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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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

Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan

This book broke my heart and I was not expecting it.  I've read African literature in the past (e.g., Half a Yellow Sun, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Infidel, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall), but nothing prepared me for this book.

The five unrelated stories are all about children in Africa growing up under terribly sad circumstances.  For example, one is about children told they are going to be sent to their godparents, but actually being sold to traffickers in Gabon; one is about siblings watching their mixed Tutsi/Hutu family violently fall apart in Rwanda; one is about a family barely surviving in a shantytown in Kenya.  All of the stories are told from the children's point of view, but the magnitude of the situations ought to be squarely adult material.

One of the stories is just a few pages long, and two are 100+ pages.  The other two stories are of more of a traditional short-story length. 

I won't forget this book for a long time.

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

Yuck.

This book was the first pick of a new book club I just joined. By the author of Devil in the White City, this book is about Ambassador Dodd, the American ambassador to Germany.

I guess the story of his being the ambassador is interesting enough. Considered by many to be underqualified, he moves his family to Germany in the 1930's, refusing many of the benefits in housing and transportation that are offered an ambassador. His daughter, estranged from her husband in the U.S., becomes well-known in German society and I can't describe her as anything less juicy than a hussy. She sleeps with Nazis, Fascists, and several notable writers, seemingly blind to the potential damange it could do to her father's career.

I really disliked the writing style: it felt like I was reading something really dry for school. Occassionally, Larson would foreshadow something very deliberately, but I never appreciated the payoff. I know his previous books were well-liked, but I'm not sure if I'd try them.

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

This book was excellent.

I've read a lot of Holocaust literature, starting in junior high school both as part of my Hebrew School curriculum as well as on my own.  I remember novels like When Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit and Number the Stars, as well as memoirs by Frank, Frankl, and Weisel, among many others.  At some point as an adult I (guiltily) felt a little overwhelmed by how much about it I had read and stopped choosing these books. But in recent years I got a lot out of books like Sarah's Key and The Book Thief. 

When Terry recommended this a one of her top 11 books - ever- I bought it.  It had sat on my shelf until last week. And, wow - t was one of the most impactful things I've read in a long time.  It was heartbreaking and emotional and not a book I will forget for a long time.

As the book jacket explains, Trudy is a college professor who has grown up in Minnesota after surviving WWII in Germany as a child.  Her only knowledge of her father is a photo her mother Anna keeps hidden of the two of them with a man in a Nazi uniform.  I kind of thought that I could figure out what the story was going to be about, but in fact I was reasonably off-base.

Indeed some of the book takes place in Germany during the war, and the reader learns how Anna comes to have a relationship with a Nazi. But the circumstances are not what I expected.  The balance of the book, told in alternating chapters, takes place in current times, where Trudy is trying to understand her past through a research project.  She knows that she does not know the entire story...but Anna won't talk about it and Trudy has grown up knowing it is a missing piece of her history.

Part of what made this book so compelling was that the narration was unflinching.  Blum never used a metaphor, or ended a scene leaving the reader to imagine an atrocity.  It was also compelling because the characters were really good.  Neither Anna nor Trudy was expressive, but they were both characters I rooted for. 

Definitely recommended.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

I am a huge fan of Ann Patchett (author of Bel Canto) and couldn't wait until this came up in my library queue.  Oh the jealousy I felt when I saw it in Thea's e-reader a few weeks ago.

The story caught my attention right away.  It's about a young woman named Marina who works at a drug company.  Her colleague Anders goes to the Amazon to check up on a researcher (Dr. Swenson, a former professor of Marina's) who has been incommunicado.  When Anders dies under mysterious circumstances, Marina is sent down there by CEO Mr. Fox (also her boyfriend) to find out more.

This book was great. It was a mystery, although not in a traditional way.  The characters were well-developed, and there were several secondary characters, each of whom was multi-faceted. Marina's journey - first to Anders' family's home, then to South America, and finally a village deep in the Amazon, was very thoroughly described.  What I liked best, though, was that the story was surprising. There were several parts of the story that were completely unexpected, some plot twists, and some of the characters' choices. 

Highly recommended.

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli

I went into Barnes and Noble to buy a guide book for a long weekend in Toronto, and this book caught my eye.  This year I've gotten to read several books that were nearly perfectly constructed/composed and this is another one.

The story takes place during the Vietnam War.  It's about a female photographer who falls in love with another American photographer, and it's also about her relationship with that photographer's Vietnamese assistant.  Through telling what is ostensibly a love story, Soli also paints a vivid picture of the war.  The book covers several years' worth of time, as well as ranging from locations in Saigon to remote villages in the countryside.  On numerous occasions the photographers are embedded with army squads and there are detailed accounts of their activities. 

I really liked so many things about this book.  The characters were really well-developed and I was rooting for them throughout the book.  The description of Vietnam was a great education for someone like me, just slightly too young to understand the impact on the US firsthand.  And the plot was incredibly engrossing.  Nancy Pearl from NPR said of this book, "“Devastatingly awesome…It's one of those books that I didn't want to put down — I resented everything else that I needed to do in my life, because I didn't want to stop reading it.”  I definitely had the same experience.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

I had been excited about reading this book for a while  While it sat unread in my bookcase I caught a Law and Order episode based on the same idea. 

Henrietta Lacks is a black woman who lived in Maryland in the 1940's and '50s.  She had a very aggressive form of cervical cancer and after her death her cells were harvested without her family's knowledge.  Those cells have been a cornerstone of scientific research for the past several decades, while Lacks' family members have had marginal and oftentimes troubled lives.

Skloot's book reads like a novel in some places, a memoir in others, and an interesting article for the balance.  Never is it a dry scientific text, although it does cover the science behind cells and gene therapy.  I don't think you have to be technical to enjoy the book.  Other sections focus on Henrietta's childhood and illness.  Most memorable to me was the latter part of the book where Skloot forms a close relationship with Henrietta's daughter Deborah, now in her 60's, and the two of them work together to find more additional information about Henrietta. 

This was a good read, although more personal than I expected.  Skloot's a great writer.

A Thousand Cuts by Simon Lelic

My bookclub chose this as our May book and when it didn't arrive in time for a trip to San Fran, I bought a second copy at the bookstore in the ferry building.  Good thing I liked it.

The story starts with a brutal shooting in a school.  One of the detectives assigned to the case, Lucy, senses that there is more to the story than what it seems and embarks on an investigation that is belittled by her male colleagues.  Meanwhile, what she finds is a systemic problem in the school that led to this tragedy.  Lucy is determined to figure out what is going on and resolve it, against several systems that don't want her to.  I enjoyed watching how Lelic played with the same themes in different settings.

The most interesting thing about this book, though, was not the plot.  The way Lelic told the story was to alternate narrative chapters with chapters that were a transcript of each of the witnesses' stories.  His creation of so many credible voices was really fun to read.  There were clear villains and heroes but also people stuck in untenable situations. 

I really enjoyed reading this book and would look for more by Lelic in the future.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Laura B (now Laura H) recommended this book to me after her book club read it.  Within thirty pages I kept remarking to Web as I read it each night before bed, “this is an incredibly ambitious book” and I think that summarizes how I feel about it.  Ambitious-good, as in, choosing a very lofty theme and complex route to get there, not ambitious-bad, as in, sets high expectations for itself them doesn’t meet them.  This may well be the best-crafted book I’ve ever read.

The story takes place in the summer of 1974, around the time when Philippe Petit found a way to string a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center and walk across it.  The story of how he prepared for this feat is like a memorable musical theme that plays throughout the book, but it isn't the main plot.  The story is about ten New Yorkers and what their lives were like that summer.  The characters range from prostitutes and graffiti artists to a set of mothers who have lost their sons in Vietnam.  Each character is incredibly well-developed, and many of them are also incredibly sympathetic. 

What is special about the book is how McCann ties all the stories together and calls on Petit's story as an interlude.  His capture of place and time is exquisite.  I think it will be a while before I find another book as special as this one.

Top Books of 2010

It is hard to believe that 2010 is almost over.  In February, Web and I went to Mexico to attend a wedding.  Shortly after returning, we brought home an adorable, friendly, happy cockapoo puppy ("Lucy") who has been a delight to add to our family.  Over the summer we went to Iceland, then in December celebrated our 10th year together.  I secured a new position at Dell that will start in February and Web continues at his job during the day and his MBA at night.

But enough about me - what about the books?  All in I read 48 books, 10 which were non-fiction, the rest of which were novels. I finally found a reliable book club with interesting people.  Throughout the year, I read a nice mix of new books and items that had been on my list for many years.  I have not moved to an e-reader, and have no plans to give up paper books anytime soon.

This year, I've included some narrative around my favorite reads, rather than just a list.  (Psst: if you like this format, check out The Millions Year in Reading series for some seriously well-thought out recommendations.)

Adding Lucy to our family has been life-changing.  Not growing up with pets other than a curmudgeonly bird, I had no idea what it was like to have another being around all the time.  She is so happy to be doing what we are doing, and so eager to explore and play and meet new people.  I was interested in reading about others' experiences with dogs to figure out what I was feeling about it.  The two novels I liked most were The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and The Art of Racing in the Rain.  Edgar Sawtelle was an intriguing story of a family who bred a very special type of dog, and the coming of age of their mute son.  Reading that was when I discovered that the training methods we were using had a long and universal history.  Similarly, the feelings I had about dogs shared a long history with many, many people - I remember being in a hotel room in Argentina several years ago and feeling very isolated and scared.  After talking to Web for several hours about different scary travel situations we'd been in, we crept downstairs for dinner, only to find a lively dining room full of happy people in a completely lovely and secure hotel.  That's how I felt about getting a dog - "oh, look at this whole universe I've been missing out on that's been going on around me all these years."  

The second dog novel, Racing in the Rain, was wonderful in that it told the story of an aging race car driver through the eyes of his dog.  It could have been corny or ill-contrived, but it was neither.  It felt like a rare glimpse inside of the inner life of a dog - kudos to Garth Stein for his execution of "voice" in this book.  I also loved reading about the rehabilitation of the dogs involved in Michael Vick's fighting ring in The Lost Dogs. Authored by a Sports Illustrated reporter, the book chronicled both the legal and the canine sides of the story. 

Lest you think I've "gone to the dogs" I'll move on from the canine theme.  I have finally found a book club that I like and many of my favorite books this year came from this group.  Some of the books from this group would probably have ended up on my night table anyway: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Little Bee, A Reliable Wife, and The Unit.  I caught Larsson fever just like everyone else and thought Dragon Tattoo was extremely engrossing, and a unique mix of corporate/financial intrigue, mystery, and interpersonal situations.  I have the second book in the series lined up for my next vacation.  Little Bee, while not as special as its mysterious jacket flap description would indicate, was a strong political statement wrapped up in an unusual story.  I adored A Reliable Wife - it was creepy and set in a dark, wintry, 19th century town where a man mail-orders a bride.  Both man and wife discover that the other has an ulterior motive in getting married.  The Unit, which I just finished, was thought-provoking and some of the best science fiction (or as Atwood likes to put it, speculative fiction) that I read all year. The Unit is a compound that childless adults are sent to once it is time for them to begin participating in medical experiments that mark the end of their useful time in society.

What's fun about being in a book club, however, is the books that I would not have otherwise read.  In this case, I really enjoyed two books in particular that others chose: Do They Know I'm Running, and The Book Thief.  Do They Know I'm Running is about a young man whose illegal immigrant uncle is deported to El Salvador, and he goes there to retrieve him and bring him back to the U.S.  The writing and plot was good enough that I was half way through before I realized it was a political statement (kind of like Little Bee).  I don't know why this book didn't get more attention this year.  The Book Thief was probably the most unusual book I read this year - and in some ways was my favorite.  For some reason it was published in the U.S. as a Young Adult book which is indicative only of the simplicity of the language used, not of the plot or the style.  Narrated by Death (yes, that Death), this book follows the story of a young girl sent to live with a foster family during WWII when her mother is arrested as a Communist.  See what I mean?  Not really YA.

As far as non-fiction this year, there's no discernible theme among my favorites.  As they See 'Em was a fun excursion into the world of baseball umpires.  I saved this book to read in April, which was a great choice - I loved reading a section and then seeing some of it in action during a televised game the next day.  I can't remember where I picked up A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome, but that was a good read.  While reading it, I felt like I was touring Roman ruins and had a good tour guide who was bringing the antiquities to life for me.  The memoir I liked best this year was Mennonite in a Little Black Dress.  Janzen's depiction of her return to her childhood home after a failed marriage was both amusing and honest. 

I have a soft spot for dystopian novels (isn't that a phrase you see everywhere) and this years I read a few.  In addition to The Unit, I also enjoyed Stephen King's Under the Dome and Margaret Atwood's Year of the Flood.  I could hardly put down Under the Dome while on vacation; it was the story of a small town that gets encased in a clear dome and the logistical and political complexities that ensue.  If I didn't work full-time I'd re-read this 1000-page tome with The Stand By Stephen King and develop some complex theories about the structure of Stephen King's works.  What I liked about Year of the Flood was that Atwood revisited a world she had created in a previous novel, Oryx and Crake.  I might suggest this was a "feminist retelling" of O+C, or just another set of stories from the same point in time, but either way it was as fun to read more about this world as it must have been for her to write it. 

Everyone I knew seemed to be reading Sarah's Key and The Help, neither of which disappointed me.  Sarah's Key was a novel about a young girl's experience during the Holocaust and a modern-day journalist's quest to find out what happened in that little girl's town.  A couple of images and stories in that book really stuck with me.  A true book-lover who recommended Sarah's Key to me passed away this year and I will remember her respect for that book.  The Help, probably second only to Dragon Tattoo in popularity in my informal poll, was a great historical novel too.  It was about the relationships between several women and their maids ("The Help") in 1960's Mississippi.  While seemingly long in pages, the voice and plot made the book go by quickly.

I didn't see any common themes in the final three books I enjoyed this year until I listed them all together.  Turns out, they each explore an imperfect marriage, though in vastly different settings.  Weight of Heaven is about a couple who move to India after losing their young son in an accident.  Not unexpectedly, a change of scenery doesn't solve any of their problems, although the depiction of ex-pats in a developing country and the related ethical challenges was excellently depicted.  In A Country called Home, a young couple choose a life in rural Idaho in the 1960's.  The story of their surviving in that environment, as well as that of their daughter's life in the next generation, are beautifully written in this book.  I'd consider this another "sleeper" book that should have gotten far more press than it did.  Just last week I finished Shadow Tag, about a woman whose marriage is falling apart and  who begins to keep two diaries when she discovers her husband is reading one of them.  Not nearly as epistolary as I expected, this book is a significant anatomy of a broken relationship.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And that concludes my descriptions of the best books I read this year.  Below is a link to my review of each of the books mentioned here.  I hope you will comment below on your favorite books from this year too - and what you thought of these.

I look forward to a 2011 filled with a new set of books that engross, transport, teach, and delight me...and  wish the same to each of you.

Sheryl

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle  
The Art of Racing in the Rain
The Lost Dogs
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Little Bee
A Reliable Wife 
The Unit
Do They Know I'm Running
The Book Thief
As they See 'Em
A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress
Under the Dome  
Year of the Flood
Sarah's Key  
The Help
Weight of Heaven
A Country called Home
Shadow Tag

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist

My book club chose this book for January from my list of ideas.  Last year I had noticed it on Flashlight Worthy's end of year list.  So far that site has had some great suggestions - including this one.

The Unit is a facility where older childless people go to donate themselves to science.  They live there for a few months to a few years and participate in medical experiments, donate their non-essential organs, and ultimately participate in their "final donation" of their heart and lungs.  The book follows a woman named Dorrit as she arrives at the Unit. 

On the surface, the Unit is not a terrible place - each resident has a private apartment, and there are parks, restaurants, cinemas, and many activities.  But the professional, chipper, and seemingly empathetic staff are committed to a government-sponsored strategy to use the "dispensable" humans who live there as efficiently as possible.  The glimpses we have of the "outside world" through flashbacks also depict a society that has been mandated to respect only a particular type of family and of societal worth. 

I will borrow Margaret Atwood's classification of this as "speculative fiction", as Holmqvist's world is not, strictly speaking, science fiction.  Like Atwood and other authors of the genre, Holmqvist was able to make significant social commentary with this story.  In this case, she comments on our treatment of the elderly, our views on childless adults, and, more broadly, our definitions of family.

It was difficult to think about this book without also thinking of Never Let Me Go; though the styles were quite different, with The Unit being far more transparent and emotional, the themes were very similar.  The other book this made me think of was Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Both books were translated from the Swedish and I couldn't help but wonder if the act of being translated was what made both books somewhat matter-of-fact or if that was an indication of a cultural norm.  It makes me wish I knew any language well enough to read the same story in the original and the translation. 

I liked this book, largely because it was well-plotted and made me think.

Shadow Tag by Louise Erdich

I read Erdrich's Plague of Doves a few years ago and while I thought it was pretty good, I didn't love it.  However, when I read a review of this book in the New York Times Book Review, the plot intrigued me immediately: a woman whose marriage is falling apart realizes that her husband has been reading her diary, so she begins to keep a second, secret, diary for herself.

This was, indeed, quite a book.  Thankfully it was not as epistolary as that description would indicate - while there are some excerpts from both diaries, the book is mostly told in a traditional narrative.  Erdrich could have written this book in several different ways based on this idea, but her choice of execution was excellent in its avoidance of relying on an obvious gimmick.  The only unusual stylistic choice was a lack of quotation marks around conversation, which (intentionally I believe) created a fuzzy boundary between internal and external dialogue.

This book tells the story of the dissolution of a troubled marriage and the impact on all the members of the family.  The husband is a painter who has been supporting the family by selling a variety of pieces of artwork depicting his wife.  Like Plague of Doves, Native American culture is strongly featured, along with many of its current societal challenges, including alcoholism and violence.  Not to say that the situations these characters find themselves in are uniquely Native American - clearly they are not.  But this heritage plays a strong role in character development.

The book is reasonably short and simply written, and yet somehow Erdrich managed to weave a very complex story.  The writing was very good and I was tempted to return to the first page and read it all over again when I was done - not because there were many hidden meanings or a surprise ending, but because I wanted to appreciate for a second time the beauty, delicacy, and pain that Erdrich depicted.

Vida by Patricia Engel

I enjoyed this collection of short stories about a Colombian-American woman.  NPR included this in their list of top books from 2010 about 'outsiders' and I think that is a great category for this book.  The stories follow Sabina from childhood through young adulthood, oddly not chronologically, with varied points of view.  While many of the stories held my attention, the change in perspective was especially unusual and refreshing - particularly the story told in second person.

In some ways this was a predictable read, in that the themes were familiar - first generation American with parents caught between the old country and the new.  Sabina had struggles fitting in at school as a child, difficulties choosing a partner, and complex friendships with others who were similarly in-between.  But something about the book was also unique - perhaps it was the storylines or the character development - and I didn't feel bored or unsurprised.   And the writing was very good - sometimes I would pause while reading a passage or section and reflect on how well Engel captured a particular feeling or idea.

The best part of reading this was remembering how much I enjoy short stories.  I know I reflect on this every time I read a new collection of shorts but I will need to add a couple more to my list for 2011.

Do they Know I'm Running by David Corbett

This novel was last month's selection for my book club.  I would never have chosen it otherwise but I liked it - one of the benefits of being in a book club.  The story is about a young man named Roque whose illegal uncle is deported back to El Salvador.  Roque travels to El Salvador to bring his uncle through Mexico and smuggle him over the U.S. border. 
 Along the way, he meets a young woman named Lupe and an army pal of his cousin's named Samir, both of whom travel with him and his uncle. The trip is not easy, and Roque and his companions meet with much adversity along the way, including gangs, bribery, and violence.  The people they have paid to assist in bringing his uncle back turn out to be extremely dangerous, and even among the four travelers, there are vastly differing values and priorities.  On the other side of the border, his family is facing difficulties as well: his cousins become involved in some criminal activities that are distantly related to Roque's trip, and suddenly find themselves in deeper than they expected. 

I'm surprised this book wasn't more widely acclaimed.  There were a few sections where (as someone in my book club said) I had trouble connecting to the book.  However, I stuck with it, and despite those hiccups, Corbett managed the balance of the elements of the book very well.  The plot moved at a quick pace while each character was given an extensive background and set of motivations.  The scenery and locations from El Salvador through Guatemala and Mexico and into the U.S., were excellently depicted.  The action that occurred in many scenes was well-described without being a play-by-play.  And even the minor characters were detailed enough to keep them fresh in my mind when they were dormant for several chapters.

What Corbett has written, however, is not just a well-balanced novel but a political statement on immigration.  Someone looking to make that statement more strongly ought to option the movie rights because this would translate exceptionally well onto the silver screen.

The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption by Jim Gorant

This was a well-written book by a Sports Illustrated reported chronicling the story behind the dogs involved in Michael Vick's dogfighting group.  The first half focused on the discovery and investigation of Vick's dogfighting ring.  The second half of the book was about several individual dogs and the process of their being rehabilitated and adopted.  I could hardly put this book down.

The depiction of what dog fights are like and of the conditions in which fighting dogs are kept helped me understand for the first time exactly how terribly dogs are treated in this environment.  One of the methods Gorant used to describe these conditions was through imagining how a couple of the dogs might have felt during their time living at the dogfighting compound.  I thought this was an effective way to personalize (dog-ize?) a difficult topic. 

I really enjoyed reading about the rehabilitation.  Of the 50 dogs rescued from his property, I believe only 3 or 4 had to be put down for health or behavior issues.  While an initial assessment of the situation had experts believing that rescuing 5 dogs would be "good news", the panel of experts actually assigned to evaluate each dog found that most of them were unsocialized and/or scared, but very few were aggressive.  This is contrary to what the ASPCA had previously though about dogs rescued from fighting rings and the story of these dogs' rehabilitation has influenced the ASPCA to change their policy on dogfighting rescue dogs.  The stories of the individuals who worked with the dogs through this period, some of whom are also the people who end up adopting them, were riveting.  Tears came to my eyes often, reading of little victories that reminded me of my own dog's behavior as the dogs adjusted.

The only aspect of the book I did not connect to was the characterization of a few of the investigators.  I thought Gorant was trying to make that an equally compelling storyline but I just wasn't as interested in reading that as I was in reading about the dogs.  That aside, I am really glad I read this book and learned about the dogfighting culture and about the rehabilitation of these wonderful animals.

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I like Jennifer Egan - I think she is one of the most creative writers of our time.  All her books start off straightforward then take a 90 degree turn into something I never expect. 

Goon Squad was no exception - it was an interconnected set of stories centering around a woman who is an assistant to a music producer, but the further into the book you get, the more ancillary the characters you thought were central become.  In fact, reading this book felt like idly clicking on hyperlinks on the web and finding yourself pages and pages away from what it was you started out to research.  I suspect that was by design - Egan provides some strong commentary on our technology-obsessed world towards the end of the book.

Also present was a theme Egan likes to return to - our society's obsession with beauty and celebrity a la Look at Me: A Novel.  In one chapter, she describes a has-been PR agent who has taken on a very unusual client.  One of the most unforgettable scenes in the book was the story of how that agent became a has-been. 

The other characters in the book were also compelling - they are seriously flawed.  Once is a kleptomaniac, one eats gold dust, and that is not actually the most interesting thing about either of them.  Egan's ability to develop characters is strongly on display in this book.  She has more characters than usual given the format, and yet they all come alive off the page.

I liked this book, but be warned of two things - first, take notes.  I had to keep track of who's who after the first three chapters.  Second - don't expect a neat and tidy ending.  There isn't one.

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.

Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

My inlaws got me this book last year for Christmas.  Referred to by some as a "prequel" to Atwood's Oryx and Crake, it takes place during the same time period as that book, with overlapping characters.  I did not like this book as much as O+C because I didn't have thrill of discovering Atwood's creepy universe for the first time.  However, I did enjoy reading it and it kept my attention.  As usual with Atwood's books, I forget between reading them how good a writer/poet she is because her plotting is so good too.

The story follows two women who are surviving after a "waterless flood" apocalypse.  One is trapped inside a high end strip club where girls wear genetically altered lizard skins, and the other is barracaded inside a spa where women would come to get genetically created treatments that help them stay young.  Prior to the flood, both women had sought refuge with God's Gardeners, a splinter eco-friendly religion, but each had reason to leave.  Much of the story takes place in flashbacks to the era leading up to the flood, characterized by violence, "Big Brother" police, and genetically altered foods and products. 

I and am hoping that Atwood decides to return to this universe again with future books.  According to one interview I read, she wrote this one because fans wanted to know what happened after the end of O+C, and because that book was told from a male point of view.  She also commented on how environmental change (even to the degree it's worsened in the past few years) has influenced her to revisit this universe as a cautionary tale.  I wonder what other alternate points of view she could explore in a third novel.