baker

My favorites from 2008:
1. Remainder by Tom McCarthy
2. Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow
3. Peak by Chip Conley
4. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
6. Run by Ann Patchett
7. Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida
8. Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead
9. The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss
10. The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley

--Jon