Sheryl K's Top Books of 2013

Happy New Year, readers!

This year I read 42 books, 10 of which were non-fiction. For those of you who suggested that having a newborn was going to slow me down, well, I am just that much more stubborn than you thought!  While I have spent a lot of the year reading Jamberry and Wet Pet, Dry Pet, Your Pet, My Pet, here are a few other books that I really loved.

On being a woman:

Well, if you are going to tell your boss you are pregnant, I recommend doing it right after Marisa Mayer does the same.  And if you are going to be on maternity leave, try doing it when Sheryl Sandberg releases her book, Lean In.  Once you've had your baby, if you decide to go back to work and pump breastmilk, read The Milk Memos, about some women at IBM who did it before it was trendy.

For nonfiction, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand was amazing.  My sister recommended this story about a former Olympic runner who enlists during WWII and whose plane is shot down over the Pacific.  Less masterfully striking but still a good memoir is Laura and Lisa Ling's chronicle of Laura's getting imprisoned in a North Korean prison and Lisa's fight to get her released in Somewhere Inside.

I read some really high-quality fiction as well.  Topping the list is The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer, recommended by my mom, which is the story of a Jewish Hungarian family during WWII.  I only wish I had read it last summer when I was in Hungary.  Also wonderful was Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, about two Nigerians who fall in love as teenagers, one of whom stays in Nigeria while the other one emigrates to the United States.  A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra, recommended by Deena, was a memorable and well-written novel about several people making difficult decisions during the Chechen conflict in the late 1990's.

A surprise gift from Kurt and Laura turned into a favorite - The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo was a storytelling romp through Malay and the Chinese underworld.  The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, on many "official" lists, was about lifelong friendships that begin at summer camp and was indeed as good as everyone said it was.  Another universally well-reviewed book was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, a mystery that I also liked as much as everyone else.  Finally, awarded the "why did it sit on my shelf for so long?" prize was The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee, a love story set in Hong Kong.

I read several books about the Asian immigrant experience in the United States.  The Mango Bride by Marivi Soliven was about two women from very different classes who immigrate from the Philippines.  In The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger, a man finds a wife in Bangladesh to bring to the US.  Another story of a wife brought to the United States, this time from India, was in A Good Indian Wife by Anne Cherian. And The Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Aimee Phan was a coming-of-age story about a young Vietnamese woman and her family.

There were two notable books that I enjoy but that were flawed.  The Circle by Dave Eggers was a searing criticism of our lack of privacy on the internet with completely lackluster character development from a writer I know is better than that.  The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin was also lacking in some character development, but was a good fictional account of Charles Lindbergh's wife's life.

Finally, if you like trashy historical fiction and are not already reading the Outlander by Diana Gabaldon series, you should be.  I read books #4 and #5 this year.

I will keep updating this blog, but now manage my "to-read" list and all my reviews on Goodreads.  Find me there if you are also a member.

Best wishes to all for health, happiness, success, and lots of great books to read in 2014.

Sheryl

Review: I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced by Nujood Ali

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book was fine. Nujood is a Yemeni girl who is married off at too-young an age, and then abused by her husband. In a show of amazing courage, she seeks - and ultimately is granted - a divorce. Gaining international attention, her divorce has led to changes in Yemeni law (though their enforcement is still questionable) as well as a handful of other young women in the Middle East to seek the same freedom.

Her story is sad, and the poverty she lives in magnifies that. Even after garnering international attention (going on The Today Show and appearing in Glamour Magazine), she and one of her sisters fail to continue attending school and while her family's station is slightly improved by her book royalties and humanitarian efforts, they are not magically lifted out of poverty and appreciative of Western values.

Perhaps that is the most interesting part. Her courage is amazing and unusual - but the difficulty in changing the oppressive society that forces women to submit to a male-dominated culture is equally striking.



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Review: The Fiery Cross

The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series continues to hold my attention. After the first half of the last book, I was a little worried that she had "jumped the shark" a bit, but this book renewed my excitement in this epic story.

In this installment, weighing in at 900+ pages, Jamie and Claire are joined by their daughter Brianna and her husband Roger in North Carolina in the early 1770's. There are small skirmishes between different factions as the colonies begin to gear up for the Revolution. But as in her previous books, there are also small everyday situations to contend with - like a murder mystery, missing people, killer bears, lost loves, and babies.

I look forward to reading the next book, probably on vacation in April.



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Review: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really enjoyed this book, recommended to me by Deena.

It follows a few people's stories during the Chechen Wars from 1996 to 2004. The book jumps around in time, but each chapter begins with a timeline with the date highlighted. The main characters include a little girl whose father is taken by the police, her neighbor who rescues her, and a doctor at the hospital he hides her in. But as the book unfolds, more characters who start out seeming like minor players become increasingly more relevant.

The writing was excellent - as was the character development. I also really enjoyed the unlikely connections he made between characters, some of which the reader knows before the characters do.

I didn't know very much about this part of post-USSR history, and the author did a good job of including enough background so I could follow the story but not so much that I was bored by the history. Definitely recommend reading this and since this is his debut novel (wow!) I look forward to future books of his.



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Review: Reconstructing Amelia

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Lisa recommended this to me, I think after I read [b:Gone Girl|8442457|Gone Girl|Gillian Flynn|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1339602131s/8442457.jpg|13306276], but I thought it was nowhere near as good as that. In fact, I thought it was like a poor woman's version of [b:Defending Jacob|11367726|Defending Jacob|William Landay|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1329612158s/11367726.jpg|16298550].

The book is about a single mom named Kate whose daughter Amelia ostensibly commits suicide after being accused of cheating at her private school. However, Kate believes she didn't actually kill herself and embarks on an investigation of her own to determine what happened to her. The book alternated between Kate in the current time and Amelia in the weeks before her death. It also includes some emails and text messages as part of the story.

The concept of this book was good and the story was ok, but the characters were not well-developed. Neither Kate nor Amelia's voice were really believable. The twists at the end of the story weren't that fun either. All in all, I was not a big fan.



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Review: The Circle

The Circle by Dave Eggers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book is really tough to review. I am a huge fan of Eggers, although I did not enjoy his last book ([b:A Hologram for the King|13722902|A Hologram for the King|Dave Eggers|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1337179987s/13722902.jpg|19355962]). This book had similar problems to the last one - it was working so hard to be a parable and make a point that I think Eggers forgot to build the characters as well as I know he is able to. I did like this more than Hologram but it was nowhere near the quality of his earliest work.

The story follows a young woman named Mae who feels like she won the lottery when her college roommate gets her a job at The Circle, the hottest Silicon Valley company since Facebook/Google. As she gets used to her new job, she realizes it is an all-encompassing community where she is expected to attend events, stay up to date on several queues of social and work-related information, and where her parents' health insurance problems are miraculously solved.

In a particularly funny bit of social commentary, nearly every day someone shows up at her desk with a new monitor - the first for her actual job, then another for her personal social networks, then another for her corporate social networks and so on. With these types of constructs, Eggers accurately portrays a lot of the current issues with modern technology and our interactions with it.

Over Mae's tenure at The Circle, she becomes increasingly more involved in the company's efforts toward transparency. Ultimately, she becomes so committed to these efforts that her engagement with the company eclipses even that of her former roommate and best friend, who had been a "golden child" at The Circle.

While the story kept me reading and the commentary around privacy and technology was well-taken, I actively missed Egger's ability to write great characters. He made the points that he wanted to, but the book would have been much better had he made Mae and her colleagues fully fleshed-out characters rather than just vessels for the point he wanted to make.



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Review: Sisterland

Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Perhaps nothing will ever stand up next to [b:Prep|9844|Prep|Curtis Sittenfeld|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1386925666s/9844.jpg|2317177], a book with one of the best "voices" I have ever read. This book was good, not great, but held my attention.

The story follows a pair of sisters who have some supernatural powers. Nothing major, just an ability to occasionally look into the future or know the location of something or someone. The sisters have treated this ability differently - one lives a pretty typical suburban life, while the other holds seances and practices as a medium. When an earthquake hits their city, they have very different reactions to whether to make predictions about future earthquakes.

Probably the best part of this book was the description of the relationships between different characters. The sisters, their relationships with their parents, their partners, and neighbors, are all described with great attention to personal detail. There were a few good twists in the plot toward the end as well. I'd recommend this book but it's no Prep.



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Review: Americanah

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I had really enjoyed Adichie's [b:Half of a Yellow Sun|18749|Half of a Yellow Sun|Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327934717s/18749.jpg|1651408] so I was looking forward to reading this, and it didn't disappoint.

This book follows the story of two young lovers from Nigeria. One leaves to build a life in America, while the other one remains in Nigeria. Their lives diverge and it is a fascinating set of parallel stories. The one who goes to America struggles with ideas of racial identity, which didn't exist for her in Nigeria. The one who stays in Nigeria tries to emigrate to London. They both find relationships and friendships and build lives for themselves.

Their lives are a really great set of foils for each other's experiences. The book concludes many years later when they both find themselves back in Nigeria and back in touch. I completely enjoyed reading this book and look forward to her next one.



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Review: The Ghost Bride

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Disclosure: one of Webster's colleagues is friends with the author and they gave me a copy as a gift.

I think the only impact that knowing the author had on me was that I read a book I wouldn't have necessarily otherwise picked up. That said, I LOVED it.

The story is about a young woman who grows up in Malaya, a Chinese colony. Her family is bankrupt, her father addicted to opium, and it seems like her only option may be to become the "ghost bride" of the deceased son of a well-to-do family. She travels into the Chinese afterworld to investigate this man and ends up stumbling into a web of family secrets and wondering if she can ever return.

I could not put this book down. The first section, where she is in Malacca (a town in Malaya), was really interesting, learning about a new culture and surroundings. But the second part of the book, which takes place in the afterworld, was fascinating - I loved reading about the afterworld, how it was organized, its interactions with the living world - and I could picture it so clearly.

Part mystery, part fantasy, part novel, I won't forget this book for a long time.



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Review: The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story

The Astronaut Wives Club: A True Story by Lily Koppel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book was ok. I thought it would be interesting to read about the wives of the first astronauts, and I guess it was, but the book didn't hit it out of the park.

In fact, I was surprised to read at the end of the book that the author had interviewed some of the wives, because the tone of the book was one of distance. I was expecting to read more about the women's thoughts and feelings. In the book, there is a lot of talk of the Life Magazine reporters who follow the women around, and yet I didn't find the book's depiction of their lives much more nuanced than that.

What I did enjoy was reading about the NASA missions. It was cool to read about the first orbits of the earth, then trip to the moon. I was transported back to the 1960's when this was all occurring, and appreciated learning about the events as they happened, rather than as history. I had no idea that astronauts and their families were so high profile as to be "hanging out" with President and Ladybird Johnson.

I think I would have enjoyed a book about the first few space missions more than this one with the "wives" angle.



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Review: Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home

Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home by Laura Ling

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was a New York Times notable book a few years back and lingered on my reading list. Glad I finally got to it. It was a quick read, but one that kept my attention.

Laura Ling and Lisa Ling are both journalists. Embarrassingly, not sure I realized they were two different people until I read this book. Laura was a reporter for CurrentTV (Al Gore's network) and Lisa is best known from being on The View and then being one of Oprah's correspondents.

This book starts when Laura visits China to report on North Koreans who are fleeing the country; she goes to a common location for their defection on a river between the two countries, and when she goes onto North Korean land momentarily (not really mistakenly, but just for a moment), she is captured and imprisoned.

The rest of the book chronicles her imprisonment and her sister Lisa's tireless work to get her freed. Laura is held more under house arrest than in a traditional prison, so she develops some unusual relationships with her captors, some of whom are young women. With the fear of imprisonment in a labor camp lingering, she tries to figure out what the best strategy is for being freed.

Lisa, meanwhile, is in the US and is able to talk to Laura three or four times during her four month captivity. She works her relationships with the media to control how the story is played on TV and to contact government officials who can help. At one point she sees how surreal her situation is when she is corresponding with Al Gore, Bill Clinton, President Obama, and Oprah calls to find out what she can do to help.

This book was unique in that in chronicled both sides of an imprisonment - the person captured and the person fighting to get them back. I really enjoyed learning about how relations worked between countries that had no official diplomatic relations, and how Laura and Lisa became a very unusual conduit through which the US and North Korea could communicate. I was also fascinated by how easily Lisa could influence what the major network were and weren't reporting, and how.






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Review: The Mango Bride

The Mango Bride by Marivi Soliven

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Found this one just shelf-surfing at the library. I really liked it. I've read so much fiction about the immigrant experience set in India and China, it was really interesting to read a novel where part of the story takes place in the Philippines and the rest is about Philippine immigrants in the US.

The story is about two women, seemingly unrelated although as the book continues their stories end up intertwining. One is the daughter of a high-class family in Manila, the other the niece of a housekeeper, also in Manila. Both women find themselves in Oakland, California, far away from home for different reasons.

Class played a very strong role in this book - particularly in Manila, the comparisons between the "haves" and "have-nots" was sharp. Both women were very likable and both made decisions that were mistakes as young women that had impact throughout their lives. I liked how the author switched between the two stories and through different time periods to weave the narratives together.







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Review: The Aviators Wife

The Aviators Wife by Melanie Benjamin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



For my first time flying with my 8-month old baby (and husband and dog) I was so panicked leaving the house I forgot to bring a book with me for the weekend at my inlaws'! Thankfully my mother-in-law had a copy of The Aviators Wife and recommended it.

While reading this book I kept thinking about how it reminded me of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank - other novels I enjoyed based on the lives of the wives of famous men, in those cases Ernest Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright, respectively. I was both happy and disappointed to see the Goodreads review say the same thing. This book was about Charles Lindbergh's wife Anne, told from her point of view. I really enjoyed learning more about Lindbergh and his accomplishments, while also appreciating how difficult a person he was in his private life.

I thought this book did a pretty good job of capturing the time-and-place of the story (the US in the 1920's through the 1950's). The kidnapping of their child played a prominent role in the story, as did Lindbergh's skilled piloting and right-wing politics. The relationship the Lindberghs had with the media was also interesting - they were victimized by the paparazzi as badly as any of today's celebrities are. I was sad for Anne through most of the book, as Lindbergh was not a warm or kind husband or father. She saw some of his weaknesses but also supported him blindly it seemed, even when he was demanding, unfair, or bordering on abusive.

Benjamin (the author) says in her afterword that the best way for her to feel like she's succeeded in writing a compelling historical novel is when her readers want to learn more about the actual history. She definitely succeeded with me.



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Review: The Reeducation of Cherry Truong: A Novel

The Reeducation of Cherry Truong: A Novel by Aimee Phan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I found this at the library and it was good. The story is about a Vietnamese family spread between the US, France, and Vietnam. The title character Cherry grows up in the US but the story goes back two generations to the Vietnamese War.

The book jumps around in time, which I liked, because there was an element of mystery around how the characters in the present time connected to the characters in the past. The book also interspersed a set of short letters between characters with the chapters; the letters themselves then became part of the plot and not just a device to reveal certain information.

I thought the character development was pretty good, although some of the characters seemed like caricatures. It made me think about the women I know from my nail salon and whether their families and lives were similar to the ones in the book. That is, is this book representative of the multi-generational Vietnamese immigrant experience, or is it just one example experience.

Either way, I enjoyed it.



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Review: The Abstinence Teacher

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book was ok. I noticed it on the library shelf and needed something for the weekend.

The story is about a born-again Christian and a sex education teacher in a small town whose paths cross. The teacher says something in class that the Christian right doesn't like and the school changes her curriculum to be about abstinence, and not grounded in science. Most of the book is about each of the two characters' individual lives and how they developed the values they have, then there is some part of the plot about their interactions with each other.

The writing in this book was very good and I enjoyed getting to know each character. Where I felt like the book fell short was in the conflict between the characters. Each one had such a rich back-story and so many complexities, then their interactions with each other just weren't interesting enough to hold my attention.

The other thing about the book I wasn't wild about was that it seemed to make a socio-political statement that sex ed is good while not respecting religion. I thought the depictions of the born-again character and his church were negative stereotypes while the sex ed teacher was a really positive character - I agree with him, don't get me wrong. I believe in sex ed and science and all that. I just think that the story would have been more interesting if the Christian side of the story were more accessible.



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Review: The Twelve

The Twelve by Justin Cronin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I like a good post-apocalyptic story as much as the next person but nothing could have prepared me for this trilogy - particularly since I didn't know it was a trilogy when I read the first one.

This book is a worthy successor to [b:The Passage|6690798|The Passage (The Passage, #1)|Justin Cronin|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327874267s/6690798.jpg|2802546]. It's similarly complex, character-driven, and at times totally gross. (Did I forget to mention that the post-apocalyptic nature of the story was brought on by blood-drinking neon green viral vampires?) At its core, this story is not about vampires, it's about good vs. evil, David vs. Goliath, maybe about the different forms evil can take.

The only problem I had with the book was that I found it hard to remember some of the details from the previous book. I was probably about a third of the way through the book before I remembered all the details of the setup, who was who, and where different allegiances were.

That said, I look forward to the third and final book in the series.



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Review: The Light Between Oceans

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Mom and Jo both eagerly recommended this book to me. I thought it was ok.

The story follows a couple who live on an island and mind a lighthouse. They are unable to have a baby, but one washes up on shore and they decide to keep her. Only when they return to the mainland several years later do they realize the ramifications of their decision.

I thought the characters in this book, both the major ones and some of the minor ones, were really well-developed. Having recently had a baby, I also felt for all the characters in the book who bonded with the little girl.

Conversely, I didn't think the plot was that interesting. After the setup of the story, the narrative was pretty predictable. There were a few things that happened that came from a character or motive I couldn't have predicted (and that I appreciated), but overall that wasn't enough to push the book over the edge into "great" territory.




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Review: The Interestings

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Kudos to Lisa for recommending another great book to me. I really enjoyed this...it's about six friends who attend an arts summer camp together as teenagers, and their relationships for the next 20+ years of their lives. It was especially fun to read this while on my summer vacation, although to call it a trashy summer read would be to minimize the compelling writing.

All six characters in this book were well-conceived although not all given equal airtime in the story. Jules is at this camp on scholarship, from the suburbs. Noah is the son of a famous folk singer. Ash and Goodman are siblings, raised in Manhattan. Ethan is a dorky but talented cartoonist. And Cathy is a dancer whose body is not cut out for it.

What was best about the construction of the book was how Wolitzer would follow one of the characters for a few chapters, then catch up with another one. It wasn't done in an exact rotation, but it wasn't haphazard either - when you had to know something new about one of the characters, she flipped to them.

The story itself was predictable - not in that I knew what would happen, but in that there were lovers, marriages, illnesses, and betrayals. The kind of saga that Messud's Emperor's Children wanted to be.

This was one I was sad to see end.



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Review: Caleb's Crossing

Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is another I got from Mom's list. It was pretty good - I enjoyed Brooks' other books (Year of Wonder and People of the Book) and this did not disappoint.

The story is based on a real character - Caleb - the first American Indian to attend Harvard. But the rest of the story is imagined by Brooks, and told through the eyes of Bethia, a young woman whose father is a missionary minister on Martha's Vineyard in the mid-1600's. Bethia befriends Caleb and ultimately follows him to Cambridge, although under much different circumstances than her own matriculation into Harvard.

I was fascinated by this story taking place on the Vineyard, partially because a close friend had lived there for the past few years. I liked reading about the relationship between the missionaries and the Native Americans, and found Bethia an honest and likeable narrator.

Like much historical fiction, this book didn't have the happiest of endings, but the story itself was a good read.



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Review: The Invisible Bridge

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



My mom recommended this book to me and it was fabulous! WOW. My only regret is not reading it last year when I was in both Paris and Budapest, the book's two main settings. Totally a first-world problem.

This book follows the story of Andras Levi, a Hungarian Jew who moves to Paris to attend architecture school. His younger brother stays in Budapest, while his older brother moves to Italy to become a doctor. He and his brothers all face challenges as the Nazi party and its anti-Semitism become increasingly stronger in the 1930's and then WWII breaks out.

Andras' story is followed most closely, and also revolves around the relationship he has with a family in Budapest and their estranged daughter in Paris. But various love interests and life event for the brothers are chronicled as well.

While I found the first quarter of the book a little tedious, with a love interest that was on-again off-again to an extreme degree, the rest of the book was enthralling. I had a hard time putting it down, and couldn't wait to see what happened next. I was also interested in learning about the fate of Hungarian Jews during WWII, tragic but different from that of much of the rest of Europe.



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Review: Baby-led Weaning: Helping Your Baby to Love Good Food

Baby-led Weaning: Helping Your Baby to Love Good Food by Gill Rapley

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Meh.

I liked a lot of the ideas in this book - feed a baby what adults are eating, let them decide when to feed themselves, let them choose from several options at mealtimes. The ideas behind these things were to raise a child who was not picky and was confident.

Well, the problem with the book is that it is not based on any sort of science. It's completely anecdotal and frankly some of the anecdotes seem kind of forced. There's no evidence that feeding babies purees is in any way bad, and in fact I was fed that way, and I'm the most secure, adventurous eater I know.

It has influenced me to give Sasha pieces of food now and then to see what she does with them - like turkey cold cut in the grocery store, piece of cantaloupe, green bean from my plate at dinner. That's fun and I think it's good for her to experiment. But if the book were more rigorously researched, I'd have better reason to omit cereals and purees - which for now I am not.



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Review: Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book was pretty good. I read it to help solve some conflict in my personal life, and though these techniques and ideas were geared more towards business and politics, some of the concepts were helpful. It's from people who worked on Harvard's Negotiation Project.

The two things that I remember most are first, separate the people from the problem. The authors advise sitting on the same side of the table - literally - and listing out interests rather than positions. That is, what are the things that are important to you in this negotiation, not where you are in the negotiation. There are a lot of good examples that illustrate the difference between the two and I came to really appreciate it.

The second thing that I remember the most was to list out a huge brainstorm of solutions before negotiating. Just come up with every possible idea and solution and make a big list of them and don't eliminate anything to start. Very helpful.

Interesting read.



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Review: Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran

Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book made my list from the New York Times, and I read it in the Adirondacks this summer. It's another one I wish I could give 3.5 stars to - pretty good, but not great.

Moaveni is am Iranian-American journalist who returns to Iran to cover the rise of the new president, Ahmadinejad. While there, she meets another Iranian-American, falls and love, gets pregnant, and gets married (in that order). This book is a combination of a memoir and a journalist's view of what was going on in Iran during the early 2000's.

I enjoyed the parts of the book that were memoir more than those that were historical or journalistic. I was most interested in learning about the political climate in Iran though Moaveni's experiences, rather than through the dryer journalistic sections. Iran once again became extremely conservative and ruled by strong religious leaders, and her depiction of her own personal civil liberties lost on a daily basis was far better reporting than any of the other sections she wrote.



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Review: Defending Jacob

Defending Jacob by William Landay

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Meredith recommended this book to me and it came up on my library queue. I wish I could choose 3.5 stars...it was pretty good but not great.

The story follows Andy Barber, assistant DA in Boston, whose son is accused of murdering one of his classmates. Andy believes his son is innocent, but all the evidence starts to point to the boy. The story is told through a combination of narrative and court documents, which was a nice touch.

I thought the characters were pretty compelling - the love Andy had for his son, and the relationship between Andy and his wife in particular. The story read quickly and was a good mystery. However, there is a major twist at the end that really made the book. Without it, it would have been just another murder mystery. I appreciated the twist but didn't think it raised the book to an amazing level.



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Review: The Art of Fielding

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Meh. Mom recommended this book to me; I thought it was on the low side of OK. It is the story of a successful high school baseball player, the college baseball captain who recruits him, his college president, his roommate, and the relationship all these characters have.

The characters were really well-written - flawed but likeable. And I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book, finding it a compelling story and enjoying the complexity the author created across many of the characters' relationship.

However, the rest of the book was not as good. I thought it was pretty tedious, with breakdowns and disappointments, and a few twists and interactions I just didn't find that credible. Though lauded on the jacket as a great American novel, I didn't get that from it. Just Meh.



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Review: A Good Indian Wife

A Good Indian Wife by Anne Cherian

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I took this book out of the library just based on the cover, no knowledge or reviews of it. It was pretty good, albeit predictable.

The story is about an Indian man who comes to the US and becomes a successful doctor. He is assimilating into American life when his family tricks him into going back to India and forces (guilts?) him into an arranged marriage. His new wife comes to the US with all sorts of dreams and beliefs about marriage, but is dismayed to find that nothing is as she had expected. The book is about how they reconcile their lives and marriage.

I like the book and it kept my attention. However, I didn't think it was anything unique. It was a well-written novels with typical caught-between-old-and-new themes.



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Review: And the Mountains Echoed

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I enjoyed Hosseini's previous books (The Kite Runner more than A Thousand Splendid Suns) so I was excited to read this one too.

It was pretty good. It follows several interconnected families and people in Afghanistan from before the war through current times. As some family members leave Afghanistan, the narrative follows them to Paris, Greece, and the U.S., but the real story is how one decision made several generations ago continues to haunt people.

The writing was really good - Hosseini managed several voices from several characters, sometimes narrating an entire chapter by a minor character to demonstrate a particular point of view. He left clues and foreshadowing in several chapters, but deftly - such that I didn't know he was doing it until a later event occurred.

Overall, well done.



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Review: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This was a great book. Jo recommended it to me, stating that it was "as good as Middlesex" which is high praise indeed.

The story is about a former Olympic athlete named Louis Zamperini who joins the Air Force. When his plane is shot down over the Pacific, he survives on a life raft for a month before being captured by the Japanese.

I really enjoyed reading this - it kept my attention and I looked forward to getting into bed each night to find out what was going to happen next. I learned a lot about how terrible POW camps in Japan were, and I was amazed at how resilient Zamperini and his fellow soldiers were when stranded at sea.

The character development was excellent, as was the research. I also appreciated how Hillenbrand followed the story past Zamperini's return home, and ended the book with an update on how each of the main characters was doing, or the circumstances of their deaths.

Wonder if I would like Seabiscuit as much.



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Bookstore: "Bookstore" in Lenox, MA

Today we were in Lenox, MA with Dave & Avi for Fathers' Day weekend.  We spent a few minutes walking around Bookstore, a lovely little store that smells like old books and was just the right amount of disorganized.

While I had taken Sasha into Barnes and Noble in the past to get something for myself, it was the first time I was in a bookstore with her and thinking about how important it is for her to see books, be read books, and grow to love books.  They didn't have a lot of kids' books for her age group, although I did notice some Corduroy books. I couldn't find the original - I have to order that for her soon.