Some Quick Reviews

   I have let myself fall behind on the book reviews, so here are some short ones to catch up a bit.

1. The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield (Rating 5/5). This is an amazing book about an out of work preacher's family in 1956 Arkansas. Financial problems force them to move in with his in-laws. Great characters and story make this feel like a worthy successor to "The Help". The little girl named Swan Lake (yes, really) has much of the feel of Scout from "To Kill A Mockingbird". One of the best of the year. My friend Lesley wrote a great review that led me to read this. You can check out her review here.

2. In One Person by John Irving (Rating 3/5). The newest novel by one of my favorite authors was a disappointment. I was intrigued by the plot, but could not get interested in the characters. This is the story of a bisexual man's life, it is especially heartbreaking during the AIDS breakout of the 1980s. Irving's writing is excellent as usual, but several themes from previous books are repeated here.

3. The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont (Rating 3/5). A fun thriller set during World War II featuring a team of real life science fiction writers (including Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague deCamp, and L. Ron Hubbard) on a military mission that involves the secret history of Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison, an imminent Nazi threat, and more. The author did a lot of research and it was a good read, but then the ending didn't quite hold up for me.

4. The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan (Rating (2/5). Well reviewed fiction about a young woman among a group of people in a lifeboat after their ship is sunk in the Atlantic in 1914. Intriguing at first, with it's story of survival and conflict in the lifeboat, but it soon bogs down with a courtroom drama.  

5. Alpha by Greg Rucka (Rating (3.5/5). Excellent thriller - think "Die Hard" at Disneyland. The new head of security at a large California theme park must stop a terrorist attack the same day that his ex-wife and daughter are visiting the park. Well plotted, edge of your seat action - would make a great movie.

Telegraph Avenue

Telegraph Avenue
by Michael Chabon
2012 Harper
Rating 4.5/5
Received an E-galley from the publisher.

     Finally, one of my 10 most anticipated books of 2012, that lived up to my hype. While this Michael Chabon novel isn't on the level of the Pulitzer Prize winning "The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier and Clay", it is nonetheless a wonderful read.
     Telegraph Avenue is the name of a street in a neighborhood of Berkeley, CA nicknamed Brokeland. It is home to a fascinating group of characters that populate this book. The book is set in and around Brokeland Records, a vintage record store owned by Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe. They find out that a new superstore with a large music section is planning on opening in the neighborhood. While it will bring many badly needed jobs to the area, it will also almost certainly put Brokeland Records out of business. There are many other story lines going on throughout the book featuring various other friends and family, including Nat's gay, Tarantino obsessed teenage son.
     I loved the characters (including a charismatic parrot) and the dialogue rang true to me, peppered with references to old jazz and R&B, comic books, and cult films. "Telegraph Avenue" is one of those books that makes you miss the characters once it is over.

Heft

Heft
by Liz Moore
2012 W.W. Norton
Rating: 4/5
Received an E-galley from the publisher.

"Heft" is a moving, well written story of two people - a morbidly obese man who has not left his home in 10 years and a teenage boy dealing with an alcoholic mother. The two are not aware of each other's existence, but are connected by a mutual person in their lives. Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds never leaves his home. A former student gets in touch with him and he starts making changes in his life, hiring a maid to help him get his home ready for a possible visitor. Unexpectedly, this contact with this teenager who comes to clean comes to mean more to him then he expected.

     In another part of New York, Kel Keller is the poor kid in a rich school with a promising baseball career. The biggest stumbling block in his life is his alcoholic mother whom he has to care for. As she gets worse, his personal & athletic lives deteriorate.

     The two characters are sympathetic, but not entirely likable. But as the book goes on, you grow to love and root for them both. Their story shows that there are different definitions for "family". As I hit the last fourth of the book, I could not put it down. Highly recommended. I just wish the book had been about 5 pages longer, it ends somewhat abruptly. The San Francisco Chronicle said: “Few novelists of recent memory have put our bleak isolation into words as clearly as Liz Moore does in her new novel.”

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Behind the Beautiful Forevers
By Katherine Boo
2012 Random House
Rating: 5/5

     This true story of life in a slum in Mumbai, India is one of the most beautifully written and devastating non-fiction books I have ever read. It follows several families that live in a slum in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement close to luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. The main person that we follow is Abdul, an enterprising Muslim teen who works everyday gathering the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. As the book progresses, he is accused of a horrible crime and we see the effects on his family as well as others in the settlement.
     The author is married to an Indian native and lives both there and in the United States. She spent 3 years researching this book, gathering documents and interviewing the people over and over again. Her writing is wonderful, I was hanging on every word. The book showed that razor thin edge between hope and disaster. The outlook on life that some of these people have in spite of their conditions are breathtaking. It is a book that is both inspirational and disturbing at once. The amount of corruption in local and national government in India is hard to take.
     One of the reviews called it Dickensian, which did not occur to me as I was reading it, but is very apt  The Washington Post review said: "It is astonishing on several levels: as a worm’s-eye view of the “undercity” of one of the world’s largest metropolises; as an intensely reported, deeply felt account of the lives, hopes and fears of people traditionally excluded from literate narratives; as a story that truly hasn’t been told before, at least not about India and not by a foreigner. But most of all, it is astonishing that it exists at all…. a searing account, in effective and racy prose, that reads like a thrilling novel but packs a punch Sinclair Lewis might have envied.” I highly recommend this book for a look into a culture we know all too little about.

Angelmaker

Angelmaker
by Nick Harkaway
2012 by Knopf
Rating: 4/5

     I loved Harkaway's "The Gone Away World", it was one of the most fun books that I have ever read. I had a lot of fun with this one too, but it wasn't quite as good. I still loved exploring his world and fascinating characters.
     Joe Spork, the son of one of London's most successful criminals, wants nothing to do with his dead father's lifestyle. He just want to run his repair shop for clockwork machines. Unfortunately, his past catches up with him and he is thrust into an adventure that may involve him saving the world. Joe is an everyman character, not the most exciting person in the book, but the easiest to identify with. He is surrounded by a cast of amazing & strange people, including Edie Bannister, an 80 something former British super-spy and her aging, blind, and somewhat noxious pug.
     This is a hard book to categorize, it is a mystery/thriller, science fiction, historical, love stories. "Angelmaker" and "Gone Away World" both are closer to a more grounded "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" then anything else I can think of. "Gone Away World" was a near perfect book in my opinion, this one seems a bit padded, but still was a great read. Here is one of my favorite quotes about it, from the author of one of my favorites from 2010: “A puzzle box of a novel as fascinating as the clockwork bees it contains, filled with intrigue, espionage and creative use of trains. As if that were not enough to win my literary affection, Harkaway went and gave me a raging crush on a fictional lawyer.” - Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus

The Red House

The Red House
by Mark Haddon
2012 Doubleday
Rating: 1/5
Received an E-galley from the publisher.

     I had "The Red House" on my list of most anticipated books of 2012. I absolutely love Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time" and I found his "A Spot of Bother" a fascinating, but disturbing look at a British family.
     Unfortunately, I didn't find anything likable about the characters or story in "The Red House". An estranged brother & sister and their families vacation together in the English countryside in an effort to get to know each other better.The book is somewhat similar to "A Spot of Bother", in that it deals with some not very likable people, but there is no sense of humor or any redeeming qualities here.
     Haddon is experimenting with narrative voice here, having all eight family members take turns in telling the story. The problem is that everyone of these people are selfish, nasty, and just plain mean to each other. I could not wait for this one to end. I will give Haddon another chance if he does another book, but this one was just not for me. Interestingly, Library Journal loved the book, but Publisher's Weekly didn't much care for it.

A Few Quick Reviews

     These are some short reviews of books I have read the last couple of months, but don't feel like writing a full blown reviews for. Several are worth reading, but just didn't blow me away.

1. Taken by Robert Crais (Rating 4/5). Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are partners in a private detective agency in LA. Crais has been telling their stories for years and a few years back began alternating between using one and then the other as the lead character. In this book, they are both top billed and tracking down a young couple kidnapped by smugglers of illegal aliens. This is one of Crais' best.

2. The Last Greatest Magician in the World by Jim Steinmeyer (Rating 3/5). A detailed, but sometimes slow biography of Howard Thurston, the last "Greatest Magician In the World". A contemporary of Houdini, Thurston had the biggest magic act and was considered the master magician of the time. The pressure to be the top act led to physical and financial problems for most of his life. An important book if you are interested in the history of magic.

3. Back To the Moon by Travis Taylor & Les Johnson (Rating 2/5). This science fiction novel had an interesting premise - America's return to the Moon in the 2020s. Unfortunately , the author is not much of a writer. The characters and dialogue are very dry.    

4. The Fault In Our Stars by John Green (Rating 3/5). Well reviewed and best selling young adult book about two teens with cancer. The book is well written and has very good characters, but the ending was a bit weak for me.