Review: Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession by Apostolos Doxiadis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A new friend at work recommended this book to me, and it was one of those things where you appreciate new book friends who expose you to books you wouldn't otherwise know anything about.

This novel was close to my heart in that it was about a mathematician who spent his life chasing an elusive proof of a difficult problem. The story is told by his nephew, who also pursues mathematics. I really liked the storyline itself as well as the glimpses of math. There is a pivotal plot element based on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which I spent several courses at school studying, so that was fun, too.

My only complaint was that the writing and the character development weren't great. And I think you really had to be a math person to read this That said, I'm glad I gave it a try!



View all my reviews

Review: Crow Lake

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Terry recommended this book to me years ago and I just go around to reading it. It was wonderfully written - very sad but great.

The story follows Kate Morrison and her two older brothers (Luke and Matt) and younger sister Bo. Growing up in Ontario, her parents are tragically killed when she is a child. Her older brothers sacrifice their own futures to keep the family together and the book follows the children into adulthood.

The writing in this book was superb. I could feel what the characters were feeling (heartbreak, yearning, hope) and see their surroundings. The characters were very likable, although imperfect, and the epiphany the protagonist goes through towards the end is one of the most striking I can remember reading recently.

Definitely recommend this book and look forward to reading another by the same author.



View all my reviews

Review: The Middlesteins

The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was a really, really weird book. Meredith recommended it to me.

The story is about a woman who is obese. When her husband leaves her right as she's facing a medical emergency, there are ramifications for the entire family. The story jumps around in time, tracking her weight gain from when she is a child, through her career as a successful lawyer, through becoming a mother, and then as a grandmother. The story is told through many different perspectives, including her daughter-in-law, her children, her boyfriend, and even a unique chapter representing a group of couples that she and her husband knew socially for years through the synagogue. Some people try to help her lose weight, others enable her to continue gaining weight, and others just find her disgusting.

I thought the writing was really good in this book - simple and direct, but created moods and characters quickly and eloquently. All the characters were very well-developed, and the setting was too. Glad I read it.





View all my reviews

Review: Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital

Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital by Eric Manheimer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I don't remember what list I originally found this on, but I thought it would be like reading the New York Times' "Well" column - clever and interesting anecdotes about a doctor at a large city hospital with quirky characters.

Not even close.

Manheimer is the Medical Director at Bellevue hospital, which is the oldest public hospital in the country, and yes, the one that has the psych ward featured on Law and Order. The stories he tells are much more complex politically and socially than I expected; they are less than about the medicine. There are illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, families with generations of obesity, convicts in Rikers Island, and even the author himself. (Manheimer suffered from throat cancer.) He and his wife have a house in Mexico and an affinity to Central America - and he uses that expertise with many of the patients who are Latino.

The book was significantly longer and more complex than I expected, but I really liked it.



View all my reviews

Review: Once We Were Brothers

Once We Were Brothers by Ronald H. Balson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I had very mixed feelings about this book that Jo recommended.

It was billed as a "legal thriller", and opens in the present time when a senior citizens accuses a prominent civic leader and philanthropist of being a Nazi war criminal. The story is told in the present time, but large sections of it are flashbacks to Poland in the 1940's, as the senior citizen is telling his lawyer the story. It is, like many stories about the Holocaust, both a very individual story as well as that of a whole nation. Jews in Poland begin the war optimistic, then end up in some of the worst conditions known to humankind.

This book read as if it were a YA book. If it is designed to be a pedantic piece of historical fiction, then it did a good job. But as a modern novel, or even a thriller, its characters were not well-developed and the plot was pretty transparent. Something like [b:The Book Thief|19063|The Book Thief|Markus Zusak|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1390053681s/19063.jpg|878368] was a YA book but so uniquely written that it had wide appeal. This book was not that - I was caught up in the story (at least the story of the war) but not the writing or the book itself.

As an aside, it was a good reminder of the importance of continuing to remember what happened during the Holocaust.



View all my reviews

Review: February

February by Lisa Moore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Found this book in the "Globe and Mail" list a few years ago and finally got around to requesting it from the library. It was very sad but I'm glad I read it.

The story is about a woman who loses her husband when an industrial rig sinks. She has several young children, who she raises on her own. The book toggled between current day, where one of her sons finds out he is about to become a father, and the months around when she lost her husband. The characters were very well-developed, and while the story was tragic (and the description of the drowning devastating), I enjoyed reading it. The main character was in particular was incredibly complex - she does a lot of reflection on what her life could have been or what may have happened, and accepting that she did the best she could.

I'd definitely read something else by Lisa Moore in the future.



View all my reviews

Review: Ordinary Grace

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Jo recommended this book to me. I am not sure - I think maybe the first chapter had been excerpted somewhere because it was eerily familiar. Either way, I liked it.

The story is about a minister's family, told from the point of view of 13-year-old Frank. He has an older sister and a younger brother, and the story unrolls over a summer. At the beginning of the summer, a young boy is killed and Frank goes with his father to learn more of the details. Throughout the summer, there are more people killed and the small community struggles with grief, racism, and accusation.

What I liked most about this book was that it was a coming-of-age story more than it was a mystery. Both Frank and his younger brother are shocked by the events of this summer and grown into young men. The story was really well-written, the characters sympathetic, and the story interesting.




View all my reviews

Review: The Shoemaker's Wife

The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



My mom and sister both recommended this book, and for the most part, I really liked it.

It starts in Italy in the early 20th century, with two young people who meet under sad circumstances. Ciro is effectively an orphan, sent to live in a convent, who gets a job digging the grave of a child who has just died. That chid is the youngest sister of Enza, a large family's eldest daughter. Through various turns of plot, both CIro and Enza end up in America many years later, where they cross paths again, a few times, but often with bad timing in other relationships.

The first two-thirds of this book was great - I loved reading about their small towns in the mountains of Italy, their immigrations to the US, and their first few years getting settled and established in America during the 1930's and 1940's. He becomes apprenticed to a shoemaker, while she tries to find work as a seamstress. Ultimately they do end up together, which seems inevitable, but it is still fun to read about how that happens.

Where the book disappointed me was the ending. I found it to be too neat, too many loose ends all tied up. Not that everyone lives happily ever after (they don't) but a few coincidences are too coincidental at the end, and time speeds up too quickly. I'd read something else by Trigiani, because she really has that novelist's ability to transport her reader, but hope for a more well-developed conclusion.



View all my reviews

Review: On Chesil Beach

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Meh. This book was ok, not that good. I enjoyed McEwan's longer, more complex books much more.

This book mostly takes place all in one night - the wedding night of Edward and Florence. They are a refined, repressed young couple who have a proper courtship, a proper wedding, and are facing their wedding night with different sorts of panic. Florence, dreading the act, and Edward, not being able to wait for the act.

This is a short book, maybe 200 small pages, but McEwan fits a lot of character development into those pages. I did enjoy hearing about the characters' backgrounds and their courtship. The tension he builds during their wedding night dinner was very well-crafted. But after that I was kind of bored - their is a haphazard attempt at coupling, followed by a conflict, followed by a long multi-year denouement of the after-effects.

All in all, kind of a sleepy book.



View all my reviews

Review: Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell

Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really enjoyed this book. Having just started a new job in Kendall Square, it was really fun to be reading a book about innovation and in many ways that is what this book was about.

The title and subtitle of the book made it seem like it would be a hacker-like story, kind of like [b:The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage|18154|The Cuckoo's Egg Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage|Clifford Stoll|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1385177918s/18154.jpg|19611]. And there definitely were parts that were exciting and had the characteristics of a thriller like that. But the book was really two stories - one was about the people who figured out loopholes in the phone system to make free calls, the other was about the phone company itself and how it developed.

See, to understand the hacking, you really have to understand the entire system and Lapsley did a great job interweaving the story from Alexander Graham Bell to the breakup of the local phone companies decades later with that of the hackers. Each time the phone company changed their technology to expand or offer new services, the hackers found new loopholes, some by technology and some by social engineering.

This book is definitely one of my recent favorites - but really only suitable if you are a geek. You'll appreciate Lapsley's writing style which is somewhat informal and irreverent, as well as the early hacker pioneers who he profiles very closely.



View all my reviews

Review: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really liked this book! I bought it at the end of my hiatus between jobs and it was the first book that I read on my "T" commute.

This is a memoir - part "Eat Pray Love" and part "A Walk in the Woods", It follows Cheryl as she hikes the Pacific Crest Trail (think Appalachian Trail but less well-traveled) alone, as a single woman. Through the book, she tells the story of her childhood, failed first marriage, descent into drug abuse, and circumstances that led her to decide to do the hike.

Also chronicled is the real-time experience of hiking - the blisters, the companions, the frustrations, the gear, the weather, the solitude, the miscalculations of difficulty and finances (and boot size), and the challenge of it all. As someone who has camped and hiked a handful of weekends, I was amazed that she took this 1,000 mile hike on.

This book really held my attention. I was fascinated by her stories, both the past and the current.

I'll be very interested to see how Reese Witherspoon captures her in the movie adaptation.



View all my reviews

Review: The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels

The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by Michael D. Watkins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Meh.

I start a new job tomorrow (YAY) and thought this would be good preparation to get back into the work mindset and get started on the right foot.

Some of the book was interesting - it categorized different types of new opportunities (Startup, Turnaround, Accelerating growth, Realignment, Sustaining). Subsequent chapters on setting goals and managing a team and other dimensions referred back to this STARS model.

There were some helpful tips on creating a learning plan, finding different types of people in the organization to help, and getting some quick wins in an area important to your manager. For me the best part was a short assessment than helped me see where some of my blind spots are (finance). I did appreciate the assessments and worksheets scattered throughout the book.

But overall I didn't think anything in the book was rocket science...I would have gotten the same value out of a short article.



View all my reviews

Review: The Racketeer

The Racketeer by John Grisham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Once again John Grisham does not disappoint. I was part way through [b:Life After Life|15790842|Life After Life|Kate Atkinson|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1358173808s/15790842.jpg|21443207], hating it, and on vacation...so I chucked it for this and ended up much happier.

The story starts with a federal judge being murdered. An inmate in a white collar prison claims to know the identity of the killer and strikes a deal to provide that information to the feds in exchange for his freedom. The story is definitely not as straightforward as that, but that's at least a starting point.

The book is a fun romp - there's Witness Protection, a love story, a main character similar to [a:Nelson DeMille|1238|Nelson DeMille|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1377030719p2/1238.jpg]'s John Corey, a twisty plot, and about 40 pages where I was completely lost as to what was going on. I flipped back a bunch of pages, reread, was still lost, and soldiered on. The payoff at the end was worth it.

My only criticism was a few paragraphs in a few places where Grisham got on his soapbox around prison reform and legal system reform. But I'll allow him that...as long as he keeps writing books that are fun to read.



View all my reviews

Review: The Innocents

The Innocents by Francesca Segal

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Confession: I didn't know this book was a modern retelling of [b:The Age of Innocence|53835|The Age of Innocence|Edith Wharton|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388248423s/53835.jpg|1959512] by Edith Wharton, and truth be told I've never read that anyway. And I almost didn't read this at all - Meredith recommended it but the story sounded trite. In a close-knit Jewish community in London, a young couple who has been together for years gets engaged, then the woman's promiscuous cousin comes to town and shakes things up.

But I am glad I decided to read it anyway - because it was well-written, subtle, and nuanced. While the high-level story isn't surprising, it's the journey of this book (vs the destination) that is so special. I enjoyed reading about the Jewish community in another country - both familiar and foreign. I also enjoyed following the plot. The characters were surprisingly well-developed and the story was compelling.

It also piqued my curiosity to read Wharton....



View all my reviews

Review: Still Life with Bread Crumbs

Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Anna Quindlen is definitively one of my very favorite authors. I particularly liked her first book, [b:Object Lessons|77478|Object Lessons|Anna Quindlen|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1389148994s/77478.jpg|1554085], and this is the next book of hers that I think even approaches that one in terms of quality, but I find all of her work so pleasant to read. When I read her books and essays I can really get lost in the worlds and families she creates and describes.

This book was lovely - reminded me of [b:Plainsong|77156|Plainsong|Kent Haruf|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388200586s/77156.jpg|1402373] in its being a simple story about people in a small town. A well-known artist leaves NYC for a small cottage in the country, and establishes a new life there. The characters are well-developed and likable, the story is nice to follow. It's the kind of book you can enjoy, and recommend to your mother, and to your grandmother.

I was happy to see Quindlen return to a simple story and focus on the storytelling and the characters. Some of her more recent books (like [b:Black and Blue|5157|Black and Blue|Anna Quindlen|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388459940s/5157.jpg|2349447] and [b:One True Thing|176839|One True Thing|Anna Quindlen|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320401814s/176839.jpg|1445239]) were so focused on a particular political topic or Big Theme that her value as a good writer got lost for me.



View all my reviews