Summer Reading

Labor Day is gone. Here's what I read starting at Deep Creek.

Legacy of Ashes, by Tim Weiner. This non-fiction history of the CIA is all the more depressing knowing that every screw-up, every wild-ass scheme, every unintended consequence, every politically misguided bit of amateurish planning is actually true. The book begins with Eisenhower starting things off in the hopes of gathering intelligence for an internal newsletter. The cast of characters is always more interested in cloak-and-dagger field work than intelligence gathering -- for example, like undermining regimes, which it turns out they're not very good at, and worse at controlling. Fascinating to read and well written.

Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk. Author of the well known Fight Club (a terrific movie), I thought I should give one of Palahniuk's books a try. Well, it was certainly a unique experience. It starts with, "If you're going to read this, don't bother. After a couple of pages, you won't want to be here. So forget it. Go away. Get out while you're still in one piece. Save yourself." Now I won't say that I regret reading it. The story of a sex addict who makes money by choking on things in restaurants and then preying on the charity of the person who saves him is novel to say the least and kept me absorbed throughout. Not for everyone, but it had a deeper kind of message than you might expect. I gave it to Garrett at Deep Creek and he gave it a thumbs up.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. I really enjoyed this short novel by the author of Atonement among other notable books. The book pretty much consists of a wedding night "misunderstanding", with background about the couple interspersed along the way. She's terrified of the wedding night sex but compensates by trying to appear nonchalant in spite of her fear. He misreads her signals as eagerness, and things go from awkward to horribly wrong. I read a review of the book that pretty much summarized things somewhat like I just did, and thought, "Why would I want to read that!?" It's really incredibly well done and my favorite of this reading list.

Little Heathens, by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. It sounded like it might be interesting in a nostalgic kind of way to read about growing up on an Iowa farm during the depression. Not really as it turns out, at least for me. They prepare meals, go to school (uphill both ways!), live in fear of the stern yet admirable grandparents, bring in the crops, and so on. Personally, I would highly recommend you stick with Little House on the Prairie if you're looking for something to keep you awake and entertained.

Run, by Ann Patchett. By the author of Bel Canto, which I enjoyed, this novel centers around an incident involving two adopted black children of the former white mayor of Boston. Unbeknownst to them, the mother who gave them up for adoption lives in the neighborhood. One night, she pushes one of the brothers out of the way of a car that is about to run him over. In the process, she is hit and ends up in the hospital. Her daughter is taken in by the family while she's in the hospital, and the story comes out. The whole story was a bit too sickly sweet for my taste, but the characters were interesting and Patchett's writing is terrific.

Ghostwalk, by Rebecca Stott. I don't think I would have read this novel if I realized quite what I was getting in to. An author returns to Cambridge, England, to attend her friend's funeral and winds up taking on the task of finishing her friend's book on Isaac Newton. Strange goings on surround her that somehow seem linked to murders that took place during Newton's time. If you can buy into the supernatural stuff and the coupling to events 400 years earlier, you'll also have to buy into a poorly drawn up love affair and some wacky animal rights subplot before you're done. Don't say I didn't warn you.

In The Woods, by Tana French. A tightly written and enjoyable police detective story that takes place in Ireland. Archaeologists discover the body of a young girl at a site that is being examined before a freeway goes in. Turns out some children disappeared in the woods there 20 years before. Two never turned up, but a third was found, completely terrorized, and could never even remember what went on. That third kid is now one of the detectives who finds himself on this case. That sounds like a setup for unlikely things going on, but it mostly adds flavor to the angst the guy experiences when doing his job on the case. I really enjoyed it.

Black Swan -- The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This non-fiction book was recommended by Hal over my stated dislike of "science for the layman" books. The book examines how things which are highly improbable can have a major impact on events, and suggests that if you can just figure out how to deal with the fact that something improbable might randomly occur, then you too can be rich and in-demand like the author of this book. I suppose I might not have had such a negative reaction to this book except that the author's ego and name-dropping took up so much space on the page that he could barely squeeze out the anecdotes about things that are improbable but appear obvious in hindsight.

Isaac's Storm, by Erik Larson. Let me give you the shorter version of this book: if a hurricane is coming at you, get the hell out!!! This non-fiction book uses the life and writings of Isaac Cline, the guy running the Galveston weather bureau office, to anchor the story of the hurricane of 1900. The weather bureau was just beginning to track weather methodically and centralize its information via telegraph. They completely missed warning Galveston about the hurricane. But, even if they had, people were confident that there should be no problem. Six thousand or so people learned a final, hard lesson that day. The stuff about Isaac I found not to be too compelling, and the lessons in meteorology were less than exciting, but the personal stories of the survivors and the aftermath were riveting.