75 Books in 2010

Although I read every day, I've never kept track of how many books I read in a year. I noticed on Librarything a group committed to reading 75 books in 2010 and decided to give it a try. I have no idea how close to that I might come but it will be interesting to see. I wonder if just making the commitment will stir me on to read more. I will keep you posted on how I'm doing and review as many as I can. I'm just finishing William Boyd's Blue Afternoon and with the holidays coming, my reading time will be severely shortened. But I've got my first book of the New Year selected, Canoe Trip: North to Athabasca by David Curran. Just the ticket for a stormy winter night, the true story of a wilderness adventure. I'm looking forward to this one.

The Polish Officer by Alan Furst

While Furst is generally categorized as a writer of spy novels, I think that's a very narrow way of looking at his books. He is an excellent novelist. He has chosen Europe during WWII as his setting and all his books are so well researched, they "feel" authentic. In this novel, as in his others, a strong but basically ordinary man is tested to the limit. Polish cartographer, Alexander de Milja, is recruited into the Polish Intelligence Service after the German invasion of Poland and is thrown in to a series of dangerous assignments. Furst has a deft touch in surrounding his heroes with very real and interesting characters, all facing life and death decisions daily as they struggle to survive. My only criticism of this book is that it jumps abruptly from one place to another as de Milja is reassigned to various countries. I would have liked a little more transition. Also, his love interest, a woman who assists him with his intelligence work, disappears with a very brief and unsatisfying explanation. While not his best book (I think Night Soldiers and Kingdom of Shadows are better), this is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it.

The Octopus by Frank Norris

For today’s reader, this novel might best be summed up as “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Set in the final years of the 19th century in the San Joaquin Valley of California, farmers, with thousands of acres of wheat under cultivation, are totally dependent on the railroad for transporting their crops to market. The railroad’s corporate greed and corruption, whose long arms extend to law enforcement, the courts, and government, are pitted against the farmers, who represent the American sense of independence, entrepreneurs who are working hard and think they are in charge of their own destiny. The result is inevitable disaster. By today’s standards, Norris’s writing seems very idealized. The character of Vanamee is more a symbol than a real character. After his young love is raped and killed, he spends his life wandering, yearning for his lost love, and has endless conversations attempting to describe the ineffable, until his final scene in a cemetery calling up her spirit. I found this very hard to get through. The farmers were a more interesting lot, from “The Governor” Magnus Derrick, a highly principled man who thinks honorable men always win, to Annixter, a wealthy farmer who spends his time reading Charles Dickens. It is interesting that Norris represents the railroad as almost a force of nature, a movement that cannot be stopped. He doesn’t really hold the officials to any moral standard. I suspect that this novel is primarily read today for historical interest.

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

This is not a book I would have picked up to read but it was a Book Group selection so dutifully read. I found it more engrossing than expected. The book is about Caelum and Maureen Quirk, teacher and school nurse at Columbine. He is absent on the fateful day and she was a survivor. The author writes in great historical detail of the event at the school itself, the history of the shooters, and the impact on the whole community. Lamb details the effect of Maureen's post-traumatic stress on her husband and marriage, her downward spiral and ultimate tragedy. The story is told from Caelum's point of view and the reader gets to experience his slow understanding of himself and his behavior. My biggest problem with the book comes with the second half. Lamb leaves his original story and veers off on a related but essentially separate story of Caelum's history and exploration of his family through the discovery of some old family documents. I found myself skipping ahead to try to figure out who these people were that he was writing about. I found this section much slower and less interesting. I kept wanting him to get back to his original story. This second story could have been done as a sequel.

The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa

The Leopard is set in Sicily in the 1860's, around the time a united Italy was formed. The plot involves events in the lives of Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, and his family, set against a backdrop of revolution and the collapse of the old aristocracy. I read this in translation so my comments reflect that rather than the original Italian but the language is breathtaking. When Fabrizio walks into a room in the palace, the reader follows his eyes as they take in every detail and hear his reflections on the history of the objects there. There is such a strong sense of place. I was fascinated with his description of the Sicilian character. When a representative of the new national government asks him to join the Senate, describing all the improvements that will be coming to Sicily, Fabrizio declines, explaining that Sicilians don't want improvements. "They are coming to teach us good manners...But they won't succeed because we think we are gods." The story of his family is simple: love, marriage, jealousy, death, all seen through the old man's eyes and filtered through his understanding of the collapse around him. This is a marvelous book.

A Flickering Light by Jane Kirkpatrick

As in previous novels, Jane Kirkpatrick has based this story on an historical person, in this case her grandmother. Jessie Ann Gaebele lived in Minnesota in the early years of the 20th century. In the story, she discovers a love of photography and dreams of working in what was then a man's profession. Against her parents wishes, she begins training with a local portrait photographer, F. J. Bauer. Kirkpatrick does a good job of describing photography of the time, the use of glass plates and mixing of dangerous chemicals. The conflict in the story arises as a strong attraction grows between Jessie and her employer. The author does a good job of developing her characters and explaining their motivations. By today's standards, the relationship between Jessie and Bauer is almost innocent, more one of feelings than physical actions. But in the community in which they live, their attraction is sinful and shocking. This is the second of Kirkpatrick's novels that I've read and she seems to be drawn to strong females, struggling to overcome the limits placed on women at the time. This book is very well written, with interesting believable characters. A special treat were the actual photographs taken by Jessie and woven into the plot.

Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd

Brazzaville Beach is one of the best novels by a very good author. The book combines thought-provoking ideas and a gripping plot. Hope Clearwater is a young Englishwoman who marries a math genius primarily because she envies the way his mind works. A retrospective look at his ideas and her observation of his breakdown is woven between her life in a camp in the Congo where she is one of the observers in a large study of chimps. The camp is situated in a region where constant fighting occurs between government and rebellious factions. Hope makes a shocking discovery about the behavior of the chimps and this sets off unexpected repercussions. Her experiences as she moves between the chimps, the scientists in the camp and the war all around her create an amazing story. This is a book that can be enjoyed on many levels, from the philosophical to the simply suspenseful.

A Mending at the Edge by Jane Kirkpatrick

Based on diaries and historical records, this novel is a fictional account of the life of Emma Wagner Giesy, the only woman sent to the Oregon Territory in the 1850's to help found a communal society. She came as part of a German-American Christian community based in Missouri. The group founded Aurora, Oregon, creating a commune focused on their Christian faith and supported by agriculture and domestic crafts. The story is told from Emma's viewpoint. Escaping an abusive husband, she is given protection and support by the group but her role, along with the other women, is very narrowly defined and decided by the men. A large part of the story is her struggle for personal expression while also satisfying her yearning to be part of the community.It is also an interesting story of the personalities and politics of the group, the tension between creating a faith based community and an economic unit. This novel is part of a series but stands alone very well. The Oregon setting was especially interesting to me but it is well written and a fascinating story with broad appeal.

Stars and Bars by William Boyd

I discovered William Boyd quite a few years ago and was very impressed with the two novels I read. Then he fell off my radar screen. Recently, I've begun reading more of his novels and I have yet to be disappointed. In Stars and Bars, Henderson Dores is unhappy with his life and after a brief self-analysis, decides all his problems are the result of his English tendency to "shyness", an extreme timidity in asserting himself. He admires Americans as the consummate models of confidence and self-assertion. He takes a job in New York with a private art dealer and attempts a reconciliation with his American ex-wife while simultaneously beginning an affair with another American woman. He is sent to a rural area of Georgia to acquire some valuable paintings and finds himself in a series of disastrous but humorous events which spiral out of his control. I was reminded of Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, where bizarre circumstances seem to bring out the man's every weakness. If you like British black humor, you'll enjoy this.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel by Lisa See

I found this book hard to read in many ways, not because of poor writing, but because of the unrelenting sadness in the life of Lily, a 19th century Chinese girl from a poor country family. It begins by describing in great detail her foot binding at age seven. After that, her life narrows, mostly limited to a second story "women's room". She longs for her mother's love but is told daily she is worthless, her only value that of obedient daughter and wife. She is married off and leaves her home for that of her husband, where she is the lowest member of the household. The redeeming grace in her life is her friendship with Snow Flower, in a formalized relationship called a laotong which is intended to be more emotionally intimate and lasting than marriage. How this relationship transcends the other areas of her life, and is threatened by a misunderstanding, forms the core of the book. Lisa See is a very skilled writer and is able to clearly conjure a physical place and society so alien to ours. The reader is left pondering why a woman's beauty and value in that culture depended upon the smallness and shape of her feet. I was struck by an obvious parallel with breast size, and implants to achieve it, in our society. (

Yesterday's Embers (Clayburn Novels Series #3)… by Deborah Raney

Doug DeVore is suddenly widowed when his wife and daughter tragically die. He is left with five children and very few resources. He turns to Mickey Valdez, his children's day care teacher, a thirty year old single woman. For a lesser writer, this storyline would be a feel-good romance, a "love conquers all" exercise. But Deborah Raney offers more than that. She looks beneath the surface at what motivates DeVore, his loneliness, his feelings of being overwhelmed at caring for his children, his need for someone to take care of him as his wife had done. Kayeleigh, at 12 the oldest child, struggles with the loss of her mother along with normal adolescent insecurities and her resentment of Mickey drives a lot of the story. Mickey worries that life is passing her by, that she will never have the marriage and family she desires. How their relationship develops, and all the problems they encounter, from religious differences, the demands of so many children and money problems, to extended family pressures, give a sense of reality to their story. I had a real sense of getting to know this family. There is a strong Christian element to the story which motivates the characters and drives their decisions but this does not overpower the story.

Nine Lords of the Night by E. C. Gibson

The author combines academia, archaeology, looters, revolution and corrupt police to create a gripping mystery set in the Chiapas region of Mexico. The disappearance of a female graduate student working on a dig at a Mayan site sets off an involved chain of events. Several story lines move between Harvard and Chiapas and involve graduate students and faculty, a revolutionary called The Professor and some truly evil bad guys. Mayan religion, both historical and present-day, weaves throughout the story. The author does a very good job of describing the jungle and the conditions of the Indians living there after the government's "pacification" program killed so many of them. This is a real page-turner and I couldn't put it down. I recommend this to those who like a good mystery. My only reservation is that I wasn't totally satisfied with the ending. But I won't play spoiler and will leave that to other readers to decide.

Unafraid: A Novel of the Possible by Jeff Golden

Suppose JFK did not die in Dallas and a relieved and grateful public gave him the political capital to do what he chooses. This is the premise of Unafraid by Jeff Golden. The novel conjectures what Kennedy would have done in both foreign policy (Cuba, Vietnam, Middle East) and domestically. The speeches and explanations the author writes for Kennedy are quite good and made me wonder if he had some background as a political speechwriter.
The point-of-view of the novel is provided by Caroline Kennedy, the last surviving member of the family, who is working with a biographer to write the definitive story of his eight years in office. This stepping out of the political narrative works well, giving a personal look at the events and the man.
Unfortunately, as the novel progresses and drastic changes in US policy are detailed, Kennedy seems to become a peg on which to hang the author's ideas and ideology. The reader loses sight of the historical Kennedy.
It is a fascinating premise and worth a look at.

Wheels on Fire: My Year of Driving and Surviving in Iraq

Michelle Zaremba joined the Ohio National Guard expecting to be called upon to deal with natural disasters. Instead, in 2004, her unit was called up for posting to Iraq. Through this memoir and her letters which were sent home and published in a local paper, she recounts her daily life with a compelling honesty and clarity. She was assigned to a convoy unit, driving trucks to deliver supplies to camps all over Iraq. This work gave her an unusual opportunity to see how soldiers were living and surviving all over the country. She describes how they dealt with incredible heat and cold, bugs, sand storms, and poor equipment. The most striking part of the story to me was her description of how they arrived in Iraq without sufficient supplies, soldiers arriving with no flack jackets, trucks with no armor or even doors. It is a tribute to their intelligence and ingenuity that they were able to find ways to work together to provide support for each other. I was also impressed with how she writes about the Iraqis with compassion and understanding even as she describes how she had to regard them as potential enemies. Also interesting is how she dealt with being a woman in command. She was a staff sergeant and often in command of the convoy but Army rules regarding the separation of females made it sometimes impossible to connect with the men under her command. Her story is told in a straightforward way, without any sense of being a victim or pointing fingers. This is a compelling look at day to day life in Iraq. I highly recommend this book.

The Egyptologist: A Novel by Arthur Phillips

This is an epistolary novel, told in a series of letters from several of the main characters. Those from Ralph Trilipush, Oxford grad, Harvard lecturer, archeologist, date from 1922 during a trip to Egypt to hunt for the tomb of Atum-hadu, whose existence most experts doubt. The letters reveal a man so confident that he is always right and destined for greatness that he filters everything through that belief and you quickly get the sense that there is only a grain of truth in his letters. His constant posturing and self-justification are very funny and cleverly written. The remaining bulk of the letters are from an Australian private detective who stumbles across Trilipush's trail and sets out to find him. Phillips is very clever to use this format to tell his story as the letters reveal the characters so clearly. It quickly becomes obvious that the letters are all self-serving and the truth somewhere in between. As the story progresses, you get a sense that it is headed for disaster. The ending does not disappoint. This is a very clever, beautifully written book.

Summer Crossing: A Novel (Modern Library Paperbacks)… by Truman Capote

There is a good reason this wasn't published during Capote's lifetime. It is more a sketch of a novel than even a novella. There are inexplicable plot jumps that a more mature writer would have fleshed out. But you can see the talent that was there at an early age. My reading was often pulled up short, arrested by a surprising image. It's a short book, worth reading to see the early effort of a very good writer.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

This novel is set in 1950's American suburbia. The main characters, Frank and April, seem to have it all, home, children, successful career. What I found interesting is how the novel follows their internal thoughts and fantasies. Each believes they are unique and creative, superior to those around them, and their attraction to each other seems to be based on each encouraging that idea in the other. As the little disappointments in life chip away at their idea of themselves, they turn to increasingly desperate measures to keep the fantasy alive. In some ways, their attitudes reflect the contempt and rejection of middle class America that dominated the 1960s. A thought provoking book. (

Any Human Heart by William Boyd

William Boyd is an amazingly good story teller. In this novel, we follow the life of Logan Mountstuart from his school days to his death which covers most of the 20th century. A writer and art dealer, his life touches on most of the great writers and painters of the age as he moves between London, Paris and New York. I had to keep reminding myself that this was a fictional character because Boyd creates a character of such depth and dimension. I was sorry when the book ended.

Van Loon's Lives by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

One of my all-time favorite books, I go back to it time and again. Set in pre-war Netherlands, the author "finds" a way to invite famous people in history to come to dinner. A delightful discussion of the invitees, their history, what they might have eaten at a typical dinner, a fascinating fantasy. The first dinner with Erasmus was such a success that they arrange for him to visit for a few weeks, offering insights on some of their other guests.You can't help but start thinking about who you would invite!

The Ethical Assassin: A Novel by David Liss

A young teenager, selling encyclopedias door to door, gets caught up in assassination, drug sales, and animal abuse. In spite of murder and mayhem, this is a very funny book. The assassin turns out to be a very committed animal rights activist and gives a compelling defense for his actions. This book could turn you into a vegan! I really enjoyed it.