More Books

The list was longer than I thought...

The Devil's Feather by Minette Walters. I like Minette Walters' books in general. They're not really whodunnits, they're usually howdeydunnits or whydeydunnits that are heavy on the psychological side of things. This one is no exception and is pretty good. It revolves around a female war correspondent who has a run-in with a wacko soldier of fortune. She escapes to the Dorset countryside trying to recover, and ends up having to deal with him after all.

Slipstream by Leslie Larson. Interesting story of many characters: an ex-con father and his daughter, an aircraft cleaning person who gets laid off and goes bonkers, and his Filipino housewife who is trying to get away from him by selling Avon products on a bicycle. There's also the ex-con's brother who tends bar at the airport and is trying to figure out if he's going to commit to his relationship with his now-pregnant girlfriend. Everyone is messed up and struggling, and there are some casualties along the way, but some good comes out of it and it was worthwhile reading for me anyway.

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters. The story takes place during the London blitz, intertwining the view from multiple characters whose lives intersect in ways I can't remember at this point. I suppose that says something about the book, because looking at the back of it now, I have some vague memory of an abortion and an affair and lesbians, but if that's the best I can come up with a few months after reading it, it must not have been very good. I liked some of Sarah Waters' other books, which is why I got this one. She always has some lesbian love story running through the book, and I wouldn't mind something in the heterosexual realm just for variety's sake.

Blow the House Down by Robert Baer. Robert Baer was a real CIA agent, running the Beirut office during some of the worst times in the Mideast. So, he has a lot of experience to draw in when writing fiction. Unfortunately, I didn't think the depth managed to compensate enough to pull this book above the mild disappointment level. It's one of those stories where inexplicable things happen only to find out later it was because someone else was pulling strings behind the scenes. The story required too many cases of "I did X knowing that you would react by doing Y" to hold together for me to be able to buy into it in the end.

Alligator by Lisa Moore. This is one of those award winning Canadian books that takes place mainly in St. John's, Newfoundland. I liked this offbeat story quite a bit, as the main teenage girl character and the people around her struggle with the aftermath of her stepfather's death. It's done with a good sense of humor, complex characters, and a good storyline.

The People's Act of Love by James Meek. I got suckered into this book by all the glowing reviews: "Heart-pounding action and jaw-dropping revelations," "Breathtaking," and the list goes on. Um, no. More like: "Boring," "No characters you can identify with," and "Weird Russian mystical shit." I gave up on it after about 150 pages.

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart. This is the non-fiction story of a guy's trek on foot across Afghanistan right after the Taliban were defeated. I was picturing a kind of Bill Bryson with AK-47's, but I was disappointed. Not much humor, and not much insight to be drawn from it. You would think that anyone crazy enough to embark on such an adventure would be able to crank out something entertaining, but I for one was very glad when he made it back home and the story was over.

Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta. Somewhat reminiscent of the recent arrest and conviction of infamous SLA member Emily Harris, this fiction book follows the life and undercover living of a 70's radical whose passions ended up killing someone. It has some deeper messages, as you might expect, about the price that has to be paid in the end, and the impact of choices made when you're young. I enjoyed it.

Beautiful Lies by Lisa Unger. Fast paced fiction with one of those spunky young female lead characters. Ridley Jones, living in Manhattan, manages to save a kid from being run over by a bus, and ends up on the news. Someone recognizes her as a long-lost child, eventually uncovering a shady operation in which "at risk" children were placed in well off homes. Various NY power brokers are implicated, and it all gets quite ugly before everyone can live happily ever after. I enjoyed it in spite of my cynicism.

Field Notes from a Catastophe by Elizabeth Kolbert. I figured I owed it to myself to read something non-fiction on the issue of global warming, and this was what I picked up. Very approachable, not overly laden with scientific obscurity but with enough to give it some meat. She reports on her investigation and travels around global warming, including trips to the Greenland ice cap where they take ice cores, and elbow-rubbing with scientists who develop climate models. I decided a while back that global warming wasn't going to fall under the no-politics rule of the blog. Still, one of the more entertaining and sad parts of the book was her interview with Paula Dobrianski, the State Department spokesperson who has the unenviable job of defending US policy. You'll just have to read it to believe it.

The Diezmo by Rick Bass. This book is a fictionalized account of an actual incident that occurred just after Texas became a republic. A shady bunch of adventure seekers gather together an army and invade Mexico, holding people for ransom, and eventually getting captured. The Diezmo refers to a tradition wherein they choose one out of every ten people to be put to death. The rest were put in a Mexican prison and eventually released after some help from the US ambassador (even though Texas was not a state). The book was okay, but not outstanding.

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes. I have had pretty spotty success with fiction based on historical figures and real events. This book is a major winner in that category, though. Arthur is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and George is George Edalji. We all know Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame, but Edalji was the straitlaced son of an Indian minister and Scottish mother who was convicted of killing animals in the farm district he lived in with his parents. In a life-imitates-art kind of way, Doyle takes up the banner of clearing Edalji's name. It's all based on real-life events. The story was terrific, and the characters were flawless.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. A National Book Award winner, this is the story of the dust bowl and the people who lived through it. Unlike the Grapes of Wrath, which is fiction surrounding people leaving the dust bowl, this is non-fiction that tells of the promise of riches through wheat farming that brought people into the area, and the devastation of the depression and incredible hardship of the dust bowl years. Great book, riveting story, probably the book I enjoyed most of this list. I almost didn't get this book because I figured it would just be depressing and dated. It was neither.

The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr. I loved Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action when it came out years ago. It led me to look for and read more highly readable well-paced non-fiction on obscure topics. Eight years later Harr finally produced another book. It follows the discovery of a lost masterpiece painting by Caravaggio. It is a fascinating story through the world of obsessed art historians and collectors, complete with bitter rivalries and intrigue. I'd rank A Civil Action much higher on the list of great non-fiction, but I liked this one a lot, too.

The Boys of Everest by Clint Willis. This is the non-fiction book Mom and Dad sent for Christmas. It centers around Chris Bonington, who was the leader of the next generation of British climbers after the big Edmund Hillary style assaults on Everest. He and others bring back alpine-style technical climbing as a goal, and it seems like with every summit they pay the price of one or more friends biting the dust (or maybe it's eating the snow, I'm not sure). Still, they keep on going because they can't stop. It was an interesting and informative story, but the author has an annoying habit of crawling inside of peoples' heads and guessing what they're thinking, while at the same time documenting every piton position and bowel movement encountered along the way. During one descent, a guy swung wildly on a rappel and ended up breaking both legs while above 25,000 feet. Reading about his crawl back down was enough to make you take a beach vacation.