My Favorite Books of 2015

Cue trumpets! It time for My Favorite Books of 2015, the fourth in the series of posts where I bring you the best literature that's passed my way during the past year.

A quick count of the books I read in 2015 tells me my total hit 23 this year. Frankly, I find that surprisingly high because this is also the year that I discovered podcasts, and so I expected my audiobook count to drop, but apparently the edict that we leave our home offices and start working back on campus this year has afforded me enough commute time to listen to both.

So which ones did I like the best? Let's start with the ones that garnered

 5 stars

The first two books, The Court-Martial of Paul Revere and A Spy Among Friends were ones that I received as part of the Early Reviewer program on LibraryThing.com.

The Court-Martial of Paul Revere sounds like one of those novels where they rewrite history and make you wonder "what if?," but this book is no novel. It's a non-fiction account of the accusations made against Revere after the ill-fated Penobscot Expedition. Well done history! You can read my full review here.

Not just the title, but all of A Spy Among Friends reads like the best in spy fiction stories, but it, too, is a history book. A suspenseful, enjoyable read. More here.

I listened to All the Light We Cannot See for a book club that I led. It was the first of two books I read this year that included scenes from the occupation of Paris during WWII. This one was my favorite. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who thought so as it won the Pulitzer. Here's my full review.

The last two on the 5-star list were audiobooks--although it's hard to even classify NPR American Chronicles: First Ladies as a book, I'll do it because it's another that I received from LibraryThing.com. First Ladies is a compilation of stories about the women beside the President as told on National Public Radio. Each of them offered something surprising. Those of you who are podcast fans like me would enjoy this listen. Find out more here.

And finally, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. I think it's my favorite book of all time, and this year I decided to give it a read again. It's just as good as I remembered. And one day, when I write my first Broadway musical, it'll be a co-production between me and Hardy.

And now for the runners up at

4.5 stars

Stoner is one of those very subtle book, like the Bridges of Madison County, where not a whole lot happens, but ordinary lives are changed in profound ways that make them not so ordinary anymore. A little more here.

The last two are about birds.

I'm kidding.

Instead they are both gut-wrenching stories--one about WWII and the other about the first interplanetary contact with an alien society.

The Nightingale tells the story of two sisters living in France during the occupation by the Germans. The two women deal with the circumstances in different ways, and it is this contrast that causes you to ask what's right and wrong? Is there such a thing during war? What would I do?

And finally, The Sparrow. This is one of the most unusual books I have ever read and so intriguing. Father Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit priest, has returned to Earth as the sole survivor of a mission to Rakhat, the first planet where intelligent life has been found. The story jumps back and forth in time between the build-up to the mission and the investigation into what happened on Rakhat that turned Father Sandoz into the physical and emotional wreck he is at his return. Equal doses of science fiction, theology, and old-fashioned good writing make this a book not to be missed. Read this one.

And that does it for the winners. Five books clocked in at a very respectable 4 stars. If you want to see a list of those and all the others I read last year--even the stinkers, check them out on LibraryThing.com.

We now return you to your local blog.

Book Review: A Spy Among Friends

Title: A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
Author: Ben Macintyre
Format: Paperback
Reading Dates: 08 Apr 2015 - 15 May 2015
Rating: *****

Before I read this book, if you had asked me to play a word association game and given me "Kim Philby," my immediate response would have been "spy." And that would have covered everything I knew about the man. I didn't even know which side he was on or where he was from. (Don't judge.)

That's what made A Spy Among Friends a real-live page-turner for me. I had to keep reading to find out how Kim Philby conned everyone, even his closest friends. Ben Macintyre has created a riveting read that follows Philby from his beginnings as a Soviet agent until his ultimate fate. (Are you like me and don't know the story? I won't spoil the surprise!)

I think what I found most interesting was how the spying seemed less like a James Bond action-adventure kind of job, and more like a Nick Charles witty repartee kind of job. Macintyre's description of Istanbul after WWI, where all the spies from all the sides seemed to know each other and dined and drank in the same restaurants, was especially vivid. Everybody was seemingly watching everyone else and writing home about it in encrypted letters.

This book really held my attention from beginning to end, which, by the way, includes a fascinating postscript from John LeCarre who worked in British intelligence at the same time as Philby. A fascinating book made all the more tantalizing by the fact that it's all true.

Highly recommended!

Book Review: The Signature of All Things

Title: The Signature of All Things
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Format: Kindle
Reading Dates: 17 Feb 2015 - 18 Mar 2015
Rating: **1/2

Hmmm...This is one of those books with beautiful prose that draws you in, but with a storyline that makes you go "what the heck was that all about?"

It is about a woman with a fine scientific mind who can tell you everything about every kind of moss, but who is never able to attract the romantic attention of a man--that is until she reaches middle age. So that's the first third of the book.

And then she does attract the attentions of a man, but that is just a painfully awkward story that results in a painfully awkward situation. So that's the second third of the book.

And then she takes off on a ship for the other side of the world where she discovers. Well, I'm not sure exactly what she figured out there. And that was the last third of the book.

And then it was over and I said "what the heck was that all about?"

Book Review: Salvador

Title: Salvador
Author: Joan Didion
Format: Audible
Reading Dates: 27 Mar 2015 - 01 Apr 2015
Rating: **1/2

On one hand I kept thinking this book was really dated and would have made much more of an impression on me if I had read it years ago, closer to when it was published. Salvador is filled with a litany of terror perpetrated by one side then another in the bloody Salvadoran civil war. Thirty years ago those horrors were the stuff of every day headlines, and I'm sure I would have wanted this book to help explain--if it could--what it all meant and who were the good guys.

These many years later, the politics don't seem to matter as much anymore, but that litany--the description of one horrific act after another--seems only to prove that inhumanity knows no decade.

Book Review: NPR American Chronicles: First Ladies

Title: NPR American Chronicles: First Ladies
Author: NPR
Format: CD
Reading Dates: 24 Mar 2015 - 26 Mar 2015
Rating: *****

What a great score from Library Thing Early Reviewers! I'm a big fan of NPR and a big fan of history, so this compilation of stories about the First Ladies of the US was a win/win for me. Cokie Roberts acts as the guide through the three discs, providing context for the stories in the introductions. It's one thing to hear these stories by themselves as they were produced over the years, but it's quite another to hear them told one after the other. The eras and situations in which these women found themselves may have all been different, but somehow the strength and dignity of each woman shines through. And oh, Mrs Harding, why have I never heard this story before??

Book Review: Stoner

Title: Stoner
Author: John Williams
Format: Audible
Reading Dates: 31 Jan 2015 - 13 Feb 2015
Rating: *****

I was about halfway through Stoner when I realized how much it reminded me of The Bridges of Madison County. They both are stories that aren't action packed or driven by mystery, but in the end they pack an emotional punch as you realize the enormity of a simple life told in a simple way. 

Stoner is a farm boy who comes to the University of Missouri to learn farming only to be taken with literature and never leaving the college, choosing a teaching career over that of a farmer. He takes few risks in life and almost all of them after careful deliberation. He makes mistakes, but makes no excuses. He gains no great reward or honor during his life, but neither does he end up a derelict. He lives his life with a quiet, slow dignity that carries him through until the end.

Robin Field does an excellent job with the voices on this recording. Spot on.

Recommended!

Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See

Title: All the Light We Cannot See
Author: Anthony Doerr
Format: Audible
Reading Dates: 18 Dec 2014 - 29 Jan 2015
Rating: *****

What more can you write about World War II? Hasn't everything been said already? Apparently not, and good for us, because Anthony Doerr has written a jewel of a book about a blind French girl and a orphaned German boy who struggle to deal with a war not of their choosing in All the Light We Cannot See. Woven into the narrative is the legend of the Sea of Flames, a rare diamond with deadly powers.

Doerr's book explores the ideas of good and bad/dark and light. Is anyone ever just one thing or the other? When faced with impossible choices, what do you choose? How do you face the world falling apart around you when you can't even see the world around you? Are you the brave one or the one who lives to tell the tale?

As the book jumped back and forth in time, I began to think of it as a constant cliffhanger--always leaving me wanting more as it quickly picked up the last story. That made it a true page-turner, although in this case I was listening to an audiobook and finding excuses to keep driving.

Really great book. Highly recommended!

Book Review: The Court-Martial of Paul Revere: A Son of Liberty and America's Forgotten Military Disaster

Title: The Court-Martial of Paul Revere: A Son of Liberty and America's Forgotten Military Disaster
Author: Michael M. Greenburg
Format: Kindle
Reading Dates: 09 Dec 2014 - 18 Jan 2015
Rating: *****

I guess if you grew up taking Massachusetts or Maine History classes in high school, you might have heard of the Penobscot Expedition, but otherwise, it’s probably nothing that hit your radar. In short, it was a disastrous foray of Americans from Massachusetts into the Penobscot Bay in Maine, the purpose of which was to forcibly remove a British garrison that had established itself on the Majabigwaduce peninsula and had begun building a fort.

The Massachusetts men comprised both an army and a navy and the officer in charge of the artillery was none other than American hero and Son of Liberty, Paul Revere. Despite outnumbering the Redcoats, the Expedition ended in an all-out rout of the Americans and the destruction of the entire Expeditionary Fleet. After the troops’ ignominious return to Boston, the blame game began and many fingers were pointing at Paul Revere, accusing him of disobeying orders, being generally lazy, and being a coward.

Author Michael M. Greenburg has created an altogether readable book on the entire affair beginning with Revere’s famous ride, its aftermath, his part in the Penobscot Expedition, and the court-martial that followed. The book is obviously well-researched but it doesn’t end up reading like a textbook. Instead, it is a gripping account of the doomed siege and its players and paints Revere in a different light than what you might have been brought up to believe.

I enjoyed Revere's story, but I also liked this book because it’s been a long time since I’ve read any history on the Revolutionary War. Greenburg does a really fine job in describing the general events that led to war and then placing the particulars of the Penobscot Expedition in context.

If I could change one thing about this book, I wish there was a good map of the area around Majabigwaduce. Greenburg includes some hand-drawn maps contemporary with the Expedition, but a larger, more readable map would have helped me better place the action he describes.

A well-done history book! Highly recommended!

My Favorite Books of 2014

We are already well into February and I realize that most of you have not been able to sleep because you have been waiting for My Favorite Books of 2014 post. Blame Captain America. He has been home a lot lately and I have been entertaining him instead of writing blog posts.

I notice as I look through my records that I didn't review a whole bunch of books toward the end of the year. Blame Captain America for that, too. I don't know why, but I blame him for most things, so he won't notice one more.

The past several years I set a goal for myself to read so many books and usually felt so rushed to do it that I got kind of crazy at the end of the year. In 2014 I told myself to slow down and read some long books. That was a good idea, because I read some great ones. Interestingly, I ended up reading twenty books in 2014 just as I did in 2013. That has everything to do with the boss saying we could no longer work from home and had to come back into the office. Thank you, Audible, for helping me keep my sanity.

So here are my top books of 2014. As always, these are books I read in 2014, not necessarily published in 2014.

5-Star Books

Endurance by Alfred Lansing

 

I loved this book and can't believe that it has been around since the 1950s and I had never heard of it. It has everything a great audiobook should have--an epic story and a wonderful narrator. I couldn't imagine when I started the book how exciting it would be. I expected a rather dry, scientific tome with lots of snow and ice and cold, and it was anything but (well, there was a lot of snow and ice but the cold didn't seem to bother them as much as it would bother me).

As Shackleton and his troop try to get back to civilization after being stranded on a expedition to the South Pole, they faced seemingly impossible odds. Just when I would think that things couldn't get any worse, they would. I would catch myself saying out loud in my car, "Oh my God!" and a few minutes later, "Oh my God!" And yet despite each setback, they soldiered on. If you're looking for one audiobook to get with your next credit, this should be it.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

This is a small jewel. As an audiobook it's only 6 hours long, but it packs a lot of emotion into those few hours. Christopher, the book's narrator, is an autistic boy trying to find out who killed his neighbor's dog, Wellington. As he conducts his investigation, the more he finds out, the more he finds his whole world unraveling. A must-listen!

Roots by Alex Haley

I've done a full review on this one here, but suffice it to say it's as good as I remember the TV show being. And that's good!

Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program in exchange for a review which you can read here. It is a quirky little book that taught me a bit about medicine back in the day. Neat read!

4.5-Star Books

A Christmas Carol by Tim Curry

I've had this one in my library for a couple of years, but decided I finally needed to listen to it. I've seen several TV and movie adaptations of the book, but I don't believe I've ever read it before ths. Tim Curry is amazing as a narrator. Listening to this book was a great way to wrap Christmas presents!

One of my favorite books of all times is Tess of the D'Urbevilles. I like it for the same reason I like Everything I Never Told You--because one decision, one circumstance causes a chain reaction that lasts for years, and you're left playing the "what if that never happened" game in your head for a long time.

I received this book as part of the Ford Audiobook Club. Soon after it was chosen by the
Amazon editors as the Best Book of 2014. It's easy to see why. I thought the characters were really well drawn and believable. You know from the first sentence that Lydia is dead, and yet as the book progressed I kept hoping that something would break that chain reaction--but it had started long before Lydia was born. Great narrator, too!

Young girls living through the horrors of World War II seems to be a popular theme in books these days (I'm looking at you, All the Light We Cannot See), and The Book Thief shines as one of the best. You can read my full review here.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Everyone was reading The Goldfinch, especially after it won the Pulitzer. It still makes me dizzy to think about. You can read my full review here.

We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen

I started the year off with We, the Drowned and it set a high bar for all the books that followed. I was looking to read an epic, and I got it. You can read my full review here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So there you have it. Nine books that got either 4.5 or 5 stars this year. There were others that came close with just 4 stars and some that didn't come close at all. You can check out the full list on LibraryThing.com.

Book Review: Roots

Title: Roots
Author: Alex Haley
Format: Audible
Reading Dates: 30 Apr 2014 - 24 Aug 2014
Rating: *****

I am a saver, and I try to capture everything. I’ve got boxes and boxes of old letters and my notes from college. (Have fun at my estate sale, everyone! The treasure you’ve been waiting for!) I bought an extra hard drive to save all of our pictures. I’ve started digitizing all my old home movies. And I like to save TV shows, too.  It’s funny for me to think that my kids have always lived when it’s possible to record what’s on TV. I still have tapes from their childhood in a drawer somewhere with old shows on them sitting next to VCR to play them (More treasures!). These days changes in technology have made it so easy to record TV—click a single button on your phone(!) to record a show—that you can imagine why the To Watch list on my DVR is perpetually growing.

But there was a time, young friends (and all my old friends here can attest to it), when the only way to see a program was to be sitting in front of your TV when one of the three networks played it the one time they would ever play it. If you missed it, you missed it. And there wasn’t a Wikipedia or an IMDB to go to the next day to read the episode recap. If you wanted to see a show, you scheduled your life around it.

So it was in the summer of 1977 when Roots, the mini-series aired. You knew it was an event because everyone I knew—without exception—made certain they were in front of their TV while it was on. Meetings got rescheduled and lessons postponed so we could all watch.

It was that big of a deal.

The times probably had something to do with it. I was sixteen that year. I was a baby when the Civil Rights marches were happening and only a few years older during the horrors of 1968. Growing up in an all-white town, those events weren’t something that really seemed to affect me that much. We were a patriotic crowd. During the bi-centennial the year before we ate from bi-centennial plates with bi-centennial forks that we bought with our bi-centennial quarters. America was the grandest place on earth! Slavery was a word I had learned in school, but it was a word I knew in order to pass a history test, nothing I had really thought about deeply.

Roots was the first time the truths of slavery became real to me—the fetid horror of the slave ships, the ever-present brutality, the rending of families. I was living in the era of women’s liberation when the mantra we girls were cutting our milk teeth on was that we could be anything we wanted to be, and that message was brought into stark contrast by the total lack of control a slave had over her life and her body was stunning.

The last several years I’ve been in a race to read as many books as I can in 365 days, but this year I decided was going to be the year of the long books. I wanted to read epics that I had skipped previously because they simply would take too long to read. I had purchased Roots from Audible.com much earlier, but now it was time to pull it off the virtual shelf and give it a listen.

Simply put, Roots is a great audiobook. Tremendous story by a really terrific narrator. His voices were so right for each of the characters that sometimes I felt like I was listening to a play instead of a book. I still had flashes of the story from nearly 40 years before rolling around my head and I was surprised at how much I did remember—Kunta’s horrific sail across the Atlantic (and Ed Asner’s bad wig), Kizzy’s separation from her family, and of course Chicken George, but reading the book brought new details and insights that I had never known or forgotten, especially the details of Kunta’s life in Africa before he was stolen away.

One of the parts I do remember was at the end when Alex Haley went to Africa. I wondered how it would be handled in the book and his whole explanation of how he fit into the story and how he had come to write the story was any genealogist’s dream—true satisfaction with a healthy dose of humility as you realize all those stories—real lives and heartaches—that had come before you.

If you want to listen to a good book that will entertain you and make you think all at the same time, download Roots and start listening. You won’t be disappointed.

Book Review: The Goldfinch

Title: The Goldfinch
Author: Donna Tartt
Format: Kindle
Reading Dates: 14 Jul 2014 - 23 Aug 2014
Rating: ****1/2

There’s this weird thing that happened to me when I read The Goldfinch, and I don’t know how much I’m supposed to tell about the beginning of the book, so, let’s try this. There is this part near the start when the protagonist, Theo Decker, as a young boy, has a chance encounter with an old man. The old man starts to mumble away about long ago times and asks whether Theo remembers them. Then the old man says something about knowing the boy’s mother when she was young.

So immediately I started thinking that this book was going to be some kind of fantasy novel with perhaps time travel or something similarly magical involved. Theo goes away from this unexpected meeting and the rest of the novel starts. Theo has to deal with some trauma early, but no magic appears. I was reading quickly through that part of the book because I knew the magic part had to start happening soon after. Then the next big thing happened and but that didn’t bring magic either. I was literally halfway through the book when I realized that there’s no magic happening here. It was all going to be real. (Although somewhere deep down inside me even at the very end I kept waiting for at least one of the other characters in the book to finally admit s/he was a witch/warlock or a werewolf or a vampire or something other than a regular person.)

The hard part about reviewing this book is that it never met my expectation of what it was going to be and so there was this bit of me that was disappointed even though this was a really good book. It was one of those books that I wanted to grab whenever I could because I couldn’t wait to read more. The story was well-drawn and suspenseful and the characters complex and dimensional.

But the thing that was most striking about the book was the literary flair that xxx brought to the table. Every sentence was jam-packed with insights, similes and metaphors that I found myself reading over and over again because they were so good. And when I say jam-packed, I mean jam-packed. Every sentence. Every paragraph. If I had highlighted all the ones I wanted to remember later, most of the book would have been bright yellow. It was as if Tartt turned on the firehose in the first chapter and didn’t turn it off until the last sentence.

So I recommend this book—entertaining story, great writing—with only one caveat. If you’re looking for magicians or time travel, this isn’t that book.

Book Review: Dr. Mütter's Marvels

Title: Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine
Author: Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
Format: Paperback
Reading Dates: 04 Sep 2014 - 28 Sep 2014
Rating: *****

Watch out Erik Larson, you've got some serious competition in Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz. I thoroughly enjoyed her new book, Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine, an excellent example of narrative non-fiction.

Although well-known in his time, I had never heard of Dr Mütter before reading this book. Aptowicz's story, however, made him jump off the pages. She followed the familiar pattern of short chapters with punchy endings that make you want to jump to the next chapter as quickly as possible. While many others have tried this formula and can make it seem tiring, Aptowicz really nailed it. The cliffhangers never seemed contrived and really did move the story along.

I'm not sure I would characterize this story as one of "intrigue," but "innovation" definitely! And though mentioned briefly at the beginning, the "Marvels" of the title aren't really discussed until the end, but I enjoyed Aptowicz's narrative in her acknowledgements as she described how she learned about Mütter and his marvels. Now I think I'd like to see them, too--and that's how you know you've found a really good author. I'm looking forward to more, Ms Aptowicz!

Book Review: We, the Drowned

Title: We, the Drowned
Author: Carsten Jensen
Format: Kindle
Reading Dates: 1 Apr 2014 - 13 Jul 2014
Rating: ****1/2

I have decided that 2014 is not going to be the year that I try to get twenty books off my "to-read" list. It's going to be the year that I read long books. We, the Drowned is the first of my epics, and it is a dandy.

About a year ago I was sequestered in a hotel somewhere in LA waiting for Brian to audition for The Voice. There was a lot of down time and a lot of together time with Brian and at one point he said that he was ready to read an epic. Coincidentally, We, the Drowned was the next day's Kindle Daily Deal and it was described as a story "spanning over a hundred years," so I bought it for both of us on just that recommendation alone. It took me 10 months to start it; I shouldn't have waited so long.

The book is the story of the Danish town of Marstal and its people, many of them sailors whose livelihood depends on the sea. But the sea is fickle and many never return. The story begins in 1848 as Denmark and Germany go to war and for the next century follows the fortunes of men who board the large ships that leave Marstal and the women left behind.

The narrator of the book uses the pronoun we to tell the story of these men. At first I found that distracting but as the stories rolled on I began to see the point and by the end of the book I loved that Jensen used that technique. How else does a town refer to itself?

This book really grew on me. I had trouble finding the rhythm of the book at the beginning and then about a third of the way through I found myself wishing for free time with my Kindle so I could read some more. When I finished I went back and reread the beginning (that never happens) and I appreciated it so much more than on my initial reading.

Really great book! Highly recommended!

Book Review: The Ghost Map

Title: The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
Author: Steven Johnson
Format: Audible
Reading Dates: 6 Apr 2014 - 28 Apr 2014
Rating: ***1/2

I wanted this book to be a history book and it started out that way. The Ghost Map tells the tale of the Cholera Epidemic of 1854 and is a fascinating story of science and sleuth. But then author Steven Johnson kept going down these paths--paths of excruciating detail about Victorian London and how crowded it was and how much it stunk and how filthy it was. I wondered all the synonyms that Johnson used for excrement. (You'd be amazed!) It all seemed too much. I kept wanting it to get back to the story's mystery and how it was solved.

And then, when I reached the end, I realized that that WAS the story--the birth of the modern city and all the perils that it entailed and how we are still learning how to live in large, metropolitan areas together as we continue to move from rural areas. I guess next time I need to pay more attention to the sub-title.

The last chapter was really an informative one as Johnson explains the factors that affect modern urbanization and whether, in his opinion, we can survive them. I listened to this book on Audible, and now I wish I had that last chapter in print, so I could take notes. He's got some really good stuff in there. And I'd like to go back and review some of those very detailed sections that I thought were dragging the story and turned out to be the data points to Johnson's main thesis.

All in all an interesting book--I learned something both about cholera and about cities. Recommended.

Book Review: Tender is the Night

 

Title: Tender is the Night
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Format: Audible, Kindle
Reading Dates: 1 Feb 2014 - 4 Apr 2014
Rating: **1/2

I hate it when I don't "get" classics. I read them. I understand the words, but I don't "get" them.

That's the way I felt with Tender is the Night.

The story starts in post-war France with Dick and Nicole Diver playing the Don and Betty roles from Mad Men. Terribly sophisticated, the toast of the town, but with a past. At a certain point there is "an episode" and the story then flashes back for awhile to explain how Dick and Nicole had arrived at that point in time. Without giving away too much of the story, it appears that Dick had rescued Nicole from a traumatic situation.

The present day story then continues as the Diver's marriage crumbles and Dick himself needs rescuing, but it's not to be. Nicole abandons him. (Well, so much for not giving away too much of the story.)

As I read this story I kept going back to the episode at the end of the first of the three parts. I don't understand how this incident caused Nicole to relapse. It seemed so random. The same thing is true of Dick's self-destruction in the last third of the book. What was that all about? You were so perfect, you two! Get over yourselves.

My verdict: I think I need more sympathy for people, but I really didn't like this book much at all.

 

Book Review: The Book Thief

Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Format: Audible
Reading Dates: 31 Dec 2013 - 31 Jan 2014
Rating: ****1/2

First and foremost, big props to the narrator of this audiobook, Allan Corduner, whose performance was right on target with all the voices and accents. I bumped up my rating of the book just for that. It was one of those audiobooks with a combination of compelling story and riveting narration that makes you want to get in your car and drive and drive just so you can listen some more.

Narrated by Death himself, The Book Thief tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a young girl living in Nazi Germany with her foster family and a hidden Jew in the basement during the early years of World War II. Liesel is obsessed with reading and with books, which sometimes seem to be the only comfort in a crazy world. She reads them. She writes them. She steals them. She gifts them. She receives them.

As I read this book, I couldn't quit thinking about Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi, which I read many years ago. Both are stories of what life was like for the every day German during the war--not the soldier, not the Nazi, but the regular guy who just wants life to be normal. Initially for Liesel her life is not much different than usual, but when her family takes in a dispossessed Jew who has a backstory with her family, that all changes.

When I finished listening to the last of the book, I wanted things to end a little tidier, a little happier, but why should books be different from real life? This is a really great audiobook and one I highly recommend!

Book Review: A Breast Cancer Alphabet

Title: A Breast Cancer Alphabet
Author: Madhulika Sikka
Format: Paperback
Reading Dates: 15-21 Jan 2014
Rating: ***1/2

I'm trying to figure out how I got this book. I mean I know I got it from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, but I don't remember selecting it and it's not normally the kind of book I'd select. That being said, I decided to dive in anyway.

Madhulika Sikka is an editor for NPR News who chronicles her experiences with breast cancer in The Breast Cancer Alphabet. It's not your normal chronicle however. The book is comprised of 26 very small chapters, each a couple of pages long--one for each letter of the alphabet. All the way from "A is for Anxiety" to "Z is for ZZZs." Her intended audience are those women newly diagnosed with breast cancer who are trying to figure out how the hell they just ended up in Cancerland, that "strange land of surgeries, and drugs and side effects, and pain and anxiety, and you didn't even have a minute to prepare for it."

Throughout the book you follow Sikka as she chronicles how she learned to deal with her body, her family, her doctors and her pain. Since each chapter is so small, it's easy to get through them quickly. Their brevity also means that they aren't deep, soul-searching kinds of chapters, if that's what you're looking for, but you definitely get a sense of Sikka's initial disorientation and her life during treatment, and the postscript follows her out the other side.

Sikka positions her book is as a counter to the idea of the pink-powered warrior that dominates much of the conversation around breast cancer. She argues that she's not a warrior, she's just a woman dealing with a terrible disease, and she counsels her readers that Cancerland is not "a world of fuzzy pink gauze, soft teddy bears, and garlands of ribbons" but a world of indignities that it is "okay to feel indignant about."

As I read the book I kept mentally comparing it to The Emperor of All Maladies, which is one of the best non-fiction books that I've read, a real must-read history of the disease, the research behind it, and the attempts to eradicate it. While A Breast Cancer Alphabet doesn't position itself as that sort of book, it gets lost in deciding what kind of book it wants to be--a memoir or a self-help book. Maybe it's because I read the book from the standpoint of a healthy woman (knock on wood), but I found the memoir parts more gripping and wish she had approached the subject solely from that angle.

Book Review: Assassination Vacation

Title: Assassination Vacation
Author: Sarah Vowell
Format: Kindle
Reading Dates: 31 Dec 2013 - 05 Jan 2014
Rating: ****

Assassination Vacation is another one of those jewels I picked up on a Kindle Daily Deal. I jumped on the offer because I so enjoyed Unfamiliar Fishes a couple of years ago.

I think I enjoyed both of Sarah Vowell's books because I think she might be my twin. My much younger, quite a bit funnier twin that stops to read all the historical markers wherever she goes like me. She's the one who does all the cool things I always wanted to do like write great non-fiction books that bring to light details about historic events that you might not even know about and she gets to travel to cool places to do it. And she was born in Oklahoma!

In Assassination Vacation, Vowell compiles a travelogue describing places she's visited associated with three Presidential murders--Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. Now think about it--when's the last time you read a good book on the McKinley assassination? That's just one good reason you should read this book. (And if you just asked yourself "Did we really have a President McKinley?" that's another.)

Accompanying her on her jaunts through museums and graveyards are her sister and especially lovable nephew. Her stories about them bring a personal touch to the book as do her stories about her family history. The way she weaves the stories of her travels, her family, her politics, and the Presidents makes for a cant-put-it-down book, evidenced by the fact that I finished it in 5 days--way shorter than my usual several months average.

If you're looking to learn interesting stuff told in a funny way, you need to read this book. Highly recommended!

My Favorite Books of 2013

It's awards season which means it's time for my 2nd annual Favorite Books of the Year list. I know how anxiously some of you wait for this post each year, and I don't want to keep you in suspense any longer, because I know there is one question on everyone's mind:

What's Stephanie wearing?

Well, wait no longer, my faithful fans, because the answer is an OU sweatshirt and bejeweled jeans. (They are my fanciest! This outfit comprises nearly my entire winter wardrobe, by the way, so you will find me in it quite regularly.)

 A message from our accountants, Ernst and Julio:
We have counted the ballots in this year's list carefully and certify that all the books included therein were read by Stephanie in 2013, though they were not all written in 2013.

And now that that's out of the way, let's get to the books!

This was a banner year for good books. Last year you may recall only two books earned the coveted 5-star ranking, but this year the number doubled. Coming in at the top were The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind--and Changed the History of Free Speech in America, Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, and Beautiful Ruins.

Note to self: If you ever decide to write a non-fiction book, be sure to pick the longest title you can, because that is obviously the sign of a winner.

Interesting fact #1- Beautiful Ruins was the first book I read in 2013 and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was the last. All you authors who want to end up on next year's list, remember that when picking a publication date.

I was very lax about writing up my reviews toward the end of the year, so I haven't said much about Billy Lynn, but it was interesting on several levels. It takes place during the 2004 Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving game halftime show. I happened to be at that show and interesting fact #2, my-very-famous-brother produced the show. I kept waiting for his character to appear, but it didn't. (Which is probably a good thing.) On a deeper level it was about the lip service Americans pay to war and warriors while having no idea of what actually happens during war and to its soldiers. And on yet another level it is about how slimy some Texans can be. And, trust me, it's pretty darn slimy.

Beautiful Ruins is also fascinating on several levels. You can read more here if you like, but interesting fact #3 I've added it to my all-time favorite list. And it's definitely my favorite of all the above.

Three books tied at 4 1/2 stars. They were A Prayer for Owen Meany, which was a 27-hour marathon via Audible.com, but well worth the listen (great narration!), The Handmaid's Tale, an icky subject, but another Audible winner combining the great writing of Margaret Atwood and pitch-perfect narration by Clare Danes, and The Interestings, which along with The Great Dissent and Brave Genius, I picked up for free in the LibraryThing.com Early Reviewer program. (Do this!)

And finally earning a very respectable 4-star rating was Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II. I picked this book up as an Audible.com Daily Deal and got way more than my money's worth. It tells the story of a plane full of site-seeing military folks who crash into a hidden valley in New Guinea and come in contact with an unknown, secluded civilization who haven't even invented the wheel yet. What I found most interesting about this story is that the author, who also doubles as the narrator, was able to go to the valley and interview natives who were children at the time to ask them to tell the story from their own point of view. Imagine being able to communicate with someone whose father was shaking a spear at an airplane and asking what they were all thinking. Amazing!

And there you have it. If you want to see all the books I read last year, including the real clunkers, check out the complete list on LibraryThing.com. Let me know below what your favorite books were this year and here's to happy reading in 2014!

Book Review: Brave Genius

Title: Brave Genius
Author: Sean B Carroll
Format: Hardback
Reading Dates: Aug 12, 2013 - Sep 24, 2013
Rating: *****

Wow! What a fascinating book!

This is a dual biography of Albert Camus and Jacques Monod, both Nobel prizewinners--Camus for literature and Monod for physiology--but it's much more than a simple biography. It's a history book, a philosophy book, a science book just to name some of its constituent parts.

Author Sean B Carroll does a terrific job in each of those areas. We've all read WWII history, but the special emphasis in Brave Genius on occupied France was especially enlightening for this late baby boomer. I was reminded of Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise as I read the account of the Germans taking Paris. But whereas Nemirovsky takes you out into the French countryside when the Germans arrive, Carroll describes what happens when most people trickled back into Paris and had to figure out how to live with their new reality. Camus and Monod decided to become active members of the French resistance while still pursuing their occupations of writing and researching. They were both unbelievably brave and incredibly resourceful during the entire affair.

Carroll does a splendid job not just with describing their lives, but explaining the philosophy behind Camus' works and the science behind Monod's experiments, making both equally accessible to the layperson. The science reminded me of a little of Siddhartha Mukherjee's "The Emperor of All Maladies," and truth be told Mukherjee's analogies were probably a little easier to follow, nevertheless, I found myself routing for Monod and his labmates as they untangled the web of how genes work.

Oh, and did I mention the story about Monod's spiriting scientists out of Hungary after the Uprising or how Camus handled the French-Algerian Crisis? Yeah, all that's in there, too.

It takes a skillful author to be able to weave all these threads into a coherent whole, but Carroll is more than up to the task.

Great book! Highly recommended!