The Travelling Cat Chronicles
by Hiro Arikawa, Philip Gabriel
A Book for Your Travel Kit (5/29/2018)
The Travelling Cat Chronicles is of the small genre of in-the-mind-of-an-animal fiction: dogs, rabbits, or (in this book) a cat (Nana). Nana's human (Satoru) and Nana embark on a road trip across Japan, the past and the future bumping into each other at their stopovers. Even as a dog person, I bonded with Nana. One of the essential functions of fiction is to be a flight simulator, allowing us to experience life's joys and exigencies in advance and so be readier for reality. I'm grateful to have gone with Satoru and Nana on their trip. I have their story in my travel kit.
The House of Broken Angels
by Luis Alberto Urrea
Family history as a mosaic (3/2/2018)
The House of Broken Angels is the story of a multi-generational Mexican-American family, straddling the border in both time and space. History is gradually revealed by flashbacks. I struggle with nonlinear narratives. I re-started my reading a short way into the book so that I could compile a running biography and genealogy of the characters. There is much to like in this book. The characters will be real people to you by the end of the book, simultaneously dysfunctional and heroic. There is wonderful word-smithing ... sentences, phrases, and pages to be copied or flagged. The House of Broken Angels might be a model for family history as a mosaic, with small stories as tiles.
Eternal Life
by Dara Horn
A contender for your short shelf. (12/6/2017)
If you are a collector of wonderful sentences you might want to read Eternal Life, by Dara Horn, with a highlighter or notebook in hand. Much of the book is an immersion -- sights, sounds, smells, textures -- in first-century Jewish communities. This deep backstory is seamlessly woven through present time. The storyline is a carrier wave for Big Questions about life and death and the persistence of memory. In this book's nearly geological sense of time, I was simultaneously depressed by the smallness of human lives and inspired to live more largely. I found the ending at first surprising and then inevitable. If your life has too many good books and too little time, Eternal Life could be a contender for your short shelf.
Extraordinary Adventures
by Daniel Wallace
An Extraordinarily Good Reading Adventure (2/26/2017)
It's no surprise that Daniel Wallace, author of Extraordinary Adventures, is the director of a creative writing program. This is a book to practice reading like a writer. The characters are painted in layers. Subplots weave as graceful as a pod of dolphins. Particularly, there are collectible sentences.
There is also quiet suspense, a count-down, not to an extinction-level event but to a Yoda moment: "Do. Or do not. There is no try."
Extraordinary Adventures is a teaching story, a reminder that just about everyone, at every age and all the time, is quietly mustering up the courage to deal with the tough bits of their life. For me, reading this book was an empathy enhancement procedure (EEP).
Mercies in Disguise: A Story of Hope, a Family's Genetic Destiny, and the Science That Rescued Them
by Gina Kolata
Fate and Courage (11/15/2016)
The best creative nonfiction books have the same elements as good fiction: memorable characters, a story arc that builds tension, deep backstory. This book is a balanced portfolio of science, history, and biography, assembled by a skilled writer. Gina Kolata's Mercies in Disguise is the story of the Baxley family, cursed by a disease of generational tenacity. The demon is a genetic malady, slow to be understood because, even now, the biology seems so improbable. There is great courage in this story, reminding us that raw fate can be endured and even overcome. There are loose ends at the book's finish. Fiction can be forced to closure but people have lives of their own.
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko
by Scott Stambach
Hard Times in Belarus (7/21/2016)
I found The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko a hard book to read. It has the social outrage of Dickens and the brooding introspection of Dostoevsky. But the characters are unforgettable. And the book is a reminder that humans are the most adaptable of animals. And in the gray dusk of the story, there are bright flashes of grace and love. After reading this book, I made a list of things that I'm recently grateful for. One of them was reading this book.
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper
by Phaedra Patrick
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper: an all-ages book (4/17/2016)
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper is a satisfying hybrid – an archeology of a life and a coming-of-age story. Arthur Pepper, in the infancy of old age, tracks along his late wife's backstory, following the clues of her tucked-away charm bracelet. Most coming-of-age stories are about the hard transition from child to adult. Arthur finds that he is fossilizing. But in a kind of elder adolescence, Arthur begins adventuring. Reading The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper is a sovereign remedy against old thinking.
I think that The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper is an all-ages book, at least from YA to OA. This book could be a Common Read for an extended family, the discussions (or posts or tweets) cross-linking generations.
Home by Nightfall: A Charles Lenox Mystery
by Charles Finch
An Upper-class Mystery (9/10/2015)
"Home by Nightfall" seems more akin to historical fiction than mystery; the murder seems accessory to the story. This is the Victorian England of Sherlock Holmes. But the sleuth-protagonist , Charles Lenox, is a member of the gentry and the detecting is more teamwork and legwork than eccentric genius. There are two mysteries afoot, the primary mystery evolving in the rural market town near the Lenox familial estate. We meet characters from most of the Victorian social strata through the noblesse oblige of Charles and family. This is the ninth of the Charles Lenox mysteries but my first. I enjoyed this dignified mystery so I'm looking forward to a long read, starting from book one.
Still Life Las Vegas
by James Sie
Time and space do funny things in Las Vegas (5/28/2015)
James Sie's "Still Life Las Vegas" seems like a collage. There are short chapters that click back and forth in time (but are helpfully labeled with who, where, and when). Interposed, there are occasional journal pages, illustrated by Walter, the main point-of-view character. And there are interludes where the story assumes graphic novel form. I liked most the deft knife-edge writing, where the tawdry and sad are also luminous and funny. The characters are so well drawn (both in words and images) that I'll remember them far longer than most of my book acquaintances. And I've never been to Las Vegas but I don't need to now, having seen the gears and guts through the eyes of a local. I am confused, maybe in a good (literary) way or maybe in a bad (mind not supple enough) way, when I try to reconcile the several competing versions of the story core. This may be a book best fitted to readers comfortable with quantum uncertainties, where Schrödinger's cat can be both alive and dead.
The Rabbit Back Literature Society
by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen
Where do writers get their ideas? (11/18/2014)
The Rabbit Back Literature Society is like reading a slightly disturbing dream. Upon waking, there are some ingenious notions to capture in the bedside notebook but enough grotesqueries to hope for a nicer dream next time.
The main characters are each an archeology project, the ages of their lives revealed by the digging of the protagonist, Ella. Ella considers a camera that could capture a person's "entire chronological existence."
The book has a winter feel to it: lots of snow, a cold-hearted psychological game, and white as a color composed of myths.
Most of the plot strands tie together at the end. One surprise seems so right that it warms the entire book.
Under the Wide and Starry Sky
by Nancy Horan
RLS and Fanny: home is the sailor, home from sea (12/4/2013)
"Under the Wide and Starry Sky" is a novelized biography of Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Osbourne. RLS, plagued by chronic lung disease and Fanny, fleeing a disloyal husband and death of a child, find each other in France, opposites attracted like a proton and electron. Their lives, before and after marriage, are uprooted, a scramble of travels in search of health and a home and each other. Nancy Horan's telling is more than a good read; it is a kind of Life Simulator, allowing us to hear the hacking coughs, feel the hard seats of Victorian-age travel, and smell the flowers of Samoa. I'm going to re-read "Treasure Island" and "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" with new eyes, as if I had known the author and his family.
To the Moon and Timbuktu: A Trek through the Heart of Africa
by Nina Sovich
To The Moon & Timbuktu (6/23/2013)
Alberto Manguel, in "A Reading Diary" discusses Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows": "Grahame wisely divides adventurers into adventurers who like their adventures orderly and those who prefer the thrill of chaos." Nina Sovich is clearly of the latter: "Out there [Africa] lay deserts and mountains, a harsh and empty terrain that would demand firm decisions, bold character strokes ... I could test myself out there. I could be changed."
This is a potentially life-nudging read. We learn about countries that many of us (i.e., me) couldn't find on a map (there is a good map at the front; keep your thumb there). We learn, vicariously, that most of what we encounter in unscripted travel contains opposites, has nuances. Travel in remote places comes with privations but normal is an adjustable concept. Islam holds both zealous anger and readings of the Qur'an that sing, gently. A "Stranger in a Strange Land" will be an exploitable resource for some but a protected guest for many others.
After reading "To the Moon and Timbuktu," even those of us partial to the familiar and the near-at-hand might decide to be a traveler in our own country, maybe even uncomfortably free-range, so that we might return home made bigger.
Palisades Park
by Alan Brennert
Palisades Park: a high dive into a family (3/11/2013)
Palisades Park is the history you wish you had, for your family. The timeline stretches 50 years, from the early 1920s to the early 1970s, encompassing wars (two), desegregation (slowly), and crime (organized). The Stopka family is an extended example of John Lennon's "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Palisades Amusement Park, a landmark in New Jersey, was the primordial soup in which the Stopka family evolved, providing a livelihood, an extended family, and a classless university.
For book clubs, Palisades Park has themes to discuss: trials by water and fire, leaving as a necessity to coming home, illusion and reality.
This seems an old-fashioned book to me, not a modern story of dark dysfunction or exploding terrorists but rather a story of the verities: do good work, play fair, dream with muscle, love people anyway.
Bone River
by Megan Chance
Bone River (Megan Chance) (12/1/2012)
Bone River will be hard to contain, leaping fences from one genre to another. Is it historical fiction? paranormal romance? a novel of ideas? The setting is late frontier on the Pacific Northwest coast, Native American cultures giving way to small settlements. The main cast is small (three men and a woman) but the bays, tides, rivers, oyster beds and rain make place a fifth character. The plot broods, becoming atmospheric and closed in, distant kin to Wuthering Heights. Fortunately, while the plot is slow simmering, there are themes to noodle: right-brain/left-brain sensibilities, gender roles, the morality of objective science. We see the story through Leonie and Leonie sees deeply by drawing in her journal. It would be nice to have these drawings, in some future illustrated edition of this book. Water carries the several plot lines along nicely, first revealing, then threatening, and finally washing away.
The White Forest: A Novel
by Adam McOmber
A dark and otherworldly Dickens (8/11/2012)
I’ve wondered why Victorian England seems such a natural setting for fictional explorations of the darker and less traveled parts of our minds. The “White Forest” is a strong addition to this tradition, with the welcome haunts: old manor house on the moors, slums of London, madness and decadence). There is a fascinating and chilling cosmology, something truly “other.” This is preeminently a coming-of-age story, of three young adults and the bonding that can be more than friendship. The plot gallops along at horse-drawn carriage pace but there are lyrical speed-bumps, nicely written prose that many readers will stop to underline or highlight.
Beneath the Shadows
by Sara Foster
“Beneath the Shadows” - moor secrets than a spectral hound (5/15/2012)
All of the hoped-for geography of the English moors is here: windswept, desolate with a raw beauty, the ghostly ambiance of ruins. But the game afoot isn’t a spectral hound. The lurking danger is a web of inbred secrets, the kind that arise in isolation (it takes a village).
One part of good story-telling is timing. “Beneath the Shadows” is artful at the slow revealing of character and history. Relationships evolve, closeted skeletons rattle, and even the weather turns eccentric. More gothic than thriller, more romance than mystery, there is still enough narrative drive to keep readers turning pages at the speed limit.
Until the Next Time: A Novel
by Kevin Fox
Time out of Memory (3/4/2012)
Transporting books are safe passages to hard places. “Until the Next Time” takes us deep into the Troubles of Northern Ireland, where history is a congenital disorder, something to be lived with and overcome. But where there is hate, there seems always to be love. “Until the Next Time” is also an old story, of perennial love.
Profound books allow readers to climb into a Paradigm Simulator, flying themselves through wholly unfamiliar worldviews. “Until the Next Time” will leave you contesting the implications and conundrums of a universe in which time is more important than space.
“Until the Next Time” could be an airplane book, a gritty love story set in shifty and slithery danger, good enough to keep you awake on the red-eye flight. But it could also make what were harmless déjà vu moments in your life seem like brooding messages from an unremembered smartphone app.
The Night Circus: A Novel
by Erin Morgenstern
The congealed imagination of The Night Circus (7/23/2011)
After reading The Night Circus, I too would like to be a member of the rêveurs, the society of ardent followers, tracking the circus on its unscheduled itinerary. Entering the circus is like falling asleep into someone else’s dream, a dream full of wonders but sustained at great cost. All of the old verities are here - coming of age, the cost of winning, love growing on sterile soil. But when art transcends craft, old is new. Morgenstern’s circus is a new place, one of the “100 imaginary places you must visit before you die.”
Jamrach's Menagerie: A Novel
by Carol Birch
Surviving Life (2/21/2011)
Jamrach’s Menagerie is a legitimate heir of Dickens. Jaffee Brown, a young boy, is growing up in a squalid part of Victorian London, where children have early-onset adulthood. The weird luck of being carried about in the jaws of an escaped tiger leads to a job at the exotic animal emporium of the book’s title and a berth on a whaling ship. The real quest of the voyage is to capture a then-rumored, now zoo-housed beast.
This is a book of the senses. We hear, taste, feel, and especially smell Jaffee’s unpasteurized life. This is certainly a coming-of-age story but the growing-up is via the fast-track of gruesome ordeal. The book might carry a warning label for squeamish readers.
We could learn from this book that getting through the hardest bits of life might be luck or grace. Either way, the job of a survivor is to create sanctuary.
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise: A Novel
by Julia Stuart
Lost and Found (8/22/2010)
All readers know that reading takes us places we’d never likely visit. "The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise" takes us inside the Tower of London, a place so saturated with history that ghosts ooze out everywhere. The arrival of a menagerie of animals (gifts to Queen Elizabeth, from all over the world) falls to the responsibility of one of the Tower guards, a Beefeater. These exotic animals are lost, uprooted from homes in jungles and plains, and now housed in moats and towers. In fact, this book is a story of losses. Some of these losses are terrible (a child), sad (a marriage), life-changing (a calling) or bizarre (the things left behind on the London Underground). But the opposite of lost is found and the London Underground's Lost Property Office seems a mirror of life. Things thought irretrievably lost can be found again: happiness, purpose, and life-long mates, whether one is human or albatross.
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