For all of you wondering what books to pack, here are ones I won't be bringing because I already read them.
Any Human Heart, by William Boyd. Continuing my romp through William Boyd, I finally made it to the one Mom recommended to me ages ago. I liked this one almost as much as Brazzaville Beach. It's constructed as a diary spanning the life of the fictional Logan Mountstuart, from his teenage years through his death. I loved the story and the span of life, the adventure of going from nothing to success, through war and disaster and loss, and climbing back to stability and fulfillment again. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't in the diary form, which tends to make it more personal but to me was a bit more constraining in how the story is told. Terrific book.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein. If you're a Milton Friedman, Chicago School of Economics fan, you're either going to find this book to be an eye-opening expose on the impact of Friedmanism on people and countries, or you're going to fling it across the room shouting obscenities. Personally I found this to be an incredibly important book and I wish everyone would read it. Your mileage may vary.
Sacred Games, by Vikram Chandra. Back cover pitch: "the lives of the privileged, the famous, the wretched, and the bloodthirsty interweave with cataclysmic consequences amid the chaos of modern-day Mumbai." Between the pages reality: 282 pages into it, I was still waiting for something to happen that I could care about. Did not finish it.
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, by Philip Gourevich. The real story behind the Hotel Rwanda movie. Philip Gourevich travels to Rwanda in the aftermath of the massacre there. He does a fantastic job capturing both what happened and how such a thing could happen. I suspect most of us place the Rwandan massacre in some kind of "tribal violence" sort of slot in our American heads, but it would truly be a lot closer to the Holocaust in its origins. How can such a thing happen, how do people experience it first-hand, and what does it do to people in its wake? Read and find out, then watch the movie (which is terrific, too.)
The Raw Shark Texts, by Steven Hall. Can you believe that words can kill? This fiction/fantasy story follows a guy who wakes up with total amnesia and finds that he left a paper trail for himself before his memory was erased. He sets out to unravel the mystery in a fast-paced jaunt that stretched my literal-minded ability to believe. Still, maybe this would appeal the those who like talking fish fantasies (that's you, Sharon!)
Christine Falls, by Benjamin Black. This is a pen name for John Banville. I suppose writing a mystery like this requires a different "voice" than he normally uses, I'm not sure. The story follows a coroner who uncovers the activities of a Dublin group that routes babies to Boston to be raised in an orphanage, as a way to feed new people into the priesthood. You'll have to read a lot of pages to figure that out, so sorry for the spoiler. I enjoyed the way the story unfolded, but not being a big fan of (fictional) Catholic conspiracy theories, I wasn't happy with it when it showed up. Seems like to me we have way more wacky, truly dangerous evangelicals here in the US than can ever be cooked up in the Vatican.
The Butterfly Garden, by Chip St. Clair. How do you react when you discover that your father was one of America's most wanted criminals and your mother was a whackjob who helped him escape from prison? It you're interested, be sure to read this book. The story is more about the discovery process as this poor kid finds out that his life is not like other peoples', and how he manages to break out of it and uncover the lies that permeated and shaped his existence. It was interesting, but in hindsight was a bit too much like watching a bad Dr. Phil episode for me.
Lost City Radio, by Daniel Alarcon. The main character of this novel has a radio show that attempts to reunite families who have lost someone who has been "disappeared." (See Shock Doctrine for a non-fiction lesson on the role of government-sponsored "disappearing" in wreaking havoc on the population of South American countries.) She ends up being reunited with someone herself as she discovers what happened to her own husband, who had disappeared years ago.
Stars and Bars, by William Boyd. I have one more Boyd waiting after this book. Unlike the others I've read, this book was decidedly comic in style and quite funny. A shy English art dealer in NY is assigned to buy a collection from a wacky collector down in Georgia. Along the way he crosses the scheming redneck son who seems to have already sold the art collection himself, and a series of increasingly improbable and hilarious situations follow before he makes it back to NY and tries to salvage things. Very good. For those keeping score, I still think Brazzaville Beach was the best.
The Tenderness of Wolves, by Stef Penney. A fun and absorbing cross between a detective story and frontier story, it takes place in the Northern Territory of Canada. A trapper is murdered in a small town, and the son of a neighbor family disappears. He's the prime suspect, and his scrappy mother sets off with another suspect to track him down. He's of course tracking the real murderer, and it all comes to a head in the middle of nowhere at a remote HBC outpost. Kind of Wilkie Collins-ish, but well done and enjoyable.
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Adichie. This one's for you, Sharon!!! I scoffed at the talking fish fantasy recommendation Sharon sent me last time. However, when we saw Ken and Sharon in Naples not too long ago, she slipped me a post-it note with this title and author written on it. She must have seen enough of my reading lists to know I'm a sucker for African history and politics. This novel is about the birth of Biafra in the mid-sixties as it was carved out of Nigeria and made its way through war-induced famine. I enjoyed all of it and learned a lot in the process. Great characters that span the range from middle class academics to houseboys to pampered political insiders.
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