NO LEASE ON LIFE by Lynne Tillman

In case you haven't noticed, the library has started a small press collection. One of those presses, Red Lemonade, publishes the works of Lynne Tillman. Her newest release, Someday This Will Be Funny, sounded like it might be good but I thought I'd give some of her earlier works a try instead. This may seem stupid since part of the Red Lemonade publishing model is making the books available online to be read. Here's Someday This Will Be Funny. But I hate reading things online. So I went the old-fashioned route and got a couple of books; No Lease on Life and Bookstore.

I thought I would really like the latter. It is a non-fiction account of Jeanette Watson and her seminal New York City bookstore, Books & Co. Tillman didn't really write it, though, so much as she compiled it. The book is mostly an oral history of Watson but after every couple of paragraphs of Watson talking, Tillman inserts comments from others involved in the story that mostly pertain to what Watson just said. It made for a very disjointed reading. Between the style and not really being able to get excited about Watson's challenges (her father was head of IBM and when she started her bookstore she asked him for money. Sure, if you put up $150,000, I will too. Guess she had been saving her allowance for a while), I gave up on it. As I said, it was more compiled than written and wasn't really giving me a sense of how Tillman writes.

I got a much better sense from No Lease on Life. The novel is a day in the life of Elizabeth Hall, a low-paid proofreader living in rent-control squalor in New York City. It begins late at night with her being unable to sleep because of noise and hooliganism going on outside in the streets below. Her boyfriend has no problem ignoring the noise every night and seems to accept their living conditions much more readily than she does which only contributes to her rage and anxiety.

Ultimately, that is what this book is - 179 pages of rage and anxiety. There are no chapters, per se. Instead, blocks of thoughts are broken up with jokes. No mention is made of who is telling them or why but you get the sense it's a way for Elizabeth to cope with the stress.

Once the morning comes, you find out more about the other people in the neighborhood and the problems Hall has had trying to get anyone to do anything about the living conditions, the most prevalent difficulty being junkies shooting up in the entryway to the building.

The ending comes with some relief for Elizabeth but it is a small victory. While not a real happy or satisfying ending, it is a somewhat realistic ending. It's not Richard Gere climbing up the fire escape to whisk her away in a limo.

The stress made the story difficult to want to read but Tillman's writing is really good and made it palatable. I think the lack of chapters and the shortness of the book aid in making it readable. I think if there were chapter breaks, I might be tempted not to come back to it. Because the story never really pauses, I found it hard to want to stop reading. Some of the jokes are entertaining, too.

After both of these, I will read more Tillman and may put Tillman's newest on the "to acquire" list for the small press collection. I recommend checking her out.

--Jon

ZAZEN by Vanessa Veselka

The setting is southern California.  The time is now, but events are off.  There seems to be a violent discontent within the population.  Bomb threats cause panic and shut down streets, stores, and restaurants.   Some bomb threats are followed by actual bombings.  Riots and racial killings seem to happen for no specific reason.  War against some unspecified adversary is threatening.

Della is right in the thick of things.  She calls in bomb threats.  And then some other group carries out the bombings.  She attends the funeral for the slain black boys and ends up in the riot.  And then she plans the bombing of a local Walmart on a back-to-school sale day.  She buys a one-way plane ticket to Hondorus so that she can get away to a better place.  But, at the same time, she worries about the innocent children who might be killed.

Della is clearly unhappy.  But it is not clear what exactly she is unhappy about or what can make her happier.  Her involvement with the bombings seems to have no purpose.  She seems adrift.  Perhaps Veselka states it best in the Acknowledgements:  “Della was afraid that the world was full of sadness and that everything beautiful just got hurt.”  I should have understood this by the second chapter.

Veselka’s writing does appeal.  Picture this:  “Britta turned into a blowfish and floated towards Astrid spiny and offended.”  And then a few paragraphs later:  “The blowfish, Britta, floated away from the sink.”  Great images.  It’s worth reading Zazen for the metaphors.

--Sue

THE PIONEER WOMAN by Ree Drummond

Book reviewing has moved down on my priority list. Intimidation and fear are the main reasons – I feel it somewhat presumptuous and quite frightening to critique a person’s writing and creativity. I’ve also read some heady books lately that I’ve been too small to say anything about (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Love Wins, Middlesex, and A Field Guide to the North American Family).

But another librarian, who will remain nameless, has this nasty habit of writing a review of every book he reads. Sheesh. So, I have self-imposed pressure to keep up with the librarians, I guess.

My book of choice: The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond.

Ree Drummond began a blog in 2006, which has grown into the very-popular-amongst-almost-every-woman-I-know Website: www.ThePioneerWoman.com. The Website seems to have a category for almost everything a domestic woman could ever want or need – cooking, homeschooling, photography, home and garden, entertainment. Full Disclosure: I had never seen the site before I read this book.

Though I was not a fan, I wanted to read Drummond’s book because of the appeal she holds for my gender and because I love reading true stories.

The book chronicles a period of Ree’s life when she was transitioning from California to Chicago and breaking up with a long-term boyfriend. During this move, she temporarily moved back home to Oklahoma with her parents. While hanging out at a local bar, she met a mysterious cowboy.

Time goes on and the cowboy (whom she calls Marlboro Man) woos her and she falls in love. She ditches her move to Chicago and agrees to marry her man. Giving up city life and moving to a ranch deep in the country was a sacrifice that Ree worried about but came to cherish. She learned to eat meat (throwing out her vegetarian lifestyle), stick thermometers into cows’ rectums, and chase cows out of her front yard.

While her courtship with the Marlboro Man progressed, her mom and dad’s marriage crumbled after a lifetime of what Ree thought was happiness and stability. The demise of her parents’ marriage caused her to question the whole institution.

Not much really happens in the book that is all that different from many of our own lives. Families break up. People fall in love and get married. Pregnancy and parenthood often follow a marriage. Not a big deal. But yet it is.

What I appreciate about Ree’s book is that she took a story that wasn’t that unusual or earth-shattering and recorded it in such a way that I wanted to keep reading. A talented writer and storyteller she is. I can see why her blog earned her a huge following. She’s funny and entertaining and self-deprecating enough that I can see my own weaknesses in her and they don’t seem all that bad.

Ree and her husband now have four children, but the book ends when they have just one. It’s a very sweet story and a quick and easy read.

--JJ

LEGEND OF A SUICIDE by David Vann

I've been working on a little side project recently involving baseball suicides and when I came across an interview with the author of this book, David Vann, I figured I'd go ahead and read the book. Legend of a Suicide is five short stories which surround a novel Vann wrote, all about his father's suicide. His father shot himself when Vann was thirteen and Vann wrote these tales throughout his twenties as a means of coping and trying to understand his father's death.

While Vann's book is fiction, there are elements of truth throughout the stories. His father was a dentist with two failed marriages caused by his infidelity. He quit his dental practice to move to Alaska and live off the land and it is there that he shot himself. His father tried to get Vann to move to Alaska with him and spend his eighth grade school year with him but he said no. The novel, which is by far the most powerful and gripping story in the book, is Vann's take on what might have happened if he had gone.

The short stories weren't near as enjoyable but they were captivating. Despite the gloomy subject matter, Vann keeps the stories moving. I was trying to figure out what exactly made his writing so compelling. I think part comes from Vann writing simply but capturing the other senses to describe things. The sounds and smells and textures provide detail in a better way than if he just wrote what the characters saw or what was happening. I'm not entirely sure. Whatever it is, it grabbed me and kept me moving along.

There's a line in the fourth short story where Vann says his father "had inflicted avoidable pain on everyone around him but who must have suffered some himself". Suicide is horrible. For Vann to put together stories about suicide and make them good enough to want to read I think is an achievement. That being said, if I weren't already in a mindset about suicides, I don't know how willing I would be to read this. I mean, there's a reason why it took Vann another decade to get this published after he had finished it. Who wants to read about suicide?

It's a tough call. Vann's writing is good. It's not like I can recommend checking out one of his other books either (though I have not read any others) because their subject matters aren't all that chipper either. His book Caribou Island also deals with failed marriages and suicides. A Mile Down has some potential as it is about his failed attempts to restore a boat and start a chartered tour company in Turkey. He has a book coming out in the near future which is a creative non-fiction work (a genre of which I am not keen) about a school shooting. Not all sunshine and lollipops with Mr. Vann's writing.

I think ultimately I can't recommend this. While the writing is by far the redeeming quality, the subject matter (and the fact that there are many, many writers who write well about more enjoyable topic matters) make it that I can't recommend it on a general basis.

--Jon

YOU ARE NOT A GADGET by Jaron Lanier

I recently started a collection of books from small presses here at the library. I try to follow the independent, smaller publishing scene and the books that come out of it but am frustrated by public libraries not acquiring them. It makes sense. With budget cuts virtually every year, libraries have to be selective and it is much easier to purchase the big name authors that a gabajillion people will want to read than take a chance on some cutting edge literature about which few people have heard.

One of the books I wanted to acquire (and did) was Garth Risk Hallberg's book A Field Guide to the North American Family. Hallberg writes for The Millions, one of my favorite sites, and he linked to an interview he did with The Faster Times (another great website) and called himself "A poor man's Jaron Lanier" in doing so.

I wasn't familiar with Jaron Lanier. But I like Hallberg so I figured I'd have to like Lanier.

Lanier is the father of virtual reality so I don't see what the connection to Hallberg actually is to make Hallberg think he is the poor man's version of Lanier. Nonetheless, Lanier's book, You Are Not A Gadget is an interesting intellectual, philosophical look at technology. Reading it, you would probably be surprised that Lanier has such a strong technology background as he can seem at times to be very much against technological advancements. He is more against the usage of technology without clearly thinking out the ramifications of introducing it.

Lanier presents his thoughts very clearly and makes many valid points. He talks about how the open source community has helped reduce creativity and innovation. He bemoans how the "cloud keepers" are really the only ones who are making money in the internet world. He talks about how people reduce themselves to fit into categories online. Just a lot of stuff. And with his background, he is able to point out where wrong turns have been made and express how things might be able to get back on track.

I would not label myself an optimist, generally speaking, and reading this book didn't help matters. I agree with Lanier on a lot of things. As someone who regularly does research and who works as an information professional, helping others find things, one of my biggest frustrations is with the usage of Wikipedia. Never mind the accuracy of it. What is it? An online encyclopedia. All this technology available and what is done with it? The encyclopedia is reinvented. And an encyclopedia with more flaws than your typical one. Why? Because of who works on them and uses them. Want to know something about someone in pop culture? Wikipedia is a great source. Entries regarding science? Sure. Why those areas in particular? Because you have a collection of people who care about those subjects and are willing to make the information current. But what happens when you have masses of people working on the same thing? In the sciences, where there is a history of academic cooperation, conflicts are resolved in a congenial manner. But with other areas you get the equivalent of shouting matches.

There is also a lack of voice in Wikipedia. In the old-fashioned encyclopedia, the editing staff was entrusted with creating a uniform voice throughout the texts. Who does that for Wikipedia? It is the voice of the group and it is this group voice that concerns Lanier (and me).

Lanier believes there is hope, though. Myself, I think we're too far gone down some of these roads. I was working in the public sector years ago and read Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, about the disintegration of social structures, and I feel that technology has eroded those structures even further. I don't know. It frustrates me sometimes to look around and feel like I'm the only one who has these concerns.

Returning to Lanier and his book, I think it's an interesting read. It has a very strong philosophical bend to it. It's not a light read despite it not being a very large book and not very complex in terms of language. It's just a lot of food for thought and it took me a while to read because of it. I had to read, then stop, ponder a bit, get back to it, ponder some more, etc. If technology means more to you than a means to know what your 400 best friends are doing, I think it's worth reading this book.

--Jon

THE BEEKEEPER'S LAMENT by Hannah Nordhaus

The Beekeeper's Lament is a book primarily based on one specific beekeeper, John Miller. If you're as clueless as I was when I read this book, you might think of a beekeeper as someone who has a few hives in his backyard to make some honey that he can give to his friends and neighbors. Or maybe he has enough to run a small farmer's market type store, selling produce from his fields as well.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Like every other agricultural product in this country, the production of honey is big, big business, albeit in this case not very profitable. The trials and tribulations of a professional beekeeper and his bees made for a fascinating and sympathetic tale.

Miller's family has been involved in bees for generations. As such, Miller has the science of beekeeping down to a science. It's hard even to know where to start when talking about the beekeeping business as it is one big cycle. Miller is headquartered in North Dakota. Why there? Because people don't live in North Dakota and he (and other beekeepers) can keep their bees somewhere where there is lots of alfalfa and similar crops grown so that the bees can collect pollen and nectar for honey.

Seems simple enough. But it isn't. The lament of the beekeeper is actually many laments. First is the care of the bees. There are mites and fungi and the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder where the bees just up and abandon the hive. There are bee thieves. There are pesticides used on fields that affect the bees. Mostly, though, there is the lack of money.

When the weather gets cold in North Dakota, Miller and his brethren load the hives onto tractor trailers and move their bees to warmer climates. They could stay and just let the bees winter over, losing some of them to cold temperatures but there is money to be made pollinating crops - citrus trees and almonds.

Who knew almonds were such big business? It's so big that almond growers can't take chances in letting nature do the pollinating of their trees for them so they hire beekeepers like Miller to bring their masses of bees to pollinate their acres of almonds. The problem is that almond honey tastes horrible. The beekeepers only do this for the money from pollination fees and goodwill to the almond growers.

Speaking of money, there's also the problem of imports of foreign honey, particularly from China. The quality isn't as good, is often watered down or corn syruped down and then there's the shenanigans on top of that. For instance, when it was discovered that Chinese honey contained chemicals (I believe from pesticides), the U.S. banned honey imports from China. Suddenly countries such as Singapore and other Pacific Rim countries that had never exported honey before became enormous sources of honey. Hmmmmm....

Following up on foreign honey, there are also foreign bees and the diseases and mites that may or may not come from them. On the one hand, beekeepers try to use foreign bees to try and breed resistance to mites and fungi. On the other hand, bees, such as the more aggressive African types, can take over and wipe out existing bee colonies when accidentally introduced.

All in all, it's a royal pain in the butt to keep bees but those who love bees as Miller does do it well. The choice of Miller is inspired because he's an entertaining fellow and respected in the beekeeping community. His passion and quirkiness shine in the book and make for an entertaining read.

I didn't think it was a great book, though, because I felt at times Nordhaus dragged things on or reiterated points needlessly. It was minor - I never felt like the book bogged down - but it was frequent enough where it noticeably reduced my enjoyment. It's well worth the read to learn about a hidden side of agriculture and the challenges beekeepers face.

--Jon

THE READING PROMISE by Alice Ozma

One of our patrons had requested this from another library and seeing the subtitle "My Father and the Books We Shared", I had to take a look at it. It looked interesting and when the patron returned it, I proceeded to sign it out.

This is the story of the author, Alice Ozma, and her father, Jim. Jim, an elementary school librarian, always read to Alice as she was growing up. Around the age of nine the two of them decide that Jim will try to read to Alice for one hundred consecutive evenings. Upon successfully doing so, they decide that they will keep the streak alive and continue as long as they can. Jim reads to Alice every night of her life up until the day she leaves for college.

I enjoyed this story a lot because I could relate on many levels. First, I love to read to people. I read to my sons when they were younger (and my oldest son still reads to my youngest even though they are almost 17 and 12 years old, respectively. My youngest just likes his brother reading to him). I've read to girlfriends, my ex-wife. A friend of mine who lives in another state has gone through many illnesses and I have recorded myself, first on cassette and later digitally, so she can hear me read to her. I even looked into trying to get a gig reading for audiobooks once but found that the companies who produce them like people with vocal training and acting background and all that stuff. Oh well. So there was the whole reading aspect that I enjoyed.

I also could relate to Jim a lot. He raises Alice and her older sister on his own as a single parent. They struggle financially on his librarian salary. Jim doesn't like cats. He's friends with spiders. I liked Jim and I especially liked the foreword he wrote for this book, which should be required reading for all parents. They're also from the Philly area and visit places near where I grew up (Brandywine River Museum, Hank's Place (which I heard was submerged to the windows from Hurricane Irene)).

As for Alice, her writing is very simple and concise. The chapters are very short (about nine pages each) and talk about some aspect of her life with her father. Not all the chapters relate to reading and the streak. They all do have something to do with the father-daughter relationship.

The negative aspects of the book come from Alice just being a little too truthful. Reading to your child throughout their teenage years, almost into adulthood, isn't what most people would consider "normal". This isn't the only quirk the family shows. Some of the stories made me feel uncomfortable in a "too much information" kind of way. While I liked Jim and admired him, I also had to question some of the things he did.

All in all, though, this was a terribly sweet book and biases aside, I think it's one well worth reading.

--Jon

JOHANNES CABAL THE DETECTIVE by Jonathan Howard

My oldest son and I both were looking forward to this book with much anticipation. We both loved Howard's first effort, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer. My son is a fan of Lovecraftian horror tales and the character of Johannes Cabal was first developed by Howard for stories printed in a magazine devoted to H.P. Lovecraft so his enjoyment makes sense. For me, I thought it was a unique tale with a surprise ending, well-written and entertaining.

When I brought home JC the Detective from the library my son snagged it up and started reading it. He was not immediately impressed and he soon dropped it to return to readings in preparation for the school year. I grabbed it back and also was unimpressed early on.

Howard takes a long time to set up the premise of the story and he really tries hard to make Cabal out to be a bad guy (which, as I told my son when we were discussing the story, I don't think he is. I think he's a good guy who does bad things). In this case, Cabal has snuck into a foreign country to steal a rare book on necromancy. He gets caught but manages to escape, boarding an aerocraft of some sort (this has a steampunk feel to it) on its way to another country by pretending to be an agricultural official.

A murder occurs on the flight and Cabal's curiosity gets the better of him. In his efforts to learn more about what happened, an attempt is made on his life. The aerocraft lands and Cabal tries to make his way back home when another murder takes place. Cabal finally figures things out and pieces the puzzle together.

Through most of the story a character from Howard's first book, Leonie Barrow, accompanies Cabal. There's not a lot of background given about the relations between the twain which, coupled with Howard's desire to paint Cabal a certain (incomplete) way, really made me feel like reading JC the Necromancer was a prerequisite for this book.

As a continuation of JC the Necromancer, this is really good. The writing style is the same. Entertaining, albeit with a lot of forced attempts at humor and redundant wisecracks. Once the story gets underway after the slow, murky beginning, it is hard to put down. But then it has a bizarre ending. The story ends in fine fashion. Cabal finds his way home safely. But then Howard says that, oh, by the way, Cabal did have another adventure on his way home and if you want you can read it. He then proceeds to give this short story, told from the standpoint of a fellow at a social club who ran into Cabal during this adventure and is relating the story to his compatriots at the club. Odd. But still good.

I'd recommend you read both Johannes Cabal books together. The second isn't quite as good as the first (which I also rated one star when I read it a couple of years ago) but if you're like my son and I, after you read the first, you'll want to read more about Cabal.

--Jon

THE PRONE GUNMAN by Jean-Patrick Manchette

Audrey Niffenegger had to be looking over her shoulder with this book. About a third of the way through I really thought about putting it down. Picture some hack writing a bad screenplay for a Jason Statham flick (we're talking a typical non-Guy Ritchie Jason Statham movie where Statham is a driver/killer/disc jockey for hire). And I'm talking a hack, maybe some college kid who is a big Jason Statham fan and who really has no idea what makes a good story, good dialogue, good characters, because it doesn't matter since Jason Statham is in it and he's the bomb. Perhaps the founder of a Jason Statham fan fiction blog. Now picture Jason Statham being a Frenchman in this movie and the inherent drop off in coolness that this suggests. That's the starting point for The Prone Gunman.

I really should have stopped when I thought of stopping because somehow, this book got worse. I honestly laughed out loud in some sections it got so bad. Like this sentence:

"His haggard face at first registered great perplexity; then it registered worry, thoughtfulness, or whatever other movements of consciousness that might cause his face to look as it did."

The problem is that this is a French novel and at times, like with the above sentence, I thought that maybe the translator was being a practical joker. For instance, there tends to be a pattern in paragraphs talking about a character (which are frequent). A paragraph will begin with the character being named (usually the main character Martin Terrier). Then the second time the character is referenced, he will be referred to as "The man". Lower case "m", not upper case cool slang "The Man". Third mention will get the pronoun "he". Jon should have put the book down. The man knew it sucked. He couldn't resist.

So that gnawed at me a bit. Maybe it's not the author but the translator's fault. But the story is just awful so no, I'm blaming Manchette.

Martin Terrier as a youth is a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. His mother left him and his dad for a truck driver soon after Martin was born. Martin, as an eighteen year old, falls in love with a hot chick two years younger who comes from a well-to-do family. Martin vows to win the All-Valley Karate Tournament....wait a minute, that was Ralph Macchio. My bad. Martin vows to make his fortune and return for her. Will she wait for him ten years while he goes and earns his bundle? Why sure, says the smitten sixteen year old. Not a problem.

You're not going to believe this....she doesn't wait for him! If you can't trust the word of a sixteen year old girl on matters of love, who can you trust? She married some snooty rich French guy (being French and all herself). You did what?!?!?! says the dejected Martin. But I've been saving up my money from doing contract killing for the last decade! And now that ten years have passed I'm ready for you. I quit my job! And even though I was banging this other chick who liked my cat more than me, I was really thinking about you. I did all this for you!

And it's not like Martin can go back to the other chick and his cat because the family of a guy he killed is after Martin and they killed the woman and her feline friend to send a message. I think. It wasn't really clear. The cat was gutted, placed in an aquarium filled with water, sealed, and shipped to Martin's hotel (where he was traveling incognito). I think it was a message.

Lo and behold, this same family shows up at the house of Martin's love and (good fortune!) kills her husband. Martin manages to kill the family and he and his babe go on the lam.

But, oh noes, that darn family killed Martin's financial adviser and took all the benjamins he had saved. Good fortune strikes again! His former employer will gladly pay him a bundle if he does this one last hit. Sigh. I'll do it. For love. I have my babe, now I just need the money.

Only Martin can't get it up for his babe. He blames the immense concentration required in preparing for this kill. This even though the kill is two weeks away and his employer has put him and his woman up in a nice place out in the woods. With three days until the scheduled kill, the caretaker of the place/Martin's driver on the kill/representative from the employer finally sits down with him to go over choice of weapons. No, we can't get the gun you want in just three days. You'll have to use this crummy gun. What?!?! If I can't have the gun I want, I'm going to go tell on you. Martin goes and calls his employer who says, sure, we can get you whatever gun you need. Whew. Thank goodness. Martin heads back to the place in the woods. He goes up to the bedroom and there's his woman banging the caretaker/driver. Does Martin the trained assassin shoot them both? Torture them? No. The trauma of seeing his woman going at with another guy causes Martin to go mute. No joke.

First she can't wait for him ten years, then she can't wait for him ten days. But Martin still loves her. Martin heads for the kill, realizes he is being setup, escapes, then kidnaps a guy working for those setting him up. He's still mute. When he kidnaps the guy, he grabs him by the ear and rips the guy (Sammy Chen)'s ear off.
Two of Sammy's associates come along and subdue Martin. The one sees Sammy's ear on the floor of the car and picks it up:

"I must be dreaming!" he exclaimed as he examined the red auricle. "Shit!" he added respectfully.

"This guy is really violent," said Sammy Chen with conviction.

Those last two lines are straight from the book. I'm really glad Sammy said that with conviction. I know I tend not to believe people whose ears have been ripped off when they say the person that did it to them is really violent.

There's a standoff. The whole reason why Martin is set up is really vague and goofy. The man gets shot in the head. He can talk again. He gets his babe but suffers from more performance issues. We get this stunning bit of text a couple pages from the end:

"But she soon tired of an existence entirely lacking in adventure-not to mention money, for Martin Terrier, under his new identity and with his current abilities, could find work only in the restaurant business: he was now a waiter in a brasserie. She also grew tired of three-minute coitus, or so we may surmise. In any case, she left suddenly and without explanation. And she has not reappeared in Nauzac, although she owns property there. May we surmise that she is running around the world and leading a passionate and adventurous life? We may; it's no skin off our nose."

Words fail me. And apparently the author, too. Well, I could write about what happened, or I could just say that we may surmise something. And even though until this point I have refrained from acknowledging that there are readers and I am the narrator, I think I'll make mention of it with two pages to go. No skin off my nose.

What else? A lack of detail except for brand names. Every make of vehicle and weapon is identified. Defining characteristics of people, not so much. Except for the black man. We know he's black. We're told that a lot about him. Citroen's are the vehicle of choice although other makes make appearances.

This was just awful. It is really short (thankfully!) and is so bad it does become entertaining. Because of that, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife still maintains its hold as worst book I've ever read. I think Stephen Carter's New England White also falls below this just because of the length of his book and the blatant racism by the author, a Yale professor. But this passes The Museum Guard for putridity. I think I have to say this is the third worst book I have ever read. And to think that this guy is considered one of the best noir writers in France. Yikes.

--Jon

THE FINAL SOLUTION by Michael Chabon

I had just about caught up with my reviews but then held up because I wanted to research this one a little more. It is a review of a book written by one of my favorite authors, Michael Chabon.

Chabon's place in my stable of fantastic authors has been knocked down a few notches over the years with some books I just didn't enjoy very much. I'm reminded of a TED talk with Elizabeth Gilbert where she expresses that she has come to grips with the fact that she will likely never match the success she has had with Eat, Pray, Love and that her writing career is all downhill from here.

I had been feeling that Chabon was in the same boat. What do you do after you win a Pulizter Prize (for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay)? Chabon has branched out into other genres writing movie screenplays, comics, a children's book (Summerland, which I enjoyed), and now has a picture book coming out next month. And it's not like his writing has become bad. He is still as marvelous with words as ever. I just haven't liked his stories much.

The Final Solution came out seven years ago, a year after it first appeared in The Paris Review. I avoided reading it for a number of reasons, the biggest one being I hate people who write Sherlock Holmes stories who aren't named Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It bothers me to no end. You have a brain, come up with your own character and don't leech off a legend. Sheesh. And for one of my favorite authors to do so? The mind boggles at my moral dilemma.

The thing is, for all the talk about this novella being about Sherlock Holmes, I cannot find any suggestion that it actually is. The sleuthing hero in the story, an old man who was once a respected, legendary crime investigator in England is only referred to as "The old man". Heck, Chabon might have been ripping off Hemingway. The old man has excellent powers of observation and deduction. The story takes place in the early 1940's which makes the age right but I found no reference that said "Hey, the old man is Sherlock Holmes". I have read every Sherlock Holmes story that Doyle wrote. And while I don't have a photographic memory, I would think something would register in my brain as being from some Holmes tale. Even more so, I would think if you're going to make it a Sherlock Holmes story, you make the obvious reference. You reference the stories everyone knows; A Study in Scarlet, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear...something. Nothing.

So I applaud Chabon for the incredible act of writing a story that most people think is a Sherlock Holmes story but isn't. That's talent. I think.

What is this story then? Well, there's a young mute lad with a parrot that speaks German and rattles off sequences of numbers from time to time. The boy lives in a boarding house with some motley characters. One night the parrot vanishes and one of the household members is found murdered. The inspector on the scene is baffled and enlists the old man's assistance. The old man realizes that the parrot is the key to the mystery and so they search for the bird instead of the killer. Both are found but the importance of the parrot (if there is any importance to be attached to the parrot) is left as a mystery.

All in all I liked it. It was a nice breezy book which is hard to say about a Chabon work given his predilection for gargantuan words. It also has a handful of nice illustrations. I initially wanted to give it two stars (my top rating) but the more I thought about it, the more I felt I was doing so because it was written by Chabon. Anyone else and it's a nice story. So I'll be honest with myself and give it one-star (still a fine book and recommended).

--Jon

EVERYTHING HERE IS THE BEST THING EVER by Justin Taylor

There was nothing about this book that was even really good, let alone the best ever. It's a collection of short stories that I found completely unmoving and forgettable. The characters, like the stories, are sort of aimless.

I like to think I don't require a connection to the characters in order for me to like them or the book. Maybe if I were a twenty-something hipster, I would have been able to relate more to the drug use and the pansexual experiences. I couldn't, though, and couldn't care less about the characters or what happened to them. There's no doubt Justin Taylor has some writing talent, and being short stories, it was a quick read and not a waste of my life. Not an awful book but not one I would recommend.

One last caveat concerning my lack of recommendation. I struggle with short stories. I think they're a difficult format to do right and when they are done right, I usually want more than what the author gave me. So, if you do like short stories, this might be worth your while just because Taylor can write. Or, if you're not an old man like myself, you might find something worthwhile.

--Jon

ELEVEN by Mark Watson

JJ wondered in her review of this book what it was that I liked about it. Well, I'm catching up on my book reviews and have finally reached Eleven so here are my thoughts.

Eleven has become my most favorite fictional book I have read this year. What a terrific book. I finished it and really wanted to just go right back to the beginning and start again. I have recommended it to several people, a couple whom have read it and enjoyed it as well (the others haven't read it yet to my knowledge).

Eleven is about the unusually named Xavier Ireland, nee Chris Cotswold, a native Australian living in London where he works as a late night radio talk show host with his co-host, the stammering Murray. Xavier lives a quiet, lonely life outside of work, indulging in a traditional weekend Scrabble tournament, and tries to steer clear of deep involvement with people's personal lives, even as he dispenses advice on his talk show.

The title Eleven comes from the eleven lives that are influenced by a non-decision Xavier makes early in the book. A young child is being bullied by a bunch of schoolmates. Xavier makes a half-hearted attempt to break it up but ultimately leaves the kid to his own fate. This starts a chain of events that concludes with a very unexpected yet appropriate and moving ending.

This concept could easily be done in a very ham-handed way with "fate" being forced down the reader's throats and coincidences that are just too far-fetched to swallow. Mark Watson, though, does it with a tremendous elegance, creating a literary "butterfly effect". If you're not familiar with the theory, it is the idea that the breeze that a butterfly stirs with its wings in one part of the world, has an influence on the air currents and weather patterns in other parts of the world in ways we cannot fathom. So it is with this novel.

The story can really be summed up by one line in it, a line that seems like a throwaway line about two-thirds of the way through the book:

Everything has a chance of mattering.

Action or an absence of action has impacts in ways we cannot possibly fathom as Watson shows how the smallest things can escalate then ebb. A minor irritation makes us grumpy and our snappish comment to a stranger may in turn set off other events.

Beyond the study of fate and the influence of one person on another, this book is great because of Watson's characters. They are charmingly flawed starting with Xavier Ireland. We eventually find why Ireland has left Australia and changed his name and why he seems so set on being uninvolved. There's Murray (whoever heard of a stammering radio DJ?). The love interest, Pippa, who Xavier meets at a speed dating event and initially hires to clean his apartment. She is a former Olympic caliber athlete who now struggles to care for her recently impregnated sister. There's the neighbors; an upstairs couple who endlessly quarrel and seem abusive, and the downstairs single mother with the ultra-hyperactive toddler. The folks from Ireland's past. The depressed regular caller to Ireland's show. The restaurant reviewer who is the mother of the aforementioned bullied child. The realtor with bad breath.

The book is primarily about Ireland but these other characters flit in and out of the story, each with their own lives that don't seem to have anything to do with Xavier's but each doing or not doing something that impacts someone else.

I loved this book. I found it inspirational in an odd way. I think it is exquisitely crafted and well thought out. Even the ending, which is shocking and emotional, is perfect. The characters are human and modern. I honestly cannot think of a single negative thing to say about this book. Please read it.

--Jon

SAVAGES by Don Winslow

Even working at a library, you can't always get the books you want when you want them. Take our library system. There are seventeen libraries in the system, ranging from some really large ones to some really small ones. But seventeen....you would think that most books that get reviewed places would end up being purchased by one or more of them.

I had read a review of Savages and it sounded like it was a fast-paced, oddly written book, much like the much-loved-by-me Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow. I wanted to read it. Only one library in the system had it. Libraries in the system won't ship new books to the patrons of other libraries. You can either drive to the owning library, hope the book is on the shelf, and sign it out, or you can wait for the six month restricted period for new books to end and then request it be shipped.

I opted for the wait. And on the exact day it came off, I requested it.

Worth the wait. I knew the book was going to be different when I started the book. You know how you always hear the advice to writers that your first line should be powerful, drawing the reader into the book? Well, the first line of Savages is the first chapter of Savages. It reads, in it's entirety, "F%*#! you" (cleaned up due to the potential for a younger audience reading this).

So, yeah, that grabbed me. Especially since that was the whole chapter.

The book is about two young guys who are marijuana dealers in sunny California. Chon is a former Navy SEAL who brought back some high quality marijuana seeds when he was fighting overseas. His buddy Ben is a botanist who figures out how to create some nice blends with these seeds to create highly desired designer marijuana. The two share a girlfriend named Ophelia.

A Mexican drug cartel decides that they want to expand their operations into So-Cal and they go tell Ben and Chon that they are taking over their business. Naturally, the two are opposed to the idea. The cartel kidnaps Ophelia. A drug war begins.

This is another book with some really nicely developed characters with multiple points of views. Chapters (which are mostly really short and brisk) move from perspective to perspective.

But profanity, drug wars, seedy folks, violence. Not a big chance for a happy ending and no one really to root for (gee, I hope that Chon and Ben get Ophelia back so they can have another threesome and then sell some more weed! By the way, f%*#! you!). That keeps this from being a two star book for me. It's well-written, powerful, with a driving style that I liked. I'd put it more James Ellroy than Toby Barlow in terms of style, which isn't bad. Well worth it if you don't mind amoral characters in your novels

--Jon

THE IMPERFECTIONISTS by Tom Rachman

I wanted to read The Imperfectionists from the moment I heard about it yet I never got around to doing so. Finally, someone returned a copy belonging to another library here so I thought it was time.
It was well worth the wait. I enjoyed this book immensely. This is another one of those books (it's almost becoming gimmicky) told by a multitude of characters with each chapter being told by one of the characters. It ends up being a collection of short stories in a sense but unlike in, say, A Visit From the Goon Squad, the stories are much more interrelated.

The story is about a dying, once great, European newspaper. Each chapter is from someone having to do with the paper ranging from editors, to writers, to someone from human resources, to a reader. Interspersed between the chapters is a page or three about the history of the paper.

Rachman does a great job developing the personalities of the characters. Beyond that, he also showed how certain characters were misjudged by those who interacted with them. You see how certain characters view others but then you reach that characters' story and you see that there is more to them than meets the eye. So even though you only get a character's perspective for one chapter, they continue to be fleshed out in ensuing chapters (or are hinted at before their chapter is reached).

Rachman is a former journalist and he seems to have covered all the bases in this novel from the highest supervisor down to a guy trying to catch on with the paper as a stringer. I thought it was a well done book from beginning to end and one I could see myself re-reading some day.

--Jon

SUM by David Eagleman

Although I hate the phrase, you know how various industries like to have their "rock-stars"? Those men or women who maybe work in an industry that normally doesn't receive much attention but gains some notoriety because of an individual being gregarious and engaging as well as creating brilliant work? Like a Jacques Cousteau or a Carl Sagan, for instance. Even now, you think of underwater exploring, you think of ole Jacques.

I think the field of neuroscience has that guy right now. He is David Eagleman, the author of this book. He has a book out on the brain called Incognito which is receiving some press and as far as being gregarious and engaging, I'll let you make the call:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
David Eagleman
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

This aired after I had read Sum. Sum is a collection of....visions? They are too short to label them essays or stories. Each is about three (small) pages in length, Forty in all. Each one depicts the possibility of what the afterlife looks like. What happens at the end of life depends, in part, on how life came to be so there's some ideas as well as to how we came to exist as human beings and what it might mean.

Eagleman's imagination is mind-boggling. How many possibilities of an afterlife can you come up with? Forty? They are well thought out and described and it really makes one wonder about organized religion and religious belief systems.

Want some examples? How about the possibility that "God" is a married couple? Or that he is the size of a bacteria making us so small as to be completely insignificant to him.

Science, religion, neuroscience - all tied together in a tidy, entertaining bundle. And even though the idea of reading a book about the brain doesn't interest me, I expect I will end up reading Incognito.

--Jon

STOLEN WORLD by Jennie Erin Smith

You would expect from the title of the post that this would be a review of another book on art crime. Fooled you! It's about reptile crime.

Who knew there was such a thing? Apparently in the sixties and seventies, before governments started cracking down on it, there were a number of guys who made fairly decent livings smuggling reptiles for private collections and zoos. In a way, very similar to art crime (minus the forgeries and replace zoos with museums). The big difference is that the guys who dealt with smuggling reptiles also had an obsession with reptiles themselves. Reptile smuggling isn't exactly a field you get into for the money.

Stolen World is primarily about two dealers who continue in the reptile trade into the 2000's. I didn't much care for them and the book is based mostly on interviews with them. As such it is one-sided and being as I didn't like the fellows, I didn't really care much about the outcome of the story/their lives.

I also disliked Smith's writing. It was as boring as her name. I was surprised to find that she makes a living writing. Yeah, I disliked it that much. I think in part because it reminded me of my own writing (which I really don't like). Dry, a lack of description.

I signed this book out, in part, because it had sat on our new book shelf for four months without anyone signing it out before me. I kind of felt bad for the book. Having read it, I don't feel bad anymore if it sits untouched.

--Jon

PERSONAL DAYS by Edward Park

I had a feeling before I read Personal Days that it would be similar to Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End. Life working in an office. Funny stories a la something you might see in a Dilbert comic or the movie Office Space (I've never seen the show The Office but I imagine it might be similar). The book started that way. Some witty situations, most of them written in such brief segments I at one point thought that perhaps this novel could be serialized on Twitter as a series of Tweets.

But then it stopped.

There are layoffs and things get weird and the text reads more like your typical novel. Stuff stops being funny or interesting and the last half of the book was a chore to read.

The only other thing of note is the attempt to have the story told in the third person plural. The narrator is "we", a group of co-workers. But so many of the individuals encompassed by the collective are mentioned individually, it really didn't seem like there was much reason for having the narrator be plural rather than singular other than as a forced literary device.

I could recommend the book for its first half, but to be honest, after the passing of a few weeks, I hardly remember enough of it to do so. It's a pretty forgettable book.

--Jon

A BARN IN NEW ENGLAND by Joseph Monninger

In my review of Andorra I mentioned that there is another book I turn to when I am feeling the effects of summer and wanting to be somewhere else. That book is Joseph Monninger's A Barn in New England.

Monninger is a professor who decides to move with his girlfriend, Wendy, and her son, Pie, to a barn in Warren, New Hampshire. The word barn means different things to different people. I refer to the building behind my house where I work out as a barn even though it is only about sixteen feet square and a couple of floors high. It's not a barn where I'm going to keep cattle. It is a wooden building with beams that resembles, well, a barn, albeit a small one.

Similarly, Monninger's barn is a bit hard to picture as a barn because of its enormity. It once housed animals so you know it is pretty big. The only thing about this book I don't like is that there are no pictures of the barn. You have to imagine it. Or be a decent researcher. From things mentioned in the book, I tracked down an old postcard that had a picture of the barn. Here it is:



That's the barn on the left. Mammoth, huh? It is four stories high. So the book is about their move to the barn, their first year in it, the town and townfolk, the renovations they make to the barn, and the lives of a couple in love/family. I love it. It's one of my favorite books of all time.

Monninger somehow creates a sense of idyllic realism. Living in a place like that isn't easy. Insulating, heating, restoring rotted wood including support beams. It takes effort and money. It's not easy and Monninger doesn't pretend it is. Yet the writing is never whiny, never defeatist. The trio are, if anything, resilient. They plug away and turn what was once a barn into a home.

Monninger's writing is exquisite with great details. And always just the right ones in the right amount. I always find it difficult (I have read this several times) not to feel inspired by reading this. A search for home has always been a struggle for me and while where I live now is as close as I have been, that summer heat still makes me want to move further north.

But beyond the building, the love Monninger feels for Wendy and Pie is also inspirational. A building isn't really a home without people and there is a lot of love in this story without it becoming sappy.

Whether or not I become Monninger's neighbor remains to be seen. In the long run, I have a feeling I'll likely stop short of New England, say, oh, I don't know, somewhere in rural New York. Until then, I'll keep plugging away at my own old house and barn and be inspired by Monninger.

--Jon

BORN TO RUN by Christopher McDougall

Amidst all my other activities, I continue to try and work out, lose weight and get in shape. One of the things I have been trying to do is run more. The idea of lugging my carcass around for any distance is a little concerning because of the amount of force being put on my joints, particularly my knees. How to run without putting strain on my knees?

After looking around a bit, I decided I'd give barefoot running a shot. There are some folks out there who think that the footwear that Nike et al provide us actually do more harm than good - that we didn't have to worry about overpronation and crap like that until the shoe companies started making shoes for it. The idea is that running is natural and our foot is meant to move a given way (more ball of the foot oriented) and less the way shoes force us to (heel to toe). So I gave it a shot. And I found that running barefoot is a lot less jarring.

When I do run, I run on pavement and so the heat tsunami a few weeks ago made me a little too toasty for getting out and running barefoot. Nonetheless, I was pretty jazzed to find that I might be able to get back into running (I ran track and cross country in high school and was a biathlete in college. Of course that was tens of years and pounds ago).

In my excitement, JJ suggested that I read the book Born to Run. It was a very popular book in this area about a year or two ago and I knew that a fleet of women runners that work out at the local Y had all read it (it may also have been a book club book). Sue overheard our conversation and she recommended it too. Our copy was out so I drove to a nearby library and grabbed their copy. The librarian there told me that she wasn't a runner, wasn't interested in running, and she loved it. I don't think it could have come any more recommended.

All the recommendations were right. I loved it.

Right off the bat I knew I would I enjoy it. The author, Christopher McDougall, is my size, lives in rural, Amish Pennsylvania and the book opens with him trying to get himself into shape by running. Just like me! When he suffers an injury while running, he begins to explore alternatives. McDougall discovers a reclusive tribe of Indians in Mexico called the Taramuhara who are considered by many to be the best long-distance runners in the world. He begins to research them and finds that not only are they great runners, they love running, tend to be injury free, run in the barest of footwear and have a mostly vegetarian diet.

Along the way, McDougall encounters a bunch of interesting folk, ranging from drug dealers to ultra-marathoners to an American who picked up and moved to Mexico to live near the Taramuhara. In the end, a race is arranged between the Taramuhara and some of the top ultra-marathoners in the world with McDougall, big carcass and all, joining them and completing it.

It's a great book and a great story. Like the one librarian said, even if you aren't interested in running, it is fascinating and entertaining. If you are interested in running, it will help you look at and question some of the beliefs you may have held to be true.

--Jon

THE WAY THROUGH DOORS by Jesse Ball

The Way Through Doors was an interesting piece of meta-fiction. The main character, Selah Morse, is a struggling pamphleteer who is hired by his uncle to work in some sort of odd secret governmental organization. One day he is out in the street walking and a beautiful woman races out of a building into the street where she is struck by a taxicab. Morse accompanies her to the hospital where he claims to be the woman's boyfriend. The woman has amnesia and cannot remember anything of her life. Morse takes her back to his place and begins to try and recreate her memories by telling her a story.

As his story progresses, characters within his story begin telling stories of their own and then characters in those stories tell their own stories. Some of those stories reference people from the previous stories but not always in ways that were expected. One story, for example, is an almost identical recreation of the first pages of the novel but with some minor twists. Along the way there are a number of interesting characters, the most prevalent being a Coney Island boardwalk mindreader who is wrong more often than he is right.

All in all, I liked it. There didn't seem to be much of a point to it all outside of the oddball style but it was fun. The author barely constrains himself when it comes to realism but although it is imaginative, it is not outlandishly so. I could see a re-read being beneficial to try and catch more details and such and the book is short enough to do so. Worth checking out if you want something different.

--Jon

A PASSION FOR BOOKS by Harold Rabinowitz

It took me a long time to read this book. It wasn't because the book was tedious. I really enjoyed it. It's because the book had to be savored. A Passion for Books is a collection of essays from noted figures in the book collecting world (which by default contains noted figures in the bookselling, writing and publishing worlds). There were some by favorites of mine like Nicholas Basbanes, Christopher Morley and Robertson Davies. There was one by the legendary A.S.W. Rosenbach. Umberto Eco, John Updike, Gustave Flaubert and many more. A veritable who's who.

As with any collection of work by a multitude of people, particularly one such as this where the entries ranged in length from a couple paragraphs to many pages, it is uneven. There were some really dull pieces interspersed with some really wonderful ones. There's also some lists of books and some cartoons.

I can see myself going back to this book, leafing through it, maybe even referencing it if the need arose. It's not one that I would read from cover to cover but some of the essays I liked a lot I would reread. If you're a book lover, you need to at least leaf through a copy.

--Jon

ELEVEN by Mark Watson

I read Eleven simply because Jon pulled it off the new book shelf and said it was a good read. I didn’t ask him what was good about it, but took his recommendation. This is odd, because I don’t always like what he likes. But for some reason, I keep reading his suggestions...

The premise is interesting and I liked right away what I read on the back about the author. He’s a comedian. And one of his other books is called A Light-Hearted Look at Murder – what a great title!

Eleven is about Xavier Ireland, a late-night radio talk show host, who has run away from his old life. He gives advice to the listeners of his call-in advice show, but yet deliberately avoids interfering in the lives of the people around him. Though written by a comedian, the story is not funny. Xavier is a lonely man who tries to avoid dealing with a very tough situation from a few years back (which is why he ran). A romantic interest comes along and calls him out on his selfishness, his inability to get involved with others. As is the case in many books and movies (and life?), the romantic attraction is the impetus for change.

My book club friends often tell of books making them cry. I don’t remember a book causing tears. This one came very close. When I read, mid-book, exactly what Xavier did that was so awful he felt it necessary to move to a different country and change his name I gasped out loud and then went several hours through the night with no sleep. Shudder. And another part of the story which hit very close to home drew my emotions a bit too close to the edge for my liking.

A blurb on the cover states: “One Moment Eleven Lives Endless Consequences.” One action (or inaction) by Xavier trickled down into drastic effects for others. A good reminder that our actions affect others (a scary thought or an empowering one? Depends upon your perspective, I suppose).

The ending was not what I thought was coming, but it was appropriate and interesting. The story is poignant, for sure. The writing is what I like – to the point, easy to follow, and not too poetic or contrived. I wonder what Jon will write about this one.

I rate it five stars.

JJ

My rating system:

1 star – Yawn or horrible writing
2 stars – Ick but slightly higher than horrible and boring
3 stars – Respect the author but it’s just not my thing
4 stars – Like the book but didn’t obsess about it
5 stars – Thought about the book day and night during the time I read it, hated for it to end, told anyone who would listen about the book I was reading

HOW TO SELL by Clancy Martin

I looked for How to Sell after reading the first part of this three part article in the Paris Review by Martin. From reading the article and then seeing the title of the book, I expected the book to be non-fiction but it is a novel. However, given Martin's background in the jewelry business and the fact that the story takes place in Texas where the narrator works with his brother in the jewelry business (as Martin did and lived), it's not a stretch to make the assumption that a good portion of the story is grounded in reality.

As such, I will never buy jewelry again. I know, it's hard to imagine me without my bling, but it's just not going to happen. Insane markups, selling customers' items that are brought in for cleaning and then telling the customer they were lost when they were shipped out, forgery, outright lying. It's a pretty shady business. And what do you expect? A lot of characters have drug habits that need to be paid for. They cheat on their wives. Heck, the one brother is sleeping with the other brother's girlfriend (and is constantly frantic at being found out (pssst, the brother knows)).

This was another one of those books where I didn't care for the characters but the writing was excellent, making me read on despite the lack of a "hero". I'm not real sure that there was much of a plot to the book either. I guess there is in the sense that the narrator has good intentions. He just always chooses the shadiest path.

I liked it and recommend you check out both the book and the series of articles linked above.

--Jon

THE SNOWMAN BY Jo Nesbo

This was a huge departure from my normal reading habits. I kept reading good reviews, though, and when we got The Snowman at the library, I snagged it. It is a crime novel that takes place in modern day Scandinavia.

The book starts off with a woman and her son going to a house where the woman is meeting a man with whom she has been having an affair. He is moving away and she goes for one more fling, leaving her son in the car. During her romp in the bedroom, the woman thinks she sees someone peering in the window but finds it is just a snowman. Her business done, she returns to her car where her son sits terrified. He informs her that he thinks they are going to die.

Gripping, huh? And that was just my hastily written synopsis of the opening chapter.

The story unfolds and the reader discovers that there have been a string of killings, and at the scene of each crime, a snowman has been left (time to move to Belize!). Inspector Harry Hole is put on the case. He ends up with a new partner, a babe by the name of Katrine Bratt. The pair pursue leads as the killings pile up like snow on a winter's day.

My main reason for avoiding books like this is that I feel the author is in a lose-lose situation. Give me too much detail and I'll figure out the story well before the ending. I'll cringe as the protagonist falls for the red herring and wonder why on earth I'm not out solving crimes instead of working at a library. The other option is for the author to withhold information. I tend not to like that because the important details are revealed at the end and are often convoluted.

Nesbo's book sort of combines both. He is a really good writer (and/or this book was really translated well since Nesbo is Norwegian and wrote the book in his native tongue. More and more of his books are being translated into English). Lots of detail. Lots of connections to be made among the murders, some of them downright ludicrous. In the end, the real murderer is none of the people you thought and the conclusion is a bit out there. At least I found it so.

The writing is incredibly compelling. It was a hard book to put down and the ending wasn't horrible. It was a nice change of pace for me and I would recommend it to thriller readers and non-readers alike.

--Jon

THE RESCUE ARTIST by Edward Dolnick

Hey! We're back to one of my favorite topics, art crime!

I really liked this book as I was reading it but then I found that I forgot about it once I was done. Not sure what to make of that. Is it the summer heat weighing on my brain or was the book just not memorable enough?

The Rescue Artist traces the efforts of Charley Hill, a member of Scotland Yard's Art Squad, in his attempts to recover the famous Edvard Munch painting, The Scream. In the truth is stranger than fiction department, nothing beats this theft. You watch movies about art crime and the thieves go through all sorts of rigamarole to swipe their object of beauty. Defeating sensors, cutting through floors or going through skylights, technological gadgetry out the wazoo to pull off the heist. It is hard work. Want to know how The Scream was stolen?

A couple of guys went over to a construction site and grabbed a ladder. They brought it over to the museum (Norway's National Gallery). They climbed up to the second floor (falling off the ladder the first time they tried to climb it), broke a window with a hammer, reached in and pulled the painting off the wall.

They were in the museum a total of fifty seconds and made off with a painting valued at over $70 million. That's an hourly pay rate of over $5 billion an hour.

The book proceeds from there to trace Hill's efforts in recovering the painting, sidetracking here and there to look at some of the other art crimes he has been a part of solving. One might wonder how Scotland Yard gets involved in a crime that took place in Norway. The answer is that Hill wanted to be involved. Hill is a forceful individual who sort of found his way into the world of art crime after a number of false starts in life. He's an interesting fellow and his story is really the focus of the book. That being said, there is some background on why art thefts take place, who profits from them, and why, given that these paintings are supposedly so valuable, security measures are pretty awful.

Definitely a good book on art crime. Some better writing might have made it more memorable but it is certainly done well enough for me to recommend it.

ANDORRA by Peter Cameron

I've been in a bit of a mood. Summer is here and I suffer from reverse seasonal affective disorder. I get miserable as the temperatures rise. Of course, my old age is kicking in and this winter was a little on the tough side for me, too, but it's nothing compared to the gloom that comes over me when the temperature hits the high 70's (never mind eighties and nineties). I need to find somewhere that is 60 and overcast with a bit of rain all year round (with maybe a snowfall or two).

When it gets hot like this, I start fantasizing about living elsewhere. This in turn leads me to turning to a pair of books on finding that place called home. I'll be reviewing the one later on. The other is Peter Cameron's City of Your Final Destination (I do re-read the occasional book).

The thing is, I like it here in Strasburg. I really don't need to be thinking about moving, hellacious heat be damned. So I steered clear of Cameron's book because I didn't need the headache of fantasizing about being elsewhere. But I did decide I wanted to read something by him and so I read Andorra.

Andorra is similar to City of Your Final Destination in that Cameron writes about a real place but makes it fictional. There is an Andorra in reality, but it is nothing like the Andorra about which Cameron writes.

Cameron's Andorra is on the coast and most of the novel takes place in a terraced town. The main character, Alexander Fox, has moved there from the U.S. after a tragedy that took his wife and daughter. Fox appears to be appropriately named as he seems to be both sly and good-looking. He quickly befriends an Australian couple, and both husband and wife fall for him. Meanwhile, one of the notable families in town also takes a shine to Fox and sets him up in a place to live and tries to get him to marry one of the daughters of the family.

We find that not all is as it appears to be, with anyone or anything. Some murders happen and Fox is suspected of being involved. This leads to some truths being revealed about the circumstances involving his family's deaths.

Despite the murder mystery, the book isn't a mystery. Despite the romances, it's not really a romance. Not sure what to call it exactly other than good. I think I have read all of Cameron's novels now and I have enjoyed every one of them.

On the downside, I didn't much care for any of the characters. They all have their really odd quirks and I can't say any of them are really likeable in the least. Cameron's writing makes the book compelling even without a protagonist for which you can root. That to me is always a characteristic of a good writer. Can you make me want to keep reading, even when I don't like the person about whom I'm reading? If so, you're usually a good writer and/or have a good story going.

I do need to try and track down Cameron's short stories and give them a shot. I'm not much of a short story fan so if I like them I'll be able to say without reserve that Cameron is a favorite writer of mine.

--Jon