My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman (2015)

Another delightful book from Backman, author of A Man Called Ove. This too builds slowly and then magically blooms into a heartwarming story of humanity.

Elsa is a 7 year old girl, who loves books and comics and is very bright, though she doesn't have friends. Her parents are divorced, her mother is busy with her career, so spends a lot of time with her grandmother. Grandma was a doctor saving lives around the world, is still constantly up for adventures and tells Elsa fairy tales - often based on real people. When grandma dies, she leaves Elsa a puzzle - envelopes she has to hand out to different people - but one at a time, so she gets to know them, and finds out how they were tied to grandma. Plus grandma has asked them all to watch over her. We rarely know the secrets of the individuals around us, what is behind the slick or weird exteriors. When you find out, their appearance and actions make sense. This was just a very feel-good book.

I'm Not a Terrorist but I've Played One on TV by Maz Jobrani (2015)

An Iraqi student gave me this very funny and spot-on book by comedian Maz Jobrani. He was born in Iran, but grew up in America, so very American. In one sense his is the typical immigrant story of parents expecting their children to become lawyers and dealing with them when he decides to take a different path to happiness and success. But it is different because he is a Middle Easterner and all the stereotyping that goes along with that. As the title indicates, he has been asked to wear turbans and play terrorists, which he now refuses to do. He has dealt with profiling - and his own fear of being profiled. I was glad to hear him share his thoughts around 911 and the precarious state for all Middle Easterners after that. He has married a woman from India to add to the wonderful melting pot of America.

Maz is funny. He has taken really heavy topics and covered them in a humorous, easy-to read and digest way. I broke out in laughter on more than one occasion. What surprised me was that he has performed in the Middle East and is a great hit there. I would expect that he would have to find the balance between being funny and offensive there, but obviously, he has found the right tone and they love him, bootleg DVDs of his performances and even kings have come to see him. Humor is tricky, and I have to say that there are a lot of comedians and types of humor I don't like, but I would actually like to go see him perform. Looks like he is in Chicago in March. Maybe...

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny (2009)

Another wonderful Chief Inspector Gamache book. This time he and his wife are on vacation celebrating their anniversary in a huge lodge - Manoir Bellechasse - across the mountain from Three Pines, where most of this series takes place. They are sharing the resort with the Morrow family reunion. Two of the regular characters in previous books were Peter and Clara Morrow from Three Pines. There was some mention that Peter came from a well off family, but had chosen the life of an artist and had not taken any funds from the family. But apparently he still feels obligated to attend the occasional family reunion. The family is quite dysfunctional with deep seated feelings of not being loved enough, mistrust, competition, dislike of each other. But they gather because mother has called them together to put up a statue of their late father. When someone dies in strange circumstances, Gamache is forced to bring in his team and start investigating. It could be any one of the family members or possibly the staff. Everyone has their secrets, their reasons for being in this place, far from the rest of the world.

Again I loved Gamache's gentle, but intuitive style. He has personal things going on too - besides having to cut short his vacation with his wife, he has a conflict with his son in Paris over the name of the future grandchild. Plus we learn of Gamache's father, who was labeled a coward for urging Canada to not join in the war that turned into WWII, but we learn the real story behind this.

With his side-kicks Jean Guy Beauvior and AGent Isabelle Lacoste they work their way through the mysteries of this murder, the biggest being how it was done. How does a heavy statue fall on someone? In the end, Gamache leads the family towards healing, though they will have to continue to work on it themselves.

I also liked the way the staff were portrayed, especially chef Veronique and her story. Interesting to learn about the issues around French and English speaking Canadians, especially in Quebec.

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1962)

This was just on my list of classic audio books to listen to and it turned out to be a strange alternate history. Unintentionally keeping to my WWII theme this year, Dick looked into the possibility that Japan and Germany had won the war and America was split between the two countries. It was interesting to see white Americans as lower class. The politics was to too confusing as though I know some of the Nazi officials, I don't remember their roles, so much of that conversation was lost on me, but Goebbles and Goring are powerful men in this version of history.

The other main strangeness, was that an author in this alternate timeline has written a book about the U.S. and Britain winning - and his book seems to be very popular. At the end of the book there seems to be a major understanding what the book within the book is saying, but I did not get it and did not like to book enough to reread/re-listen to figure it out.

We follow a few characters: 
Frank Frank, a secret Jew that is a skilled metal worker gets fired and starts a small business with a friend making unique jewelry. I thought this was going to play out more but was unsure what the jewelry of the time was. 
The antiques dealer discovers that many of his antiques are not originals, but great reproductions. He ends up taking the jewelry on consignment and is trying to provide unique gifts to a Japanese official who wants to impress a Swedish businessman.
Then there are the two I just mentioned with another Japanese general coming in from Japan - there were SD guys who wanted to kill them and they were planning some sort of revolution.
Then finally there is Frank's ex-wife who is in Colorado and who hooks up with this Italian guy. Again, not clear what she was all about.

Now that I've read this, I found out there are at least two seasons of this as a series by Amazon. I might look into it.

The Last Mile by David Baldacci (2016)

I like Amos Decker and like watching him return to the world slowly. There is an ex-football player theme here as well as a racial one, going back to the 1950's and 60's in the South when cruel racial crimes were perpetrated. We get to think again about capital punishment.

Melvin Mars is supposed to get executed for murdering his parents, but Amos gets interested in the case when he finds a lot of similarities to his own life - both with promising careers cut short by tragedy. In both cases someone came forward years later confessing to the murders. Why? 

As always, Baldacci provides a suspenseful read.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014)

This is the Common Read book for our university this year. We created a display around the themes in the book at the library, so I thought it would be a good thing to read this dystopian novel.

In the beginning, I wasn't that impressed, but towards the end the book grabbed me. Actor Author dies on stage while playing King Lear, a young paramedic jumps up on stage to try to save him, an 8-year-old girl Kirsten watches all this happen. We follow Jeevan the paramedic through the early stages of the epidemic - he gets a call from a doctor friend who works in a hospital who tells him to get out, this flu is unprecedently fast and lethal. Jeevan purchases numerous shopping carts of water, groceries, and supplies from a corner store and lugs them up to his wheelchair-bound brother, and the two of them hole up. Then the story wanders between the past, present and 15 and 20 years after the end of civilization. Jeevan ends up being a doctor in a small community and Kirsten travels with a troupe of entertainers. They encounter a town taken over by someone calling himself the Prophet and end up in the Museum of Civilization.

Barkskins by Annie Proulx (2016)

Whew! I don't know the last time I read one of these multigenerational novels spanning over 300 years. There was one like this about the French and Americans in Viet Nam that I read many years ago, and James Michener was known for these sagas, but I don't think I ever read one.

This was the saga of two families, but even more the saga of the deforestation of North America. I was driving through the beautiful tree covered hills of the southern tier of New York State while listening to the final part of this book. Those forests look healthy from my car, but I realize I have seen very few old growth trees - maybe the redwoods in Muir Woods National Monument north of San Francisco. And of course, we don't live in sync with the forest any longer as the Native Americans or First People's did.

The book starts with two French orphan boys who are indentured to work for a nasty guy in Nova Scotia cutting trees in 1695. The deforestation starts with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, along the St. Lawrence, Maine. Other loggers are working their way through New York and Pennsylvania. This story takes us to the white pines of Michigan - that seem endless at the beginning - and then out to the NW U.S., and even the ancient kauri trees of New Zealand.

We get alternate stories of Rene Sel and Charles Duke (Duque).

I learned so many interesting historical facts about Boston, Detroit and Chicago, besides the lives of Native Americans and the tree story. This was such a huge tome, that I will just pull out a few things that stood out:

• Travel by ship was done by many of the characters - I think only one character went down in a shipwreck - and that was on Lake Erie.
• Fascinating was the trip to China in the 1700's - it took months and then they would have to wait months for the right winds to come around for their return trip. China would no let them wander freely, but they had to live in a special compound for foreigners. China had already destroyed their forests, but the rich had special gardens with trees.
• Life in logging camps was hard and dangerous.
• How Chicago became such an important center.
• Native Americans living off the forest vs. whites feeling that the forest needs to be tamed, chopped down and land used for agriculture - they considered the Indians lazy for "just" hunting and gathering.
• The Europeans kept destroying land by destroying forests and then trying to grow crops on insufficient land - all the way West. They even used the Bible as an excuse for this - something about man over nature.
• I do not have a clear sense of how the Forest Service evolved, though they get mentioned and what they have done to stop deforestation, restore things to their natural ways and how far we have gotten.

I am sure I had more to say, but I left off here and it will have to be enough. Great book!

Chasing Sunsets by Karen Kingsbury (2015)

Sighhh. I cannot wrap my mind around this world view, and I know it is the world view of many of my fellow countrymen. I can more easily accept some strange world with different parameters created by a science fiction or fantasy writer, than one where everything is controlled by a specific flavor of god and angels with a mission. I should write down my own beliefs at some point, as there is a sense of a higher power, a connectedness, fate to some extent, and even guardian angels, but very different from the ones portrayed here.

I realized I had to give this book up after one CD. There is a baseball star Marcus, who is supposed to father an important future messenger, but only if Mary Catherine stays well enough (she has a genetic medical condition) to bear the child. Then there are gang members who are supposed to kill Marcus, the baseball coach and his family, and a youth center, that seemed to be created with a lot of good intentions, though the conversations at the opening did not convince me they had thought it all through. Though the story may be good, it is not for me.

Stars of Fortune by Nora Roberts (2015)

Been a while since I've read a Nora Roberts book (I have to be reading at least one a month to catch up will all she's written, but then I don't need to read them all - not something to aspire to on this author.) This is the first of the Guardians Trilogy and is high on the magic scale - magic again being the central focus that brings the three couples together. Three moon goddesses created three stars of fire, ice and water for a new queen. The evil goddess cast a spell on the stars so that they fell at some point, though well hidden. These six seekers - each most likely from a family of seekers - are to find them and restore them to the Glass Island, whatever that might be, and somehow have to stand up to the evil one. It is just the excuse to bring these six strangers together in beautiful settings doing interesting things.

Sasha starts off the story by dreaming of the other five and drawing from her dreams. She is an artist from NC and the seer that will guide them on their quest and that brings them together in Corfu, an island off Greece, for the first adventure. The rest know they are seeking the stars from family lore, but seeing themselves in Sasha's drawings convinces them all quickly that they belong to this team. Bran is a magician from Ireland and her love interest, her protector. Riley is an archaeologist who is world savvy and gets them the great villa to stay in through connections. I liked that they had to take time out of their adventures to take care of the place and figure out who cooks, who cleans, etc. Sawyer they pick up hitchhiking. He is handy with his hands and a drifter. Annika just appears on the beach one night and is not of this world, very innocent. I guessed who she was within minutes of meeting her. Doyle is another Irishman, the last to join the group and still mostly a mystery at the end of the story, but there are two more books to go. Heavy magic not my favorite in Roberts' books, but I do like this grouping of people, so want to read the rest of the trilogy sooner rather than later.

Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear (2016)

And we continue the WWII theme of the year. I read two of the first Masie Dobbs books and I promised myself to pick up some more, as I liked her. This is many years later, she has lived through a lot, luckily enough of her back story is told throughout the book.

It is 1938. Maisie has returned to London after helping wounded soldiers in Spain. She is staying with a long time friend, looking for a place of her own as a widow. Her old friends at secret service contact her and ask her to bring an important British businessman out of Munich, out of Dachau prison. She is to pretend she is the man's daughter. Masie reluctantly takes on the task and, of course, things don't go as planned. The Germans toy with her, asking her to return to Nazi headquarters numerous times. Then the person they bring out of Dachau is not the right one. Plus she has been given another task by a rich Englishman to bring his daughter back home. The plot is complex with Germans, Brits, Canadians and an American. All set in pre-war Germany. During the story Germany annexes Austria and Maisie keeps feeling that something is very wrong in Munich though it is in beautiful Bavaria - e.g. she sees two little girls playing in a deserted alley, so their families would not see them. They are not allowed to play together, as one of them is Jewish. This unease is well justified as we know the future events. She does face real danger, but in her usual composed way, deals with it.

I really should read some of the other Maisie Dobbs books. It was seven years ago that I read the first two - http://mairasbooks.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html