So Many Books. . .
So Little Time.




Welcome to my book blog. . .

I am a book nerd.  Since 1987, I have kept journals in which I carefully record titles, authors and the date read plus a response to each book.  Some entries are only a paragraph about cotton candy books that are quickly inhaled and enjoyed but which are also ultimately forgettable. The longest entries are several pages, either preparation for discussion in my book group or enthusiastic reflections on books that raise intriguing questions and/or reflect interesting narrative styles.  The earlier journals (the first is a black and white marble notebook) are hand-written, but eventually I moved to typing, cutting and pasting into blank books purchased at Barnes and Noble (still antiquated, I realize) and each one covers about three years worth of reading, or about 180 -200 titles.  Writing about books has, in this fashion, always been for an audience of one – me.  As a high school English teacher for 36 years, I have been driven to do what I always encouraged students to do:  write to find out what you know and understand.  I haven’t worried about giving away the ending or explaining who all of the characters are because I am my own audience.  The journals have proved useful over the years when people ask for recommendations, either for personal reading or titles to teach.  They are also fun to revisit every once in a while as I find that my writing reveals a little about me at the time I was reading the book. 

At the urging of numerous friends, I have decided to expand my audience through this blog.  I hope to update it weekly with title recommendations and/or musings about reading and its related activities. I have funny stories to tell about a book group I was in for 17 years and I have questions about people who don’t read at all but seem to be otherwise intelligent, likeable individuals.  I think there’s an essay in the contemplation of audio books versus printed material (Are you really reading a book if you listen to it?) and, of course, the Kindle experience versus the physical tome.  There’s also my addiction to Amazon.  I’m one of their charter members; there’s nothing quite like the rush I get when I open the front door and find a box with the familiar curvy arrow waiting for me. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.  When I recently told a woman I know that I was going to blog, she said, “Oh, there are so many book blogs out there.”  I told my husband who noted correctly that I was then discouraged.  “What can I say that no one else has said about reading?”   “Probably nothing,” he replied, “but they don’t say it the way you do.”  Okay, so maybe.

Since it is the end of the year and everyone is making lists of “the best,” I will begin with my list of the ten best books I read in 2015.  I should take a moment to put the list in context.  I am largely a reader of current fiction.  While I appreciate the classics, I am not particularly interested in revisiting them when there are so many new, more accessible titles available.  I don’t read a lot of nonfiction either, although, ironically, a few years ago I was asked to teach a course for teachers on “Teaching Nonfiction in the High School English Classroom.”   The gig forced me to take a serious look at literary nonfiction and I did read some truly good books through this endeavor, but, honestly, given the choice, I gravitate towards fiction.  I regularly read the Time, Washington Post and New York Times book reviews and these are largely the source of my choices.  I also try to read the National Book Award nominees, as those seldom disappoint.  My more mainstream literary reading is broken up by murder mysteries and detective stories.  I’m a sucker for getting Elizabeth George, Sue Grafton, Robert Galbraith and Robert Goddard newbies in hardback the day they become available.  So, if you too like current fiction, some intellectually stimulating, some a good break from everyday life where you can disappear for a few hours, then I think you will like my recommendations.

So, here’s my list for 2015 in the order that I read them with hopefully enough description to entice you to read these great books too!

My favorite reads in 2015 

( in the order in which I read them)

Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

            Many people I know say, “I quit reading Jodi Picoult ten years ago.  I did too, moving on to what I considered more interesting writers, but when I read the review of this book, I was intrigued.  This book establishes her, in my mind, as a far more ambitious writer than I have previously given her credit.  The book is about love and the grief of losing those we love.  It operates on two levels:  that of the present-day narrative story in which 13 year old Jenna hires washed up psychic Serenity and burned out detective Virgil to help her find out what happened to her mother, Alice, 10 years earlier; and a second narrative, that of the past which contains much research done by Alice, a professional zoologist, on elephant grieving.  At first, Alice’s elephant research seems to be simply a way for the author to raise awareness about theses animals and their treatment, but gradually the two stories come together in interesting ways.  The book is told through the alternating voices of the four main characters, and the audio version (I listened to it on CDS.) has four different actors reading.  The alternating points of view make the story a puzzle as each character’s piece has to be fitted with those of the others and the perspectives on events differ enough to make the reader feel a bit like a detective.  Picoult misleads the reader as you gradually start to question what you think you know.  The characters are well developed, the plot fast-moving and the ending is a roller-coaster ride through a house of mirrors.

The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber

            This is a strange and compelling book; as one of the blurbs on the back cover mentions in reference to both this title and an earlier book by the same author Under the Skin, Faber does alien well.  Ostensibly a piece of science fiction, the book is really about what it means to be human, the complexity of building and sustaining relationships and the role of faith.  I think it would make a terrific book group choice if I could convince my friends to read it. The story is told mostly from the point of view of Peter, a former alcoholic and drug addict turned minister.  As the book opens, he has been selected by a mysterious conglomerate called USIC to bring the word of Jesus to an alien population on a planet they have named Oasis.  The assignment seems open-ended, however there is the definite possibility that he will come back and this is the thread that Bea, the beloved wife from whom he is departing, and Peter grasp in the final moments before Peter leaves.  Oasis turns out to be a relatively stark place.  USIC has a huge, self-contained base where a number of people with all sorts of specialties (hydraulic engineers, pharmacists, botanists) live and work.  The base is strangely barren of anything current; there are no newspapers and the magazines are 5 years old.  Even the music that comes through the cafeteria speakers consists of recordings from the ‘30’s to the ‘50’s, emphasizing the distance from home in both time and space.  The only form of communication with Bea for Peter is the Shoot, a machine that essentially allows email back and forth to Earth.  Faber does a masterful job of creating a sense of isolation, filling it with characters who have started over and who don’t look back. 

      Peter meets the natives and becomes quickly caught up in the wonder of working with them, joyous at their thirst for readings from “The Book of Strange New Things,” a.k.a. The King James Bible, and excited by the challenge of getting to know them.  As he slowly immerses himself in their culture, he finds that the visits back to the base seem like trips to an alien place, and thus, the idea of what it means to be “human” gets turned around.  Many questions about the relationship between the Earthings and the Oasans abound, and why USIC is on this planet, and are only gradually answered.   Letters between Bea and Peter are inserted throughout the novel.  Initially, they reflect the longing that each has for the others, Peter’s excitement about his new adventure, and Bea’s efforts to get on with life without him.  Gradually, however, Bea’s letters take on an ominous tone as she reveals how horrible things are becoming:  grocery store shelves empty and are not restocked, crime is up, violent rain and wind storms cause huge damage, technology is breaking down and horrible typhoons are destroying islands in the Pacific.  Caught up in his new ministry, Peter is initially unresponsive to her complaints as they seem – and, in fact are – a galaxy away.  It is only when her letters take on a truly desperate tone that he begins to realize the toll that the separation has taken on their relationship.  It is easy to get caught up in Peter’s adventure, feel his unsettling sense as he comes to know and understand life on Oasis as well as his eventual pain over his separation from Bea.  It is also interesting when Peter struggles to explain the stories of The Bible in a context and with language that will make sense to the Oasans. 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Martel

            A finalist for the National Book Award last year, this was a remarkable book for both the beauty of the writing and for the imaginative story. The book begins dramatically with a production of King Lear during which the titular actor, Arthur Leander, has a heart attack and dies.  A young man with EMS training, Jeevan Chaudhary, springs up from the audience and tries to save him.  A child actress, Kirsten Raymonde, cowers in horror off to the side. Almost immediately following this incident, the world is hit by a pandemic during which 99% of the population dies.  The novel then springs forward twenty years to the post-pandemic world in which most technology no longer exists.  Kirsten, now a young woman, is part of The Traveling Symphony, a group of musicians and actors who travel around the Great Lakes area of Canada performing Shakespeare.  Martel plants a number of mysteries in this futuristic setting:  the traveling troupe comes to a village they had visited two years previously which has changed drastically due to the coming of a man who calls himself The Prophet and seems like an armed, extremist Latter Day Saint.  Who is he?  Kirsten has among her possessions two volumes of a graphic novel about  a group of travelers who have fled a destroyed Earth aboard a planetoid-like space craft called Station Eleven.  She has read it so many times that it is falling apart but its origin is a mystery and she has never met anyone else who has ever heard of the books which had belonged to Arthur.  The story then moves back and forth in time, covering much of Arthur’s life (Who knew when he died in chapter one that he would be a main character?)  revealing the origin of the comic books as well as the story of The Prophet.  The novel also goes back to the moment when the airplanes stopped flying, television went off the air, cell phones no longer provide service and freeways were jammed with cars that ran out of gas showing it through the eyes of people all connected to Arthur.  Martel provides a hopeful vision of humanity, the religious zealots notwithstanding. Kirsten has a line from Star Trek as a tattoo:  “Surviving is insufficient.”  The Traveling Symphony represents the beauty of music and drama – the arts that are necessary for a society to be civilized.  Everywhere they travel, people are happy to hear and see them. This was a terrific book; after finishing it, I thought, “The actual winner of the book award must be sensational.”

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

     Another finalist for the National Book Award, this was also a wonderful novel.  Set during WW2, it alternates between the points of view of Werner, a young German orphan with a talent for electronics and Marie-Laure, a blind Parisian girl.  The story begins on an August day in 1944 when the Americans are bombing the picturesque French coastal town of Sainte-Malo in order to drive the Germans out.  Both main characters are there, but it does not become apparent until the end of the book why they are there and how they will interact.  Doerr goes back and forth in time, sharing each character’s childhood and gradually bringing their stories forward.  There are, as in Station Eleven, some puzzle pieces that fit terrifically together in the end, and the reader delights as each piece falls into place.            

     Doerr’s creation of setting and character are descriptive and realistic.  He also includes interesting details;  each birthday, Marie-Laure’s father gives her a new model house that is a puzzle box with a treat inside to add to her model of first, their Paris neighborhood and later the village of Saint-Malo, and he also gives her a classic book in Braille.  She becomes the most fascinated with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and the novel quotes passages a number of times that correspond with events in the narrative as well as holding more metaphorical significance. For example, the mad quest of Captain Nemo seems to parallel the madness of the Nazis.  The idea of being contained in a submarine under so much dark water seems like both occupied Europe and also the state of being blind.  Again, if this book didn’t win the prize, the one that beat it must be fantastic.

Everything I Never Told You by Cynthia Ng

     The book opens with the sentence, “Lydia is dead.”  The story that follows provides the context:  who Lydia is, the days, months and even years leading up to the day they dredge the lake and find her body.  Ng goes back and forth in time to develop the layers of issues that plague the Lee family, not the least of which is their mixed heritage in a small, largely white Ohio town.  Lydia’s mother is a Caucasian college student who falls for her Asian professor and marries him.  Marilyn Lee’s dreams of becoming a doctor are put on hold when James gets a professorship, not at Harvard where they both are, but at a small mid-western college.  Marilyn doesn’t finish school and ends up having two children in short order.  Her frustrations with what she perceives as the glass ceiling for women as well as her derailment from her dreams leads her, at one point, to leave the family, head to Toledo, and enroll in school there to finish her degree.  James and the two children, Nath and Lydia, are devastated.  What brings her back 9 weeks later is the discovery that she is pregnant, and once again destined to be a mother and housewife, a bitter pill that she can never quite swallow.  Finally, she decides that if she cannot be a doctor, Lydia will become one, and she begins to groom Lydia with gifts of science books, a real stethoscope and trips to science museums.  It is not Lydia, but the neglected and gifted Nath, who has the real academic potential.  Lydia, so grateful that her mother has returned and eager to do whatever her mother wants to keep her home, struggles mightily under the pressure to be what she neither wants to or can capably become.  Hannah, the surprise child, is largely neglected as well, hiding under tables and behind furniture as a metaphor for her invisibility.  The children, however, are close to each other, unified in their feelings of being ostracized by the larger white community.  Ng moves back and forth in time, ending the book with the day of Lydia’s death.  The book is sad but so powerful in its exploration of social and personal expectations and their consequences.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

     This is a fascinating and poignant fictionalized account of the last six months of the life of Agnes Magnusdottir, the last person in Iceland to be publicly beheaded.  It’s a bit of a downer that you know from the get-go that she is going to be executed as Kent creates in Agnes a sympathetic character who is a victim of circumstances rather than a doer of evil.  The point of view shifts from members of the farm family (primarily the mother, Margret, and her two daughters) who are forced to house Agnes while she awaits an execution date, to the young minister (Toti) whom Agnes asks for as a spiritual counselor, to Agnes herself.  Gradually, Agnes begins to trust Toti and Margret with stories of her life. 

     Over the course of the novel, the events that result in Agnes’ death sentence emerge as well as her back story that seems to fatally lead to these moments.  Agnes’ past as an orphan who has moved from farm to farm as a worker over the years has given her an edge and this has worked against her.  Agnes explains to Toti why she believes that no one has pity for her:  “All my life people have thought I was too clever.  Too clever by half, they’d say.  And you know what, Reverend?  That’s exactly why they don’t pity me.  Because they think I’m too smart, too knowing to get caught up in this by accident”  (126).  Agnes seems to have had few friends throughout her life and she makes the mistake of falling for Natan, a man who is portrayed as selfish and manipulative.

     The reason that Agnes is not immediately put to death seems to be two-fold:  Iceland in 1829 still belongs to Denmark and they must await the final decision of the Danish authorities and the king; the commissioner also wants them to be spiritually counseled so that they go to their deaths in a state of remorse and atonement.  Agnes asks for Toti because she has met him on the road years earlier, and he was kind to her.  He is young, insecure in his role as minister, and, as he gets to know Agnes, seems to grow truly fond of her and maybe, as Kent portrays him, a little in love with her.  Agnes rejects any sort of preaching and instead chooses to tell Toti stories of her life.  He is mesmerized by these stories and comes to believe in her goodness and innocence.

     It’s a little like watching or reading Wolf Hall.  History tells us Anne Boleyn is going to lose her head and, as convenient as it is to see her as a villain who deserves it, you cannot help but see her as a sympathetic figure who gets caught up in events beyond her control and you begin to dread the coming gallows with each episode or turn of the page.  So too with Agnes.

The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob

     The protagonist, Amina, is an Indian American living in Seattle and working as a wedding photographer when she gets called home to New Mexico because her father is ill.  The novel explores identity in a variety of ways.  Early on, there is a flashback to Amina’s childhood when she, her parents (Thomas and Kamala) and her brother (Akhil)visit the family home back in India.  The expectations of her grandmother towards her son, Thomas, (come back to India, assume the role of head of the family) create a schism.  While Thomas seems to reject all things Indian, determined to be only American, back in the States the family ironically surrounds itself with other expats who become their extended family, reinforcing traditional expectations and values.  Amina and her friend Dimple escape to Seattle to get out from the mandate to “find a nice Indian boy.”  All four members of Amina’s family grapple in different ways with who they are.  The book also explores how people deal with grief.  You know from the beginning that Amina’s brother has been dead for 15 years, but it is a long time before you know the how and why of it.  Meanwhile, you watch the other three family members moving through later life, in their continuing inability to cope with his loss. The titular sleepwalking plays out in a number of ways:  a character who sleepwalks, a character with narcolepsy, and the more metaphorical sleepwalking that the characters do.  It sounds like a grim book but the ending is ultimately positive.  The book takes a few chapters to get interesting, but push through and you will find there’s a lot to like and to think about.

The Dead Lie Down by Sophie Hannah

     Sophie Hannah is a British writer whose trademark is an unreliable (maybe) narrator and a conundrum that initially seems impossible to solve.  If you liked Girl on a Train and Gone Girl, this mystery fits neatly in the same drawer. Hannah plays with point of view, alternately telling the story through the eyes of Ruth, a traumatized young woman who finds herself at the center of a strange mystery, and Charly, a policewoman who also fights the demons of something that happened earlier (in a previous book) that got her into trouble, leading to a demotion.  The premise is initially confounding:  Ruth comes to Charly to report that Ruth’s boyfriend, Aidan, swears he killed a woman named Mary Trelise a number of years earlier.  Ruth knows this cannot be true because she has recently met Mary.  The mystery gets even more puzzling as Ruth and Charly separately seek out Mary, a talented artist who refuses to sell any of her paintings.  By the end, Hannah pulls out the threads one at a time to reveal the reality, but not before violence occurs.  I listened to the audio version of this, and the reader of the book was quite good at capturing the sense that the three women are all a bit off balance.  This book set me on a Sophie Hannah binge, and I read/listened to three others in short order.  Charly and her colleague (and eventual husband) Simon are continuing characters in a series, but Hannah also has a number of stand-alone mysteries that follow the same pattern.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

     I used to read Anne Tyler every time she published a new book.  And then I quit reading her.  I’m not sure why.  My book group resurrected my interest as this was our November selection.  I was reminded of how well she does ordinary people, family relationships, and the magic to be found in everyday moments.  This one moves back and forth in time to create a portrait of three generations.  I read it on my Kindle; I recommend a physical book instead.  You will want to flip back to revisit events when their full significance becomes apparent later on.  There are so many wonderful lines to note.  Here’s a great quotation:  “Oh, there’d been so many stories in her life.  The Whitshanks claimed to have only two; she couldn’t imagine why.  Why select just a certain few stories to define yourself?”  The novel is largely about how the various family members define themselves (through their own inner monologues) versus how they are seen by others.  As with all of us, there are key stories that unlock mysteries and help to explain how we evolve into our older, actualized selves. 

Redeployment by Phil Klay

     So this was the National Book Award recipient that beat out Station Eleven and All The Light We Cannot See. Interestingly, all three books concern the aftermath of war, though very different wars. The opening line of one of the stories is:  “Success was a matter of perspective.  In Iraq it had to be.”  This reflects what Klay does well in the book - showing a variety of perspectives, none of which reflect the American involvement in Iraq as positive.  A collection of short stories, each one assumes the voice of a different person involved in the Iraq war.  Often the narrators are soldiers, but one of the best stories channels a civilian contractor who naively believes he can make big changes.  He wants to revive a water processing plant that will bring fresh water to thousands of people.  The military officer with whom he works tells him to instead find five widows and set them up as beekeepers.  The contractor plows ahead but by the end of the story is, in fact, reduced to looking for beehives.  The message seems to be that idealism and large-scale changes have no place in the morass of what has become of Iraq. 

     Disturbingly but probably by necessity, there’s a lot of anti-Iraqi rhetoric.  In several stories, the characters refer to the natives as “Hajis” and most often do so disparagingly.  One story told from the point of view of an army priest involves the disclosure by one of the marines that men in his company are killing civilians purposely.  Klay seems to be commenting on the warped mentality that overtakes one’s very humanity that occurs when soldiers are put in these anxiety-filled, day to day missions. “Money as a Weapons System”  highlights the huge gap of understanding between people at home and those embedded in the war.  A rich man sends baseball uniforms because he believes that baseball will (“as it did in Japan”) create diplomacy and peace.

     Klay’s un-PC point of view is very effective.  A veteran in a bar tells a guy he meets there about a particularly harrowing war experience.  The guy declares his respect for soldiers and the veteran replies, “I don’t want you to respect what I’ve been through.  I want you to be disgusted.”  This seems to be at least one overall goal of the book – to deglamorize war, to pull back the curtain and show the physical, emotional and spiritual destruction that it reaps.  Klay does a great job of this through his series of compelling and believable voices.  The book deserves to win the big prize.