Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

This book was a very fun read.  It's a memoir of Janzen's return home to her Mennonite parents after the collapse of her marriage.  Parts of her life are perfect for a memoir - for example, her husband of fifteen years leaves her for a man named Bob who he meets on Gay.com.  Seriously.  But it is also her excellent writing, ability to write humorously, and willingness to share things that others might find too private or too shameful, that make this book so good.  I laughed out loud repeatedly while reading this - causing Web to ask a few times just what could be so funny about a book about Mennonites. 

Janzen's memoir covers a lot of ground: she reports on her marriage (arguably broken from the start), her upbringing in an austere, frugal, and loving Mennonite family, relationships with her siblings, and her educational path.  She also spends several chapters educating the reader wryly about Mennonite customs and culture, incidentally, it seems, reflecting on how growing up in that background shaped her choices and beliefs as an adult.  She takes the reader through her emotional convalescence and how she comes out of it both more independent and, at the same time, more rooted in the things she grew up with. 

At the end of the book, she writes a short afterword which summarizes Mennonite history.  It might have been nice to have that sprinkled throughout the book.  That said, I don't have any other criticisms of this book - like most good memoirs, it was brave, funny, and felt like a friend telling me their particularly interesting life story.

The Lion by Nelson Demille

I noticed this book at Jo's house - Dad had gotten her a copy - and when I got home I put it on my library queue.  Until I started reading it, however, I had forgotten how much fun it is to read a Nelson DeMille book, in particular one that stars John Corey. 

John Corey is a recurring character in many of DeMille's books.  A retired NYPD detective, he works on an anti-terrorism task force with his wife, Kate, an FBI agent.  Like in previous books, he is sarcastic, irreverent, clever, and successful. 

In this book, he is up against Asad Khalil, a terrorist with whom he matched wits in The Lion's Game.  Khalil has returned to New York for revenge on him and Kate.  The book chronicles Corey's strategy in protecting himself and his wife from Khalil, while also trying to find Khalil and bring him in...i.e., kill him.  It was fun to revisit some of the other characters from the previous books - many of Corey's coworkers re-appeared, as well as Boris, who had been contracted to train Khalil to kill many years back.

This was a fun, quick read that was hard to put down.  As a bonus, Corey was written with more depth than in the previous few books.  A+ airport read if you're a fan of his.  DeMille's or Corey's, that is. 

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

I missed the meeting when my book club chose this book; when I heard this was what we were reading, I was not really looking forward to it.  However, I ended up liking it more than I expected.  By the same author as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, this book took a serious look at Lincoln's little-known history as a vampire slayer, as documented in some secret diaries.

What was fun about this book was that historical anecdotes were interspersed with fantasy.  I enjoyed refreshing my memory on Lincoln and the Civil War.  But just when I would get absorbed in a section around Lincoln's beliefs or his relationship with Stephen Douglas, Grahame-Smith would thrown in a connection between vampires and slavery, or would "out" a famous politician as being a vampire.  It kept me chuckling.  The book was part narrative, part excerpted from diaries, letters, and telegrams.  There were illustrations of parts of the story as well. 

Only two real complaints with the book - one is that there were a few scenes dealing with violence against slaves that felt disrespectful to read as part of a fantasy book.  The other was that the book started in a modern-day "frame" and it would have been nice to have it wrap up that way.  Other than that I enjoyed the book as a light-hearted read.  It got me thinking whether this could be used as an educational tool with middle-school aged-kids, too.

Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature was just announced...congratulations to Mario Vargas Llosa.  One of my all-time favorite books is Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter: A Novel.  Not your everyday book but a wonderfully fun excursion into South America's magical realism.

Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner

This book is about a woman who has built her life around her politician husband.  An early scene has her waiting at a breakfast buffet for his omelette while he catches up on the newspaper at their table.  As a young adult she had been a lawyer, but choose this path instead.  When a scandal about him hits the news, she needs to re-evaluate her life.  At the same time, her two adult daughters (one a recovering addict and the other a lifelong overachiever) are struggling with their own identity crises.  The book changes point of view among the women, each one narrating a chapter at a time. 

Relevance of the subject matter aside, I just can't get into Jennifer Weiner.  Every one of her books I read is good but not great, and this was no exception.  The characters were interesting but a little too predictable.  The writing kept my attention but was nothing sophisticated.  And the story was just ok.  It was neither a story of the road to forgiveness nor of personal transformation.  I enjoyed American Wife's treatment of similar subject matter much better.  Not sure I will read Weiner's next book.