Books Read in 2012

This is the list of the 94 books I read in 2012, in the order that I read them, with links to the 52 reviews I wrote.

2012 was the first year in quite a while that I didn't read at least 100 books. I blame Whittaker Chambers, whose dense, 800+ page Witness sucked up a lot of reading time.  But the lower total was also intentional.  I made a reading resolution to concentrate on Witness and some other longer books and not pay attention to the number of books I read.

There is not much rhyme or reason to whether I review a book or not. Some of my favorite books go without a review.

I rate a book a 3 if I liked it but wouldn't think of recommending it and a 4 if I would recommend it to anyone. Lots of books get 3.5, which means that I liked it and would recommend it to people who like that genre or type of book.  For a full explanation of my rating system, see here.

If you have reviewed any of the books I reviewed, and you would like your review listed on mine, please leave a comment on my review post for that book with a link to your review and I will add it.

2012 BOOKS

The Coffee Trader by David Liss (3.5/5)

Tinkers by Paul Hardin (2.5/5) (reviewed here)

High Stakes by Dick Francis (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (4/5) (reviewed here)

A Case of Need by Michael Crichton (3/5)

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

The Mandelbaum Gate by Muriel Spark (4/5) (reviewed here)

Dracula by Bram Stoker (4/5) (reviewed here)

The Rubber Band by Rex Stout (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

My Grandfather's Son by Clarence Thomas (3.5/5)

Shroud for a Nightingale by P. D. James (3.5/5)

Living by Henry Green (2.5/5) (reviewed here)

Blood Sport by Dick Francis (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe by Thomas Cahill (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré (3/5) (reviewed here)

The Innocents Abroad, Volume I, by Mark Twain (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Serenissima by Erica Jong (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (3.5/5)

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (3.5/5)

The Pothunters by P. G. Wodehouse (3/5) (reviewed here)

What's So Great about Christianity by Dinesh D’Souza (4/5)

A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Murder in Belleville by Cara Black (3/5) (reviewed here)

The Black Tower by P. D. James (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Driving Force by Dick Francis (3.5/5)

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie (3.5/5)

World Without End by Ken Follett (3/5) (reviewed here)

The World of Herb Caen: San Francisco 1938-1997 by Barnaby Conrad (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

The Black Book by Ian Rankin (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

A Month of Sundays by John Updike (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (4/5) (reviewed here)

Dressed for Death by Donna Leon (3.5/5)

Vie De France: Sharing Food, Friendship and a Kitchen in the Lorie Valley by James Haller (3/5) (reviewed here)

Out Stealing Horses by Per Patterson (3/5)

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (4/5) (reviewed here)

On the Town in New York: The Landmark History of Eating, Drinking, and Entertainments from the American Revolution to the Food Revolution by Michael Ariane Batterberry (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table by Ruth Reichl (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

A Time of Hope by C. P. Snow (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (3.5/5)

Home Truths by David Lodge (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Other People's Children by Joanna Trollope (3.5/5)

Glittering Images by Susan Howatch (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

The Hapless Valet by Lenhardt Stevens (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships by Daniel Goleman (3/5)

Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst (3.5/5)

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Trespass by Rose Tremain (3.5/5)

Greene on Capri: A Memoir by Shirley Hazzard (3/5) (reviewed here)

The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner (4.5/5) (reviewed here)

Starvation Lake by Brian Gruley (3/5)

Paradise Postponed by John Mortimer (3/5) (reviewed here)

Silver Swan by Benjamin Black (3.5/5)

The Gate House by Nelson DeMille (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

The Edge by Dick Francis (3.5/5)

Writing Places: The Life Journey of a Writer and Teacher by William Zinsser (3.5/5)

The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly (3.5/5)

Witness by Whittaker Chambers (3/5) (reviewed here)

Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow (3/5) (reviewed here)

Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope (3/5)

Swan Peak by James Lee Burke (3.5/5) (reviewed here)


The Comedians by Graham Greene (3.5/5) (reviewed here)
 
Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil by Tom Mueller (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom (2.5/5) (reviewed here)

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morely (3/5)

Ring for Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse (3.5/5)

The Folks That Live on the Hill by Kingsley Amis (3.5/5)

Death at the Bar by Ngaio Marsh (3.5/5)

Venetian Mask by Mickey Friedman (3/5)

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates by Michael Bond (3/5) (reviewed here)

The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren (3/5) (reviewed here)

Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler (3/5)

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester (3.5/5)

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (3/5) (reviewed here)

The Imperfectionists by Tm Rachman (3.5/5)

The General's Daughter by Nelson DeMille (3.5/5)

Evolutionaries: Transformational Leadership: The Missing Link in Your Organizational Chart by Carmen E Voillequé and Randy Harrington (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (3/5) (reviewed here)

Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes (3.5/5)

May We Borrow Your Husband? & Other Comedies of the Sexual Life by Graham Greene (4/5) (reviewed here)

Fortune's Deadly Descent by Audrey Braun (3.5/5) (reviewed here)

Death of an Expert Witness by P. D. James (3.5/5)

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott (3.5/5)

The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré (4/5) (reviewed here)

The Book & the Brotherhood by Iris Murdoch (4/5) (reviewed here)

A Personal Odyssey by Thomas Sowell (3.5/5)

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni (3.5/5)

The Children of Men by P. D. James (3.5/5)

About Face by Donna Leon (3/5)

Lift by Kelly Corrigan (3/5)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (4/5)

Friends and Lovers by Helen MacInnes (3/5)

See's Famous Old Time Candies: A Sweet Story by Margaret Moos Pick (3/5)

Review: The Honourable Schoolboy

John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was a long, slow slog through a lexicon of Cold War spy jargon. The sequel, The Honourable Schoolboy, is ten times more enjoyable. For one thing, the plot to atmosphere ratio is weighted to the plot side. Instead of being almost all atmosphere, there is an exciting espionage story involving drug runners, Hong Kong tycoons, glamorous ex-patriots, and the political legerdemain of wrapping up the Vietnam War.

It starts with a long but vivid section describing how the entire British international intelligence network had to be dismantled in the aftermath of routing out the mole in Tinker, Tailor. Then it really picks up and gets delightfully complicated when George Smiley sends a semi-retired operative to Hong Kong to find one Chinese informant buried in the rubble of the earlier undercover operations.

What atmosphere there is is pitch perfect. Le Carré frames the story as one of British Secret Service lore, expressed by the omniscient narrator with an ideal balance of admiration and world-weary cynicism.

OTHER REVIEWS

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy here on Rose City Reader

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on chaotic compendiums

The Honourable Schoolboy on chaotic compendiums

Smiley's People on chaotic compendiums

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold on chaotic compendiums

If you would like your review of this or any other John le Carré book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

The Honourable Schoolboy won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and counts as one of my Black choices for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, British Version, challenge.  It also counts as one of the books for the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf Challenges, since it has been on my TBR shelf since 1983.

Review: The Book and the Brotherhood

Iris Murdoch’s 1987 novel, The Book and the Brotherhood, is subtitled “A Story about Love and Friendship and Marxism,” which pretty much sums up the themes of her 23rd novel but only hints at the scope and complexity of the story.

The book begins when a group of longtime friends meet at an Oxford ball only to have their sentimental reunion jarred by the reappearance of their charismatic former leader, David Crimond. Years earlier, as young, liberal university students, the group had agreed to fund Crimond's writing of a book on their political philosophy. The book never materialized and the brotherhood never came to much. Now Crimond is back and bent on rekindling his affair with one of the women.

The story swirls around this original group of friends, pulling in siblings and other relatives, lovers, and hangers on. Lots of things happen with these people, from ice skating parties to suicide pacts, in between which they ponder and discuss the moral vacuum of Marxism, the possibility of religion without a personal God, the Platonic ideal, abortion, real estate, marriage, and parrots.

Murdoch is at the top of her game with this novel. She is droll in the telling, but forgiving with her characters, never sarcastic, and comfortable with moral ambiguity as she tells their stories without drawing conclusions or passing judgment. There is no pat ending and the various storylines demand further contemplation long after the cover closes.

OTHER REVIEWS

The Book and the Brotherhood on Hannah Stoneham's Book Blog
The Book and the Brotherhood on Musings
The Sea, the Sea on Rose City Reader

If you would like your review of this or any other iris Murdoch book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

The Book and the Brotherhood was 602 pages long, so counts as one of my 551 - 750 page books for the Chunkster Challenge. It also counts for the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf challenges.

Review: Fortune's Deadly Descent

 


Audrey Braun’s first thriller, A Small Fortune, was an unputdownable race through the jungles of Mexico to the the high-finance world of Swiss industrialists. In the rollicking sequel, Fortune's Deadly Descent, heroine Celia Hagen is back on the run, this time trying to find her kidnapped son while keeping one step ahead of the bad guys, the cops, and her possibly unfaithful husband who she is in no mood to talk to.

The action starts when Celia’s young son Benny disappears after their train breaks down in the South of France. Interpol suspects Celia, but could Benny have been stolen by Gypsies? Or is her evil ex-husband, imprisoned though he may be, behind it all?

Fortune’s Deadly Descent is just as exciting as A Small Fortune, right to the finale. Braun has an eye for detail and makes the most out of the French village setting. She also balances the action with the honest emotions of a distraught mother.

Read both of Celia’s adventures. And look forward to the third book in the trilogy!

OTHER REVIEWS

Mysterious Reviews
The Washington Post

NOTES

Braun is the pen name of novelist Deborah Reed, author of Carry Yourself Back to Me, a Best Book of 2011 Amazon Editors' Pick..

My Rose City Reader review of A Small Fortune
My Rose City Reader review of Carry Yourself Back to Me
My Rose City Reader interview of Audry Braun
The Deborah Reed/Audry Braun website
 

Review: May We Borrow Your Husband?

Short stories are hard. They are, legend has it, hard to write. They are certainly hard for me to read. I generally skip a short story collection for a novel every time because I usually find short stories either pointlessly atmospheric or gimmicky.

But Graham Greene's little collection of 12 stories, May We Borrow Your Husband?, won me over. The title story about two gay men who woo away a honeymooning husband is a pitch-perfect Mid-Century period piece on closeted homosexuality. The others range from wryly comic to tragic, but all share a nerve-twinging honesty.

"Cheap in August" about a wife seeking a fling and "Two Gentle People" about star-crossed lovers are probably the best of the bunch from a literary standpoint. But my favorites were "A Shocking Accident" about a father killed by a pig, which I found delightful all around, and "The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen" about a self-absorbed young writer, which made me cringe and laugh at the same time.

May We Borrow Your Husband? made me reconsider the short story genre. And it raised Graham Greene even higher on my list of favorite authors.

OTHER REVIEWS

The New York Times (April 30, 1967)
My review of The Comedians

If you would like your review of this or any other Graham Greene book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I read this book for the Graham Greene Challenge and for the Books Written in the First Years of My Life Challenge.

Review: Doctor Zhivago

I probably watched Doctor Zhivago three or four times in high school and college and never could remember the plot, beyond the basics about Omar Sharif being in love with two women – his earnest wife Tanya and the elusive, flawed, and beautiful Lara. Other than that, it was all snow, trains, battles, furry hats, theme music, and Julie Christie's doe eyes.

The book is the same, but without the balaclava music or Julie Christie.

There is a chronological order to it, but with big gaps. Some threads take so long to tie together I had forgotten where they started. And in between scenes of snow, trains, trains stopped by snow, trains buried by snow, battles, battles in snow, battles on trains, and more of the same, were rambling discourses on religion and political philosophy. And I thought the movie was slow!

The themes are grand and the writing, even in translation, is beautiful. Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize because of the book, although the Soviet government forced him to renounce the honor. There are many reasons to read Doctor Zhivago and many reasons to enjoy it. But it is a long and often frustrating read.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I read this one for the Eastern Europe Reading Challenge, the TBR Pile Challenge, the Mt. TBR Challenge, and the Off The Shelf Challenge. Since Pasternak won the Nobel Prize, I also made some progress on that list.

Review: How to Read and Why

 

Several years ago, I read Great Books by David Denby and was inspired to upgrade my reading program significantly. At 48, Dendy had returned to Columbia University to take its controversial "Great Books" course and wrote his about his reawakened appreciation for and engagement with the Western canon.

Denby reminded me of the intellectual and emotional pleasure I had gotten from my own college courses on classic literature. He motivated me to go back to some of those classics and to search out other Great Books. As a result, I undertook to finish the books on the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century list (the inspiration for this blog), bought the complete 54-volume set of The Great Books of the Western World at a library sale, and, more lastingly, began to read more deliberately.

I turned to Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why with the expectation that it would arouse the same enthusiasm in me. I was looking for bibliophile red meat and was disappointed by the thin gruel between the covers. There was enough there to keep me going, but now, a couple of months later, nothing has really stuck with me.

Bloom organized his discussion by short stories, poems, novels, and plays, then picked a few of his favorites from each and explained what he liked about them. If this was touted as a collection of essays by a brilliant literature professor reflecting on his favorite books, I may have enjoyed it more. But Bloom didn't impart to me why I should read these books, only why he did. And his lessons for how to read them seemed interchangeable – read them out loud, read them for their irony, re-read them, etc.

I think I would have been happier reading Bloom's seminal work, The Western Canon, and leaving How to Read and Why to his more ardent devotees.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts for the Non-Fiction Challenge, Mt. TBR Challenge, Off The Shelf Challenge,  and TBR Pile Challenge, 

Review: Oscar and Lucinda

 

Oscar and Lucinda is a strange book. Or, more precisely, it is a normal book about strange people. There is nothing experimental about the writing and there are no long philosophical passages. It definitely falls in the "good yarn" category of novels. But the main characters are odd birds – awkward misfits who end up doing unusual things because they can't do otherwise.

This Booker Prize winner by Peter Carey is a historical novel set, almost entirely, in the mid 1800s, mostly in Australia. Oscar is the son of an English marine biologist of such fervent Low Church beliefs that he beat his son for eating a Christmas pudding. Lucinda is an Australian orphan of independent mind and means, who invests half her fortune in a glass factory.

The two are drawn together by their mutual love of gambling. Oscar put himself through university by playing the ponies. Lucinda is dithering away the other half of her money on cards. The book is as much about gambling addiction as it is about anything else, although there is plenty in there about other 19th Century preoccupations, like religious sectarianism, natural sciences, sea travel, and geographic exploration.

None of the characters are particularly likable, or have much depth, despite the rich detail of the narrative. The ending is abrupt and half-baked. But the story is a grand, mesmerizing kaleidoscope of Australian history and human nature that never let's go of the reader's imagination.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts as one of my Booker choices for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, British Version.  It also counts for the Mt. TBR Challenge, the Off The Shelf Challenge,  the TBR Pile Challenge,  and as one of my 450-550 books for the Chunkster Challenge.

Review: Evolutionaries

 

"Whether we like it or not, the new economy demands leaders that are agile, adaptable, innovative and visionary." That idea of how to adapt in today's quickly-changing business world is the impetus behind Evolutionaries: Transformational Leadership: The Missing Link in Your Organizational Chart, by business strategists Randy Harrington and Carmen E Voillequé.

The authors define evolutionaries as leaders that emerge from any part of a company and act as the catalyst for change. Evolutionaries are risk takers willing to proceed before every contingency is worked out perfectly. They will cross-pollinate ideas from across the company and look outside the company for inspiration on how to transform the business.

The book is organized around interviews with half a dozen or so individuals the authors identified as successful evolutionaries within their fields, including Chandra Brown, the President of United Streetcar; Captain Steve Ahlberg, leader of Navy SEALS teams; and Cindy Tortorici, CEO and Founder of the Link for Women. The format works because it puts faces on the ideas. However, the one weak spot in this short book is the lack of concrete examples of evolutionary ideas in practice. It is a short book and has room for a few war stories that could really make the concepts come alive.

One of the biggest strengths in the book, aside from bringing light and terminology to the evolutionary idea, is its honesty in describing the dark side of evolutionaries and their force in some organizations. Evolutionary practices may be invaluable in an organization that needs to innovate to exist. But in a business seeking to grow along established lines or implement a proven business plan, change for change's sake, or innovations that sap resources from successful programs may be more damaging than beneficial.

Evolutionaries is definitely a book that deserves space on any shelf of leadership and business innovation books. It is a quick read – hopefully a little more fleshed out with concrete examples in future editions – and worthwhile just to spark ideas and discussions about where your business is going and when and how to tap into the power of evolutionary thinking.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

This counts as one of my books for the Non-Fiction, Non-Memoirs Challenge, hosted by Julie at My Book Retreat.  I only have one more book to go to complete the challenge.

Review: The Man With the Golden Arm

 

If gritty reality set to a jazz beat is your thing, then The Man with the Golden Arm is the book for you. It's Jack Kerouac meets James Farrell. In a deserted Chicago alley. With a used hypodermic needle.

 Nelson Algren won the first National Book Award in 1950 for this bleak portrayal of postwar life on Chicago's Division Street. The story centers on Frankie “Machine” Majcinek, discharged from the Army with a morphine addiction, no job, and a wife confined to a wheelchair thanks to his drunken driving. Frankie's days are spent dealing poker, fighting with his wife, shooting up, and putting the moves on his drunken neighbor, all the time fantasizing about playing drums for Gene Krupa.

Mixed in with the plot are several montage scenes where Algren moves out of the action to describe every detail of the picture. These verbal jazz improvs, including serial descriptions of the guys in the holding cell at the local precinct and the revelers at a New Year ’s Eve party at Schwiefka’s neighborhood bar, are virtuoso performances and give the novel lasting value. But the story is still as dark and depressing as it can get, even with these artistically compelling interludes, right to the bleak and inevitable ending.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES 

The Man With the Golden Arm is commonly considered the "first" National Book Award winner, but there was a period of time before WWII when an earlier version of the award existed, although it was not limited to American books.

I've already read two National winners for the American Version of the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, so this doesn't count for that challenge.  But I read it with my ears, so it counts for the Audio-Book Challenge. 

Review: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

When a venerable member of the Bellona Club is found dead in a wingback chair, Bellona member, Lord Peter Wimsey, is called in to make some discreet inquiries into the time of his death. The inheritance of a large fortune depends on just when the old fellow shuffled off.

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club finds Lord Peter at the top of his game, always urbane and witty as he unravels a series of knotty clues and evaluates myriad suspects. There are many moving parts to the puzzle, but Lord Peter and his technologically savvy butler Bunter never lose their cool, right up to the surprisingly dark ending.

OTHER REVIEWS

My review of Clouds of Witness is here.

If you would like your review of this or any other of Dorothy L. Sayers book listed here, please leave a comment with a link.

NOTES

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, first published in 1928, is Dorothy L. Sayers' fourth book in the Lord Peter Wimsey series. It was one of my Golden Age Girls choices for the Vintage Mystery Challenge, hosted by Bev at My Reader's Block.

Review: The Comedians

 

François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his secret police, the Tonton Macoute, ruled Haiti from his election in 1957 until his death in 1971. As tin pot dictators go, Papa Doc was particularly repressive, using bribery, extortion, and confiscation to enrich his cohorts; crippling the country by causing a mass exodus of educated professionals; and killing as many as 30,000 of his countrymen.

In The Comedians, Graham Greene tells the story of Papa Doc’s ascendency from the perspective of three foreigners: narrator Brown, owner of a once-chic ex-pat hotel in Port-au-Prince; former US Presidential candidate Smith, in Haiti with his formidable wife to open an institute of vegetarianism; and third rate mercenary Jones, hoping his fabricated credentials will earn him fame and fortune on one side of the conflict or the other.

Brown, Smith, and Jones are the comedians of the title, but only in the older sense of the word comedy as political satire or a work that emphasizes the ridiculous and the absurd in human life. There is humor in the book – the whole bit, for example, about Smith running for President on a vegetarian ticket is an ongoing and funny gag. But the humor is often dark, as when Smith doesn’t understand that there is no need to teach Haitians the benefits of a vegetarian diet since they cannot afford meat.

Although Greene keeps the tone light and the story moves along at a steady clip, there is a sad inevitability to it. Local leaders die, opposition is crushed, and the lucky flee. Brown’s love affair with a diplomat’s wife founders in the turmoil. The grand plans of Smith, Jones, and Brown all crumble against Pap Doc’s corrupt political and military might. Contrary to comedies of old, there is no happy ending, but The Comedians is a story of history on a human scale that will grip the reader’s attention to the very last page.

OTHER REVIEWS

1966 New York Times review of The Comedians

If you would like your review of this or any other Graham Greene book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

I read The Comedians for several challenges, most obviously the Graham Greene Reading Challenge hosted by the Carrie at Books and Movies, but also the Birth Year Reading Challenge on Hotchpot Cafe, the Books Published in the First years of My Life Challenge hosted by Emma at Words and Peace, the Mt. TBR Challenge on My Reader's Block, the Off the Shelf Challenge on Bookish Ardour, and the TBR Pile Challenge hosted by Adam at Roof Beam Reader.

Review Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates

Michael Bond is best-known for his beloved books about Paddington Bear. But he has also written a series of 16 mystery novels featuring the gourmand sleuth, Monsieur Pamplemousse, and his faithful hound, Pommes Frites.

Monsieur Pamplemousse Investigates is the sixth book in the series and finds Pamplemousse trying to thwart a plot to humiliate his boss, the editor of France's premiere restaurant guide, and ruin the company. He is helped along the way by his clue-sniffing dog and an attractive computer expert who can cook a pot-au-feu just like his mother (including plugging the bones with potatoes to keep the marrow in).

The humor is a little silly (Pamplemousse loses his clothes and has to go in drag, for instance) and the computer crime so dated as to be incomprehensible, but the book has a decently puzzling plot and the charm needed to make a successful cozy, plus a Paris setting and plenty of food talk. Perfect for a chilly autumn afternoon.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other books in the Monsieur Pamplemousse series, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts as one of my books for the Foodies' Reading Challenge.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Review: Swan Peak

Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel can never escape their pasts or the angry demons in their heads, even to do a little fishing in Montana. Mobster Didi Gee died in a suspicious plane crash years before, but when his goons turn up in Montana, working for a pair of oil baron brothers, Dave and Clete get sucked into a whirling vortex of violence, sex, booze, and vengeance.

Swan Peak is the 16th book in James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series and exemplifies everything that is good and bad about the long-running saga. Burke is the best there is at writing literary, atmospheric mysteries peopled with complex characters and glorifying their settings (usually Louisiana, occasionally Montana). The stories are dark, sometimes a little twisted, and always exciting, with multi-faceted plots addressing important social issues.

But sometimes Burke lays it on with a trowel, and he does in Swan Peak. In addition to mobsters and crooked oil barons, there's a sadistic prison guard tracking an escaped convict, a self-medicating adulterous wife, a charlatan preacher with an eye for teenage girls, a porn producer and his call girl companion, and a vicious serial killer. That's a lot of bad guys crowded into the Bitterroot Valley. And all of them are deformed, addicted, damaged, particularly cruel, or otherwise extra creepy.

Swan Peak is a page turner, but may leave the reader needing to take a Burke break.

OTHER REVIEWS

My review of Crusader's Cross is here
My review of The Tin Roof Blowdown is here

If you would like your review of this book or any other JLB book listed here, please leave a comment with a link.

NOTES

Swan Peak counts for my "topographical" choice for the What's in a Name Challenge, and as another book for the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf Challenges.

Review: Extra Virginity

 

Extra virgin olive oil is the gateway drug to great food, as many a foodie has discovered. But in Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, Tom Mueller explains that what consumers around the world accept as EVOO usually isn’t.

The standards for what makes olive oil “extra virgin” are both objective and subjective. EVOO is supposed to come from fresh pressed (or centrifuged) olives maintained at relatively low temperatures, without heat or chemical treatment. Various regulations govern the chemical makeup of EVOO. The EU, for example, sets limits on the amount of free fatty acids and peroxides that can be in olive oil and still be called EVOO.

On the subjective side, the flavor of the oil determines whether it is “extra virgin.” EVOO should have a balance of fruity, bitter, and peppery flavors – a combination that can be challenging to those more used to softer, sweeter olive oil. Bitterness and pepperyness indicate the presence of antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, and other “minor components” of top-quality olive oil that make it so healthy.

Mueller argues that most of the oil sold in Europe and America does not meet the definition of EVOO, for three main, sometimes interrelated, reasons. The first two are objective – the oil exceeds regulatory standards for free fatty acids, peroxides, or other elements, or the oil had been adulterated. Adulteration has been a problem with EVOO since ancient times. Oil has been labeled and sold as EVOO, even though it has been cut with seed or vegetable oil or with refined olive oil. Refined olive oil is the trickiest because it comes from olives, but has been processed with heat or chemicals that remove bad odors or flavors, but also remove the healthy elements of the oil.

The third reason is harder to pin down because it depends on the flavor of the oil. If the oil does not have the flavor profile described above, it should not be called EVOO. It may have bad flavors, such as moldy, rancid, cooked, greasy, metallic, or cardboard, or it may just lack the bitter and peppery flavors EVOO should have. Mueller makes the case for intentional mislabeling on the part of olive oil distributors trying to tap into a huge and growing market that demands the “extra virgin” label.  That may be a big part of the problem, but flavor issues can also be the result of time. Olive oil is a natural fruit juice, so its flavor and aroma begin to deteriorate within a few months of milling, and quickly go downhill when the container is opened and the oil exposed to oxygen.

One drawback to Mueller’s book is a lack of organization. He combines chapters on the history of olive oil, the science and manufacturing of olive oil, recent olive oil scandals, and the current state of olive oil production in different countries. But he jumps around among these topics seemingly at random. Still, Extra Virginity is fascinating, argumentative, and enlightening. It will change the way you shop for and consume extra virgin olive oil.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Tom Mueller has a great website devoted to olive oil called Truth in Olive Oil where you can find all kinds of information of how to taste, buy, and use good quality EVOO.  

This counts as one of my books for the Foodie Reading Challenge, hosted by Margot at Joyfully Retired, the Non-Fiction, Non-Memoirs Challenge hosted by Julie at My Book Retreat and the Audio-Book Challenge hosted by Teresa at Teresa's Reading Corner.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Review: Witness

 


Whittaker Chambers was an American communist and Soviet spy who broke with the Communist Party in 1938 and later denounced the other members of his underground cell to the House Un-American Activities Committee and a New York grand jury. His testimony eventually lead to the 1950 perjury conviction of Alger Hiss and launched a decades-long battle between the Left and Right over which man was the real villain. The controversy seems to have petered out, at least in the mainstream, since both the US Russia released formerly-classified Cold War records identifying Hiss as a Soviet agent.

In 1952, Chambers published Witness, his autobiography and apologia. Starting with his childhood, Chambers explains his attraction to communism, his involvement in the communist movement in America – first in the open party as an organizer and writer for the Daily Worker, later in the underground – how his growing Christian faith lead to his break from the party, and how his Quaker principles lead to his testimony against his former fellow-travelers.

Chambers spent ten years as a writer and editor for Time Magazine, so he knew how to wield a pen. His story is organized, his arguments persuasive, and his writing is moving, sometimes even beautiful. The drawback is that Chambers took his serious subject seriously – there is not a glimmer of humor in the whole 800 pages. Still, it is an amazing story and much of it reads like a spy thriller, well, an egg-heady spy thriller. 

Witness isn't a quick or easy read, but as a first-hand account of a fascinating episode in American history, it is worth the effort. Christopher Caldwell summed it up well when describing the book:

Confession, history, potboiler -- by a man who writes like the literary giant we would know him as, had not Communism got him first.

OTHER REVIEWS

Cindy Simpson for American Thinker (2010)
Brothers Judd (2001)

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

Witness is on the National Review list of Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century.  It counts for several of my 2012 challenges: Chunkster, Tea & Books, Mt. TBR, Off the Shelf, TBR Pile, and Memorable Memoirs.

Review: Mr. Sammler's Planet

 

There's a reason why Mr. Sammler's Planet doesn't spring first to mind when making a list of favorite or best known Saul Bellow novels. People tend to mention The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, Seize the Day, or Henderson the Rain King, but not Mr. Sammler's Planet, even though it won the National Book Award in 1971.

Mr. Sammler's Planet is not an easy novel, either to read or review. It has a typical Bellow plot, simple, funny, and shaggy, and a typical Bellow collection of wonderful, overblown characters. Here, Artur Sammler is an elderly, one-eyed Holocaust survivor and former minor member of London's Bloomsbury Set, living in Manhattan on the largesse of a nostalgic nephew, under the haphazard housekeeping care of a loony daughter and a couple of nieces, and attracting the attention of screwball hucksters, an Indian professor with theories of colonizing the moon, and a sharply dressed pickpocket with a peculiar method of intimidation.

But, also typical of Bellow's books, it is a novel of ideas – in this case dense and unrelenting ideas about the degradation of social mores, the philosophical underpinnings of human suffering, and the existence of God. That's a lot to get through in 285 pages.  And it is difficult to know how Sammler's ideas fit together or where they end up.  As the 1970 New York Times review noted:

There is something appealingly elegiac about Sammler. The book is not only his swan song, but civilization's as we once knew it. With his minutely articulated ideas as his only tools, Sammler is something like a watchmaker tinkering with the huge and faulty mechanism of modern life. And though he may not succeed in putting it back in working order, it is both moving and instructive to see him try.

Dedicated Bellow fans may end up adding Mr. Sammler's Planet to their personal list of Bellow's best, but newcomers may want to start with one of his more accessible books.

OTHER REVIEWS

Commentary Magazine (1970)
New York Times (1970)

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

Mr. Sammler's Planet counts as one of my National Book Award choices for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, American Version.   With this one, I've now completed the challenge. Woo hoo!

It also counts for the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf challenges, the TBR Pile challenge, and my "sky" choice for the What's in a Name challenge. 

Review: The Gate House

The Gate House is the sequel to Nelson DeMille's wildly popular mafia thriller/farce, The Gold Coast, picking up ten years after John Sutter's blue blood wife shot her mafia don lover.  Now John is back in the aristocratic Gold Coast section of Long Island, having spent three years sailing around the world and seven years as a London tax lawyer.  Susan Stanhope Sutter, his ex-wife, is also back from her exile in Hilton Head.  Unfortunately for both of them, the dead don's son has also moved back to the neighborhood, determined to avenge his father's death and take over his empire.

Those many thousands of readers who loved The Gold Coast will either enjoy this revisit to favorite territory or find it a desperate re-tread.  I fall into the first camp.  I was pleased to catch up with John and Susan, and DeMille had me laughing all the way through.  It is an excellent send-up of snooty East Coast high life, with clever dialog and plenty of one-liners.

The book poses a conundrum, however, fr those who didn't read the first one.  For one thing, the first one really is better.  There is no point reading the sequel instead of the inaugural.  But anyone who reads The Gold Coast for the first time can't immediately move on to The Gate House because DeMille exhaustively rehashes the original plot -- it would be torture.  The only way to enjoy the sequel would be to read the first one and then wait a couple of years. 

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book or The Gold Coast listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

This counts as one of my books for the TBR Challenges I am doing, as well as the Chunkster and Tea & Books Challenges.

Review: Paradise Postponed

When it comes to humorous literature, I see a continuum from books that are almost purely funny, with only a fragile plot for framework, to serious literature written by a witty author able to leaven a heavy story with a little comedy. I personally put P. G. Wodehouse at the one end and Jim Harrison at the other, with Christopher Buckley, Nick Hornby, Kingsley Amis, David Lodge, and Kate Atkinson in the middle, more or less in that order subject to aberration for particular books.

With that in mind, I can't say that I was disappointed with Paradise Postponed, the first book I've read by John Mortimer, an English author noted for his humorous books (including his popular Rumpole series), but I was thrown off. Without rational basis, I had it in my head that his books were going to be closer to the Wodehouse end of the scale and Paradise Postponed was much closer to the Harrison end – somewhere between Lodge and Atkinson. It took a while for me to enjoy the story while my expectations readjusted.

I ended up enjoying Paradise Postponed well enough, even if I didn't love it. It is my favorite kind of comic story about English village life with the requisite nutty vicar, illicit lovers, country doctor, and mix of difficult and lovable family members, all involved in a series of funny adventures. The story moves between the present in the 1980s back to post WWII days, as two middle-aged brothers try to figure out why their father, a communist clergyman, left his estate to a Conservative cabinet minister.

None of the characters were very likeable, and snarky jibes at Thatcherism have lost their bite after twenty-some years, but the story pulled me in and there were plenty of funny bits. I'm up for the sequel, Titmuss Regained, and will give barrister Rumpole a try.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

This counted as one of my books for the TBR challenges I am doing this year.

Review: The Spectator Bird

No one can strip a marriage down to find the twinging nerve like Wallace Stegner, but he does it with such a deft and gentle touch that it is beautiful to observe. In the case of The Spectator Bird, which won the 1977 National Book Award, Stegner combined his marital vivisection with an elaborate backstory about a family of faded Danish aristocrats trying to live down their scandalous past.

Joe Allston, a retired literary agent, feels he has gone through his life as a spectator, falling into his career, his marriage, friendships, and fatherhood without much conscious effort on his part. But Joe and his wife Ruth have lived with a pebble in the shoe of their marriage for twenty years, ever since an extended trip to Denmark following the death of their son. When an unexpected postcard from their Danish friend startles Joe out of his grouchy retirement funk, Ruth uses the opportunity to finally learn what happened all those years ago. For the first time, Joe is forced into an active, thinking role in his long-enduring marriage.

Stegner uses Joe's journal from their Denmark trip to move back and forth between the Allstons' current life as affluent retirees on the stormy California coast south of San Francisco and the remarkably gothic story of the Danish aristocrats with whom they became entangled. In between late night sessions of Joe reading the journal to Ruth, they deal with the disruptions of daily life – bad news about a neighbor, storm damage, and an unexpected visit from one of Joe's eccentric former clients.

Combining Stegner's elegant composition with a terrific plot, curmudgeonly humor, and spot-on set pieces about growing old, sex in contemporary fiction, and the "homeland" myths of second-generation immigrants, The Spectator Bird is the rare page-turner that lingers.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this or any other Wallace Stegner book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES 

The Spectator Bird is my favorite read of the year so far and I can't see anything replacing it.  It may make my all-time Top 10 list if I can think of what to bump off it.  It is an incredible, wonderful, entertaining novel.

It also counts as one of my two National winners for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, American Version.  There is still time to sign up for this challenge, which involves reading only three or four books.  Click the link above or the badge below for details.