Love Anthony by Lisa Genova (2013)

An amazing book on autism and unconditional love. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, as I really enjoyed the way it evolved. Two women living on Nantucket year round, which is deserted in the off season, like Saugatuck. You have to really love it to live there, as nothing is happening in the winter - businesses are closed, it is hard to make a living. Then during the summer you have to put up with the the crowds of tourists and summer people. You have to find something that can earn you enough off the tourists to tide you over, or be a teacher or something that serves the year round population. The local population is still active – they have families, sports & other after school activities, book clubs, a library :). I know I am totally digressing, but I am heading out to Montana, a sparsely populated state, that still creates a close sense of community with the few people it does have, as does a place like Nantucket. I like to understand how people live. Like where do the Vail store clerks and ski area workers live? Not in Vail – way too expensive. 

Beth finds out her husband has been seeing another woman and kicks him out. This triggers a self-examination that leads her back to creative writing and she seems to be fascinated by autistic children. Olivia has come to Nantucket to grieve the loss of her autistic son. She needs the space and time to heal. I liked that she discovered she could use her photography skills to earn some income.

This book is largely about autism, and gives us a great insight into the autistic mind. A mind a little further along the autistic spectrum than the person in the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time that is mentioned in this book. I liked these parts of the book best, and that both women learned something. The unconditional love depicted was also beautiful, touching and difficult.

This book made me think of my own life and taught me something, as a good book should. For example, a therapist asks a couple to write down what they need to feel wanted, happy, secure, and loved. The guy can do it easily, the woman struggles. Made me think what my answers would be. 

Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger (2013)

I had a total of about 45 minutes to spend at the American Library Association

annual conference exhibits (you can spend hours there), so I promised myself I would ignore all the book sellers and not even look at the list of authors signing books. But... on my way out of the exhibit hall, I saw a familiar unique name - Niffenegger. No line, she was just standing there signing a pile of books, so I went up to her. I got flustered and couldn't remember the names of her books, but knew I had read three of them. (The Time Traveler's Wife, Her Fearful Symmetry, and The Three Incestuous Sisters) So I got this, her latest book, half price, signed and all, and having met the author!

I read it on the bus ride home - a dark modern fairy tale of a postman who falls in love with a raven, and they have a little girl, who wants to fly, but can't as she has arms.  There are fantastic elements, and today's reality - as in the girl going to school and college. The story is accompanied by Niffenegger's hauntingly beautiful illustrations, which are perfect for the story. I loved the nest on the bed.
 
In the author's afterward she tells how she wrote this fairy tale at the request of a choreographer for the Royal Ballet of London, so this story may become a dance sometime. I can see this. The movie Black Swan comes to mind.
 

Inner Circle by Brad Meltzer (2011)

In looking for a new author to follow, I picked this one up because I saw something about libraries on

one of Meltzer's book covers, and then realized I had to start with the first one in the series. The main character Beecher White works in the National Archives and archives are becoming more fascinating to me than libraries. I love it when there is more than a fast paced story in a book- when I learn about something. This taught me more about the workings of our National Archives and gave me a further glance into their storage caves in Pennsylvania. I had heard of them, but had forgotten. I have seen the archival caves in the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, so could better imagine what these look like. The other interesting piece was about the presidency. I had barely thought about the fact that the President needs people he can really trust around him and how hard it is to get any privacy in that office. I did not know that George Washington had a secret spy group called the Culper Ring. Meltzer asks the question, what if they never disbanded?

Beecher White runs into a high school girlfriend and to show off brings her into one of the closed and secure rooms used by the president to read archival documents. I liked the image of the story's President Wallace coming to the National Archives on a regular basis to read letters and documents from his predecessors. They inadvertently find a 200 year old book holding secrets, a man dies suddenly, and we are off. We are never quite sure who is on whose side, who are the "good guys," but there are plenty of interesting characters - a barber, a doctor, a crazy man who tried to kill the president, and Clementine - the high school friend who's motives become more and more unclear as the book progresses. I will definitely read more of Meltzer's books.

Bared to You by Sylvia Day (2012)

Eva moves to New York City with her bisexual best friend and model Cary and

starts a job in an ad agency. On the first day she bumps into extremely rich and handsome Gideon Cross. There is instant attraction on both sides, and though Eva rebuffs him for a while, of course they end up together. Both have painful pasts, which actually does make them good for each other. Basic hot fluff.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (2001)

This is the first of the Thursday Next novels, and I should have read this first.
Thanks to my blog I could find that I had read Thursday Next in First Among Sequels, but my notes indicate the confusion caused by the pretty complex alternate world, which was more or less explained here. I know I was intrigued, because this series of mystery/thriller/science-fiction/fantasy is based on literature.

Thursday Next is a bright and resourceful woman working as a Special Operative in literary detection in an alternate England of 1985. Her father is a time traveler, who is wanted by some government agency, so he just pops in and out of Thursday's life for a few minutes. In this first tale, Thursday is called in to work with a higher level of Special Ops to deal with a dangerous criminal Acheron Hades, who has stolen a literary text. This is of critical importance, because if original texts are damaged, they damage all versions of the literary piece, and rewrite literature, which is of major concern in this alternate world. Big enough to create a whole government agency to police this - the Literary Division.

Fforde allows his characters to interact with literary characters, and Thrusday is one of the few people who can travel between the "real" world and literary ones. She had met Rochester of Jane Eyre as a child, and he seems to travel to her world to save her life at one point. Acheron Hades gets his hands on the original manuscript of Jane Eyre and starts changing the story. Thursday ends up going into the world and saving the story, but in the process changing the ending, which had bothered a lot of people. I had read Jane Eyre a long time ago, but it never impressed me, so I had forgotten the story, though references to Rochester and Jane appear every once in a while, so I was very happy that at one point Thursday retold the story for those of us who had forgotten it or never read it. 

There is so much to this book from the literary references (and I am not expert, so didn't get many, probably missed more) to entertaining concepts and names like the nasty Goliath Corporation and their man Jack Shit. It is one thing to read this name, but to listen to it on the audio tape over and over again, I actually found myself coming out with non-professional language at work one day.

We get much of Thursday's history, which is probably critical in understanding her in later books - her tour of duty in the Crimean War (an interesting alternate history), her brothers, her brilliant uncle, her former love. My only minor complaint was that too many things seemed to get resolved at the end of the book, but that is not enough for me to stop reading this series. Definitely want to try more.

Perfect Harmony by Nora Roberts (2011)

Two oldies, but goodies.

Unfinished Business (1992)
Vanessa was taken away from her home and on the road by her father to have a brilliant career as a pianist. When her father dies, she returns home to Maryland to figure things out, to understand why her mother broke off contact, to find what she really wants to do with the rest of her life. Brady, her high school love has returned home too, to work with and take over his father's medical practice. Obviously he woos her back and she finds where she belongs. There was a brief connection with another of Nora Roberts series set in fictional Cordinia, as Vanessa goes to play a concert there.

Local Hero (1988)
Hester and her son Radley move into an apartment where one of their neighbors is Mitch Dempsey, a writer of comic books. Radley worships him, as a comic book loving kid, and Mitch enjoys the boy's company, so becomes his main babysitter. Hester is cautious, thankful for the father figure Mitch provides, though a bit skeptical about his profession, but does not want to get involved if that will hurt her son in any way. Bit of a glimpse into the comic writing, producing and moving to movies world.

The Racketeer by John Grisham (2012)

Thank goodness for this blog, as I did not recall ever reading a book by Grisham, but sure enough, I have read two of them (Playing for Pizza and Painted House), though neither is a legal thriller like this book. We have black lawyer Malcolm Bannister telling us his story from prison - how he was wrongly convicted of racketeering and how he plans to get out, because he thinks he knows who actually killed a federal judge. The story is quite convoluted and you never quite know what to believe, but it was a great tale and a good read.

At the end of the book the author has a disclaimer, that none of this is based on any facts and that he did not do any research for it. There is no prison camp, murdered federal judge or uranium mine court case, but the story reminded me of  the senselessness of our prison system. Grisham mentions a $40,000 per prisoner per year price tag. A quick Google search places that at the low end of estimates, so we are spending huge amounts to incarcerate large numbers of the populace for non-violent crimes. It ruins the lives of those individuals, as a conviction closes many doors, and creates huge stresses for the families. I would not be surprised if the divorce rates are high, as pointed out in Grisham's story. On one hand the monotony of prison life is mind numbing, on the other it gives one time to concoct elaborate plans as the one we see unfold. I also liked that Malcolm worked in the prison library and helped other prisoners with their legal problems, though rarely being able to shorten their stay in prison.  I also like a well thought out scam like on Leverage or the Ocean movies.

Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire (2012)

That old adage, don't judge a book by its cover came true again - literally. I picked this book up, because I liked the cover. (Maybe I will explore this again sometime. When I had a bookstore, all the horror books had black covers with dripping red or purple letters. The romances too could be classified by their covers. Westerns had a certain style, so did science fiction and fantasy. I am sure the publishing industry puts a lot of thought into the type of customer they want to draw in with their cover.) I read the blurb and thought I was up for a contemporary book about college age kids. But it disappointed in so many ways. I will write what I thought and then look at what other people have said.

The opening chapter was good. She - Abby - gets drawn into a basement where there is an illegal fight going on. He - Travis - is one of the fighters, the reigning champ of Eastern University from some Midwest state not too far from Wichita, Kansas. The story is basically a romance with the usual push - pull. He isn't the type of guy she wants tatoos and all, she is getting away from some past and he reminds her of that too much. He doesn't want any woman - he sleeps with them but doesn't call or date. She has a best friend America, who is going out with his roommate and cousin. He talks her into a bet she loses, and ends up having to live with him for a month - just friends. But then it gets frustrating as they work things out. Maybe things have totally changed since I was in college, but since when are freshman looking for the one and only? Sure, people are looking for relationships, learning in them, but rarely do they end up forever. (OK, so my best friend in college was an exception, but they started in high school, and did some soul searching before they realized they really are meant to be together and still are.) I had a hard time with the college life depicted. Everyone meeting for lunch in the cafeteria every day, like in high school, sitting in clicks? With everyone watching what everyone else is doing? Maybe that happens in small schools, but it seemed so immature.

Then there was the physical fighting. Not my favorite thing, but I could get there being impromptu fights called together through cell phones like a flash mob, with bets going on, where everyone keeps mum, but there was some major fighting outside these situations, that never seemed to draw the attention of authorities. Maybe it is literary license, like Clint Eastwood movies, or the norm in that part of the country, but my sense is that any fight, especially if someone is injured, gets the attention of the police or campus safety. That seemed to barely graze the consciousness of the characters, especially in the last fight when a lot of people were injured. No way that would have gone unnoticed.

I was going to give up on this book early on, but since I have dropped a few books recently, I decided to stick with it and see if there was anything redeeming about it. It did get exciting about three quarters of the way through, when we get a glimpse into Abby's past, as she is forced to play her former role as an expert gambler. Now this I found interesting, but it was over way too soon. I wanted to know more about this life, how her friend America had gotten to be her sidekick at times like these, why Travis was not more impressed with her skills, more about her mother other than a brief mention. When Abby broke up with Travis, because he did not understand some aspects of her past, I never felt that he got it in the end. I do get that they were both broken in some way and in that way worked together, but I have a hard time understanding the "forever" sentiments at that age.

When looking for the book covers, I look at reviews. Of course, I must be getting old or way off mainstream, because this book got some sort of romance of the year award. I actually like Amazon personal reviews, there one reviewer that said it better than I: "the relationship was so raw and emotional that the rollercoaster that was their relationship became quite stressful. By the end of the book I just wanted them to stop fighting!" Though she did point out that the ups and downs in their relationship were more like real relationships than in many books. OK, I'll give it that.

The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier (2013)

Tracy Chevalier is one of the authors I will continue to pick up, no matter what she has written, and she did not disappoint. I can't explain why, but this is the type of historical novels I really like. I could not say why Ian McEwan just didn't grab me as Chevalier does. 

I understand this is the first time she has written about American history, having an English girl Honor Bright (what a great name for a Quaker heroine to have) come to the US with her sister, only to find herself all alone in Ohio with a community of Quaker "friends" as they call themselves, where she does not really fit in. Her one true friend in Ohio is Bell, a whiskey drinking milliner woman who's brother catches runaway slaves, and keeps eying Honor.

I like filling in my knowledge of history with stories that help me understand details, how towns evolved, how the underground railroad worked as far north as Ohio. Having lived in Ohio for six years, I could relate to the descriptions of nature and places. I have had friends say they have attended Quaker meetings, but I learned more about their beliefs and practices through this story. But my favorite detail was about quilting. Honor was a great quilter, and she worked patchwork quilts rather than the applique quilts favored in the town she landed. She saved scraps of cloth from people important to her life to incorporate into her quilts. Of course I always like strong women who think for themselves, so it was a pleasure to watch this shy little girl from a thousand year old town in England blossom into a woman and an American who accepts change and its challenges.

Atonement by Ian McEwan (2002)

This book in my favorite historical fiction genre did not really grab me until the very end, when I felt its

power. It is divided into three parts with an epilogue of sorts, though having listened to it, I couldn't quite figure out how it was labeled.

We start in 1935 with a detailed description of just a few days in 1935, where we see the well off Tallis family - 13 year old Briney, who wants to put on a play with her newly arrived cousins, her older sister Cecelia and older brother Leon. Mother Emily suffers from constant migranes and spends most of her time in bed. Father Jack is busy at work and doesn't always come home. Robby is the son of their housekeeper and is in love with Cecelia. I know kids are imaginative, and I too remember having flights of fancy, though I don't recall details of the topics of my thoughts, but it was hard reading about the over active imagination of Briney and her misinterpretation of what she sees that ends up affecting other lives.

The second part takes us to France during 1940 and the British retreat to Dunkirk, where the story is told mostly from Robby's point of view. This is a glimpse into the harsh realities of that war. As much as I dislike hearing these stories, we must keep telling them and hearing them, as only then we have any chance of having the motivation to prevent future wars. My friends in Facebook are currently discussing the atrocities of WWII done to women, and how little we know of those, as our parents would not talk of such things.

The third part of the book also takes place in 1940, but this time in London, following Cecelia and Briney, who saw the horrors of the war in their work as nurses in the hospitals. I was struck by the details such as preparing for bomb attacks - fortifying walls, doors, windows and roofs. I had heard of blackening out all light, so enemy planes could not find you, but I just can't imagine what that would be like. I am uncomfortable when we have a power outage and I drive through completely dark neighborhoods.

The epilogue shows us Briney for a few days in one of the last years of her life. Her acerbic wit comes through and pulls the whole story together. It is only when I realized what her atonement was, that I was struck by the skill of Ian McEwan as an author. I just may need to read some of his other work and see the movie version of this book.

I just realized this is my 500th post. Not bad for 8 years of book reading.