Published Columns and Additional Book Reviews
This page will show the most recent column published in The Valley Reporter plus additional book reviews. As time permits, my brief book reviews will be added into the library catalog in the comments.
Western set in Australia
Quigley Down Under (DVD). Entertaining as long as you don't mind a lot of dead bodies. Matthew Quigley, an American sharpshooter takes a job with an Australian who owns a huge spread. When Quigley discovers the landowner is looking for someone to shoot Aborigines he gets upset and finds himself beaten up and dumped out in the desert to die.
Downstairs at Balmoral
India Black and the Widow of Windsor by Carol K. Carr. Pure escapism! The heroine is the owner of a brothel who moonlights as a British agent. She gets sucked into pretending to be the maid of an elderly marchioness and heading off to Balmoral to prevent Scottish nationalists from assassinating Queen Victoria. Yes, it is just as silly as it sounds, but entertaining if you like that sort of thing.
Art and Deceit
After the Auction by Linda Frank (downloadable audio). Lily Kovner is an affluent widow who writes magazine articles on the side. She attends an auction of Jewish art objects as part of an assignment and is shocked and amazed to see a Torah plate which was stolen from her family in Vienna during the Nazi era. She finds herself in pursuit of her own past in addition to navigating a mystery about the missing plate. This is a first novel and there are definitely some thin places in the plotting and the writing. On the other hand, the theme of art looting, particularly of Jewish art, is fascinating and she does a good job of presenting that aspect of the story. I'll give this one a mixed rating!
Let's Pretend (to be an army)
Ghost Army of World War II by Jack Kneece. Back in November we had a library program featuring Tom Roche who served with the "Ghost Army" a super secret group of special troops whose specialty was pretending to be other army units. They used inflatable tanks, trucks and artillery pieces, sound systems, fake insignia and all sorts of other clever ruses to convince the Germans that they were facing large forces. Jack Kneece is unfortunately not a great writer, but the story transcends the limits of the author. Well worth reading if you like unusual war stories.
Berlin 1933
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson (audio CD, book, downloadable audio, downloadable Kindle, downloadable ebook). William E. Dodd, an unassuming history professor, was appointed ambassador to Germany in 1933. Larson describes what he and his family found during their years in Berlin. In addition to the horrors of dealing with the Nazis, Dodd also had to deal with the ingrown prejudices of the upper class clique that ran the State Department. A fascinating and horrifying book.
Never-never land
The Silver Lotus by Thomas Steinbeck. A mythological story set in a sort of alternate universe where a sea captain from Nantucket and the beautiful daughter of a Chinese merchant are able to marry, sail the seas together, and then settle in Monterey. Lady Yee, in addition to being beautiful, is incredibly wise and good and devotes her immense wealth to quietly improving the world. In spite of being a very odd book, I found it enjoyable and sort of weirdly fascinating.
Poor Little Rich Girl
The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin (downloadable audio). Cora Cash is very rich with an indulgent father who has affairs on the side and an implacable mother who pursues social supremacy at all costs. Her mother decides that an English title is the next item on the agenda and drags her daughter off in pursuit. Capturing the title turns out to be the easy part. The best character in the story, in my opinion, is Bertha, Cora's "colored" maid, who navigates the complex social strata below stairs with a cynical good sense.
Icelandic echoes of Mordor
Where the Shadows Lie by Michael Ridpath. Magnus Jonson was born in Iceland but ended up in the U.S., working in Boston as a detective. His boss sends him to Iceland to get him out of the way of a hired killer and also to offer some help to the Icelandic police force--they want to upgrade their skills. Once in Iceland he finds himself investigating the murder of professor which involves a lost saga, an enchanted ring, and some letters written by Tolkien. Excellent entertainment and I hope to read more by this author. (note, you don't have to be a Lord of the Rings fan to follow the story)
Escape to Italy
Under the Tuscan Sun (DVD). Loosely based on the book by Frances Mayes, but only very, very loosely. Pictures of food but no recipes. Nevertheless, a charming and delightful and very entertaining movie.
Whodunnit in Aix-en-Provence
Death at the Chateau Bremont by M.L. Longworth. If you like your mysteries with lovely scenery, fine food and wine, romantic confusion and a bit of misdirection, you'll enjoy this one. Funny, too.
Flowers as a path to redemption
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (downloadable ebook or downloadable audio or book). Victoria is a young woman who was bounced from foster home to foster home and finally ends up living in a public park. At one foster home the "mother" introduced her to the Victorian conceit that flowers could be used as a language. Each flower is supposed to have one meaning. This began Victoria's fascination with flowers and gradually leads her into flower arranging as a career. An enjoyable book, but a bit too tightly confined by the flower language concept. Oh well!
We've got large print books
You can find them on top of the bookcase which backs up against my desk. I return one group and gather up another pile about once every 3 or 4 months. The books are listed in the catalog and do include some titles that are not in our regular collection. We also have a very small collection of large print books which we own. You can find them in the same location.
Here are the books we currently have on loan from the Special Services Department:
Heartwood by James Lee Burke
The Aloha Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini
Coma by Robin Cook
Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell
Summer on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber
No Safe Place by Richard North Patterson
No Graves as Yet by Anne Perry
The River Knows by Amanda Quick
I can borrow particular books in the large print format. Just ask!
Birth of Democracy
The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization (DVD). This PBS home video is beautifully done and surprisingly entertaining for an "educational" piece. It tells the story of how Athens created the first democratically run city state, how they beat the Persians at Marathon (side note: the runner actually traveled 140 miles in two days, the shorter distance now used for the "marathon" is the mileage from Marathon to Athens), how Athens became rich and powerful and successful AND how they blew the wad in a war against Sparta.
Two faces of war
Tides of War by Stella Tillyard. Richly detailed and imaginative account of the struggle in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars. The main characters include Wellington, his wife Kitty, Nathan Rothschild (the banker) and Frederic Winsor who created the first gas lighting utility. The novel moves back and forth between London and Spain as the larger war between nations is echoed by various power struggles between individuals. Very good!
Will our future be poor, dark and cold? Or perhaps not...
Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era by Amory B. Lovins and Rocky Mountain Institute. Energy is the great challenge of our time. Nuclear, oil, solar, wind, hydrogen, conservation, natural gas--is there any one clear path forward? This unusual book takes up all of the questions in 6 sections: Defossilizing Fuels; Transportation: Fitter Vehicles, Smarter Use; Buildings: Designs for Better Living; Industry: Remaking How we Make Things; Electricity: Repowering Prosperity; and a final section on how to make the best choices going forward. Each section provides detailed analysis of the various options, pointing out problems and challenges, advantages and disadvantages of all of the potential choices. The book is business oriented and focused on good business decisions and where to invest, personally and as a society, for the best energy outcomes. I finished reading it in a state of bemused surprise. There are a lot more choices ahead than I had realized.
The art of the impossible in politics
Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union by William C. Harris. As a child, studying American history, I was horrified when I discovered that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't apply to slaves in states that had remained in the Union. It was obvious to me that Lincoln was a hypocrite! As an adult, studying European history, I wondered what happened to all the defeated revolutionaries after 1848. I knew many had come to the US and thought, in passing, that they must have played a part in the Civil War, most likely on the Union side. This book does a brilliant job of explaining why Lincoln was conciliatory to slave owners in the border states: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. It describes the role of the German immigrants in St. Louis, Missouri, where they provided vigorous support to the most radical anti-slavery arm of the Republican Party. The book is a bit of a heavy slog, but for anyone who is really curious about the political battles (passions were very high on all sides in the North) during the Civil War, it is worth the effort.
Multiple Personality Disorder Unveiled
Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case by Debbie Nathan. An utterly fascinating book which digs through the intersection of three women and the creation of the book Sybil. I couldn't put it down! This would be a great read for a book club (but you could wait until it is available in paperback) and should provoke some interesting discussions about the ever-expanding list of mental health diagnoses.
Mosquitoes or 40 below
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier (downloadable audio). Fascinating. A bit long-winded in the descriptions, but mostly very entertaining and enlightening.
Murder obscure
Death Qualified by Kate Wilhelm (audio CD). I'm a huge fan of Kate Wilhelm, who writes, in my opinion, complex and subtle mysteries. This is the first in her series about Barbara Holloway, reluctant lawyer daughter of a successful lawyer father in Eugene, Oregon. Her father convinces her to come home and help him out with a very tricky murder case that looks very obvious. Nell must have shot her estranged husband. No one else could have done it. As Barbara digs into the case more and more peculiar connections turn up. This book is a bit crazier than the later books in the series, just to give everyone fair warning!
Country House Mystery set during World War I
A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd. Bess Crawford is the daughter of a Colonel, and a battlefield nurse who keeps getting sucked into the odd murder case. This one involves an unhappy family, a mysterious orphan and a very clever murderer.
Back to basics
Castaway (DVD). Very busy globetrotting Fed Ex expert suddenly finds himself marooned on an island in the Pacific with no clocks, no gadgets, not even a pager. His struggle to survive and escape forces him to reconsider his life choices.
Elizabeth and Walter
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (DVD). A dramatization of the middle part of the reign of Elizabeth the I of England, this movie combines splendid settings and costumes with some very good acting. Warning, includes some scenes of torture.
Trinidad to New York City
Minding Ben by Victoria Brown. First novel, slightly autobiographical as such novels often are, but very, very good. Grace arrives in NYC, 16 years old, hoping to stay with relatives while she goes to high school. Instead she finds herself working as a nanny and struggling to survive. Funny, sad, crazy look at the underside of the American Dream.
Action! Camera! Pirates!
Pirate King by Laurie R. King. After a couple of much more serious novels involving danger and evil, Laurie King has produced a light-hearted romp involving a film crew doing a movie about a film crew doing a movie of the Pirates of Penzance. On location in Portugal and Morocco. For fans of the series which began with The Beekeeper's Apprentice.
A Political Life
James Madison by Richard Brookhiser (downloadable e-book). An enlightening biography of a brilliant thinker who is consistently overshadowed by the other Founding Brothers, particularly Jefferson. Madison played an essential role in writing and justifying our Constitution, was an active player in politics for most of his life and eventually became our 4th President. I found this biography informative and it cast a new light, for me, on the War of 1812 and the burning of the public buildings of Washington, D.C.
History Light and Lovely
The White Countess (DVD). Shanghai in the 1930s, a rich, lush, varied international city filled with refugees. As the Japanese threat inches closer, a blind American expatriate starts a night club called the White Countess with a real Russian countess as his centerpiece. Includes some amazingly good acting, but it is all a little bit too lush and beautiful for my taste.
Run a convenience store and sort out your identity
My Korean Deli: Risking it all for a Convenience Store by Ben Ryder Howe (audio CD). A painfully funny memoir details Ben's experience of simultaneously helping out his Korean wife and in-laws with purchasing and running a convenience store in Brooklyn while working at the Paris Review. I'll never treat our local convenience stores casually again! What a crazy, impossible, challenging, scary business model.
Drug Regulation...a joke?
Blood Feud: The Man Who Blew the Whistle on One of the Deadliest Prescription Drugs Ever by Kathleen Sharp. A heartbreaking true story describes the experiences of two drug reps (eventual whistleblowers) working for Ortho (part of Johnson & Johnson) pushing a wonder drug called Procrit. Procrit is still on the market despite studies done in Europe showing that it acts as a stimulant for cancer cells and increases the death rate in patients on the drug.
Murder/Suicide or is someone being framed as a pedophile?
Guilt by Association by Marcia Clark. Los Angeles Prosecutor tries to clear the name of her murdered friend, found dead in very suspicious circumstances. Good first mystery novel by a real life lawyer.
War Technology upgrade 332 B.C.
Alexander the Great and the Catapult (DVD), from The History Channel. Alexander, aged 20, was en-route to conquering the Persian Empire, but the island city of Tyre stood in his way. This film explains how he used the torsion catapult, a new weapon at the time to destroy the city walls. He also used engineering techniques to build a causeway from the mainland to the island.
Spy Dog!
The Dog Who Came in From the Cold by Alexander McCall Smith (audio CD, book). I think that people either enjoy McCall Smith or they don't. If you like his books, this one follows the usual formula that he developed for his 44 Scotland Street series of brief chapters following various characters who are linked (sometimes remotely) to a particular address. This series is connected to a small apartment building in Pimlico (London) called Corduroy Mansions. Because the chapters are first published in a newspaper, there is a certain amount of repetition as the author brings you up to speed on what was happening the last time the particular group of characters was up front. I find his books very soothing and enjoy them when I want to just relax. The only thing I find irritating is his parody of new- agers and alternative beliefs. Alas, nowadays, staying in the mainstream is no defense against being lied to or ripped off.
Tough Neighborhood
The Second Chance (DVD). One city, two churches. The suburban church is big and rich and fancy, a sort of mega-church. Back in their early years this church sponsored an inner city church and they still donate lots of money to help...but nowadays people think it is too scary to actually go to the inner city and lend a personal hand. A young pastor riles up the board and is sent off to work among the scary people. Not bad, and definitely not dogmatically "religious". I enjoyed the story (although some of the acting is a bit weak) and the themes made me think. I miss Chicago sometimes because of the social, ethnic, religious and financial diversity. We've got the financial diversity in Vermont, the rest not so much.
Do Not Write a Successful Self-Help Book!
The Answer Man (DVD). Arlen Faber wrote a bestselling book called "Me and God". This turned out to be a terrible mistake as it developed a huge following and Arlen ended up going into hiding to avoid his fans. His life cracks open as he encounters a book store owner who is struggling with some really bad stuff and a young woman chiropractor who is trying to establish a new practice and care for her son. Sweet and funny.
Breaking and Entering
Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick (downloadable audio). A most peculiar story about a very strange guy. Kevin became fascinated with messing around with the phone company as a teen, progressed into messing around with computers and gradually became a totally addicted hacker. The most interesting aspect of the story was the non-computer side of hacking, something Kevin calls social engineering. He was an expert at manipulating people into giving him access to private information. Nowadays he is an expert for hire: he breaks into computer systems and then tells companies how to make their info inaccessible. Except for some of the "computer speak” this is a good read.
Suspicious death in Venice
Drawing Conclusions by Donna Leon (audio CD or book). A widow dies and the circumstances are faintly suspicious. A few oddities in her apartment convince Guido Brunetti that he needs to dig deeper. Meanwhile, his superiors want to hush up the case (we don't want to worry the tourists) and almost everyone that the Commissario talks to seems to be trying to conceal something. As always, very entertaining and thought-provoking.
Fun with spaceships and aliens...but the human beings are a mess.
Leviathans of Jupiter by Ben Bova. Jovian lifeforms, deep in Jupiter's ocean, are much puzzled by a tiny visitor with odd behaviors. Twenty years later, on a space station orbiting Jupiter, a group of human beings are preparing for a second manned mission into the deep ocean. Someone doesn't want the mission to succeed. -Note: This book is not available through ListenUp Vermont, but several other titles by Ben Bova can be found as downloadable audiobooks.
Family growing pains
Daughters-in-Law by Joanna Trollope. Anthony and Rachel have three grown-up sons. The first two daughters-in-law cooperated with Rachel's management of the family, but the third one, Charlotte, wants to go her own way. The most difficult son, Ralph, proceeds to have a major work crisis which precipitates a family crisis and then all of the established arrangements and relationships throughout the entire extended family shift. Good story.
Columbian Exposition 1893 and the serial killer--what a combination!?!
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson (downloadable audio, downloadable ebook and regular old-fashioned book-book). I'm so glad I finally got around to listening to this book. An utterly fascinating story of a brilliant and determined man who managed, against incredible odds, to erect the amazing Columbian Exposition of 1893: Daniel Burnham. As a counterpoint, we get the story of the charming and terrifying Herman Webster Mudgett, alias H. H. Holmes, a very successful mass murderer. Holmes was incredibly good at sweet-talking women and the result was almost always deadly. Great book!
War Gadgets
Churchill's War Lab: Code-Breakers, Scientists, and the Mavericks Churchill Led to Victory by Taylor Downing. Many pieces of this story have been told. This is the first over-view of Churchill's delight in technology and ingenuity and the role it played in the Allied win over the Germans. A fascinating and strange story.
Cooking and Transformation
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister (audio CD). Lillian has a successful restaurant, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. She runs a monthly cooking class and the eight students who join the class get a lot more than they expected. For people who love cooking and eating and thinking about cooking and eating and fantasizing about cooking and eating. There is also a bit about love and work and marriage and child-raising.
Dinosaurs to Cave Men
The Prehistoric Collection: From Dinosaurs to the Dawn of Man (set of 8 DVDs). Hours of wild entertainment, alternating between dinosaurs killing one another and scientists talking about dinosaur teeth, brains, bones and armor. The final two disks look at human pre-history: the first considers the 5,000 year period in Europe when Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal co-existed, the second considers some of the mysteries about the early human inhabitants of North America. Mysteries about origins (they probably didn't come from Siberia) and mysteries about how they survived a possible comet strike and severe climate change.
As someone who has been interested in evolution and geology for a long time, I was fascinated to note that there has been a shift from a view of geological history as consisting mostly of slow and gradual changes to a view involving lots of exciting catastrophes. Catastrophes definitely make better TV viewing. But there was a question that was not addressed in any of the programs: If many geological changes were actually sudden and drastic, perhaps the timeline of the past needs to be recalculated? The many millions of years currently allowed for various geological periods were originally based on gradual change.
This particular set can be a bit boring as there are a lot of repeats (probably around commercial breaks), and much of the footage of dinosaurs is reused over and over and over in different programs. But it is perfect for working your way through a big craft project and some kids would probably enjoy watching dinosaurs eat each one another.
Tibet and China
Escape from the Land of Snows: The Young Dalai Lama's Harrowing Flight to Freedom and the Making of a Spiritual Hero by Stephan Talty (Book or downloadable audio book). I thought I sort of knew what happened in Tibet, but discovered that my ignorance of modern Tibetan history was complete. An excellent account of the Chinese takeover in 1959 and the Dalai Lama's successful escape to India. An extraordinary story and well worth reading.
Very rich and a bit loopy
The Aviator (DVD). Based on the life of Howard Hughes, a young man who was brilliant, a bit odd, very wealthy and fascinated with airplanes. He came to Hollywood in the 1920s and started making movies, moved into designing airplanes and manufacturing them, had affairs with movie stars, including Katherine Hepburn and eventually began a slow descent into an extreme state of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The movie focuses on the first half of his life and it is an amazing story.
Buy a house? Get married? Choose a college?
The Real Cost of Living: Making the Best Choices for You, Your Life, and Your Money by Carmen Wong Ulrich. Life isn't just about money, although it is pretty darn important. This unusual little book reviews the financial and non-money related costs for many of life's major decisions. I got some useful clues from the book for my own life and finances.
Murder at midnight in Venice
A Question of Belief by Donna Leon. Downloadable audio or book. I listened to the audio edition which was well-read and evocative. If you haven't tried this mystery series, please do. They are set in Venice. The main character is a Commissario in the Questura of Venice, which means he investigates crimes. It also means that he maneuvers his way through a web of corruption, social climbing superiors, bizarre rules and the challenges of moving through Venice. The murder in this book is of a man that everyone describes as "good" and yet he was entangled with some legal shenanigans...
Clever!
Ridiculously Simple Furniture Projects: Great Looking Furniture ANYONE Can Build by Spike Carlsen. I brought this book to my son-in-law who builds stuff occasionally and apologized because I thought it was probably too basic. He looked through it and got very excited at some of the ideas. Then he explained that the book is full of clever work ways for people who don't have much in the way of fancy woodworking machinery to build stuff that looks fairly complicated. For example, he shows you how to build an attractive television console with doors and stuff. Looks really snazzy. But it all starts by buying a 36-in. wide wall cabinet and then adapting it for another use. The book has 38 projects altogether including shelving, tables, chairs, toy chest, coffee tables, a kitchen cart and many more. Some are small and quick, others would take a fair bit of time. Interspersed are helpful explanations about tools and methods which will speed the work and keep it safe.
Sweet, gentle and sad
Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School (DVD). A car accident leads a grieving widower to a dancing school and to a reawakening to life's possibilities.
Divorce is NOT a laugh fest
Deep Down True by Juliette Fay (audiobook on MP3 disk). I decided it was time to try listening to one of the books on MP3 which have been donated over the last couple of years. My DVD player can handle them but it turned out to be a pain because of having 87 sections and no way to get there but hitting the navigation button over and over. I think that transferring the book into a computer or MP3 player would be better. The story? A divorced mother struggles with money problems, unhappy children, resentment against her former husband and his new girlfriend. On top of this pile, she has some tricky issues with friends and possible lovers. Entertaining but definitely not deep.
Science Fiction or the Real Future?
How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate by Jeff Goodell. A balanced and thoughtful exploration of some ingenious ideas for dealing with global warming. Anyone up for causing plankton blooms to sequester carbon? How about whitening clouds to reflect back sunlight? Or creating some artificial shade by faking a few volcanoes? All real ideas that real scientists have been exploring. A fascinating book of interest to anyone concerned with our collective future.
Sort of Noel Coward
Easy Virtue (DVD). An early melodrama by Noel Coward is transformed into a sort of comedy. Great acting by some of the usual brilliant British crew: Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas (as the mother-in-law from hell), and Jessica Biel as the American bride. Not really a period film, more like a spoof...but not quite that, either. See it for the performances, not the plot.
Razzle Dazzle with Jazz
Chicago (DVD). Entertaining but morally edgy movie follows two women who commit murders in 1920s Chicago and their slick lawyer who specializes in (for a fee) getting women out of jail free. Lots of singing and dancing.
Jane Austen's take on the Gothic Novel
Northanger Abbey (DVD). Quite an entertaining transformation of the book into a movie. It is many years since I reread this novel and the movie pushed me back to the book to see what they changed and why. I'll admit that the book is better, of course, but the movie manages to convey the nature of the characters effectively and that counts for a lot.
Small boats conquer the Atlantic
Viking Explorers: The History Channel (DVD). Along with our entertainment movies the library has a number of educational movies and they are great, IMO. Shorter, which can be fun, and a good adjunct to reading. For example, we recently acquired a book by a Vermont author: The Far Traveler which is about a Viking woman who lived in Iceland, Greenland and North America. Watching this movie is a nice adjunct to reading the book or reading the book is a nice addition to watching the movie.
And finally, the audio version
Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon (audio CD or book). I read this as a book when it first came out back in 2007 and decided to listen to it, just as a bit of pleasant escapism. Worked better than I expected, as I had forgotten most of the plot and all of the details. Set along the Silk Road somewhere around 950, the story focuses on two Jewish adventurers, Amram, from Ethiopia and Zelikman, originally from Regensburg. They become entangled with a teenage prince from Khazar whose family has been deposed and murdered. Wildly entertaining and completely unlikely, but who cares? There is an afterword read by the author.
Fiber fanatics dream book
The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook: More than 200 Fibers from Animal to Spun Yarn by Deborah Robson & Carol Ekarius. I borrowed this from the Regional library and we'll have it for about 3 more months. If there is a lot of interest I'll buy a copy, but it is a big, expensive book so I'm waiting to see. The book is invaluable for handspinners, of interest to serious knitters and very useful to anyone who raises fiber bearing animals. So, you have a flock of sheep you are using for meat or milk and you are wondering if you could also sell the fiber. The book covers all of the common breeds and many of the more unusual breeds, plus some other varieties including Yaks and many camelids. There is detailed information on the particular qualities that handworkers look for in fleece, so it would be helpful for anyone who wants to improve fiber production by management or breeding. A fascinating read for anyone interested in the history of human beings and domesticated animals.
As twisted as they come
The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly (audio CD, book). Mickey Haller is doing foreclosures to keep the cash flowing. One of his clients is accused of murdering her banker and Mickey and crew are back in business doing a criminal defense case. Innocence is not relevant of course, but Mickey sees pointers that indicate that his client was set up to take the fall for the murder. I particularly enjoy Connelly because I lived in Los Angeles for many years (in my long ago youth) and I remember many of the places his characters travel through.
Old pleasure from the paperback collection
Requiem for a Wren by Nevil Shute. I went digging through the paperback collection to find some books to take on vacation and found this old gem. Shute almost always tackled some sort of social question in his books. This one is about the aftermath of war and the struggle to re-adapt to civilian life. Quite good. Note: paperback collection books are not in the catalog and can be taken out without the use of your library card.
Is it an immigration problem?
Heaven is High by Kate Wilhelm. Barbara Holloway has been lying low and taking care of minor legal matters for neighbors, when she finds herself in the middle of a case involving an illegal immigrant/refugee. Very good!
Yummy!
Mostly Martha (DVD). German with subtitles. Martha is a chef. Martha is interested in nothing but food. Martha cooks for a restaurant and the owner only keeps her on because she is brilliant. And then Martha suddenly finds herself with her niece, 9 years old, to raise. Martha also finds her new Italian co-worker a bit of a pain because he is sweet and funny and just as obsessed with food...
Alexander McCall Smith starts ANOTHER series
Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith (audio CD or book or e-book). Apartment building in London provides McCall Smith with a lively cast of characters, and he doesn't hesitate to pull in their employers, friends and relatives, either. The best character is, however, the dog, who lost his job as a drug sniffer at Heathrow when the higher ups decided to equalize the dog staff between male and female. I'll rate the MP, Oedipus Snark, as the second most memorable character.
Try out downloadable audio on our Zen Mosaic MP3 Player
We'll be happy to help you figure out how it works, plus it comes with an instruction sheet. You will need a home computer and some earphones or ear-buds. Listen Up! Vermont currently offers hundreds of audio and e-books (you need a computer and/or a reader) and all content is Free!
Definitely Not Vermont!
I feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron (audio CD or Book or downloadable audio). Funny (mostly) but it made me very glad I live in rural Vermont and not in New York City.
Old but very good!
Pride and Prejudice (DVD). We finally got this in DVD format. This version has some bonus bits with various participants talking about the process of creating the series and the public response at the time. Delightful!
New DVDs
Persuasion (DVD) I found a good deal on the BBC versions of Jane Austen's novels. This one was just okay, but I've never seen a good movie version of this book. It is a mature, inward, complex novel and very hard to bring to the screen. There are some lovely scenes and I enjoyed some of it!
Sense and Sensibility (DVD). This one was great! Followed the novel closely without being slavish about it, excellent acting and lovely scenery, settings and costumes. Includes, on the second disk, Miss Austen Regrets, a brief biographical interlude focusing on Miss Austen's relationship with her niece Fanny.
Mysterious journey through the Pyrenees
The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse. A young Englishman, touring through the French Pyrenees, has a puzzling encounter with a beautiful young woman who disappears. His search has an unexpected outcome and uncovers an ancient tragedy.
London addresses can be complicated!
The Brothers of Baker Street by Michael Robertson. This is a sequel, but it isn't hard to follow the story. Reggie Heath is renting 221B Baker Street for his law offices. The lease comes with a requirement that they reply to all of the letters which arrive addressed to Sherlock Holmes using a standard form letter. Reggie gets recruited to handle a murder case involving a London Black Cab and his life spins utterly out of control. Very entertaining!
Different View of Jane Austen's Novels
A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me about Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter by William Deresiewicz. William sounds like an utterly tedious young man when he begins his story as a graduate student. Thanks to a professor who forced him to read Emma he began to wake up to his own self-centered and pretentious state of mind. Over the next few years he read all six of the famous novels and, coincidentally, grew up. I could easily do an advanced degree on these novels, which I've been reading for roughly 50 years, but this book offered insights into the books which surprised me.
Stager comes undone
Best Staged Plans by Claire Cook (audio CD). Sandy Sullivan stages homes for frustrated home sellers, sweeping away clutter, choosing the colors that buyers fine irresistible and generally knowing exactly how to make everything just right. So why can't she get her beautiful old home cleaned out, cleaned up, and on the market? Light entertainment with useful tips on home management.
Historic Trial Reconsidered
The Eichmann Trial by Deborah E. Lipstadt. Why did the Eichmann trial matter? Why was it held in Israel? Was it a fair trial? Ms. Lipstadt manages to cover all the complexities of this historic event in a brief and easy read, part of the Jewish Encounters series.
Unlikely coincidences
Think Twice by Lisa Scottoline (audio CD, book ). I listed to the CD version, which is well read and very gripping. However, the high number of most unlikely coincidences, undermined my enjoyment. Bennie Rosato is a successful lawyer. She has a twin sister (Alice) who is a mess and a failure but very clever. Alice decides to murder Bennie and steal all her money by pretending to be her sister for a few days. I guess thrillers all have an overflow of coincidence!
Cultural Chasms
City of Veils by Zoe Ferraris. A sequel to Finding Nouf (recently read by a local book club) is a mystery set in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Although it has all the usual accoutrements of a mystery, including a dead body, a crowd of suspects and layers of motives, the main interest of the story is the opportunity to explore a radically different culture. Very good!
Rambling history
At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson (down-loadable audio and book). An entertaining and informative tour of diverse aspects of human life. Bill starts with the country parsonage (built in 1851) where he and his family reside and uses each room to launch into a rambling exploration of health or clothing, or cooking, or servants, or architecture, or sex, and on he goes. Some of the information about poverty and working conditions is pretty depressing, but most of the book is lightly entertaining, education at its smoothest.
Wimsey in the 50s? Hard to imagine.
The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Paton Walsh (based on the characters created by Dorothy L. Sayers). Not a bad piece of work, but trying to bring Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey into the early 1950s (not to mention Bunter) is a bit of a stretch. They are so 1930s... Anyway, Peter's very first case, way back in 1921, involved some peculiar shuffling of a valuable emerald belonging to the Attenbury family. The problem turns up again as the latest Attenbury needs to sell something very valuable to cover death duties and there is an argument about the ownership of the emerald which has spent many years in a bank vault, only going out three times. There seem to be some dead bodies associated with the emerald, too. Entertaining, but cannot compare with the original novels by Sayers.
Witches and Vampires and Daemons?
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (audio CD, book). A most peculiar novel about a reluctant witch whose day job as a historian of alchemy and science is interrupted when she requests and receives an enchanted book from the Bodleian stacks. Suddenly vampires, witches, wizards and daemons are everywhere and her peaceful, studious life is totally overset. I found it possible to suspend disbelief when it came to the magic and the creatures, but the laptops and cell phones that never seemed to need recharging just didn't work for me. Oh well. I will probably read the sequel despite that little oddity.
A-bombs aloft
15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation by L. Douglas Keeney. Recently declassified materials have made it possible to explore the history of the Cold War in great detail. This book is a brief (relatively speaking) history of the U.S. attempt to create and run a system for wiping out the U.S.S.R. with atomic bombs. My father worked on a project connected with the early warning radar systems which were supposed to protect the U.S. so I was curious to get behind the curtain. Quite a story, but gave me the creeps. Especially the many bombs that just got "lost".
Make it and Sell it--
The Handmade Marketplace: How to Sell Your Crafts Locally, Globally, and Online by Kari Chapin. A cute little book for anyone who likes to make stuff and is wondering about moving from crafting for fun to crafting for income. The book is well organized and designed for browsing and skipping around. If, for example, you already know what you want to make, but need help with pricing, it is easy to just go and read the section in Chapter 3 on pricing. Full of helpful ideas.
Sheer Escapism
Manhunting by Jennifer Crusie (downloadable ebook). Kate is rich and successful and hates doing management consulting. Plus she wants to get married to a rich and successful man and run a business with her husband. After 3 engagements in one year she is feeling frustrated. So her roommate and best friend sends her off to a golf resort in Kentucky to find a rich, successful man that she can stand to marry. As always in such books, there are surprises in store and much hilarity ensues. This was perfect escapist reading while I was going crazy getting ready for the quarterly Library Commission Meeting.
Southern Secrets Fester
The Lost Hours by Karen White (audio CD). Piper Mills had been a champion rider but a nearly fatal accident leaves her depressed and limping. Following the death of her grandfather, Piper discovers a mystery in the past of her grandmother, who is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's and as she digs she discovers a connection to two families, linked to her own by love and a secret horror.
Food, food and food
Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton (book, downloadable ebook, downloadable audio book). A fascinating and horrifying story of an idyllic (but somewhat peculiar childhood) abruptly ended and an accidental career in the restaurant business begun. Ms. Hamilton owns a famous but tiny restaurant in NYC. Her career included many years in catering kitchens, cooking for a summer camp, and lots of life experience including an extremely odd marriage. I couldn't stop reading...
Frothy light romance with a literary touch
Love Letters by Katie Fforde. One of the most entertaining light romance writers around tackles the book trade in England. Owners of a small stately home (upkeep is a challenge) decide to sponsor a literary festival with a bit of a music festival on the side and hire an English graduate whose book store job is disappearing to help rope in the authors. She is sent to Ireland to rope in a reclusive writer and emotional mayhem ensues. I'm afraid I enjoyed the literary festival aspect more than the romance. I think it is getting to be a stretch to identify with the emotional confusion of a 26 year old...
Deerstalker hat brigade faces a real murder
The Sherlockian by Graham Moore. Sherlock Holmes has, for some unknown reason, produced more obsessive fans than any other detective in history. This mystery is based on a real murder of a real Sherlock scholar who was hunting for some missing papers originally belonging to Arthur Conan Doyle. Moore creates two stories, one, historical, following Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker as they investigate murders; the other, modern, following two fictional characters as they investigate a fictional murder loosely based on the real murder. Confused yet? The modern story is tongue in cheek, the historical story is painfully serious. I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure this is a book that would appeal to a broad audience.
Precocious detective deciphers mysterious death of puppeteer
The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan C. Bradley (downloadable audio). The second in a series about 11 year old Flavia, a very odd child who uses her knowledge of chemistry and local characters to figure out who killed the puppeteer. Was it his pregnant assistant? The vicar? The BBC executive? The German prisoner of war who has continued working on a local farm? The farmer? The farmer's wife? The madwoman who lives in the wood? As you would expect, the police inspector really doesn't appreciate Flavia's enthusiasm for investigation...
Earthquake! Flood! Pirates!
Red River by Peter Tonkin. This is a book for people who like wild adventure involving boats and gadgets. It is set on the Yangtze River, following an enormous earthquake which causes immense damage and also destroys the Three Gorges Dam. Entertaining, and that is about all.
Silence the Heretics!
Silent Mercy by Linda Fairstein (audio CD, book). Alexandra Cooper is pulled into a very controversial murder case involving churches, theology, fringe religious groups, the ordination of women and a mysterious perpetrator who seems to fly over obstacles. Entertaining, but as usual she gets quite "teachy" in her tour of the NYC churches and theological colleges.
Alaska!
Though Not Dead by Dana Stabenow. The latest in a very long-running series about a woman PI in a remote area in Alaska. One of her elderly relatives dies and leaves her several mysteries to sort out: Who was his real father? Where is the long lost Russian icon? Why do people want to murder her? What did Sam hide at his remote homestead? What does it all have to do with a missing Dashiell Hammett manuscript? Great fun, especially for history buffs.
Fatal Attraction
The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars by Patrick Hennessey. Young man decides to join the British Army, attends Sandhurst, graduates, guards the Royal Family, goes to Iraq, goes to Afghanistan, sees his friends killed and injured, writes a book. Very intimate view of war, violence, masculinity and the attractions of junk food. And books.
A Last Passionate Fling
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson (downloadable audio or book). Does Ernest Pettigrew love his matched pair of hunting guns, his charming house, his quaint village, his son, his books or playing golf? In a great example of the genre of "elderly wake-up call", the widowed Major discovers the charms of an unusual woman, the owner of the village shop, born in Cambridge, but considered a foreigner because she has brown skin and a foreign name. Quite good, but went on a little longer than necessary in my opinion.
Series Takes a Different View of the Universe
This is the one that I read: A Little Book of Coincidence in the Solar System by John Martineau. Others in the series: The Elements of Music: Melody, Rhythm, & Harmony by Jason Martineau; Sun, Moon, & Earth by Robin Lundy; Sacred Geometry by Miranda Lundy; Sacred Number: the Secret Qualities of Quantities by Miranda Lundy. I intend to read the rest as time permits. Fascinating in a strange way.
Murder in Quebec City
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny (audio CD). Number 6 in an excellent series set in Quebec and featuring an eccentric little village near the Vermont border. In this one, Chief Inspector Gamache is haunted by a hostage situation which turned to disaster and left him on leave to heal from a serious wound. He goes to Quebec City to relax with his old friend and mentor and starts history research in an old library. A dead body turns up in the basement, and Gamache gets pulled into the investigation. I've been enjoying this series all along. Unfortunately, Warren doesn't have a complete set. We have four novels as books, 4 as audio CD, and ListenUp Vermont has 5 as downloadable audio. If there is interest I'll track down the missing pieces of the series and fill the gaps.
Saxophone and Love and Success
The Melody Girls by Anne Douglas. A sweet romance about a young woman in Edinburgh who plays the saxophone and would like a career as a musician. She is taken on to play in a swing band, but gets frustrated because the band leader pays women less than men--a lot less. Eventually she and a friend start an all women band. I was hoping for more detail on life as a musician and band leader in the 40s and 50s in Scotland and England, but the book is mainly about Lorna's star-crossed love life. Oh well.
Precocious Puzzle Protagonist
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (down-loadable audio or book). Flavia adores chemistry and specializes in poisons. Then she encounters a dead body in the cucumber patch behind her family home, Buckshaw. The year is 1950, Flavia is 11 years old, and her pursuit of the real murderer (it couldn't possibly be her father), brings her a surfeit of bicycle riding and even some danger. I enjoyed this somewhat tongue-in-cheek mystery novel and may even read the next in the series, which is also available as a download. Should I buy the next book in the series?
Science in the Middle Ages?
The Abacus and the Cross : The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages by Nancy Marie Brown. A few weeks ago Ms. Brown gave a wonderful presentation about her previous book, The Far Traveler, and I bought copies of both of her most recent books for the library. This one tells the fascinating story of Gerbert, who after a long career as a monk, churchman and scientist finished his life as Pope. Ms. Brown is very good at describing the practical foundation of life, explaining how goats and sheep provided skins were turned into parchment and how scientific information and technology traveled from Muslim Spain into Christian Europe in the 900s. The Church politics got a bit tiresome after awhile, but the rest of the book was great.
Surprise!
Your Republic is Calling You by Young-Ha Kim. Ki-Yong leads a quiet life as a film importer and an equally quiet life as a husband and father. In fact, he is a North Korean spy, sent South 20 years earlier. For the past 10 years he has been inactive (his supervisor was purged) and hoping he has been forgotten. Then he gets an e-mail telling him to come "home". A novel that combines gripping suspense with a thoughtful exploration of the human condition AND a portrait of aspects of Korea over the last 40 years.
On the Road with Elvis
Losing Graceland by Micah Nathan. I like to buy a certain number of weird books just to keep a little juice in the collection. This one totally fits that category. A young man named Ben, at loose ends after the death of his father, rejection by his girl friend and graduation from college, answers an ad. An old codger wants someone to drive him to Memphis and is willing to pay a lot of money. So off they go. Is the old codger Elvis Presley or just a really good Elvis impersonator. As disaster piles on disaster and adventure on adventure, Ben finds out more about himself and a bit about his road companion. Odd, but surprisingly entertaining. Even for someone who never paid any attention at all to popular music!
Local Munchies in One Vermont Community
The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food by Ben Hewitt (book, down-loadable audio book). An entertaining book, although I found it somewhat unfocused, Mr. Hewitt wanders through the history of Hardwick, the long-term development of a local food system, and the much publicized recent developments around local food businesses. It was interesting to mentally compare the Mad River Valley local food scene to the events in Hardwick.
Alabama, Civil Rights and the Klan
Fighting the Devil in Dixie: How Civil Rights Activists took on the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama by Wayne Greenhaw. Mr. Greenhaw has been working as a newspaperman in Alabama for many years now and knows the people and their stories. The only problem with the book is that he writes like a journalist so the book has a somewhat reportorial tone. But the history of the civil rights movement in Alabama is painful and uplifting and the transformation of the white attitudes over many years gave me hope for the future. I'd suggest reading this book in conjunction with Root and branch : Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the struggle to end segregation by James Rawn (920 J) which covers different aspects of the legal battles against segregation.
Constantinople and the Crusaders
The Sheen on the Silk by Anne Perry (audio CD, book available at Joslin). The protagonist is a woman physician who comes to Constantinople in 1273 disguised as a eunuch in an attempt to clear her brother of complicity in a murder which has resulted in his permanent exile to a remote monastery. Constantinople had been sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and another Crusade is on the horizon. A nicely Byzantine plot! Ms. Perry does a quite decent job of exploring the history and culture of a very different time and place from her usual Victorian settings. I did spot a few anachronisms, but by and large the book works and none of the minor mistakes is all that jarring.
How Bad will it Be?
Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World: A 25-Point Program for Action by Michael C. Ruppert. How things need to change in a post cheap fuel world. Lots of good information, but mixed in with some muddled and repetitive discussions and some boasting about how accurately he predicted the economic collapse of 2008.
Growing up Odd
The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown (down-loadable ebook, down-loadable audio-book). My family was strange, especially for 1950s America. No TV. We ate whole grains, read all the time and avoided doctors. This book is about an equally odd family, a bit later (exact years unspecified), with a father who is a college professor specializing in Shakespeare. The three daughters, Rosalind (Rose), Bianca (Bean) and Cordy (Cordelia), all return home, ostensibly to care for their mother who is ill, but really to lick their wounds and regroup. Although they love each other, they don't like one another and the constantly shifting alliances and battles make for a very messy scene. Amusing and sad. I thought the first half of the book, laying out the disasters, was much stronger than the second half, wherein most problems are resolved. The narrator is the collective we of the three sisters, but at the same time we see them individually in the third person, an unusual technique which works pretty well.
Damp Scotland in the 1950s
A Small Death in the Great Glen by A.D. Scott. An excellent novel, especially for a first-time author, set in a small town in Scotland. The center of the story is the local newspaper and the small staff that gathers the news, and types it up on typewriters. A little boy is found dead in the canal. Was it an accident or murder? Was it the Polish sailor who jumped (or was thrown) off of a Russian ship? The local police inspector is determined to pin it on an outsider...
Fancy weddings can be fun...
Vision in White (Book One in the Bride Quartet) by Nora Roberts (down-loadable audio or book). Mackensie Elliot works with her best friends running a wedding planning company, Vows. Fun line of work, dealing with not only over-excited brides, but all of their relatives and friends. The book is pleasant light entertainment. The audio version seemed a bit drawn out so you might prefer the book.
Life in Vermont gets tricky sometimes
Moonlighting in Vermont by Kate George. Mystery set in South Royalton--a town I visited when I was looking for a library job back in 2004. The main character is a young woman who is working two jobs to support herself and her collection of animals: dogs, a cat, many chickens (only 3 laying), and a pony. Her main job is doing layout for the local paper and her secondary job is cleaning at a fancy resort. Her boss gets murdered, Bella ends up at the top of the suspects list, and life gets very complicated. I think this series has potential.
World War II suffering and triumph in Britain
Forbidden Places by Penny Vincenzi. One of those big sprawling novels with lots of characters, painful secrets, sexual hi-jinks and miseries. The main character is a young woman named Grace who marries "up" and soon regrets it. Her husband doesn't want her to do anything at all but sit quietly at home while he goes off to fight the war. Plus he has one unpleasant secret... Her sister-in-law has a charming husband except when he is a monster. And her husband's former fiancee has a dreamboat of a husband, but yes, something disastrous intervenes, will they be able to save their marriage? I found myself sucked in by the story. A good solid piece of entertaining escapism.
Is this food?
Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats by Steve Ettlinger. I don't think I've ever eaten a Twinkie. My parents were into natural and organic way back when that was weird and unheard of. I did taste Coke when I was about 8. My brother and I scrounged up some money and went and bought one, but I thought it tasted yucky. So I've been wandering around the Mad River Valley trying to find a Twinkie to look at (after reading the book I'm not planning to eat one), but so far, no luck. Lots of other packaged cakes and cookies, but no Twinkies. You'll be glad to know that the shelf life of Twinkies is ONLY 25 days. Enjoy.
On the verge of war
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake (downloadable audio or Joslin Memorial Library). The postmistress in a very small town in Massachusetts faces war and a woman reporter endures the Blitz in London and rides with the refugees in Europe. The young wife of a doctor faces uncertainty after her husband heads to London to work in a hospital. All the threads are delicately pulled together at the end. A good, thoughtful, enjoyable novel.
World War I mystery
An Impartial Witness by Charles Todd (down-loadable ebook). Bess Crawford, the nurse we met in A Duty to the Dead returns, once again facing a mysterious set of circumstances and a murder. When Scotland Yard takes the wrong man into custody she races against time to find the real killer. I've decided not to buy this series for the library unless someone requests it. It is fairly good, but space and money make it impossible to go for every single mystery series.
The man wrote a lot of letters
Saul Bellow: Letters edited by Benjamin Taylor. I've read a lot of Mr. Bellow's books over the years, plus I used to live in Chicago, then in Montreal and now I live in Vermont. He also lived in Montreal, Chicago and in Vermont. The letters are really good reading, but there are close to 500 pages worth, so I'll understand if no one else wants to read the entire book.
Exploring the e-book collection
A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd (downloadable e-book). I've been wondering if I should add this series to our collection, so I downloaded and read it on the Kobo e-reader the Friends kindly bought for my use. The main character is a WW I nurse, temporarily on leave due to a broken arm. A dying man asked her to carry a message to his brother and she takes advantage of her leave to visit the family and give him the message. It turns out that there is an awful family secret (isn't there always?) and Bess ends up trying to sort out a horrendous mess. Well written and thoughtful.
Dark Underbelly of Victorian England
India Black by Carol K. Carr. India Black runs a whorehouse in 1873 London. An important government official complicates her life by dying in one of her rooms. Within a few hours India finds herself neck deep in spy business, trying to steal back some crucial documents from the Russian embassy and partnered with a sarcastic gentleman with no first name. Amusing escapist fluff.
Wedding troubles in Texas
Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. (book or downloadable e-book) Wacky young woman comes to small Texas town as wedding attendant, participates in break-up, gets stuck in town due to lack of money, gets sucked into trying to persuade a rich plumbing magnate to invest in a golf resort...and things go downhill from there. Pleasant entertainment from an author who is really good at this genre.
Cross Currents
Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick. A brilliant take-off of Henry James's classic The Ambassadors Cynthia Ozick manages to gently parody the style of the original while exploring a completely different Europe and America. Set in 1953, the story focuses on Bea Nightingale, whose brother asks her to go to Europe to extricate his son from a mysterious situation. Unusual, fun, difficult, fascinating.
On the Beach (with Sense and Sensibility)
The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine (book, audio book on CD). The sadly charming story of two sisters and their mother who find their lives overturned by a scheming woman. The mother finds herself ejected from her marriage and her apartment, the daughters, with troubles of their own decide to support her in her travail and all three of them end up in a cottage in Westport. One daughter, whose business as a literary agent has fallen apart, starts a love affair with a charming younger man, while the sensible sister, Annie, suffers unrequited love for a successful author. Some story lines hold up very well translated into the modern world...
Freedom and Slavery
Original Sins by Peg Kingman. Loosely linked to her previous novel, Not Yet Drown'd, her new book is not precisely a sequel. This is a superb historical novel, telling a fascinating story, amazingly researched, vivid, lively and gripping. Themes include slavery, the status of women, legal proceedings, the Underground Railroad, justifications for slavery, and the development of the daguerreotype. Ms. Kingman's ability to provide a rich background without bogging down her plot is impressive. Highly recommended.
Courtroom Shenanigans
The Reversal by Michael Connelly. (book, audio CD, audio download). Exciting, suspenseful, complicated, filled with surprises...Haller is persuaded to take the prosecution side in the retrial of an accused child killer who has been released on DNA evidence. Haller lines up his ex-wife as his assistant and Bosch as his investigator and they start digging into what turns out to be a very creepy back story. The courtroom scenes are, as always, superb. I found one aspect of the plot unbelievable...let me know what you think!
Grand Sweep of History in a Novel
Fall of Giants (Book One of the Century Trilogy) by Ken Follett. Available as a book, an audio book on CD, a down-loadable eBook and a down-loadable audio book. I did the book on CD and it took me two months...but I only listen when I exercise. The story follows five families in the months leading up to World War I, then through the war in Europe and Russia and finally through the aftermath. A gripping tale told by a master storyteller, but also a triumph of deep research into the people and the times. Highly recommended.
Glamor isn't all that much fun
The Debutante by Kathleen Tessaro. This book surprised me. I was expecting light nostalgic escapism, instead it is an exploration of the changing situation of women. One modern woman, a young artist, is trying to escape from a messy, nasty relationship with a rich and powerful man, the glamorous 1920s debutante, struggles with her love for an unavailable man along with some very awkward relatives. The artist traces the story of "Baby" Blythe via a shoebox full of odd objects. Don't be put off by the sweet pink cover!
Real News, or just PR Spin?
Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks out on How Corporate PR is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans by Wendell Potter. I thought I really knew all about corporate spin and how public opinion is manipulated, but this book taught me a lot. Unfortunately, most of what I learned was pretty depressing. Well worth reading. I'll also recommend a related web-site: http://www.prwatch.org/
Special Flavors
American Terroir: Savoring the Flavors of Our Woods, Waters and Fields by Rowan Jacobsen. (Review by Patricia Davies) A great book for anyone interested in food. Food tastes different from different locales, even close ones. He has chapters on honey made from one plant species (like tupelo or sourwood), salmon different in kind and size according to their spawning rivers, a wild food restaurant in Quebec (venison and muschrooms to daylily buds and cattails) real chocolate, non-chemicalized, grainy and ground by stone mills, mussels grown on rope in the sea of Prince Edward Island and much more. He also tells you where to get some of these specialties and gives a few interesting recipes.
On the Beach in the 30's
God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam. I really don't know what to say about this book, except that I really enjoyed it. Rich, complex, subtle...all that sort of stuff.
Deadly Wilderness: New Orleans?
Burn by Nevada Barr. Book and (hopefully very soon) audio CD. Anna Pigeon is hanging out in New Orleans recovering from an injury when she runs into some really strange goings on. Meanwhile, in Seattle, a woman named Clare discovers that her children have disappeared, then her house blows up. Things just go down hill from there. A genuinely scary story...
Big Water!
The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean by Susan Casey (down-loadable audiobook). Gripping and terrifying, this is the book to give to the relative who is trying to convince you to go on a romantic cruise. The author alternates stories about scientists and cargo ship disasters with tales from the world of big wave surfing. I was surprised to find surfers risking their lives to ride 70 and 80 foot waves, using a relatively new technique called tow surfing which involves teamwork and jet skis to get the surfer into position to grab the biggest waves. One theme of the book is the effect of global warming on the size of waves, but unfortunately the scientific answer is: "we are not sure." Cargo ships are disappearing at an amazing rate these days, a largely overlooked problem, exacerbated by the fact that the majority of crews are currently from the developing world. An excellent story, also available as a down-loadable e-book.
Juliet...Saved!
Juliet by Anne Fortier. It turns out that the original Romeo and Juliet lived in Siena. This romp of a novel sends a young woman named Juliet to Siena on the trail of a mysterious treasure. Her story is entangled with the "real" story of the historical Romeo and Juliet, along with their ill-fated families: the Tolomeis, the Salimbenis and the Mariscottis. Along the way she encounters an artist, a saint, and some gangsters. We can't leave out the underground passages, nor the terrible case of sibling rivalry and then there is the really good-looking Italian guy who may be a villain, or, on the other hand, might be a hero.
Seaside Vacation (with problems)
Dead Man's Chest (A Phryne Fisher Mystery) by Kerry Greenwood. Entertaining escapism set in Australia. Phyrne, her maid, her adopted daughters and the dog all drive off to Queenscliff, a beach resort, for a few weeks at the sea. When they arrive they discover that the butler and cook have vanished from the rental house, the back door is open and all of the food is gone. Phryne works on the mystery while her household copes with the domestic challenges. Why don't rental houses come with butlers and cooks nowadays?
Searching for a romantic mystery about a dog trainer?
The Search by Nora Roberts (downloadable audio or book). Fiona trains dogs including search and rescue dogs. Simon has a misbehaving puppy. But that is only the beginning of a book which includes useful information on how to cope with canine behavior (I applied a technique from the book to an overly friendly dog met on the Mad River Path), a hot romance, a lovely setting, three amazing search and rescue sequences, AND a nasty serial murderer. The mix seemed a bit odd to me...
Sad Tales of Murder and Mayhem
The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases by Michael Capuzzo (downloadable audio and book). True stories of detection from the annals of the Vidocq Society an extraordinary club founded by three brilliant investigators are combined with excerpts from the life stories of the lead trio. The Vidocq club meets monthly and focuses on solving cold cases, with considerable success. Not for the squeamish.
You have to read both books...
to make sense of this very complicated novel published in two parts. Blackout is the first section and All Clear is the second and final book. Both by award-winning science fiction novelist Connie Willis. The premise is simple. At some point in the future time-travel has been perfected and historians have come out of the archives and started doing their research directly in the past. Three young historians are sent to England, one to Dover disguised as a reporter to interview participants in the Dunkirk evacuation, one to a country house to work as a maid and observe the children evacuated from London and one to work at a London department store as a clerk. Something goes terribly wrong and they all find themselves stranded. The books are amazing as an evocation of England during World War II and also as an exploration of the possible effects of time travel. Recommended!
Downloadable audio
Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis—and Lost by Andrew Ross Sorkin
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The plot of this story closely parallels a movie: Vertical Limit. The movie is about people falling off a mountain and the book is about companies falling into catastrophic insolvency. In the movie rescues involve ropes and in the book rescues involve paper, phone calls, congressional committees and a lot of meetings. A surprisingly entertaining book, for all that. Long!  |
One Thing Led to Another
The House That George Built With a Little Help From Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty by Wilfrid Sheed. A couple of weeks ago I watched a movie: De-Lovely: The Cole Porter Story which left me curious about Cole Porter's life and work. I just ignored my curiosity until I was weeding the Dewey Decimal 700s and hit this book. I looked inside and there was an entire chapter on Cole Porter so I took it home to read. I didn't make it all the way through, but it is an entertaining account of American popular music from roughly 1910 through 1955, focusing on the personalities who churned out the best music of the era.
Serial Killer
The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly (audio CD or book). Jack McEvoy just got fired from the LA Times, but he is given two weeks to train a successor. In an attempt to leave with colors flying, he starts digging into a murder case involving a gang banger and dead woman in a car trunk. But there is a lot more going on than Jack is prepared for and he finds that instead of writing his last great story he is the target of a vicious killer.
Rainy Day (no week) and Murder
On Location by Elizabeth Sims. A fun little mystery as ex-actress Rita goes hunting her missing sister up in Washington State, accompanied by her good friend Daniel (handy in the woods and with first-aid) and her son and pursued by her boyfriend who is working a case of his own with a possible embezzlement at a large Seattle firm. The book includes flooding, multiple injury cases, kidnapping (but not of the child), murder and some very complex plotting. Enjoyable, especially if you like outdoor adventure.
Why so many DVDs?
Why am I suddenly reviewing all these DVDs? Simple. I'm knitting sweaters for my grandchildren.
Prairie Home Companion (DVD). Making a movie of a radio show which is sort of fiction and sort of not-fiction is strange. But it sort of works. Great performances by Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and others. Garrison Keillor plays himself.
The Day After Tomorrow (DVD). Global warming suddenly overturns the Gulf Stream current and precipitates some huge storms. Ice Age descends over the Northern hemisphere. Lots of special effects, quite decent acting, and a mention of Nietzsche. People take refuge in the NY Public Library and burn books to keep warm. As a librarian, I disapprove.
Pretty Woman (DVD) Entertainment, pure and simple. Girl gets a chance to hang out with a super rich business magnate in town for one week. Business magnate gets a chance to reconsider his life, his work and his ability to relate. Everyone wins. Hard to take it seriously, but there is some really great acting.
I Robot (DVD). Loosely based on the book of short stories by Isaac Asimov. Robots are getting better and better, making life easy and pleasant for human beings who can just lean back and let a robot deal with the hard work. A leading robotics researcher suddenly dies under suspicious circumstances and a very retro detective is assigned to the case. A movie that manages to combine action with some snippets of philosophy.
Little Women (DVD). Winona Ryder and Susan Sarandon star in yet another version of the classic book. Well acted and charming coming of age story.
Rush Hour (DVD). Silly, violent, entertaining--starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker--who go zooming around LA to rescue the daughter of the Chinese Consul. Climax takes place in the Los Angeles Convention Center--wild!
Flashdance (DVD). Follow your passion and dance. I really enjoyed this movie. The people looked real, wore real clothes, worked real jobs and lived in real spaces that looked normal. The main characters were awkward, complicated and passionate. The only thing I thought was a bit unreal was the quality of the exotic dances presented by the main character. Is there a real bar where someone could dance like that? In Pittsburgh? This is one I'd watch again.
Men Seeking Women (DVD). A sad little movie about three young guys who would really like to settle down, maybe not get married, but at least have some sort of ongoing relationship...but things just aren't working out. So they make a bet with each other and start getting into trouble, and more trouble and more trouble. Supposedly a comedy.
Somethings's Gotta Give (DVD). A charming but somewhat irritating movie about an aging bachelor who is chasing a young woman and ends up interested in her mother. The irritating part is that all of these people always have clean houses (with no help), and food in the refrigerator (with no shopping) and never seem to get stuck in traffic. But the acting is superb from the entire cast and especially Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton.
The Legend of Zorro (DVD). Wildly silly but entertaining in parts. Nice costumes, good chase scenes, amazing fight sequences and a very cute kid. I found the special features more interesting than the movie, especially the one about the process of doing the train chase, battle and explosion.
Addicted to Plastic (DVD). Amazingly entertaining ecological disaster movie. Educational, too. You'll never toss another piece of plastic without feeling concerned...
Catwoman (DVD). Silly and entertaining. The special features includes interviews and so forth, which try to make the claim that Catwoman represents an example of female power. Personally, I've got extreme doubts that the ability to be sexy and violent has anything to do with real power. Just consider Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi or Margaret Thatcher!
Mona Lisa Smile (DVD). Julia Roberts stars as a young art professor who comes to Wellesley in 1953 with high hopes. An interesting picture of privileged young women a few years before the world began to drastically change.
The Marshal of Cedar Rock (DVD). Old western with a bad guy trying to rip off the ranchers and a good guy who saves the day. I noticed that in old westerns they seem to have magic horses who never need to be watered or fed and can gallop madly for long distances without getting winded or needing to walked or wiped down or cared for at all. Pretty nifty!
The Murders in The Rue Morgue. (DVD). Includes some amazingly poor acting by the lovely Rebecca De Mornay, some good acting by George C. Scott (although he is absolutely not a Frenchman), and some nice atmospheric effects. One of those movies that you can enjoy despite the shortcomings...
Mary Kerr at the Warren Public Library with "A Mountain Love Affair: The Story of Mad River Glen". (DVD). I don't ski, but Mary had a lot of good stories to tell about Mad River Glen and the process of writing a history of a unique ski area.
Arlington: Field of Honor (National Geographic DVD). I knew almost nothing about the history and current activities at the Arlington National Cemetery and I enjoyed learning more.
20 Wild Westerns: Marshals & Gunmen (DVD). Twenty westerns on 3 compact disks is a lot. Strange mix, besides. Includes some very, very old John Wayne movies from the 1930s, some spaghetti westerns made in Italy and lots more. I watched: The Proud Rebel with Alan Ladd and Olivia De Havilland; Little Moon & Jud McGraw with James Caan & Stefanie Powers (a spoof); Pioneer Woman with William Shatner & Joanna Pettet; and Raiders of Old California with Lee Van Cleef & Marty Robbins. If you like the genre you can probably find some entertainment here.
Grease (DVD). I hated being a teenager and I hated having to associate with other teenagers, so this movie struck me as a mix of unrealistic (all those teenagers without pimples) and too realistic (pettiness, meanness, gameplaying). But some of the music and dancing is fun.
The Cowboys (DVD). John Wayne as a rancher whose cowhands have all run off to hunt for gold. How to get his herd to market? Hire schoolboys. Pleasant entertainment, nice scenery, lots of horses and cattle and some violence. I used to watch John Wayne movies as a teen babysitter a very long time ago. In those days it didn't occur to me that manhood doesn't actually have anything to do with the ability to be violent.
Hero (DVD). A Chinese martial arts film with a twist. I like the way martial arts films combine beauty and grace with violence and this particular movie is an especially strong example of the genre. A gently twisty plot, lovely costumes and scenery, and some amazing fight scenes add up to good entertainment.
Swimming Upstream (DVD). Based on a true story, set in 1950's Australia, a poor, not very functional family with a sports-crazed father, produces two sons who are amazing swimmers. The father ends up pitting the two boys against each other, with sad results. In the end, however...well, watch the movie, I found it quite gripping.
The Singing Detective (DVD). A strange, but fascinating movie about a writer with a severe case of psoriasis. He is in the hospital, almost helpless, but in his mind's eye he is rewriting one of his earlier books. The book scenes are set in 1950s Los Angeles and done in noir, the hospital scenes are done in fluorescent, the flashbacks to his childhood are done in desert. Altogether bizarre. For this one I actually took the time to watch it again with the director's commentary--enlightening. The movie reminded me of Hamlet crossed with the modern play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. A couple of minor characters emerge from the author's imagination and start wreaking havoc.
Runaway Jury (DVD). This movie is based on a book by John Grisham. I had listened to the book a few years ago and was sort of curious about the movie version. Although the trial cause was changed from smoking causing cancer to careless gun sales causing mass killings, the plot structure was surprisingly similar. Excellent performances from Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, John Cusack and Rachel Weisz.
I am Sam (DVD). Sam (Sean Penn) is a grown-up with the mind of a 7 year old. After a brief fling with a woman he suddenly finds himself the father of a baby girl he names Lucy (after Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds). With a bit of help from a neighbor he manages until Lucy turns 7, when some problems escalate and he is threatened with the loss of custody. Sam goes looking for a high-powered lawyer and finds Rita (Michelle Pfeiffer). The movie raises some really good questions about what constitutes normal and high-functioning in our somewhat insane world.
The Thing About My Folks (DVD). A sweet movie about an elderly father and his grown son who go on an unexpected road trip together after "Mom" suddenly disappears, leaving behind a brief and mysterious note. Peter Falk turns in an entertaining and appealing performance as the father and Paul Reiser is very good as the son.
Blazing Saddles (DVD). One of Mel Brooks funniest, a parody of the silliest bits of the western movie genre, and just as amusing as the first time I saw it. Utterly politically incorrect on every level.
Vermont's Creative Economy: Progress and Promise (DVD). From the Vermont Council on Rural Development, stories and tools for invigorating local economies by developing the arts and crafts and fun events. Of course this is already big in the Mad River Valley but there might still be some great ideas not tried. Includes documents in pdf format which can be printed using your computer, along with short video clips about successful programs.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin (DVD). Odd, but modern life with conveniences and goodies doesn't seem to make people happy. At least not according to the light romantic movies I've been watching--everyone is at best uncomfortable and at worst seriously miserable. The current one features a slightly geeky guy who just never managed to go all the way with a girl. He works in a big electronics store and the other guys figure out that he is a virgin and decide to fix the problem. Some of it is funny.
Smart People (DVD).Dennis Quaid plays a widower and English professor, father of a teen girl and a college age boy. Due to his generally unpleasant behavior no one likes him. However, he meets a woman. And his stepbrother turns up. This movie was supposed to be funny, I thought it was mostly very sad.
National Geographic: 30 Years of National Geographic Specials (DVD). Explores common themes of the human and animal experience on earth by lining up appropriate excerpts from various specials. Nicely done.
The Fighting Temptations (DVD). Set in a NY advertising agency and a Baptist church, this sweet movie shows the awakening of a young con man to the joys of gospel music and a wholesome life. But it is entertaining in spite of a somewhat banal plot line.
Tune in Tomorrow: Local Radio's Role in Community - The WDEV Story (DVD). I had no idea that WDEV had been on the air since 1931! The disappearance of thousands of local radio stations across the U.S. has really undermined access to the local airwaves because large corporations aren't going to care who wins the local hockey championship. WDEV has successfully held its ground against the corporate juggernaut and enriched the Vermont media environment in the process. A great story.
The Importance of Being Earnest (DVD). Wilde's play takes off as a very entertaining movie. Judi Dench makes Colin Firth look a bit of an amateur!
Vertical Limit (DVD). Action movies, by definition are not about great dialogue or deep development of character. This one is about some climbers who get stranded in a crevasse under an avalanche on K2 and some other climbers who try to rescue them. I enjoyed it but it reminded me that I hate heights and especially views of heights where people are dangling by one hand from an ice axe.
2 Days in Paris (DVD). Parisian gal and NY guy who have been living together in NYC go to Europe for vacation. They drop off the cat at her parent's house in Paris and then go to Venice. On the way back to NY they stop in Paris for a two day stopover. The movie is about hypochondria, male/female differences, past lovers, having eccentric parents...and Paris. Entertaining but a bit silly IMO.
Virginia's Run (DVD). A girl, a horse, a race, a mean competitor, and a few other cliches. Not sure what age group this is for...tweens?
De-Lovely: The Cole Porter Story (DVD). A charming, delightful movie tells the life story of Cole Porter in music, dance and drama. Bittersweet and visually delightful.
NY City Tenement Food
97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement by Jane Ziegelman. One of the most fascinating and enjoyable non-fiction books I've read this year (the other one was Blind Descent), highly recommended! History with recipes and pictures and incredible human interest, particularly for folks with ancestors who spent time in large city slums. The book recounts the story of one building, now The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, formerly home to many families of immigrants. The book looks at a German family, an Irish family, two Jewish families and an Italian family through the lens of what they ate, when they ate it, where they bought it, how they prepared it and how they earned the money to pay for it. Highly recommended.
Complicated Families
The Other Family by Joanna Trollope. Chrissie returns home from the hospital in a daze. Richie is dead. Although Richie was the father of her three daughters he was not her husband. Richie was still married to Margaret who lives in the North of England near their son, Scott. Richie's death forces the two families to confront some uncomfortable truths...
Watching DVDs so I can knit a sweater...
Shergar: Discover the Heart of a Champion (DVD). Based, very loosely, on the kidnapping for ransom of a retired to stud racehorse by IRA terrorists, this movie adds a teenage runaway to the story who kidnaps Shergar from the IRA terrorists and then hooks up with a kindly old man and his granddaughter who spend the summers as Travelers. The villains are very villainous and the good people are very noble and there are a few in between characters for balance. Entertaining but not to be taken seriously.
Life as a House (DVD). Kevin Kline stars as a man who has wrecked all his relationships and lives in a falling down shack at the edge of a cliff in an otherwise upscale neighborhood. For years he has fantasized about tearing down the shack and building a beautiful new house. Then he discovers that he is dying of cancer and decides it is now or never.
The Smallest Show on Earth. Very early Peter Sellers combined with rather late Margaret Rutherford makes for a silly but entertaining old movie. A young couple inherits a movie theater from "Great-uncle Simon" along with three very strange employees.
Say Cheese!
Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge by Gordon Edgar. A fun food book written by the cheese buyer at the Rainbow Cooperative in San Francisco. Mr. Edgar was just looking for a job that matched his politics, was offered work in the cheese department, and the rest is history. Lots of interesting commentary on common and rare varieties of cheese, including exploration of hot questions: raw versus pasteurized, small versus large, handmade versus factory made, and, biggest of all, why are some cheeses so darn expensive?!? Many mentions of Vermont cheeses.
Not for the Claustrophobic...
Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth by Jim Tabor. I devoured this book in two days, fascinated and horrified by crazy people who are willing to spend weeks underground, climbing up and down cliffs with ropes, swimming through underground lakes (sumps), crawling through narrow tunnels and spending time in total darkness to save batteries. Why do they do it? Some for science, others for the adventure and I suppose some for the challenge.
Explosive!
Pompeii by Robert Harris (down-loadable audio or book). Great story about an aqueduct engineer who finds himself pulled into the middle of the dramatic tale of the eruption of Vesuivius. Cast of characters includes Pliny the Elder (well-known natural scientist), an evil entrepreneurial ex-slave, a beautiful maiden in distress and a large crowd of extras. I really enjoyed the book which manages to be both entertaining and educational, not an easy thing for an author to pull off.
Arty Fiction
The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. (audio CD or book) Why would a successful artist attack a painting in the National Gallery? A psychiatrist explores his story, searching for the identity of the beautiful subject of the artist's paintings by speaking to the women in his life. Events from 1870s France illuminate the mystery and tragedy in the life of a brilliant woman painter among the Impressionists. The audiobook is narrated by several excellent readers.
Biographical Movie
Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women (DVD). The extraordinary story of a truly remarkable woman who overcame huge challenges to become a successful author and public figure. The movie combines actors, photos, dialogue based on the written record and commentary (only a little) by scholars. The fascinating story of a life that included home schooling from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, nursing during the Civil War, desperate struggles with poverty, years of hard work, and a secret career as the writer of pulp thrillers makes for a surprisingly entertaining documentary.
Young Adult reading?
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. We have an audio edition, which is how I started the book. Some of the disks were badly scratched and I wanted to finish the book, so I pulled out the "hard" copy and plunged in. This turned out to be a blessing as the book offers some special visual pieces that are, of course, missing if you just listen to it. On the other hand, the reader of the audio version enriches the story...my recommendation is to do both! The story? It is about a German foster child during World War II who steals a book and then another book and then another book. It is about Death, and violence and suffering and despair and joy and love and kindness and family. The audio edition is in the adult section and the book is in the Young Adult collection.
Downloadable Audio
Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R. A. Scotti. August, 1911 and the Mona Lisa is successfully heisted from the Louvre. The museum staff didn't even notice her loss for over 24 hours! The story gets even crazier as the police decide that Picasso and his friends may be part of a gang of international art thieves. One of those unbelievable true stories with an unsolved mystery at the core.
Superbly Entertaining Non-Fiction
Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory by Ben Macintyre. British eccentrics pull off a ridiculous stunt and convince the Germans that instead of the Allies planning to invade Sicily they are heading for Greece. The eccentrics were intelligence officers and the plan, although carefully worked out, was only successful due to an amazing stroke of luck...but you have to read the book.
Fiction Set in Vermont
The Road Home by Michael Thomas Ford. A charming little book about a 40 year-old photographer who has to go home and stay with his father in rural Vermont (due to a couple of broken bones from a car crash), a painful experience for both of them. Burke is, he thinks, happy living in Boston as a gay man and happy with his work as a photographer and he hates rural Vermont. You can probably figure out the rest of the story! Warning, graphic sex.
Outstanding Non-Fiction
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. The totally amazing story of a fourteen year-old school drop-out who, with the help of three books from the tiny library in his village, a large pile of junk and a couple of good friends, built a working windmill which supplied electricity to his home. One of the best books I've read this year, highly recommended.
Fiction Pick
Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons. The Rosenblum family arrives in England in 1937, fleeing the Nazis and leaving behind relatives. Jack is determined to become more English than the English and is fairly successful except for membership in an English golf club, which is not open to Jews in the 1950s. Jack finds a cottage and some land in Dorset and begins to build his own golf course. Meanwhile, Sadie mourns her lost mother and brother and bakes mountains of nostalgic cakes. A curious mix of magical realism and everyday life, this book definitely has its charms.
Downloadable Non-Fiction from Overdrive
Predictably Irrational : The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions by Dan Ariely. An entertaining excavation of the hidden springs that motivate our actions. From the best way to get friends to help you move, to the best method of avoiding ordering things you don't want at a restaurant...human beings are indeed irrational...but surprisingly consistent in our craziness. (Downloadable Audio)
Crime and Mystery
Diary of a Confessions Queen by Kathy Carmichael. Amy's husband disappeared seven years ago. Amy is having a hard time making ends meet writing fiction for true confessions magazines. Amy also has a blackmailer, a stalker breaking into her house and a very sexy detective, plus some weird relatives by marriage and a super wacky elderly neighbor. Silly, fluffy, but sort of fun, except for a couple of murders. I guess most mystery novels have murders...
Forbidden Fruit by Kerry Greenwood. Christmas in Australia means hot weather, which means that baking bread is hot work. Corinna, the baker, has to deal with a missing teenager (pregnant), a donkey, and a group of utterly fanatical vegans. Luckily she gets some help from the crazily creative Fregans. Entertaining -- fifth in a series.
The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny (audio CD and book). The second in a mystery series set in Quebec in a tiny rural town filled with charming eccentrics along with an occasional murderer. Chief Inspector Gamache is faced with a creepy murder at a seance held in an abandoned house, along with some truly dangerous political maneuvering within the Quebec police force.
The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear. The latest in a series about a woman detective working in England following WW I: this time Maisie Dobbs is looking into a possible murder which was covered up by the massive slaughter on the battlefields of France. A young American mapmaker volunteered to serve in the British forces and disappeared. Now his body has been found and identified, along with some papers. Intriguing.
I've been thinking about filling some of the gaps in our collection, specifically series fiction. For example, we have some of the series by Jacqueline Winspear, reviewed above. There are many other authors where we have some of a series, but not all. I'm looking for suggestions of books in series where readers would like to read earlier books or recommend them to friends. Give me a call!
Read all about your favorite detectives
as described by their creators! The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives edited by Otto Penzler. First I skipped through and read all about the fictional detectives whose stories I know and love, then I skipped through and read about the fictional detectives I've been thinking I ought to have read. By then I was so fascinated with the weird imaginations of the various authors that I read about all the fictional detectives whose stories I'll probably never touch with a ten-foot pole. A very entertaining compendium for any fan of mystery or crime novels.
AudioBooks
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (audio CD). A somewhat sweet story of two maids working in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s and their unlikely collaboration and friendship with a young white woman who wants to become a writer. Entertaining. And the evil young matron who heads the Junior League is truly an outstanding example of her type.
Hunting Eichmann by Neil Bascomb (downloadable audio from Net Library). The story of Adolf Eichmann, his career during World War II and his escape following the war is fascinating and horrifying. In 1960 a team of Mossad operatives slipped into Argentina and kidnapped Eichmann. He was smuggled out of the country and transported to Israel where he was tried and condemned to death. I found the details of the operation gripping in a bizarre sort of way. Real life spies never manage perfect timing or totally smooth operations, which is probably a good thing. The most difficult part for everyone involved was spending time with Eichmann, who didn't really seem to understand why he was seen as a criminal...
DVD
Invictus. A delightful movie about South Africa and rugby, based on the book Playing the Enemy by John Carlin and the 1995 World Cup match. The Springboks were the underdog team, going up against the All Blacks from New Zealand. Nelson Mandela used rugby, a sport that had been divisive under apartheid, to bring white and black South Africa together.
Non-Fiction Options
The 10 Things You Need to Eat: and More Than 100 Easy and Delicious Ways to Prepare Them by Dave Lieberman and Anahad O'Connor. Unfortunately the library doesn't have a test kitchen. We don't have a staff chef, either. This deficiency means that cookbooks are tested in my kitchen by me. Since I am, at best, very middle-of-the road in my kitchen skills, the most I can do is try out a few recipes and report the results. This book was easy to use, the recipes are clear, each section starts with an explanation of the benefits of the recommended food and the end results were all edible. I cooked Beet and Caramelized Onion Potato Mash, making a 2/3 recipe since I am definitely not 6 people. I followed the directions for boiling the beets. Everything worked okay except that some of the stuff was done well before other stuff, so I was pretty hungry by the time I combined the ingredients and ate lunch. For dinner I made Chicken Scaloppine with Sweet and Sour Spinach. This one told me to flatten the chicken breasts by pounding them. I'd never done this before and I don't think I pounded quite enough. But the end result was very yummy and was certainly an easy way to get my spinach. I also tried Red Lentil Dal with Cilantro and Yogurt, which was easy and delicious. I've been using red lentils for years and was happy to find another good way to cook them.
Any volunteers for the position of library test cook?
Fiction pleasures
Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay. Kay has created his own unique fantasy genre. He writes novels about real historical times and places, but loosens the bounds of reality and fact. Under Heaven takes place in a world much like Tang Dynasty China, but freely and beautifully imagined. The story begins in a remote area on the border of "Kitai" where Shen Tai is coming to the end of two years of mourning the death of his father by burying the bones of the soldiers who died in a huge battle. A wonderful story of adventure, disaster and transformation.
The Information Officer by Mark Mills. The author of Amagansett manages to gently merge the WW II adventure novel, with a spy novel, with a murder mystery. The background story of the resistance of Malta to a horrific level of bombing by the Germans is just as good as the fictional adventures of young Max Chadwick, who has the fun job of making the war effort look good as the bombs rain down. Recommended!
audio entertainment
Guardian of Lies by Steve Martini (audio CD or book). The latest in a very long-running series about a California criminal lawyer takes off into the international terrorist underground. Complicated plot depends heavily on coincidence and luck (good and bad). Entertaining, but I prefer his earlier books.
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith. Good times in Botswana with the investigators at the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Precious Ramotswe faces the loss of her tiny white van, struggles with a football (soccer) team on a losing streak, and deals with an epic power struggle between her assistant, Grace Makutsi and the evil (but glamorous) Violet over Grace's fiance, Phuti Radiphuti, owner of the Double Comfort Furniture Store.
I have a confession to make. I listen to audio books while I do my morning exercises. If a book is too gripping, I'll get distracted and miss some of the exercises, and if it is too boring, I won't want to exercise. Alexander McCall Smith's books are just right...
U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton (downloadable audio from OverDrive or book). A very old kidnapping case comes up to irritate and puzzle Kinsey Milhone. Entertaining, but not for vegans. And no, the problem is not disgusting indulgence in meat by carnivores. Ms. Grafton includes a vegan character who is utterly repulsive in every possible way. I guess she assumes (perhaps correctly) that people who avoid meat, eggs and milk also avoid murder mysteries.
Guest Review from David Ellis
Red Families v. Blue Families – Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture
Authors:
Naomi Cahn – Research Professor of Law at George Washington University
June Carbone – Professor of Law at University of Missouri at Kansas City
This is a remarkable book! Two scholars of Family Law have written a book anyone can understand, and everyone should read. Why? Anyone who watches election returns knows about Red (Republican) and Blue (Democratic) States. The authors explain with admirable clarity how and why our country has become Red/Blue - polarized geographically, economically, and religiously, as well as politically.
Other reviews summarize the books goal, arguments, and conclusions. This review concerns structure and style. The Introduction states “This book takes a comprehensive look at the relationship among moral anxiety about family form, ideological driven family laws, and the prospect for more constructive approaches to family change”. It also states the following conclusion: “—genuine family reform requires a more honest conversation about the changed and changing terms of family stability. Doing so starts with the recognition that red families and blue families are living different lives with different symbolic and practical needs.”
The astute reader will quickly notice the author’s natural modernist “blue” sympathies. However, they show deep understanding of and respect for the goals of traditional “red” families. There is not a trace of polemic writing in the book.
The book is divided into three parts. Part 1, “Family Maps” lays out the salient facts in detail. And the facts should be very interesting to anyone who cares deeply about their family and the future. Part 2, “The Legal Map” shows how and why Family Law evolved differently in different geographic regions of the country. Part 3, “The Map To The Future” gives pragmatic advice for individuals, voters, and lawmakers that respects tradition, is sensitive to the “culture wars”, and moves the country towards healthier families.
Finally, the brief Conclusion beautifully summarizes what is important, and what is not.
For those willing to read the book carefully, hidden gems and sparkling insights make the time well spent. Highly recommended!
Back from vacation!
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (audio CD or book). I listened to the audio book and then pulled the book off the biographies shelf and browsed the pictures. An excellent work in audio or paper, thoughtful, deeply researched, warm and lively. Great vacation "reading".
The picture of Lincoln as an unsophisticated prairie lawyer is well established, Ms Goodwin shows him as a shrewd and subtle politician who knew how to turn the strengths and weaknesses of others to advantage. What made Lincoln extraordinary was his genuine humility and dedication to public service.
The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen. Novels based on the lives of artists are now a popular genre. Ms. Cullen tells the story of the well-known female artist Sofonisba Anguissola who studied with Michaelangelo. Sofonisba is invited to Spain to become Lady-in-waiting and painting instructor to Felipe II's third wife, Elisabeth a young French princess. The court is filled with intrigue and scandal, and Sofonisba struggles to work as an artist in a setting quite hostile to independent and talented women. A vivid picture of the time and place.
More stuff to read or listen to
Wedding Season by Katie Fforde. Ms Fforde neatly combines work and romance in her light novels set in England. Wedding Season is--big surprise--about the insanity of the wedding business. The story covers the ups and downs of three women, a wedding planner, a hairdresser and a dressmaker, who end up working on a really cheap wedding for the wedding planner's sister (needed, wedding gown that won't emphasize "the bump") and an utterly extravagant wedding for a minor movie star (needed, quaint English country setting, coach and horses, little bridesmaids with wings). Fun and silly.
Hell Gate by Linda Fairstein (audio CD or book). Ongoing series about an assistant DA in NYC who specializes in sex crimes. This outing finds Alex Cooper investigating an international slavery ring with links to someone in city government. Someone murders a congressman's girlfriend and someone murdered one of the girls who was being "imported" from the Ukraine. The girls are linked by a rose tattoo...
Requiem in Vienna by J. Sydney Jones. Someone is trying to murder Mahler. Karl Werthen, a lawyer and investigator is asked to look into the case and is joined by his good friend, a criminologist, Hanns Gross. Not a spectacularly good mystery, but the setting is delightful and the descriptions of food are even better. I had no idea that Mahler was such a difficult person!
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them by Elif Batuman. The peculiar story of how Elif fell into graduate studies in Russian literature, met many strange people, visited Russia, spent a summer in Samarkand and visited a reproduction ice palace in St. Petersburg. Very entertaining, even if you don't understand Russian literature. But then...is there anyone who understands Russian literature? Really?
Reviews
Faces of the Gone by Brad Parks. A young reporter working for a Newark daily paper is sent to cover an unusual killing: 4 seemingly unrelated people executed in a vacant lot. As he starts digging he finds a connection--and everything spirals out of control. Funny, a bit scary, and includes an denouement that combines terror with quirky humor.
Olive Kittridge by Elizabeth Strout (downloadable audio from Overdrive, audio CD, book). A series of brief stories, set in and around Crosby, Maine, centers on the difficult life and personality of Olive Kittridge, a retired math teacher. Some of the stories are directly "about" Olive, some stories center on other folks around the town who intersect with Olive at one point or another. Olive, like most of us, is a queer mixture of insight and self-delusion, stubborn, intelligent, interested, surprised. I enjoyed the book and wondered where everyone eventually ended up--the characters were that believable.
How to Get Things Really Flat: Englightenment for Every Man on Ironing, Vacuuming and other Household Arts by Andrew Martin. A middle-aged Englishman from who grew up in York explains why men should do housework (to regain the moral edge from women) and how to do housework (which isn't the way women do housework). I thought it was the funniest book I'd ever read on the topic of housework. But none of the others were funny...
The God of the Hive by Laurie R. King. A close sequel to her previous book in the series, The Language of Bees, this is more of a thriller than a mystery, with Holmes and Russell separated through most of the story. I found it entertaining, but slightly weaker than some of the other entries. King is a very good writer, even when she isn't at her best.
Blackout by Connie Willis. Science fiction by an author who transcends the genre. Some of the book takes place in 2060 Oxford and the rest in England during WW II as various "Historians" take up residence to observe the "contemps" coping with the Blitz and the evacuees (the evacuees are worse) and trying to get around London on public transportation (close to impossible). But something seems to have gone wrong with time travel and they may be trapped in the past...
The House on Tradd Street by Karen White (audio CD). A very light and fluffy mystery involving an old house which needs major rehab, a missing person story from 80 years earlier and a woman who sees ghosts. Set in Charleston, South Carolina, with a very southern ambiance, the story does include a short detour to Vermont. Personally, I prefer Vermont!
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The Heretic's Wife by Brenda Rickman Vantrease. Historical adventure tells the story of the underground attempt to translate the Bible into English during the reign of Henry VIII. The story moves between the fictional adventures of a young woman whose brother is arrested for selling illegal religious pamphlets from their bookstore and the activities of the powerful: Henry VIII, Wolsey, Thomas More, Ann Boleyn. In my opinion, the author is much more believable describing the experiences of the ordinary folk than exploring the minds and hearts of the historical movers and shakers.
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False Mermaid by Erin Hart. Set in Ireland and Minneapolis, this suspense/mystery is the third in a series. I haven't read the first two, but it wasn't a problem. The author has a talent for describing the settings, the plot is legitimately twisty (doesn't depend on people doing really dumb stuff to miss seeing what really happened) and, except for one character, I found everyone believable. An enjoyable read.
The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon. Evelyn is trying to make it as a lawyer in 1920s London (when women lawyers were rare and usually met with hostility), trying to keep a roof over her discordant family's heads and trying to cope with the loss of her younger brother in World War I. She finds herself battered from all sides as a young woman turns up with a small child who is obviously her brother's son and her boss throws her into the middle of a difficult murder case.
The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health—And a Vision for Change by Annie Leonard. A fascinating and surprisingly enjoyable book that gives you the low-down on cotton t-shirts and millions of other “inexpensive” bits and pieces which we just cannot live without. Highly recommended for anyone who is interested in the health of our society and our environment.
Real Simple Magazine (one of 30 magazines in our library collection). I've got mixed feelings on this one. All about acquiring more stuff, organizing the stuff once you've acquired it, and using the stuff you've got more effectively. Covers a lot of basic information that would help people who are setting up their first space. On the other hand, there are lots of lovely pictures and some cute articles on this and that. Personally, I wouldn't subscribe, but I'll probably check it out of the library a couple of times a year.
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. A novelized account of the lives of two remarkable creatures: women who became fossil hunters in the early 1800s in Lyme Regis, England. Mary Anning belongs to the working classes and is set to fossil hunting by her father, a cabinet maker; Elizabeth Philpot is a middle-class woman, one of three sisters dumped in Lyme Regis to be out of the way of her brother's wife. Fossils presented, at that time, a troubling challenge to the literal interpretation of Genesis, so Elizabeth's interest in fossils moved her to the edge of respectability. A fascinating story by a superb historical novelist and a book that would make a very good read for a book club.
American Wife by Craig Sittenfeld (downloadable audio or book). An exploration of the peculiar role allotted to spouses of powerful men, this novel explores the life of a quiet, reserved, thoughtful woman who finds herself married to the president. When Alice first met Charlie Blackwell, he was a bit of a lightweight, fun, lively, running for Congress. After his congressional run fails, he settles down to work for the family business and Alice settled down into the role of a stay-at-home mother and wife. To her surprise, Charlie ends up managing a ball team, then becomes governor...and finally ends up as a controversial president. If this sounds familiar, it is because the novel is loosely based on the lives of Laura and George Bush. Very loosely. Intriguing.
A Night Too Dark by Dana Stabenow. One of my favorite mystery authors, Stabenow has a long-running series set in an isolated part of Alaska. This installment involves some missing workers from the new gold mine, along with plenty of eccentric characters and a grizzly. Stabenow is very good at providing background information for new readers of the series without slowing the action to a crawl, so you don't have to start with her first book and read forward.
Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation by Rawn James, Jr. A horrifying and fascinating story, well told by a young lawyer living and practicing in Washington, D.C. The Civil Rights Movement began many years before the 1960s and Houston laid the groundwork by establishing a high-quality law program at Howard University, an all black college in Washington, D.C. The book recounts the history of the legal battles which led, eventually, to school desegregation. The most telling moment, for me, was the Supreme Court review of restrictive covenants, which prevented black families from buying homes in white neighborhoods. “Oral argument opened dramatically on January 16, 1948, when Justices Rutledge, Jackson and Reed rose from the bench, and having recused themselves, left the courtroom.” Three of the justices on the Supreme Court lived in neighborhoods with racially restrictive covenants! Highly recommended, a gripping account of the extreme racial bias embedded in American culture and the determined people who struggled to overcome it.
Captain Robert H. Domey: The Namesake of Domey's Dome by Carol Johnson Collins. Local author recounts the story of her husband's grandfather: his work on the Long Trail and his many years of activism in the Green Mountain Club. I was also intrigued by the story of Fred Collin's grandmother, Emma, who hiked the whole length of the Long Trail in 1937 with her husband. A pleasant little memoir (47 pages) of interest to fans of the Green Mountain Club and Vermont history.
The Reluctant Sinner by June Tate. A hardworking young dressmaker takes up a second career as barmaid in a brothel to provide care for her dying father. Not surprisingly, all sorts of unpleasant consequences follow. Set in Southhampton, England during World War I. Romance in the rags-to-riches genre.
The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch. How to make yourself really unpopular: do groundbreaking research that demonstrates conclusively that a whole class of very lucrative drugs are no better than placebo and have dangerous side-effects besides. This lively book summarizes his research and explains why the drugs appeared to be effective in various studies. The last chapter of the book reviews the most recent research on treating depression. Certain types of talk therapy have an excellent track record, so does exercise. Note: he strongly recommends that people not quit taking antidepressants they are already on...going off suddenly can be dangerous!
U.S. News & World Report. I'm going to be reviewing all of the magazines in our collection over the next few months. U.S. News comes out monthly and usually has a particular focus: I read the April 2010 issue on “The Future of Energy.” The articles are basic, straightforward and easy to read. The tone is calm and seems to be trying for a somewhat neutral stance. The articles I found most informative were the one on our outdated electrical grid and the article about the new electric cars.
Just finished “weeding” the children's non-fiction. This means that I looked at every single book on the shelves and pulled out books that haven't been circulating for a few year. We tend to think of non-fiction as hard work, but there are a lot of amusing books in this area: fairy tales and folk tales, for example, many with beautiful illustrations. Poetry, sports, science, gardening, history, music and games. I checked out How Things are Made (j 670 H) for my grandson and he loved it. Kids wonder how matches are made, or those bags of cookies at the store or airplanes and this book has the pictures and the explanations to answer those questions. Have a look at the kid's non-fiction area, I think you'll be surprised how much fun you and your children can have with these books.
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Review by Paul Hanke: Daring Young Men by Richard Reeves. The Haiti earthquake left us anxiously watching our TVs as the U.S., the U.N., and NGOs struggled to get aid into that poverty ravaged country. Daring Young Men tells the heroic story of the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift, where the U.S., Britain, and France delivered over 2.3 million tons of desperately needed food, coal, medicine, and other supplies to the starving citizens of Berlin after the Soviet Union blockaded the city in an effort to drive out the Western powers.
Nothing seemed to stop the relief effort. Planes landed every 3 minutes. The unloading record was 19 tons in 7 minutes. Nineteen thousand Berliners worked to build a new airport. Fifty percent were women, sometimes working in high heels (their only shoes). To maintain the planes, Gen. William Tunner didn't hesitate to call upon his former enemy, Maj. Gen. Hans Detlef von Rohden, who provided 5,000 German mechanics. American pilot Gail Halvorsen (the “Candy Bomber”), on his own initiative, dropped 10 tons of donated sweets for German children using mini-parachutes made from handkerchiefs. The San Francisco Chronicle editorialized that while Congress must be concerned about expenses, the Airlift was not the place to economize. German children were chosen by lottery for evacuation. An American pilot who had to parachute into the Soviet sector was rescued by a former German P.O.W. whose injured leg had been saved by American doctors. After the blockade ended, 500,000 Germans lined the unannounced departure route of Commanding General Lucius Clay to express their gratitude. An inspiring and heartwarming tale with many lessons for today.
Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy (downloadable audio from Overdrive or book). Set in Dublin at a heart clinic and filled with the author's usual characters plus a few additions. Her main focus is on the “new Irish” who are pouring into the country to work at menial jobs for low pay, but there is plenty of romance and fun. Pleasant escapism.
The Book of Fires by Jane Borodale. The haunting story of a young country woman who flees her home for the anonymity of London in 1752. An unpleasant fellow left her expecting a baby, the poverty of her family leaves her feeling hopeless—why not run away? In London she becomes assistant to the mysterious Mr. Blacklock, a fireworks maker, who is, she discovers, searching for the secret of colored fire.
Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark (downloadable audio from NetLibrary). One of the reasons I enjoy audiobooks is the way they stretch my reading habits. For some reason I will listen to books I would probably never read. This book fits that description. Based on an actual murder case from 1974, it is the odd story of Hildegard Wolf, a Paris-based therapist, who finds herself treating two men who claim to be Lord Lucan, who accidentally murdered the family nanny instead of his wife and has been on the run for 25 years, helped by various upper class friends. An odd, but nevertheless entertaining book which addresses questions of loyalty, social class, mental health and morality.
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