I usually don't like to read so many books by the same author so close together, but I was 9 months pregnant, perhaps a little grumpy, and the idea of another gothic-style mystery cheered me up.
Like the other two novels of hers that I read, this book takes place in a few time periods. In one, a young girl witnesses her mother commit an act of violence. Fifty years later, she is at her mother's deathbed and decides to investigate that incident from her childhood - which takes the reader back to London - WWII. As she unravels the intrigue behind her mother's first love and famous neighbor, she uncovers family secrets and a dramatic story.
I liked this book a lot. There were some good plot twists, interesting characters, and a great job of moving between the different stories. There are ways in which Morton's books share similarities, but they never fail to keep me engaged, and I never guess the twists that she puts in the stories.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
Meredith recommended this to me and then it was also a NY Times Notable book for 2012. (That Meredith, she is always ahead of the game!)
The book is about a group of soldiers who are home - briefly - from Iraq as war heroes. They have a little time with their families and a little time touring, parading, at the White House, and at an NFL game. Billy (the title character) struggles with whether he feels like a hero or not, and how he feels about his imminent return to Iraq.
The situations the soldiers are in while they are home creates a very satirical look at how we recognize and reward armed service. There are characters in the book - caricatures really - who exalt the soldiers without really understanding what their sacrifices and hard work are. Fountain creates some really cool word images in the book to represent these conversations.
I liked this book, and appreciated reading it while it was relevant to current events. It did a good job of satirizing not war itself, but the inadequate yet overblown responses that many of those at home have towards soldiers.
The book is about a group of soldiers who are home - briefly - from Iraq as war heroes. They have a little time with their families and a little time touring, parading, at the White House, and at an NFL game. Billy (the title character) struggles with whether he feels like a hero or not, and how he feels about his imminent return to Iraq.
The situations the soldiers are in while they are home creates a very satirical look at how we recognize and reward armed service. There are characters in the book - caricatures really - who exalt the soldiers without really understanding what their sacrifices and hard work are. Fountain creates some really cool word images in the book to represent these conversations.
I liked this book, and appreciated reading it while it was relevant to current events. It did a good job of satirizing not war itself, but the inadequate yet overblown responses that many of those at home have towards soldiers.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sheryl K's Top Books of 2012
Hello readers - here we are again at the end of another year.
Lots going on in our household - the night before Webster's graduation from his Babson MBA program, we found out we are expecting our first child! (EDD 1/25/13 - yes, soon!) Over the summer, Webster joined an early-stage startup based in Palo Alto and is loving it. I am leading a small team of technical marketing professionals at Dell and continue to learn a lot and thrive in the role. Lucy is doing great.
My parents continue to snowbird between NJ and Florida, and fortunately were safely in Florida during Hurricane Sandy. Jo lives in Manhattan and is an attending at NYU Hospital, which is finally re-opened since the hurricane. We lost my grandmother a few weeks ago and while it was sad, I reflected a lot on the 98 years she did live.
On to the books! I read 37 books this year, 10 of them non-fiction. Right now I have books on my library queue that won't come up until after the baby arrives - we'll see how that goes, but I have faith that I'll always be a reader. The baby has his/her first few books already - a set of my old Golden Books that my mom had saved, and The Giving Tree and Goodnight Moon from Webster's parents.
Omitted from the following list are three books that are part of series that I am reading: Voyager, WWW:Watch, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
Top Fiction:
Say You're One of Them - touching set of unrelated short stories about children in Africa.
Reamde - for geeks only - huge adventure story about when real life and online life collide.
Fiction Runners-up:
QBVII - classic courtroom drama set in the shadows of the Holocaust
World Without End - long-awaited sequel to Pillars of the Earth
Unaccustomed Earth - short stories about people reconciling modern lives with Indian childhoods
Distant Hours and The Forgotten Garden - two books by Kate Morten that are well-written gothic-style mysteries
Lady Matador's Hotel - linked short stories all taking place in a hotel in an unnamed Latin American country
The Disappeared - story about a woman who falls in love with a man still haunted by his family's past in Cambodia
Buddha in the Attic - linked short stories about a set of women who are Japanese mail-order brides
My Life on a Plate - funny story about the mishaps of a slightly-overweight mom, reminiscent of Bridget Jones
My New American Life - the first few years of an Armenian woman's life in the United States, and her relationship with the Armenian community
The Love Wife - a family struggles to accept a new member of the family from China, as requested by the matriarch's dying wishes.
Top Nonfiction:
Pack of Two - Caroline Knapp's examination of her relationship with her dog.
Revolution - a woman's memoir of leaving college to join "the revolution" in the 1980's in Central America with her boyfriend.
Longitude - the story of how someone came up with an ingenious way to measure longitude at sea.
Happy 2013 to all!
Sheryl
Lots going on in our household - the night before Webster's graduation from his Babson MBA program, we found out we are expecting our first child! (EDD 1/25/13 - yes, soon!) Over the summer, Webster joined an early-stage startup based in Palo Alto and is loving it. I am leading a small team of technical marketing professionals at Dell and continue to learn a lot and thrive in the role. Lucy is doing great.
My parents continue to snowbird between NJ and Florida, and fortunately were safely in Florida during Hurricane Sandy. Jo lives in Manhattan and is an attending at NYU Hospital, which is finally re-opened since the hurricane. We lost my grandmother a few weeks ago and while it was sad, I reflected a lot on the 98 years she did live.
On to the books! I read 37 books this year, 10 of them non-fiction. Right now I have books on my library queue that won't come up until after the baby arrives - we'll see how that goes, but I have faith that I'll always be a reader. The baby has his/her first few books already - a set of my old Golden Books that my mom had saved, and The Giving Tree and Goodnight Moon from Webster's parents.
Omitted from the following list are three books that are part of series that I am reading: Voyager, WWW:Watch, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.
Top Fiction:
Say You're One of Them - touching set of unrelated short stories about children in Africa.
Reamde - for geeks only - huge adventure story about when real life and online life collide.
Fiction Runners-up:
QBVII - classic courtroom drama set in the shadows of the Holocaust
World Without End - long-awaited sequel to Pillars of the Earth
Unaccustomed Earth - short stories about people reconciling modern lives with Indian childhoods
Distant Hours and The Forgotten Garden - two books by Kate Morten that are well-written gothic-style mysteries
Lady Matador's Hotel - linked short stories all taking place in a hotel in an unnamed Latin American country
The Disappeared - story about a woman who falls in love with a man still haunted by his family's past in Cambodia
Buddha in the Attic - linked short stories about a set of women who are Japanese mail-order brides
My Life on a Plate - funny story about the mishaps of a slightly-overweight mom, reminiscent of Bridget Jones
My New American Life - the first few years of an Armenian woman's life in the United States, and her relationship with the Armenian community
The Love Wife - a family struggles to accept a new member of the family from China, as requested by the matriarch's dying wishes.
Top Nonfiction:
Pack of Two - Caroline Knapp's examination of her relationship with her dog.
Revolution - a woman's memoir of leaving college to join "the revolution" in the 1980's in Central America with her boyfriend.
Longitude - the story of how someone came up with an ingenious way to measure longitude at sea.
Happy 2013 to all!
Sheryl
The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir by Elna Baker
Another NPR find - this one someone I heard on The Moth and I think I also heard on This American Life.
Elna is a Mormon from the West Coast who moves to New York City to go to college and ends up living there for several years in her early 20's. This is a collection of essays about her life in the city as she struggles to figure out how much of her Mormon background she wants to carry forward in her adult life. Many chapters read like "No Sex and the City." Others are more about her jobs (among others, at FAO Schwartz and Nobu) or her family relationships.
This was definitely a quick read that kept my attention. Baker is a funny writer, able to see humor in her own misadventures. Her ongoing conflict between the secular and the traditional is well-described and it is easy to empathize with her.
Elna is a Mormon from the West Coast who moves to New York City to go to college and ends up living there for several years in her early 20's. This is a collection of essays about her life in the city as she struggles to figure out how much of her Mormon background she wants to carry forward in her adult life. Many chapters read like "No Sex and the City." Others are more about her jobs (among others, at FAO Schwartz and Nobu) or her family relationships.
This was definitely a quick read that kept my attention. Baker is a funny writer, able to see humor in her own misadventures. Her ongoing conflict between the secular and the traditional is well-described and it is easy to empathize with her.
Learning to Die in Miami by Carlos Eire
Oops - this memoir is a sequel to a book I read last year but forgot to review at the time! I had heard Carlos Eire interviewed on NPR and thought his story was interesting.
The first book was called Waiting for Snow in Havana. In that book, Carlos is growing up in Cuba in the late 1950's and early 1960's. His privileged and sheltered childhood comes to an abrupt end when he is among 14,000 chilren airlifted out of Cuba and sent to the U.S. upon Castro's ascendance.
This book picks up with Carlos adjusting to life in the U.S. He is shuffled among family friends, foster homes, and other living arrangements, sometimes with his older brother and sometimes alone. The title of the books is an allusion to his belief that "Carlos" from Cuba has to die for his American "Charles" or "Chuck" or other identity to emerge. While the first book told a lot of his childhood, this one talks about him mostly as a pre-teen and teen, and flashes forward many times to his life as an adult.
Unlike other memoirs I've read that have been written in more than one part, these two books were very similar in style, tone, and composition. I enjoyed Eire's style in fact - it was unusual - the books being written more as a reverie, a collection of memories, than as a straightforward linear narrative. Eire was very poetic in places, very sad in others. This was not a laugh-out-loud set of books, but I did learn about an immigrant experience I was unfamiliar with, and was compelled to read the second one.
The first book was called Waiting for Snow in Havana. In that book, Carlos is growing up in Cuba in the late 1950's and early 1960's. His privileged and sheltered childhood comes to an abrupt end when he is among 14,000 chilren airlifted out of Cuba and sent to the U.S. upon Castro's ascendance.
This book picks up with Carlos adjusting to life in the U.S. He is shuffled among family friends, foster homes, and other living arrangements, sometimes with his older brother and sometimes alone. The title of the books is an allusion to his belief that "Carlos" from Cuba has to die for his American "Charles" or "Chuck" or other identity to emerge. While the first book told a lot of his childhood, this one talks about him mostly as a pre-teen and teen, and flashes forward many times to his life as an adult.
Unlike other memoirs I've read that have been written in more than one part, these two books were very similar in style, tone, and composition. I enjoyed Eire's style in fact - it was unusual - the books being written more as a reverie, a collection of memories, than as a straightforward linear narrative. Eire was very poetic in places, very sad in others. This was not a laugh-out-loud set of books, but I did learn about an immigrant experience I was unfamiliar with, and was compelled to read the second one.
The Forgetting Tree by Tatjana Soli
Soli's previous book The Lotus Eaters was one of my favorites, so I was excited to read this 2012-published novel by her. I liked it - it was really good.
The story starts with the main character, Claire, experiencing a tragic accident in her family on the farm they own and run. Years later, her marriage has fallen apart but she remains on the farm, even though her family moves away. When she is diagnosed with cancer, she hires a young woman named Minna to help her around the house. While Minna is a good caretaker, she begins to exhibit unusual behavior and her past slowly comes out throughout the story. Claire and Minna's relationship develops into something Claire does not expect, and becomes the focus of the majority of the book.
This book was haunting - when Minna's back story comes out, it is touching and surprising and violent. Similarly strange is Claire's acquiescence to a lot of Minna's idiosyncrasies. Whether either of their backgrounds justify their behavior throughout the story is perhaps the biggest question left with the reader at the end of the book.
The story starts with the main character, Claire, experiencing a tragic accident in her family on the farm they own and run. Years later, her marriage has fallen apart but she remains on the farm, even though her family moves away. When she is diagnosed with cancer, she hires a young woman named Minna to help her around the house. While Minna is a good caretaker, she begins to exhibit unusual behavior and her past slowly comes out throughout the story. Claire and Minna's relationship develops into something Claire does not expect, and becomes the focus of the majority of the book.
This book was haunting - when Minna's back story comes out, it is touching and surprising and violent. Similarly strange is Claire's acquiescence to a lot of Minna's idiosyncrasies. Whether either of their backgrounds justify their behavior throughout the story is perhaps the biggest question left with the reader at the end of the book.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Falling together by Maria Dos Santos
This was another book I picked up at the library without any recommendations. It was an easy read although also complex.
The story follows three college friends: Pen, Cat, and Will. After college they become estranged from each other, then many years later Cat "summons" Pen and Will to their college reunion. I'll reveal that they both decide to go, but to tell you any more would ruin the sprawling, multi-layered, story that spans continents and decades. The book tells the story of their friendship in college, the events leading up to their estrangement, and their developing relationships in the current time, after the college reunion.
Overall I enjoyed this book and looked forward to reading it each night before bed.
The story follows three college friends: Pen, Cat, and Will. After college they become estranged from each other, then many years later Cat "summons" Pen and Will to their college reunion. I'll reveal that they both decide to go, but to tell you any more would ruin the sprawling, multi-layered, story that spans continents and decades. The book tells the story of their friendship in college, the events leading up to their estrangement, and their developing relationships in the current time, after the college reunion.
Overall I enjoyed this book and looked forward to reading it each night before bed.
The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman
Many years ago I read Practical Magic by Hoffman and really enjoyed it - it became a movie in the '90's too - with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock. When I saw this book by the same author at the library, I picked it up.
This book is about a family of women, each of whom has a special talent - for example, knowing if someone is lying. When Stella comes of age and finds out that her talent is clairvoyence, she is put in a difficult situation when she sees her father commit a crime in the future. Once a series of events comes from this, she goes to live with estranged grandmother, complicating things for her mother.
I liked the mix of supernatural and "normal" worlds - not too science-fiction, but certainly a required element of the plot. I also liked thought the characters were well-developed and strong. It wasn't the most memorable book I've read recently, but I did enjoy it.
This book is about a family of women, each of whom has a special talent - for example, knowing if someone is lying. When Stella comes of age and finds out that her talent is clairvoyence, she is put in a difficult situation when she sees her father commit a crime in the future. Once a series of events comes from this, she goes to live with estranged grandmother, complicating things for her mother.
I liked the mix of supernatural and "normal" worlds - not too science-fiction, but certainly a required element of the plot. I also liked thought the characters were well-developed and strong. It wasn't the most memorable book I've read recently, but I did enjoy it.
Pack of Two by Caroline Knapp
Disclaimer: I’ve become an
extreme dog person in the past two years, since Lucy came home with us. This book is only for extreme dog
people.
This book is by Caroline
Knapp, author of many of my favorites, including Appetites. She gets a dog
(coincidentally named Lucille) who changes Caroline’s life. This book was a lovely story about their
friendship and how having a dog changed Knapp’s outlook on life.
I definitely related to some of her sentiments around how it feels to be around a dog. She was a more solitary person than I am, so in some sections she described a relationship with Lucille that was more intense than mine with Lucy. But overall I appreciated her elevation of dog to complete companion and enjoyed her anecdotes and reflection.
The Litigators by John Grisham
I hadn’t read a John Grisham
book in a while and Web had this one around the house. On a whim I asked him to bring it to Paris
for me.
The story is about a small “ambulance-chasing”
law firm. Shortly after hiring a new
associate (a young burnt-out attorney from a big firm) the firm takes on a
giant pharmaceutical company in a case that quickly becomes that which will
make or break the partnership.
It was pretty standard
Grisham. Fast-paced, quickly-drawn good
characters, and didn’t take itself too seriously. Good airport read.
Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
Webster bought this book for
me a few years back when we last went to Paris.
Since I didn't read it then, I thought last week's trip to Paris (part
work part play) would be a good time.
The memoir is by Adam
Gopnik, an occasional writer for The New Yorker, and chronicles his family's
move to Paris when his son was a toddler.
He and his wife and son live there for a few years and this book is a
collection of essays he wrote during that time.
I enjoyed reading this book
but it wasn't what I expected. I thought
it would be a lightweight memoir about his time there. While there was some of that (anecdotes about
finding an apartment, taking his son to the park), the book was much more a set
of reflections on society and what it means to be Parisian - including
politics, labor relations, medicine, and the pure quintessence of living in
Paris.
I’d recommend the book; just
don’t expect a lighthearted memoir.
Friday, November 16, 2012
The Love Wife by Gish Jen
This book is a rarity for me
– I took a few minutes to browse in the library and picked out with no
recommendations and no knowledge of it.
But it was a good choice!
The story follows a
Chinese-American man who marries an American woman (“Blondie”) and they adopt
two children. His disapproving Chinese
mother has strong feelings about his decisions, and after her death he finds
that in order to inherit some particular items of great sentimental value, the
family has to take in a distant relative from China.
I’ll leave the plot there,
but it was a good story. Also unique was
the alternating narrators – not just each chapter but every few
paragraphs. Very interesting style that I thought would be annoying but actually worked.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Becoming Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey
In my search for books prior to vacation this year, I learned that Marie Antoinette was raised in Vienna. Since we were visiting Vienna, I decided to try a historical fiction book about her childhood.
This book was not great literature (more like a beach read), but fun to read. It followed Marie's silver-spoon childhood which comes to a screeching halt when her mother decides to marry her off. She is betrothed to Louis XVI of France who will one day be king, which will help Austria's political prospects greatly. However, Marie is scarcely more than a child, so the first third of the book is about all the training and primping and planning that goes into turning her into a proper princess.
Once she arrives at Versailles, there is a lot to get used to. There are political and social requirements and factions, there are limits to her free time and her privacy, and there is the delicate matter of getting to know her also-young husband, both privately as well as in the context of a friendship. The latter proves easier than the former, though both stump her for a while.
The book, part one of a trilogy, ends with King Louis XV's death and Marie and her husband's ascent to the throne. It will be fun to read the next book in the series when it is published.
This book was not great literature (more like a beach read), but fun to read. It followed Marie's silver-spoon childhood which comes to a screeching halt when her mother decides to marry her off. She is betrothed to Louis XVI of France who will one day be king, which will help Austria's political prospects greatly. However, Marie is scarcely more than a child, so the first third of the book is about all the training and primping and planning that goes into turning her into a proper princess.
Once she arrives at Versailles, there is a lot to get used to. There are political and social requirements and factions, there are limits to her free time and her privacy, and there is the delicate matter of getting to know her also-young husband, both privately as well as in the context of a friendship. The latter proves easier than the former, though both stump her for a while.
The book, part one of a trilogy, ends with King Louis XV's death and Marie and her husband's ascent to the throne. It will be fun to read the next book in the series when it is published.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The next book I read on vacation was this one - The Historian. It is a novel about a group of people searching for Dracula - not Bram Stoker's Dracula, but the purportedly real Dracula whose myth evolved into the vampire we are familiar with today.
The book was really fun to read - it alternated between the 1970's where a young girl discovers her widowed father's fascination with Dracula and the 1950's when he was actively searching for traces of Dracula across Europe. A mix of history, adventure, and a little supernatural, the story held my attention. The narration was shared by several of the characters and various articles, letters, and other "primary sources," which made some of what would have otherwise been dry historical content easier to digest. Also keeping the book lively was the well-developed cast of characters, which included the daughter who finds her father's books, her father, father, his college professor, the professor's daughter, and many librarians, historians, monks, students, and others.
Being in Central Europe while I was reading this book was fun - there are scenes that take place in Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, and other places in the region we were in. This was a good vacation read - not fluffy by any means, but one that you need to read a chunk of at a time to really appreciate.
The book was really fun to read - it alternated between the 1970's where a young girl discovers her widowed father's fascination with Dracula and the 1950's when he was actively searching for traces of Dracula across Europe. A mix of history, adventure, and a little supernatural, the story held my attention. The narration was shared by several of the characters and various articles, letters, and other "primary sources," which made some of what would have otherwise been dry historical content easier to digest. Also keeping the book lively was the well-developed cast of characters, which included the daughter who finds her father's books, her father, father, his college professor, the professor's daughter, and many librarians, historians, monks, students, and others.
Being in Central Europe while I was reading this book was fun - there are scenes that take place in Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, and other places in the region we were in. This was a good vacation read - not fluffy by any means, but one that you need to read a chunk of at a time to really appreciate.
Monday, September 10, 2012
QBVII by Leon Uris
I hadn't read anything by Uris in years, although Exodus (about the creation of Israel) is one of my all-time favorite books. I picked this for our trip to Europe and it was a great read.
The book is about a trial - the trial of an author whose book about the Holocaust makes mention of a particular doctor's activities in a concentration camp; the doctor sues for libel. It's fast-paced, and unlike some courtroom dramas, it doesn't suffer from pages of detailed testimony. Much like Uris' other books, a great deal of the book is dedicated to the back story of each of the main characters. I did not find there to be a clear protagonist and antagonist: both the author and the doctor were characters I could root for.
I particularly enjoyed reading this while in Central Europe because in Prague and Budapest, we saw a lot of Jewish history sites from before and during the Holocaust that enabled me to better connect with some of the themes in the book. There were also several ethical dilemmas in the book (e.g., should the doctor have followed orders, should camp survivors have been asked to testify, etc...) that kept me thinking and engaged.
One note: this book was written in 1970 and in one particular way shows its age. The female characters are thin and predictable, reminiscent of Marjorie Morningstar or early Le Carre. That aside, the book still resonated with me and kept me thinking long after it was over.
The book is about a trial - the trial of an author whose book about the Holocaust makes mention of a particular doctor's activities in a concentration camp; the doctor sues for libel. It's fast-paced, and unlike some courtroom dramas, it doesn't suffer from pages of detailed testimony. Much like Uris' other books, a great deal of the book is dedicated to the back story of each of the main characters. I did not find there to be a clear protagonist and antagonist: both the author and the doctor were characters I could root for.
I particularly enjoyed reading this while in Central Europe because in Prague and Budapest, we saw a lot of Jewish history sites from before and during the Holocaust that enabled me to better connect with some of the themes in the book. There were also several ethical dilemmas in the book (e.g., should the doctor have followed orders, should camp survivors have been asked to testify, etc...) that kept me thinking and engaged.
One note: this book was written in 1970 and in one particular way shows its age. The female characters are thin and predictable, reminiscent of Marjorie Morningstar or early Le Carre. That aside, the book still resonated with me and kept me thinking long after it was over.
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