Overview for 2008

I have never done this before, but I feel like taking a look at what I have read this year. I look though my blog around Christmas every year, because from this list I choose books to give to friends. I also like to put the past year's books into an Excel file, so I can do some sorting by author, year, etc. This year at times I haven't been as diligent recording books I've read, so I might have missed some, and I usually don't include any Latvian reading I have done, though I don't do much - maybe it is out of embarrassment on how little I read in Latvian. Even so, by the end of the year I should have about 60 books under my belt, and I feel this is pretty OK, considering my busy life. At this point I have 58 books in my list, 19 of them published in 2008. Actually most of what I read is recent - 72% from the last four years. It is wonderful to not be constrained by any required reading, so I just read what interests me, what lands in my scope of awareness. And since most of what I "read" I actually listen to, it means that my Audio Books store is highly influential in my choices. They get all the bestsellers, and that is the shelf I tend to browse first, and at times I will ask their advice, especially when I'm looking for some light reading.

My biggest find and joy was Geraldine Brooks. People of the Book was immediately my favorite book of the year, and then a patron at the library suggested other books by her, so I read every book she has written, except for March, which I will tackle this coming year. I couldn't wait till Christmas, so I started sharing People of the Book with friends earlier in the year. I liked all her books, but the one that blew me away was Nine Parts of Desire: the Hidden World of Islamic Women. That too was shared earlier in the year.

I also followed up on previous favorite authors, such as Elizabeth Gilbert with her book of short stories Pilgrims and the biographical Last American Man, both good but not as inspiring as Eat, Pray, Love. From Louise Erdrich I read her latest - Plague of Doves.

I went to Sweden for a couple of days this March and wanted to read something by Swedish authors. I picked up a few books there, got a few more back home. The best was Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, first of a mystery trilogy and the only one translated into English. That led me to a book by one of my favorite children's authors - Astrid Lindgren, and I got an old beat-up copy of Bill Bergson, Master Detective.

[I will post this, though incomplete, to make sure I don't forget to continue it.]

Widows of Eastwick by John Updike (2008)

Another one I missed entering in here. I read in Time magazine how three well known authors had revisited former works. At some point not too long ago I read Updike's Witches of Eastwick, having loved the movie. Now he has written a sequel - the Widows of Eastwick. The same three "witches", after their husbands die, start traveling together, finally deciding to go back for a summer in Eastwick. I enjoyed this book about women getting older. Again, I wish I had written this right after reading it.

Beach House by Jane Green (2008)

I read this a couple of months ago and could have sworn I wrote up a blurb somewhere, but it's not here, so I just want to record that I read this. An eccentric older woman lives alone in Nantucket, but can't afford to maintain the large house, so she takes on boarders. We get to hear each person's story - what brings them to Nantucket - and all are looking for something. The way they all connected was a bit too much, but it was a nice story, I liked the characters and the writing.

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (2001)

This translation from Turkish is written as one of my favorite genres - art history fiction. Set in Istanbul of 1591, it tells the story of a group of miniaturists or artists that illustrate texts, full of details of the art and thinking behind the art of those days. It is also a mystery, as it starts out with a murder and it is written in a very interesting manner (there must be some name for this style), where each chapter furthers the story in the voice of a different character - well the eight or so main characters, plus the corpse, a dog, a horse, Satan, dervishes, the color red, etc.

Maybe the fault lay with the fact that I was listening to this, and I seem to do better with foreign names when I see then visually than hear them. Maybe that I am totally unfamiliar with all the stories and legends alluded to in the book. Maybe because I couldn't see the art the author was describing. (Don't I complain about this on all the art history novels?) But I wished the book was half as long. I finally checked it out from the library - originally to double check spellings of things, to flip back to something I hadn't understood, but then I couldn't take it anymore and I just read it till it was finished - faster and with the ability to skim when wanting to skip over something quickly and reread something I hadn't understood. The author is well reknown throughout Europe, winner of prizes, translated in many languages... or maybe I just wasn't intellectual enough for this book.

But not all is lost. I did get a sense of this part of the world - what, when, where WAS the Ottoman Empire? I did enjoy the stories of the apprentices coming to work for master minituarists. Coffee plays a role, considered decadent by some. Of course women have a rough time, but they actually did have the right to divorce - especially when their husband doesn't return home for years. It took me a while to catch on that the relationship between masters and apprentices wasn't all OK and that there was a lot of pedaphelia going on. One passage explained that if women walked around uncovered, men would walk around erect. And to take care of urges that couldn't be normally satisfied, they used prostitutes and young boys. Great :(

Interesting how much art development depended on the patron, in this case the Sultan. The next Sultan wasn't interested in art and illustrated texts weren't made in his time. Then there is the controversy between Muslim and "Frankish" (Europpean?) art, where in the latter individuality of the artist is encouraged, as is depiction of actual people, instead of copying old masters without variation.

The story? One of the artists is murdered at the very beginning, and we find out who it is at the very end. There is Master Osman and his studio of artists, where the best are called Butterfly, Olive and Stork. There is Enishte, Shekure's father, who has been commissioned by the Sultan to put together a unique book, and he uses all the best artists from Osman's studio. Then there is Black, who has been in love with Shekure since childhood, but who has been gone many years to war and the world. Shekure's husband has not been back from the war for four years and she has moved with her two boys back in with her father, avoiding her husbands brother. Black would like to marry her. At one point to determine which artist is the murdered, Osman requests to be allowed into the Sultan's treasure room to look at all the old books. This seems a ploy to give us a history and influences on all the books of the times. In the audio format I couldn't absorb much of this. Interesting, but not one I will recommend further.

Divine Justice by David Baldacci (2008)

This continues the story begun in Stone Cold and takes Oliver Stone out of the DC area into a small mountainous town in Virginia, as he has to lay low for killing a couple of people. Ends up uncovering a huge problem in this gentle town. All the Camel Club members participate.

Stone Cold by David Baldacci (2007)

Baldacci has become one of my favorite spy novelists. This continues the story line of the Camel Club after the Collectors (where someone is killed in the Library of Congress). The plot is too complex to even begin to retell, but someone is killing off Oliver Stone's (AKA John Carr's) former colleagues in the super secret Triple 6 division. Then we have Annabelle Conroy running from crazy casino owner Jerry Bagger, whom she conned for killing her mother.

Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley (2008)

Wasn't expecting much, but found a delightful and very funny book about our presidency and Supreme Court. Judge Pepper Cartwright is a judge, but works on TV, like Judge Judy. Since the president can't get his real candidates through, he offers Cartwright up as a nominee for the Supreme Court, and she gets the job.

Paper Towns by John Green (2008)

"Quentin has been in love with Margo for years, so when she includes him in a madcap night of escapades and then disappears, he feels compelled to search for her and to learn why she is so unhappy. This suspenseful and emotionally taut story of self-discovery and compassion is laced with smart-aleck humor and graceful prose." School Library Journal

Siberia: A Novel by Ann Halam (2005)

I was looking for children's books that could help explain the whole Soviets sending people to Siberia process and came upon this interesting book, though not what I needed. This is a science fiction story set in a post ecological disaster world, where most of it is frozen and Siberia refers to a state of mind rather than an exact place. When Rosita and her mother end up in a shack in a dismal frozen village and her mother has to work all day, and she is taught little about truth in school, it sounds too much like the experiences of my people and many others the soviets tortured by sending them off to labor camps and dismal villages in the far reaches of Siberia.

The story itself reminds me more of the Golden Compass, where kids are traveling with a goal, get in all sorts of trouble and are befriended by animals. Rosita, who becomes Sloe in school, ends up being the caretaker of the seeds of all the animals of the planet that have been destroyed by the misuse of the planet. She is sent to an awful boarding school, lives with gypsy types for a while, lands in a fur farm, etc., etc.

Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee (1995)

I picked this book up randomly off the shelf at a friend's house and then asked to take it home to finish it. This is a great glimpse into the life of Korean immigrants in New York City. The narrator is Henry Park, the son of Korean immigrants, married to a white woman, though their marriage seems to breaking apart in the beginning of the story. He has a strange job of infiltrating certain influential people's lives and reporting on them, but not for the government. Henry's current assignment is a Korean politician - John Kwang. He starts working in his campaign office and slowly becomes a valuable aide. The setting is the complex Korean community among all the other ethnic groups that try to coexist in New York. Henry's father owns a few grocery stores, others own laundries, restaurants, etc. The author does a wonderful job of describing the family relations, the work ethic, the relations with various black groups, the differences between generations, etc.

I often don't pay attention to language unless it gets in the way of the story or is childihs, but I did notice author Lee's use of language. E.g. on p. 31 "...his mother and father were just like him, thick-fingered people of the earth, human weeds, hardened and sad and always ready to burst from the drab husk of their lives with great quaking fits of emotion."

Oh, and the title is from the fact that Park has always tried to speak English like a "native speaker."

Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich (2008)

I have always like Erdrich's tales, often about Ojibwe people. This was a complex tale, narrated by various voices (literally in the audio version), but interwoven into an intriguing story of North Dakota. I will need to get my hands on a physical version of the book to be able to follow all those story threads. The story starts out in Evalina's voice, who retells her grandfather Mooshum's tales, the most critical being the unjust hanging of a group of Indians for the murder of a family. The lives of all those involved and their descendants are deeply intertwined. There was a wonderful story about a violin, and I liked Publisher's Weekly phrase about it: "its backstory is another beautiful piece of the mosaic." Most of the story takes place in an Indian reservation and in Pluto, ND, a fictional place as far as I can tell, but with a funny passage on how it got its name and its fate at the end of the book. Though it tells of the intermingling of Indian and white lives, it touches a lot of themes in all of our lives. I think I liked this enough to pass it on to friends.

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer (2006)

I don't know how she does it, but again I feel like Stephanie Meyer has woven a unique tale. I know she has been compared to J.K. Rowling, but she hasn't quite created such an elaborate alternate world, as her world is still grounded in today's reality and everyone is trying hard to keep the magical and mystical aspects away from the regular humans. Bella again is thei very believable teenager, who is not only involved with vampires, but their archenemies the warewolves. This time the tale takes us to Italy, where we meet an old vampire family. All very fascinating.

Tribute by Nora Roberts (2008)

Why do I always feel like apologizing for really enjoying some of Nora Roberts' books. This is again one of the broader novels with a child star returning to her grandmother's country house to make a new life for herself. I really liked the details of house remodeling and landscaping. I liked the guy too - a graphic novel author and artist. I liked the slow progression of their relationship. And a big part of the story line is actually a mystery story, all woven together very well.

Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich (2008)

I've been needing to read something light and funny, and bounty hunter Stephanie Plum fit the bill. She and the characters around her had me laughing out loud quite a few times.  In this particular story Stephanie is helping her hunky friend Ranger bodyguard an aging country singer. Meanwhile her cop boyfriend Joe Morelli ends up taking care of a graffiti artist teenage son of a kidnap victim. There are always numerous story lines going on. I particularly enjoyed the outrageous wedding plans of Lula, Stephanie's big black mama side-kick, without the conscious consent of the supposed bridegroom Tank.  Just a lot of fun. Though I've read some of these before, I'm planning to tackle them in reverse chronological order.

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb (2005)

Suggested by an old college friend in Vermont, this book has a totally new take on the metaphysical world of death and ghosts. Helen died over a hundred years ago, but didn't end up in heaven or hell, but continues an existence of sorts by hanging out close to particular live beings. And then she meets James, who is like her, but in a body - a body deserted by a young drug addict. Wonderful to watch them trying to communicate.

Though I have no set view of life after death, I do have a sense of souls, and think reincarnation could be an explanation why certain things happen to us. Though I don't believe in ghosts as such, I do believe our departed loved ones can be with us, watching over us. My parents used to dream of departed friends and relatives all the time. I don't, but I have a sense of my mother being with me at times. (She would have been 83 tomorrow, if she had lived.) Maybe it is my own thought patterns evoking a sense of her, but whatever it is, there is some power to it. That is why this story doesn't bother my reasoning, as vampire stories do - it makes more sense to me. The concept that people could be so beaten by their lives, that their souls choose to desert their bodies seems more heart-wrenchingly sad than improbable. So a wonderfully unique book. I am glad such good books are being written for young adults.

Sleeping Arrangements by Madeline Wickham (2008)

An enjoyable light read about two families who are forced to spend their vacations together in a mutual friend's villa in Spain. Turns out they are quite connected. Chloe is hoping to relax with long time partner Phillip, who is in danger of losing his job, and her two sons, one a sulky teen. Hugh, a busy executive is hoping for some fun time with high strung Amanda and his two small daughters. But Chloe and Hugh were an item 15 years ago. I liked looking a relationships that have been going on for a while, and the challenges they face. The punky nanny adds delightful color to the story.

Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert (2002)

Since I loved Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love so much, I wanted to read more by her and picked this up at our library. This is actually a non-fiction book about Eustace Conway, a real, still living man, a few years younger than me. I get the sense that Gilbert too was in love with this man, but was able to maintain a friendship over the years and step back enough to write about him. This guy could hunt as a child, and decided that the thing to do was to live off the land - which he has been doing all his life and continues to do so. He also wanted to change the world by educating kids about his life style, in speeches around the country and in the camp he has built on a thousand acres in North Carolina. Oh, I could imagine being enthralled by him in my back to the land days, though I am not sure I would ever want to live off of things I have killed, nor would I ever want to work as hard as he did and expected those around him to work. I didn't understand his two big trips around the country on horses. The first, he rode on the back of a horse from the Atlantic to the Pacific with his brother and a friend in record time. They did not stop to enjoy the people and beauty around them, but plowed on as if in a race to see how far humans and animals could be pushed. His other trip was in a horse drawn cart around the Midwest - also at a numbing pace. He has driven all the women who fell in love with him away, by being so demanding and inflexible in his lifestyle. Fascinating man, fascinating story, though sort of sad in the end.

Say Goodbye by Lisa Gardner (2008)

I just couldn't handle graphic details about molested children and dead prostitutes right now, and it sounded like the creepy guy wasn't going to be caught any time soon, so I gave up on the 3rd CD of this book. Maybe at some other time this pregnant FBI agent will appeal to me, but not now. Kind of weird quotes about spiders at the beginning of each chapter. I could have studied many spider species while painting my house - disturbed many a spider web with its large and small inhabitants.

Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich (2008)

This is one of those Stephanie Plum detective stories I picked up because I needed something light and funny - and it fit the bill - getting me laughing. I've read some of these before, so I remember Stephanie living in a Trenton, NJ working class neighborhood. In this book she is working on security detail for Brenda, an aging country western singer, with Ranger, one of the men she likes. But she seems to be mostly spending time with Joe Morelli, who reminds me of the Italians in my high school in northern New Jersey. There are plenty of fun characters including the video game playing, graffiti spraying kid Zook, who she ends up taking care of for a while, a gentle stalker, Stephanie's colleague Lula planning a wedding to Ranger's right-hand man, Tank, without his input or approval, and more.

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks (2001)

Not exactly a joyousy book, but again a well researched historical novel about a town in England in 1665-66 that had the plague and quarantined itself from the rest of the world for a year until the epidemic was through. I have heard the plague mentioned when reading about history many times, but I somehow could not imagine the devastation, even when they said half or three quarters of the population died. This made it very real, personal, as each family loses members, maybe all, and what happens to those left behind, especially children. What happens when people filling certain roles in a town die? How does everyone cope?

I really appreciate it when an author explains where the idea came from and how much is real, how much has come from the author's imagination. Brooks provides her explanations in an afterward. Brooks visited the village of Eyam, which really did suffered the plague, and has quite a few books and plays written about the event, though she said there weren't many real facts, but quite a few anecdotes. I liked her comment: "William Styron once wrote that the historical novelist works best if fed on 'short rations' by the factual record." The voice of the novel is Anna, who is mentioned in a letter as: "My maid continues in health; which was a blessing..." Amazing that Brooks could take that brief mention and weave this elaborate tale of Anna's family, her miner husband who gets killed before the plague in a mining accident, her children, her work with the minister and his wife Elinor, etc. I really liked the way Anna and Elinor learned about herbs and their healing qualities, when the local wise woman and her apprentice were no longer available. And I enjoyed looking into the life of a small English village in the 17th century.

Made in the U.S.A. by Billie Letts (2008)

Two kids run away from Spearfish, South Dakota, after the woman they were living with dies in a Wal-Mart. They head to Las Vegas to find their father. Lutie is the 15 year old sister who has a foul mouth, shoplifts, but loves her 12 year old brother dearly and tries to provide for him. Fate is the brilliant little brother who loves books and facts and hangs out in libraries, when possible. I have to say at times it was hard to listen to their down and out life in Las Vegas, but you know that they will pull through and they do - someone helps them and takes them someplace where they can heal and find themselves.

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (2005)

I have been avoiding this very popular young adult series, because I heard it was about vampires, and as I have stated before, they are not my favorites, though I seem to keep running into books about them. I decided I was going to wait when this first one of the series was available in the audio book store, and so there it was.

The story is set mostly in Forks, WA on the Olympic Peninsula. Since I was going to Seattle for a conference, and was going to have a day to see something, I was looking closely at maps of the area and found Forks. A friend suggested La Push as a good beach to go to, and the characters in the book go to the beach at La Push. Unfortunately both Forks and La Push were too far for me to visit, but I got close and got the feel for the dense, lush forests described in the book. I later went on Stephanie Meyer's site and found that she needed a very rainy part of the country for her setting and she had found Forks through Google. Love it!

The story itself starts out as a fairly typical teen story - girl goes to live with her father in Forks, so her mother can follow her current husband as he travels playing ball. I think Meyer did a good job of capturing the awkwardness of going to a new school and slowly making friends. But then she is drawn to a gorgeous boy who always sits with his siblings and seems to avoid her. They do become friends and I don't think I would be spoiling the plot to say she discovers he is a vampire - but one of the good kind, that doesn't drink human blood. It definitely makes for an interesting relationship. Other than the slow parts where she keeps harping on how beautiful he is and why would he want to spend time with her, I think it was engaging, and I might even read the rest of them.

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (2007)

A very interesting historical novel from the point of view of Frank Lloyd Wright's mistress Mamah Cheney. Though Mamah was a real historical person, she is rarely mentioned, though she was a part of the famous architect's life during an important part of it. The author had to piece together Mamah's story from biographies of Wright, her work, occasional newspaper articles and archives. Since I have always loved Wright's work, it was wonderful to hear more about his philosophy, design style and buildings, especially the process of building Taliesin, which I still have yet to see. I have seen some of his houses in Chicago, Oak Park, and here in Kalamazoo. I enjoyed the love story too, the travels, the growth of feminism and Mamah learning Swedish to translate some important feminist works. I was interested in their thinking about marriage and divorce, I am sure that was very radical at that time, and in a sense, still is. The only part I had a hard time with was when Mamah chose Frank over her children, leaving them with their father. I liked hearing all the details of the era - the state of phone lines, use of cars, the craftsmen working on Taliesin, etc. Great read!

High Noon by Nora Roberts (2007)

It was a hard week, so I deserved a little guilty pleasure. I sat and just read one more of Roberts' thriller romances. This one has the heroine Pheobe be a hostage negotiator for the police. Interesting work - I never knew how they talk people down. Seems like they often don't get very far. Duncan is rich - won a major lottery ticket, but does good things with his money. Duncan has been adopted by a black family. More interesting characters like her mother, who is agoraphobic and won't leave the house. I also like the fact that Pheobe is divorced and has a daughter. Much more realistic of today's situations. Now if Roberts would only do more middle age romance.

Flotsam by David Wiesner (2006)

Just thought I'd check out a few of the latest Caldecott winners. When I started looking at this and found it had no words, and it was just a kid on the beach, I was disappointed, but then when he finds an old underwater camera and finds film inside which he has developed, I became fascinated. The imagination of Wiesner is just wonderful. Combining the real and fanciful. Like the octopus family sitting on living room furniture, but in the background you can see a moving truck upended, so the furniture could have fallen out of that.... Anyway, pure joy!

Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks (1998)

OK, I am on a Geraldine Brooks kick. This is her other non-fiction book which is her own story. Her father was an American musician, who chose to leave the US and live in Australia. Geraldine grew up in a suburb of Sydney, complaining about the dullness of her life, so she started looking for contacts with the rest of the world through pen pals in America, France and Israel. Later in life she looks these people up and sees how their lives had evolved. Somehow her search for life's answers speaks to me.

Rosetta Key by William Dietrich (2008)

I was not thrilled with the pace of adventure in this book. Seemed like Ethan Gage was constantly in mortal danger - in front of a firing squad, fleeing for his life, confronting a lion or crocodile, and I kept thinking - not again! Plus he was such a rogue - OK a fairly likable rogue, but still... What I did like was the snippet of history I got from this book. I picked it up, because it was about the Mideast, a part of the world that intrigues me again from Nine Parts of Desire. This takes place in 1798 and 1799, not too many years after the story of Marie Antoinette ends (a recent read), and it describes Napoleon invading Egypt and Palestine, before he became emperor of France. A quick check in the Wikipedia confirms the historical events - Napoleon's wiping out of thousands of people in Jaffa, but that he was unable to take Acre. The main character, Gage, is an American, looking for treasure and an ancient book. He is able to befriend and antagonize everybody - the French, the English, the local inhabitants, but in doing so, we see the story from all of their perspectives. The other intriguing historical piece is that Gage had worked with Ben Franklin, so he was always quoting Franklin, or asking himself what would Franklin do, and Gage was familiar with Franklin's experiments with electricity, which played a role in the novel. I also didn't realize that it was the French this long ago, who found the Rosetta Stone. That has always fascinated me, and it was the one thing I saw both times I was in London in 70's and a few years ago.

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut (1968)

I seem to want to go back to some of the authors and books I really like in my youth. Though some of the stories seem dated, I still enjoyed this. I had forgotten this book is short stories, so I ran into the same problem I had with Pilgrims - listening to a series of short stories while driving around town makes for a jumble in my mind. I had forgotten how much Vonnegut leaned towards science fiction. He had various stories on the future. Some dealt with overpopulation - either many living in close quarters, or everyone's sex drive taken away, so people wouldn't procreate (in the title story). I do remember the one about the computer that fell in love and wrote love poems. I was a bit surprised about the Kennedy obsession, but then again, it was the 60's. Vonnegut obviously lived in the Cape Cod area, as that is featured in many stories. I think only one story is set in his version of Ithaca - from his Cornell days. Since I listened to this, I will have to wait until a copy is returned to the library to check it out and give more details on individual stories. I probably own a copy, but it's buried deep in the boxes I haven't unpacked since I moved into my parents house.

Nine Parts of Desire : the Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks (1995)

After an interesting phone conversation with a patron at work, I realized that Geraldine Brooks, the author of People of the Book, has written other books, and her first is this amazing non-fiction book about Islamic women. As a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, she had ample opportunity to interview and befriend women in Egypt, Jordon, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Eritrea, and other countries. She somehow pulls it all together in logical chapters about marriage, political power, education, work, the Queen (Noor of Jordan), etc.

This is the best explanation I have ever read and helps me understand the different levels of Islamic restrictions for women. Brooks is well versed in the Koran and the life of the prophet Mohamed, so she can show where different practices arose, and where they are inconsistent with the Koran or the prophet's life. I am in total awe or this woman, who being Jewish, took on wearing the coverings required by the women in each country. Ballsy woman. She was also able to explain the difference between the Shiites and Sunnis. Not that it makes logical sense, but at least I have some understanding now. I think my strongest gut reaction to the unfairness of the treatment of women arose from her stories about how Mohammed's revelations from God about women came in response to his own household situation. The multiple wives for the sake of alliances is still happening - reflecting the old European marriage patterns - like Marie Antoinette being an alliance between France and Austria. Of course, sometimes a new wife is taken to bear sons.

Though probably many men would enjoy total control over their women, I still don't understand why it has remained so ingrained in the Middle East culture. Though there are more liberal countries, seems that all Islamic women face more inequality than women in most other countries. Though some progress has been made (like outlawing clitoridectomies in hospitals of at least one country), there has been a conservative backlash in most of these countries. I would really like to read an update of how women have fared in the different countries in the 13 years since the book was published.

Pilgrims by Elizabeth Gilbert (1997)

Since Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love was my favorite book last year, I was happy to find this by her in the audio book store, but found it was not ideal to listen to short stories, especially while driving around town, when listening happens in short spurts. It is a little difficult to bounce around the different settings and characters. In general, I liked her short vignette's of life, though I didn't always get how each story was about "pilgrims," though I quickly learned to think of "pilgrims" as a broader concept. Lots of strong women - the woman ranch hand from Pennsylvania, the woman bar owner, who's business is ruined by a strip joint across the street. I think my favorite was The Finest Wife, where a woman meets all her old lovers again at the end of her life. I was a bit surprised by the Western slant in stories that started feeling like Annie Proulx's Wyoming Stories, but not as desperate. "Elk Talk" was about Easterners moving out West and trying to call elk. I did like Gilbert's realistic and female centric approach to sex in a few of her stories. Some stories I didn't care for. I'll try to remember to leave short stories for reading in print.

Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin (1983)

Just one of those books I could not get into. I liked the setting of New York City in it's early days, but the characters and writing just grated on me, so after 2 CD's I gave up.

Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber (2008)

Another one of my favorite genre's - art history fiction! And this one combines the present with the past. Chaz Wilmot, a current day artist doesn't want to compromise his art and ends up just doing advertising work. The only thing he seems to get into is painting in the style of old masters. Then a college roommate asks him to experiment with some drug that may enhance creativity, and he starts having experiences as if he was Diego Velázquez, a Spanish court painter from the 17th century. Again, I liked the look into the past at how artists worked.

The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred by Carl-Johan Vallgren (2005)

Whew, what a title! This is one more of my Swedish books picked up at the Stockholm airport. First published in 2002, translated by Paul and Veronica Britten-Austin. The title actually does describe the wild ride through the life of Hercules Barefoot. On the back of the book, the quotes from various news sources are apt. The Guardian called this book "a picaresque, grotesque and magical novel." (OK, I had to look up picaresque, as I thought it was "picturesque" at first. From the Wikipedia: "a subgenre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society.")

One one level it was my favorite historical fiction, depicting Europe in the early 19th century - starting with the births of Hercules,a highly deformed deaf-mute who can read and speak to people's minds, and the love of his life Henriette, in a brothel. We see details of life in a brothel, traveling freak show, monastery, asylum. These worlds are depicted in all their darkness of ignorance and intolerance and abuse of fellow humans. There were times when the story got so grotesque, I didn't want to read further - or, since I was actually reading the book and not listening to it, I could sort of skim more quickly through the unpleasant parts. When Hercules gets really mad about all the tortures of himself and deaths of those close to him, he goes on a mental rampage that was hard to read, but luckily, he pulls out of it in the end - because of love.

I was fascinated by a few of the descriptions - for instance, the church had a library of forbidden books where you would have to wait months for permission to enter, fill out lots of bureaucratic forms and have your background checked. (p.100) Sounds like the Soviet era Special Funds of forbidden books in the Communist times.

Now Hercules was deaf and dumb, but could communicated by reading minds and projecting into other's minds. He had stubs for arms, but his feet were very dexterous and he could play an organ. (This explanation was a bit fuzzy on how his deafness worked with music.) He eventually learned sign language and moved to Martha's Vineyard, where there really was a historic deaf community.

I flagged another part of the book, where one of the priests goes into a riff about what is evil. That has been one of my own spiritual questions, and though I didn't get any satisfying answers from this character, I was still glad it was addressed. This was just one of the philosophical discussions embedded in the book. I checked the author out in our library's Contemporary Authors database and got this insight: "In an interview with Sean Merrigan for Spoiled Ink, when asked about the nature of Barfuss's gift in terms of narration versus philosophy, the author remarked: "When I started out the novel it was a narrative ploy: what could I do with it, how far could I take it? But after a while all these other questions arose, questions about language, mind and perception..." I tried to get to the Spoiled Ink site itself, but the link didn't work.

Cathedral: The Story of Its Construction by David MaCaulay (1973)

I promised myself I'd look at this book, since it would give me a visual understanding of Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth. I should have bought it while I was listening to Pillars, but better late than never. I guess I am even more amazed, when I see the dimensions of a cathedral, especially in proportion to the town around it. It's like a bear sitting amongst week old chicks. Now I have answers to my questions about the size of the stones used, how they did the foundations, which I somehow could not visualize, the templates, the flying buttresses, the vaulted ceilings - all these things are much clearer. I thank McCaulay for providing this insight on cathedrals and many other structures not only to children, but all of us.

Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Sena Jeter Naslund (2006)

This is the author of Ahab's Wife (which I think I read before I started this blog) and I listened to an abridged version, which was fine in this case.

At one point in my past I was fascinated by Marie Antoinette. I was not as fascinated this time around, but Naslund has a very interesting take on her - a very personal first person story.

The audio book has the advantage of having an interview with the author at the end - one that answered many of my own questions.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (1989)

I have been fascinated by the construction of cathedrals for some time now - maybe since I visited our National Cathedral in Washington and was blown away by its story - how it took 83 years to complete in our age of modern twentieth century technology. How in the world did people build these majestic structures 800 years ago? Where did people get the architectural and engineering skills, when everything else was so primitive? How could they afford this? Follett seems to have had similar questions. I liked that he was raised in a simple unadorned church, but started visiting cathedrals, when he needed settings for his novels and was intrigued.

[Will write more about the book itself, hopefully soon.] Listening to this 32 CD book was quite an undertaking, but well worth it. I'm glad I had a couple of long trips out East in May.

I still want to get McCaulay's illustrated book for kids on how cathedrals are built, as I still need some visuals, though I did go to the Wikipedia for illustrations for some of the terms, like clerestory.

Glory in Death by JD Robb (1995)

Road trip book again. Though I have listened to quite of few of JD Robb's books already, Nora Roberts' futuristic crime novel writer alter ego, my plan is to go through them all in a chronological order, so I can follow the development of various characters, relationships and settings.

Though this follows the formula - 3 murders with Lieutenant Eve Dallas going after the murdered at the end, getting into a fight where she is injured and Roarke coming to her rescue. I will ahve to keep count of how many of the JD Robb books stick to this formula.

Dallas, always the powerful, interesting troubled main character. Having night-mares and not wanting to deal with her horrid childhood. Her relationship to Rolrke gets a bit rocky, where he want to haves some commitment from her. Eve is finally able to tell Roarke she loves him. At the very end he proposes to her. I didn't expect that to happen so soon in the series, but I think it takes a few books before they get married.

Roarke - In spite of him being a powerful gazillionare, I like him. I like seeing him get rid of some of his shady operations, now that he's dating a cop. He even avoids answering her, when she asks why he sold a certain enterprise, by saying "for personal reasons," without elaborating.

Somerset - I don't think I've listened to the book that explains Roarke's relationship to his butler Somerset. Eve dislikes him and the feeling seems mutual at this point.

Mavis - Eve's only real friend is present in all her colorfullness. She is still a struggling artist without any boyfriend mentioned. I loved the scene where she spends the evening with Eve in Roarke's mansion.

Roarke's mansions - We slowly uncover the various parts of the New York mansion - the solarium, the hot tub/pool room, the library with its leather bound volumes. Eve gets her own room in this book, as Roarke moves her belongings out of her apartment. Eve and Roarke whisk off to his Mexico mansion on the Pacific for a night.

Feeney - Eve's trusted technical wiz at work - always eating almonds.

Commander Whitney - always supportive of Eve, but the first victim is a friend of the family, so that gets in the way of the investigation.

Chief Tibble - new since the last book, as Eve put the other chief of police out of business the last time. This new guy is supportive of her, though I don't remember how their relationship evolves.

Peabody - One of my favorite characters makes her first appearance and impresses Eve with her stiff efficiency and competence.

Dr. Mira - psychologist reveals that she was raped for years by her stepfather, trying to help Eve resolve her own past.

Nadine Furst - TV reporter - as Eve saves her life in this book, now I understand why they have such a solid relationship.

Future setting - though Robb doesnt' dwell on it, she fleshes out the futuristic setting in each book. I think it must be hard to predict technology 50 years from now, (I think the setting is 2058) as it moves ahead so quickly. The all still work at computer consoles with Roarke having the most sophisticated equipment. Computers are voice activated - as in security, house lights and food preparation. Transportation sill seems to consist of personal cars that are still involved in traffic jams, though cars can be put on automatic pilot. I think there are hover cars or some sort of personal flight craft. I don't recall references to the subway. There was a short reference to the clearing of old buildings, but the rich rebuilding brownstones. Some sort of food crisis has occured, as most available food is synthetic and the one thing that Eve really appreciates from Roarke's richness his access to real food and coffee. Virtual reality goggles are used for entertainment. Personal light and music shows can be programmed.

And then the title - Glory in Death. Like Sue Grafton's series A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, etc. JD Robb has managed to name all the books in the series as Something in Death. And the title always is relevant. In this case, the murdered was looking for glory - it was part of his psychiatric profile and helped Eve nail him.

Though I had hear this book before, I didn't remember it, so about 3/4 through I started looking beyond the most obvious suspects, as I knew the killer had to be someone we had met. I figured out the killer a few chapters before Eve. I used love doing that with Agatha Christie.

I never have time for such a long comment on a book, especially a trivial one, but since this was written on the road - yes, I can write while driving - I had time to write down all my thoughts.

Flyte by Angie Sage (2006)

Book Two of the Septimus Heap trilogy had been lying around the house for quite some time, and before I forget what Magyk was about, thought I should read it and it again delighted me. Obviously for young adults with short chapters, but it continues this rich new magical world, where magic is often performed through charms and other magical objects, the biggest and most wonderous being the dragon boat. Jenna is now princess and Septimus the apprentice to the ExtraOrdinary Wizard Marcia. Jenna is kidnapped by her oldest brother Simon, who has joined the Darke forces. I sorta liked the way all magical verbs were bolded and in a more old-fashioned font. Septimus goes after her, and they have all sorts of adventures before getting back safe and sound. They are just kids, but you can sense the bond between them growing. The title Flyte comes from a new form of magyk that gets found in this book. I am again in awe of the many characters, creatures, and types of magyk kept track of by the author.

Sidewalks: Portraits of Chicago by Rick Kogan (2006)

One of the few times I heard the author speak and was moved to purchase the book. Rick Kogan and just as important, Charles Osgood the photographer, addressed us at the LOEX conference in Chicago early in May. It was a fun, informative session on Chicago. Both men work for the Chicago Tribune and travel around Chicago and surrounding areas looking for interesting things. They don't follow famous people (there are a few musicians and artists, and one not very flattering, but realistic photo of Mayor Daly), but look for ordinary people doing extraordinary things. In our after dinner presentation, they had about a dozen of Osgood's photos blown up to poster size. They asked audience members to choose a photo from a bag, and then they talked about the place, the person, the story behind it. My favorite story was about a barber, who emigrated from Russia in 1990 and now has a shop on the sixth floor of a classy neighborhood and who shaves and cuts the hair of some well known people. There were great stories about the 20 foot cat they found in a deserted parking lot, or the two-story outhouse in southern Illinois, or the man who raised two kids by selling peanuts on a street corner, or how Osgood got a great shot from the top of the dome of the oldest library in Chicago, or about the man who single-handedly reorganized the naming and numbering system on the streets of Chicago. All great stories that became columns in the Sunday paper - along with wonderful photographs by Osgood. What we as librarians appreciated, was how they researched the story. Of course they interviewed the people involved, or asked around to try to find out something about the cat or other object, but often they had to do more research. For instance, they found that the two-story outhouse was not unique, and that five other places in the U.S. claim to have the only two-story outhouse. The book is compiled of over 100 of these stories and photos and is a wonderful mosaic of Chicago. I bought the book and had it signed, thinking I was going to give to someone as a gift, maybe to someone in Latvia, but after reading it, I want to keep it for myself, and look up some of the wonderful places they describe.

The Hollow by Nora Roberts (2008)

Second in the Sign of Seven trilogy. Still not my favorite topic, but for some reason I still like the interplay of these three friends that were born on the same day, and now the three women that have been pulled into their lives to fight this evil that rears his head every seven years. This book focused on hippie lawyer Fox, who falls for New York City boutique lady Layla. Nice first undressing scene. These six people are quite different and look at the world from different viewpoints, but they really do complement each other and create a greater whole.

The Serpents Tale by Arianna Franklin (2008)

Another good historical fiction book. This takes place during the reign of Henry II in England and involves an unusual character - Adelia Aguilar - a female forensic pathologist. Her father taught her medicine and dissecting dead bodies, but I can't imagine that forensics had evolved that far in the 12th century.

Mysterious by Nora Roberts (2008)

Light reading, three of her earliest books in one. Not great.

This Magic Moment (1983)
I think I liked this one the best. It was about a magician - Pierce Atkins, and the woman who falls in love with him is Ryan Swan, who works for his agency. This was a glimpse into an interesting world of stage magic, and the enormous amount of practice it requires. I also likes some of the side characters.

Search for Love (1991)
This was one of those - Oh, Please! Serenity (starts with the name) is looking for her long lost grandmother in Britanny and finds out about her past, gets a castle and prince all in one fell swoop.

The Right Path (1985)
This was one of Roberts' romance and mystery combinations, a bit of JD Robb coming through. Morgan is visiting friends on a Greek island and falls for one of the wealthy guys there. But she keeps taking walks at inopportune times along the beach and lands in the middle of smuggling operations and can't figure out if her guy is the good guy or bad guy.

Sixteen Pleasures by Robert Hellenga (1989)

Another good novel about books, suggested by a friend. I was well into it when it started sounding familiar and I realized I had read this book some time ago, but before I started keeping a blog of what I've read. This time it is Margot, who works in preservation at the Newberry Library, who goes off to Florence in 1966 to help them recover from a flood that damaged much of their art and their books. She ends up spending much of her time in the library of a convent. I have come up against the same theme in two books concurrently, where the convent is considered a good place for women to hide from disagreeable marriages. Here they actually can get research done on behalf of women, and a big motivator in the book is to keep the convent independent and away from the control of the bishops. In this convent library they find the "sixteen pleasures" a Renaissance Kama Sutra. I loved to read about the efforts made to save books and art and the details of restoration. I liked Margot's ties to Italy - she had come there with her mother, an art teacher, and later returned to graduate high school with her class, so she had the language, and was drawn to the place where she was so happy with her mother, who has since died.

A Bridge to the Stars by Henning Mankell (1990, trans. 2005)

I decided to start with a young adult book from Mankell, a famous Swedish writer. Joel is 11 years old and lives with his father in northern Sweden, his mother has abandoned them, and the dad is reluctant to talk about it. Definitely a big issue, especially at this age. Joel starts sneaking out at night to follow a dog he thinks he has seen. I am not sure of the importance of the dog, but it seems to be the thing that motivates him to keep going out at night. When the father starts spending time with a local waitress, Joel is understandable jealous, but it is interesting how it all is played out. I think Mankell hit on some very real pre-teen emotions, but I would be interested in hearing how American kids like this book, as the pace seemed slow.

Naked in Death by J.D. Robb (1995)

Always a good one to keep me awake while driving long trips, I decided to start at the beginning with Lt. Eve Dallas' adventures. I was surprised that Roarke, her rich love interest shows up in the very first book. But then again Nora Roberts couldn't write a book without a few steamy sex scenes. Just interesting in how they met. I still wonder why I don't tire of these formulaic books - three murders, last scene with Eve being attacked by the murderer, city politics. But I like her characters, and many of them like Mavis and Feeney stick with her throughout her books.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (2008)

I don't think I will ever tire of reading good novels about books. Here's another. The main story that ties all the other together is about Hanna, a rare book preservationist, who gets the opportunity to examine and stabilize a 500 year old book, a Jewish Haggadah in Sarajeva. She finds small anomalies and things in the book that lead us to stories about the books travels over the years and through southern Europe. Each story is a heart wrenching one of the Jewish plight over the centuries.

The butterfly wing led to the story of how the book was saved during World War II and the harrowing destruction of the Jews by the Nazis. It also gives us a glimpse of Tito in his youth.

Each of these flash-backs into history not only tells the immediate story of the book itself, but gives a broad brush illustration of numerous people's lives - their lives, sorrows, families, lovers, castes, religious groups, which all end up affecting the fate of the book. For a while I couldn't understand what a doctor in Vienna in 1894, who discreetly treated STD's, had to do with the Haggedah. It turns out one of his patients was the one to rebind the Haggedah, and his illness influenced how he did that.

The wine stain leads to a priest, who worked as one of the main censors in Venice of 1609.

The minuscule crystals of sea salt lead to the story of the books creation in Spain of 1492, during the times of the Spanish inquisition and when all Jews were expelled from Spain.

The hair leads to the story of the creation of the illustrations, another very interesting peek into the history of Spain. May be another topic worth exploring. I now I've been fascinated by the story of the Moors in Spain, but I didn't realize what an interesting combination of Christians, Muslim and Jews have created Spanish history. One of the quotes I liked in this book was that the Christians made war, the Muslims build buildings and the Jews raised the funds. I still don't understand how Spain got to be such a huge empire. (Some of the other books I have read about Spain: The Spanish Bow, Zorro, Constant Princess (Katharine of Aragon was from Spain), and I am sure there are others.)

Some parts were hard to listen to - the torture, the killing, exile, etc. But then I had a sense of being privileged to get a glimpse of "what really happened" to the book, while the main character Hanna, just had a crumb of that history - the book had been in such and such a place because that is where this type of butterfly lives. I plan on buying this book for friends.

Bill Bergson, Master Detective by Astrid Lindgren (1946, trans. 1952)

I have read a lot of Astrid Lindren's books in my day, as many of her books were translated into Latvian from Swedish, and provided Latvian kids with exciting adventures rarely found in kids books by Latvian authors. My favorite character was Pippi Longstocking. After reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, where the main character is compared to Lindgren's masterdetective Kalle Blomkvist, I had to find this book.

Though tame by today's standards, Lindgren still weaves a good tale of a curious boy (with his name Americanized to Bill Bergson), a bit bored on summer vacation, looking for suspicious characters. He finds one in the neighbor's Uncle Einar. Playing detective he get his friends Anders and Eva-Lotta into serious trouble, but you know they get the crooks in the end.

Reading these translations, I keep wondering about the choices translators make. Why change Kalle Blomkvist to Bill Bergson. Is Blomkvist too foreign a name, but Bergson a Swedish name that English and American kids could handle? In my present state of wanting everyone to become more familiar with other countries and cultures, I would hope that original names would be retained.

Of course I had to check out Lindgren in our literary resources, and found that she was amazingly prolific, having written over 70 books between 1944 and 1997. She died in 2002. Many have been produced into movies. Pippi has been so popular, that her books have been translated into more than sixty languages from Arabic to Zulu. Turns out Pippi was a character that Lindren invented when telling stories to her daughter. When first published, readers loved it, educators were critical about this free spirited girl who didn't care much for authority. Early feminists were influenced by reading about Pippi, seeing new possibilities. Lindgren was also trying to provide non-violent reading for kids. No wonder she is considered a national treasure or "premier export product" according to the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold (2007)

I really liked Sebold's Lovely Bones, even though it too started with a murder, more gruesome that this one, because I thought it gave a wonderful insight into family relations and the possible relationship between those that have passed away and those that stay behind. Since I had just lost my mother, this made sense to me.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for The Almost Moon. I felt ill at ease throughout the whole book. And though it described family relations again, and a real debilitating disease, and the whole issue of taking care of elderly parents that I can relate to, it was one of those books I just hoped would end soon - I even stopped listening to it for a while to take a break. I kept hoping it was going to bring me to some peace of mind, as it did in Lovely Bones, but this did not.

Astrid & Veronika by Linda Olsson (2005)

I continue my exploration of Swedish authors. This was recommended at the airport bookstore, written by a Swedish author living in New Zealand. The cover photo of a handful of wild strawberries was compelling. One of those slow and deep books on the evolution of a friendship between two women. Veronika rents a house in a small village in Sweden next to Astrid, an old "witch". Over a years time they become friends, share secrets and sufferings, and bring joy back into each other's lives. This was originally written in English, so it doesn't lose anything in translation, and evokes an intimate feeling for Sweden and New Zealand.

Treasures: Secret Star / Treasures Lost, Treasures Found by Nora Roberts (2008)

I keep apologizing for reading Nora Roberts, but life had gotten so stressful in early March, that I needed some mindless light reading. This was again the two in one romance. Secret Star was about a detective who falls in love with the picture of his victim, who turns out not really dead. Some good portrayals of female friendships. The second was one of those finding sunken treasure stories. Left the book in Latvia, so I have no real further comment.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2005, trans. 2008)

I saw this in the Stockholm airport on my way to Latvia and read the first few pages and was hooked, but since it was a thick, heavy book, I left it to pick up on my way back. Then I asked my Swedish friend for suggestions of what current Swedish authors I should try reading, Stieg Larsson was one he mentioned. He said the author had written a trilogy and then died unexpectedly, but was quite a phenomenon. In the airport on the way back I found out that only the first book of the trilogy has been translated into English, so I will have to wait patiently for the rest. This was an engaging crime novel that I just couldn't put down.

The characters were intriguing. I like the central character Mikael Blomkvist, a financial investigative journalist, because he is intelligent, ethical and loves women in a friendly non-possessive way. My sense is that this is a Swedish approach, where having married lovers is socially more accepted and is at times even OK with the spouse. I liked the three healthy relationships he had with women throughout the events of this novel. Anyway, he gets convicted of libel at the beginning of the book (he was set up) and it frees him to take on a job for Henrik Vangar, a retired head of a large Swedish corporation, who wants Mikael to investigate the disappearance of a niece from almost 40 years ago. The suspects are mostly members of an extensive dysfunctional family.

The other character is much more colorful - Lisbeth Salander, the one with the tattoo mentioned in the title, and described by my friend as a modern day Pippi Longstocking. She is briefly compared to Pippi in the book, and since Pippi is one of my favorite children's book characters, I really liked Salander. Pippi's creator Astrid Lindgren is a Swedish author and Mikael kept being compared to Kalle Blomkvist, a Lindgren character I was not familiar with, but who turns out to be a master detective. (I just ordered the English translation from Amazon.) Anyway, Salander is a bit older, mid 20's, but is slight in build, not very communicative, but powerful in her computer and reasoning skills. We are introduced to her through the eyes of Dragan Armansky, a Croatian who has lived most of his life in Sweden and runs a security company, that ends up employing Salander. He fades into the background, but is an important support character. As with the Iranian taxi cab driver I encountered, I keep forgetting that Sweden is not homogeneously Swedish.

One of the major themes of the book is violence against women. Each of the four parts of the book starts by quoting a statistic on women and violence in Sweden, the scariest being - 46% of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man. It is not apparent in the beginning where that fits into the story, but obviously it does, and Salander is one of the forces bringing about justice.

The setting in Sweden was one of my reasons for reading this book. It doesn't play a major role, but I liked that most of the action was not in Stockholm, but in a small town along the coast. Since I just spent a couple of days in a small coastal town, and for the first time really thought about the expanse of islands off the coast of Sweden, asked my friend how they were used and got the sense of summer tourism, which is confirmed by Mikael's getaway cottage on an island. I was also reminded of Sweden as one of the big players in economics with products sold throughout the world.

As usual, I had to look up Stieg Larsson and found that he was actually a journalist who focused on exposing extreme right and racist organizations. Not only does he address violence against women, but nazism in Sweden, and corporate corruption. Turns out, Larsson had written these books, but had not published them when he died of a heart attack at age 50. They were published posthumously and have been on the best seller lists for a long time. This book is actually called Män som hatar kvinnor or Men who hate women, giving it a different focus than the English title. I found on Larsson's official site others complaining about the title change too, as the original title speaks to the theme. The next one only comes out in 2009. Can't wait.

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips (2007)

Interesting premise - if gods are immortal, that means they must still be living among us. How would they function in our world today? Well, if they continue to be as catty as they are in the Greek mythologies, then I guess Phillips' view of them could be a possibility. I just wasn't up for reading about these self-centered, lazy, perverse god characters. I gave up after one CD - not worth the effort.

Used World by Haven Kimmel (2007)

I am sorry I found this book to be tedious and I completed it only by inertia, as I just kept putting in the next CD hoping it would get better. I read one review on Amazon (where real people review books) that found the characters and descriptions so lackluster, that she didn't even finish the book. I too found the descriptions of this small Indiana town unappealing. It's not that I dislike small towns - I've lived in one and somebody like Jan Karon does them great justice. Kimmel's main three characters - women who work together in an antique store (hence the title) - and who are fighting various painful pasts - just did not inspire me. Her descriptions were so slow, that I would lose track of things - maybe it was partly because I listened instead of read it. (spoiler alert) I didn't understand till the very end that Hazel's mother had been doing illegal abortions. I caught on sooner that Claudia's problem was she was too tall, though in actually getting the book from the library I realized that was mentioned in the first sentence of the book about the mirror being too short. Beckah was the totally out of it, raised in a conservative religious cult girl, that worked hard to get out of her destructive home, but it was hard to read her story. Hazel was the crazy old hippie lady that I would usually love, but I just didn't. I didn't get where Kimmel was going with her religious passages either. Everyone's story does get tied together by the end of the book in sort of interesting ways, but the road there was not interesting enough for me to try anything else by this author.

First Test by Tamora Pierce (1999)

I picked this up at the audio book store, because the author was recommended by one of my former Latvian school students as a good young adult fantasy author. It was a nice story with a strong young female character Keladry, who struggles to prove herself in the otherwise all male knighthood training program at the castle. After all the heavy and often unappealing adult stuff I've been reading, this was great.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (2005)

This book was a Christmas present from a colleague, given to me because it is about Eastern Europe and it deals with libraries and archives. And these are the things I really loved about the book. The three generations of characters are constantly looking for clues in primary documents in libraries and archives. And the book itself, though labeled a novel, has an engagingly realistic Note to the Reader, explaining that this was all compiled by the author from letters and notes in her possession, as if she herself were a middle aged scholar, and the events described were from her youth, and that of her father and his teacher. I loved the map of Europe on the end papers of the book. Novels rarely have this touch of reality, especially when they are describing real places and buildings. Their travels through Eastern Europe were both fascinating, and at times a bit familiar - when dealing with travel restrictions in the former Soviet Union. Istanbul seemed exotic to me.

I liked the basic story too. A motherless girl lives and travels around the world with her father. Then he takes off on a trip without her, and she feels she has to follow him, as he is searching for something relating to Dracula, following old paths he trod before looking for his professor, who had disappeared mysteriously. On that long ago venture he was with Helen, the professor's daughter, who travels with him through Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Anyway, there is enough suspense, romance, and all good things a novel needs.

What I did find disconcerting at times, was the juxtaposition of these academic, research focused characters in this mystical world of vampires. I didn't mind that one of the librarians turned evil, and I believe in a little bit of mysticism - the power of mind over body, of good spirits, maybe even guardian angels of sorts, and I know there is evil in the world, mostly created by us mortals, though I do not understand the depths of it at times, but vampires just don't fit into my world view.

In the middle of reading this book I couldn't resist looking up Dracula and vampires in the Wikipedia. The Dracula entry is on Bram Stoker's 1897 book, though it links to many other related articles. It is interesting where Stoker got his inspirations - a bit from folklore, a bit from Romanian history, though it is not clear that he knew much about Vlad Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler from the 15th century. But what I also found interesting, having never read the original Dracula, was that it consists of journal entries, letters and news clippings, a technique also used by Kostova. I will have to read the original to see. Another book that used this method of telling the story was Myla Goldberg's Wickett's Remedy.

Looks like many different cultures have had some type of myth about vampire-like creatures. I don't think the Latvians do. Their evil never gets that evil - it is mostly an expansion of negative human traits like laziness, dishonesty, cruelty. Even the devil is a not too bright trickster. So maybe that is why these really deep evil creatures are so repulsive to me and I do not enjoy horror movies or books, and keep wondering how I keep stumbling into books on this theme.

This time it was worth it.

Everybody into the Pool by Beth Lisick (2005)

An unexpected gift from Andris in Washington with the statement that I will probably like it better than he did. Probably true. I mostly enjoyed this funny and edgy collection of true stories from a San Franciscoan. I especially appreciated the setting, since San Francisco was where I was going to go and live after college, though life landed me solidly in the Midwest. I have lost my yearning for the West Coast, though I still love to visit it. In some ways I felt some similarities with the author - we both were raised in solid families, but tended to find friends and adventures in the more edgy world - though I never got anywhere near as edgy as Lisick.

I loved some of the early stories the best, like the one where she become a prom princess, and when a cute older guy hit on her, she learned to avoid "people who were suave, classically attractive, and socially adept." And her obsession of ferreting out phonies stuck with her. The ladies tea story was funny too and I enjoyed her flirtation with bi-sexuality. I also liked the last story with her take on raising a baby. In the middle, her life in the world of drug addicts was less appealing, but still a good description of these various groups in our culture. I thought she was remembering a lot of the same things as I did from my younger days, but at some point, I realized she was talking about the 90's and must be quite a bit younger than me. I just went on an exploratory mission and found she 13 years younger. Lisick has a new book Helping Me Help Myself, as she takes a year to work on different aspects of herself each month (Is there a theme going? See Eat, Pray, Love.) I think I'm going to find this book and read it - I seem to be in a similar stage.

I brought this with me to Latvia in March as a gift for someone, but my friend Inta was desperate for something American to read, so she read most of it before I had to pass it on. She mostly liked it too, but found the prom chapter too long. I believe she just couldn't relate to the American high school scene, which I found so funny because I do remember it that way.

Blood Brothers by Nora Roberts (2007)

I found a new way of reading. I had been listening to this book in my car, was almost done with it, just a couple of more chapters, but I needed to go away to a conference. So in my hour and a half layover in Detroit, I found this book was one of the few books in all the newsstands. I felt uncomfortable standing at any one of the newsstands reading for too long, and since every other store in the airport is a newsstand, I had plenty of places to stop. I walked from newsstand to newsstand found the book and read a few pages until I was done.

Another interesting phenomenon at the airport newsstand was that the books were "Rent to Read." That means you can return them to a participating airport newsstand for half off your next book. Good idea!

The book itself? This is the first in Roberts' latest trilogies. Another perfect matching of three best friends with three women (this does get old), brought together by mysterious phenomenon that occur in Hastings Hallow, MD every 7 years. I don't like the premise, but the characters are OK. Cal runs the local hangout - the bowling alley - in this small town. Fox was raised by hippie parents, but turned small town lawyer. Gage had a rough childhood, now he wanders the globe playing poker. Quinn is a writer that investigates unexplained phenomenon. Layla works in a boutique, and I'm not sure what Cybil does, but she might be an interesting character.

The setting is not that important this time, as is the mystical phenomenon. And that is what I enjoy the least. Again, I'm reading an interesting combination of books - listening to this and reading Historian - a fiction book about people looking into the "true" history of Dracula and vampires. Blood Brothers has an evil being that was confined hundreds of years ago by a good guy. The three friends released this evil energy, and it is wreaking havoc in the town. I have liked Roberts putting in whiffs of magic in her stories, but this is major evil that I don't like. I know there is evil energy in the world, I just don't think it manifests in these ways, so this reduced my enjoyment of this book.

Torpedo Juice by Tim Dorsey (2005)

(Found I had written up this description on paper for this book that I read last summer.) This would have been the perfect book to listen to while on a Florida vacation, especially one to the Keys. Though listless characters doing drugs is not my favorite scenario, I found myself breaking into a smile quite often. Serge heads down to the Florida Keys to get married, though he doesn't have a wife picked out yet. He hooks up with his old buddy Coleman (sounds like these two characters have been in previous books), a pretty worthless druggie, but he makes an entertaining side-kick for Serge. Serge finds mousy Molly working in the library and asks her to marry him on their first date. I couldn't understand how an intelligent woman like Molly could go for such a con artist as Serge, but maybe she was desperate. I can't complain about stereotyping librarians, as the other librarian is a beauty. Though Serge is a con-man, I have to admit he grew on me, The riffs on buying towels with his new wife and then their session with a marriage counselor I found hilarious.

I really loved the references to specific keys, the small Key deer, mangroves, Key West, etc. I should have had a map in from of me while listening to this. I remember my one vacation in the Keys back in 1984 - and there really was a lot of back and forth on Route 1 - the string that holds the pearls of keys together. I seem to recall mile markers, as you never knew which key came when, so for directions, people gave you mile markers.

The book is full of colorful characters, and since this is a thriller/mystery, there are drug pins, cops, mysterious sharpshooters, and murderers. The book is so lighthearted that you don't notice how many murders have occurred until the end.

The Spanish Bow by Andromeda Romano-Lax (2007)

Once more I am faced with the knowledge of how little I know. This time it is about how little I know about Spain, the Spanish Civil War, Spain in World War II, and Franco. So I learned a little about all of this from this novel about a cellist inspired by the real life Spanish cellist Pablo Casals, as I found out from our library catalog. I had to find out about Casals too, and see that a few things are parallel with the book's main character, but much is not. Feliu Delargo is a child prodigy musician, who falls in love with the cello when he first hears it in a concert. (Though I am fairly unmusical, the cello is my favorite string instrument and I actually took lessons on it for about a year in high school, so I can understand his enchantment with the instrument.) His father had died and his mother sacrifices a lot to give him the opportunity to study cello in Barcelona. He lands in the court, playing for the young queen. (Seems some other books I have read addressed young English princesses married off to young Spanish kings.) He meets pianist Justo Al-Cerra (pronounced very strangely by the reader of the book), who convinces Delargo to tour with him in a trio with a violinist. This is the start of a long, complex relationship - both musical and personal. On a voyage back from America, during the great crash of 1929, they meet Aviva, an Italian violinist, that they both fall in love with , each in his own way. They travel as a trio, attempting to avoid the political upheavals in Spain and throughout Europe. Their lives are affected by numerous real historical incidents, and they meet historical persons like the royals, Franco and Hitler. I got a good sense of what it is like to be a musician constantly on the road, and enough glimpses into the historical time, to want to look things up in books and atlases when I was done. Very good, all in all.