The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

This was a fascinating book about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. While that might sound dull, the story wasn't - one of the main contributors to the OED was an American imprisoned in an insane asylum in England.

I learned a lot reading this book. First of course was the realization that there was a point in history when there were words but no dictionaries. I was also interested to find out that the OED was compiled in a very collaborative way that reminded me of Wikipedia. The general public was solicited to read different works and submit examples of words used in different ways. I also hadn't known that the OED was unique in that it always sought examples from literature, rather than relying on sentences purpose-built for the dictionary.

The writing was enjoyable to read, with each chapter beginning with an entry from the OED about some relevant subject matter. The only criticism I have of the book is that the climax is incredibly weird. However, as someone who ready as much as I do and still lugs out the dictionary to look things up (Webster's, not OED), it was a treat to find out how the most famous one was conceived and delivered.

The Appeal by John Grisham

After fighting with a book of Carlos Fuentes' (and its winning), I needed something easy to read. John Grisham to the rescue. This book was about a chemical company who loses a major personal injury case and decides to fund the campaign of a supreme court judge who will guarantee their winning on appeal. The concept was fun to follow and I enjoyed reading the back-room machinations that were necessary to craft his campaign.

However, I became disintereted in the story about 2/3 of the way and did not even really care who won the case in the end. Grisham let his desire to make a political statement come at the cost of the storytelling.

Infinte Jest Online Book Club

So someone is proposing an online book club for David Foster Wallace's Infinte Jest: http://www.infinitesummer.org/. I've meant to read the book for a long time, and the book club starts on my birthday....hmmm.....

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

This book was great fun to read.

It was about a young boy who stumbles into an enchanted forest after trying to escape the reality of his unhappy life. In the forest he meets many characters who are familiar to him (and us) from common fairy tales. However, their versions of the stories we know are not the same. And the little boy's search for a way home from the forest forms the narrative of the story.

I really enjoyed the book - it was a book that was full of wolves and castles and rickety bridges. The good guys were good and the villains were bad. It was perfect for staying up late and reading under the covers with a flashlight...err...grown-up booklight.

There were definitely themes of adulthood and voice of a child, etc., etc., in this book that I suppose you could appreciate. Also parallels between his life in the real world and that of the enchanted forest. I tried not to overthink it and just devoured the story.

Flash Forward a TV show

Flash Forward, a good read by Robert Sawyer, is being made into a TV show: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/102316.

Dracula

Check this out - Stoker's Dracula was never copyright-ed and even so it'd be in the public domain by now. Since it's written in letters and articles, this blogger is putting the book up on the actual days that correspond to the story. Cool.

http://dracula-feed.blogspot.com/2009/05/dracula-begins.html

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre

Some organization named this book the best spy novel of all time and so I bought it a couple years ago. Picked it up recently and read it in a few short days. You'll notice there's no photo of the book - that's because the edition I have is from 1965 and I couldn't find an image of the cover - in fact, pieces of the cover were flaking off and pages falling out of my edition. It made it easier to remember that when the book was written it was during the Cold War era and the Berlin Wall, which plays prominently in the story, was a reality of the times.

The story is about a spy who is disgraced when the post he covers is compromised. He goes to meet his boss ostensibly to be fired, but he is asked to complete one more mission and then retire. This book is about his last mission - a mission to ruin the cover of a double agent.

The writing is simple but kept me at the end of my seat. I thought the first half of the book was good but not too complex then I came to a point in the book when I realized I had no idea what as going and I had to flip back about 10 pages. The climax is a worthwhile payoff and the denouement not a disappointment.

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar

Sara recommended this book to me and I really enjoyed it.

I held off on reading it for a while because I felt like I had read a lot about India lately. Turns out I had only read two books on India last year: Groom to Have Been and Inheritance of Loss. Over the past few years, I've read In Between World of Vikram Lall, Interpreter of Maladies, Namesake, God of Small Things, and A Fine Balance. Which, for me, is not a disproportionate number of books on a certain topic - but I guess I find these pieces about India have strong descriptions that stick in my head so I don't like to confuse the books by reading them too close together.

In any case, this one was great too. It was about two women with a long history together - one of them (Bhima) is the other one's (Sera) servant. While by our standards, Bhima is treated poorly by Sera - forced to sit on the floor and use separate drinking cups - within the culture depicted in the book Sera treats her well. Secrets in both Sera and Bhima's lives are slowly revealed throughout the book, which continually changed my perceptions of the characters. The story also follows parts of the lives of Sera's daughter and her husband, and Bhima's granddaughter.

The plot held my attention, the characters were well-developed and multi-dimensional, and the culture is described almost in a detached journalistic way, devoid of the typical Western judgement found in some foreign-set stories. I have very little criticism of this book.

Blogger's Dilemma

I've been slow in blogging lately because I am reading Omnivore's Dilemma with Laura as the sole members of an email book club we've started. It means that some of my 'reading time' is spent on that book so less is spent on whatever else I'm reading.

So far it's been a good experience. It's not as good as an in-person book club, but I'm getting far more out of the book than if I read it alone. Coincedentally, Webster is reading In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan's other book, so we have been talking about his themes at home lately as well.

I'll review the book and the experience once we're done.

Reading multiple books at a time is something I used to do a lot when I was younger. I like it because it makes the length of time it takes to read each book longer and I think that makes them stay with me more. It also means I am not ever picking up a book I'm not in the mood for.

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World by Lucette Lagnado

I had been out of touch with Deena for a while, but we emailed recently and she recommended this book, which she had liked because of her interest in genealogy. Having just finished a fictional account of a Jewish family's escape from post-revolutionary Iran, I thought it would be a good contrast to read some non-fiction on a Jewish family's leaving Egypt. Coincidentally, I found myself reading this just weeks before Passover, which added to my interest in the story.

This book follows a family who lives in Cairo as upper-class Jews. Narrated by the family's youngest child, a daughter, the first half of the book is about their family history and the early years of the parents' marriage, not particularly happy. The political situation in Egypt in the 1960's forces many Jews to consider leaving the country, and the Lagnados eventually flee to France and then ultimately Brooklyn. The family's story is not a particularly happy one, and the 'man in the white sharkskin suit', Lucette's father, deteriorates from debonair regular on the Cairo club circuit to infirm old man forever mourning his home country.

I enjoyed reading the book, though, because it was a crisp depiction of what it is like to leave a home country under duress. I had never really understood the dimensions of that choice as well as I did after reading this book. While Lucette is young enough to eventually adjust to that change, her father never really recovers. I had to glance at the title several times during reading this book to remind myself that the story is really about him, not her.

PS - Turns out that my mother has an unusual connection to this book that I only learned about half way through - her mother was treated by the same doctor at Sloan-Kettering as Lucette was, back in the 1960's. It is a small, small, small world.

Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer

I was in NYC a few weeks ago and Meredith gave me several book recommendations. This one, about an Jewish family in Iran, caught my attention and I got it out from the library right away.

I wasn't disappointed. The story followed a young girl whose family is dealing with their change of status during the Revolution of the early 1980's. Formerly well-off and respected, the family is suddenly thrown into the throes of a violent change in regime. The family's father is put in jail and the young daughter absorbs all of the changes with the innocence and honesty of a 9-year-old. Also in the story is a brother who is sent to the United States and the mother of the family, who is grappling with her own challenges to the new government and its regulations. There were some unique circumstances the family found themselves in because they were Jewish but the story seemed pretty universal to me.

I enjoyed reading the book, both to learn about the place and time the author described and to find out what happened to the characters- she did a good job of building suspense and of crafting a young character with real emotions and concerns.

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke

I noticed this book in the 'new arrivals' section of the library. The title caught my eye so I decided to try it.

This book is about a man who turns his life around after serving a jail sentence for accidentally setting fire to Emily Dickinson's house. Twenty years later, his history starts catching up to him as other writers' houses are burned down and he is the prime suspect. In figuring out how to defend himself, he reconciles with his estranged parents and learns more about their marriage and his childhood. The book was part mystery, part novel.

The narrator was likable enough as a character although I didn't think that he (or the other characters) were particularly well-developed. The story's quirky style held my attention, but I don't think this is a book I'll remember at the end of the year.

The Blind Assasin by Margaret Atwood

I love love loved this book. Webster bought it for me at the airport when I discovered I didn't like the other book I had brought with him. I typically enjoy Atwood and I think this is one of her best.

The book has two stories in it: the main narrative and a novel that one of the characters wrote. I usually find these types of books frustrating (see Lamb's last novel) but in this case, both stories kept my interest equally. Also, I was not disappointed by the climax that ties the stories together.

The outer (?) story is about a woman looking back on her life, which includes growing up being raised by her tycoon father with her unusual sister followed by an unhappy society marriage. The inner (?) story is about two un-named lovers across class boundaries in an un-named city in an un-named time. It feels more like Atwood's sci-fi style.

I only wish that I had read this as part of a book club because I am sure I missed several layers that I would have gotten from discussions with others.

ps: I was struck by how beautifully this was written only after starting the next book I read which was written just fine but was not as beautiful as Atwood's poetic style.

Book Weekend

I had a nice weekend in Rochester celebrating my mother-in-law's birthday with a large raucous group of her friends. Though I had met many of them before, I discovered several avid readers in the group. See below for the book recommendations I picked up. I think I may have picked up some new blog readers too!!

At dinner on Saturday, I was seated next to the lovely Amy, author of a soon-to-be-published book that I can't wait to read! At one point in the conversation she asked me what books I would most recommend. I said, "to what audience?" and she said, "just the books you'd hand down, or what you would call the most influential, or the ones you'd talk to Oprah about." I chuckled, commenting on how those are three very different questions and then stalled because I didn't have a great answer for any of them. Though I compile the booklist each year, I haven't ever kept a running favorites list which often trips me up in conversation. It's like when my boss recently asked me what U2 song I liked best, I stumbled and stuttered and came up with something off Joshua Tree. Not my finest moment, and not representative of my devotion to Bono et al.

Anyway, I should work on a more comprehensive answer to that set of questions. It would be a good project for me.

Book recommendations:

1. Amy : Random Family by Adrian LeBlanc; Courtroom 302
2. Bob and Beth: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner; China Road; Master and the Margarita; Barbara Kingsolver's new book on local eating
3. Connie: Land Without Hats by Julie Mugal
4. Mary: Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

Keep 'em coming.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I really liked this book. It was an "emergency" purchase at a closing bookstore and I lucked out.

The story follows a family in Nigeria in the 1960's. It alternates between the early part of the decade, filled with affluence and culture, and the later years, filled with civil war. There are many well-developed characters from different classes that make the story a full picture of the time period from many points of view.

Uniquely, each chapter read like a short story although the book had a strong narrative linking the individual episodes. I really liked this especially at the beginning of the book because it gave me a self-contained set of events to think about each night.

I also appreciated learning about Nigeria. Looking back at my booklists, the majority of African writing I've read has been set in Zimbabwe. While there were certain themes present in this book that were familiar to other books - treatment of ethnic minorities, existence during war time, ordinary people surviving great trials - there was also a great deal of information on Nigerian history that I didn't know. Some of the characters in the book were involved in the creation of Biafra, a short-lived independent nation that seceded from Nigeria. I had never learned about that.

I think this is my favorite thing that I've read this year so far.