Review of the Day: Restless

Restless by William Boyd is one of the rare novels that is enjoyable from the opening quote to the final paragraph. The story goes back and forth between the cloak-and-dagger world of WWII British espionage and the “contemporary” (1976) relationship between a mother and her daughter.

The premise is that a proper English grandmother, tucked away in a tiny Oxfordshire village, puttering in her garden, gives her daughter a manuscript she wrote, which reveals that she had been a British spy. From there, the story of her life as an intelligence agent develops along with the daughter’s completely new understanding of the person her mother is.

While it has its exciting bits, it is not a heart-racing thriller. Instead, gets into the minds of the characters to look at what it was like to have once been a spy, then live a normal life, and what it would be like to learn that your parent had been a spy with an adventurous life no one knew anything about. Fascinating.

NOTE: The audio book version was particularly entertaining because the woman who read did remarkably well on the accents. She had to portray characters with a variety of English and American accents, as well as Irish, Scottish, French, German, Russian, Mexican, and Iranian. She did an incredible job.

Review: Middle Passage

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson won the 1990 National Book Award. I was reluctant to read it because I thought it was going to be too depressing and preachy. It was depressing at times, but it was also, well . . . goofy. Very engrossing, even exciting, but a little haphazard. It has a ne’er-do-well hero, multiple plots, and exciting adventures -- a real sea yarn.

I could not get my brain around the notion that the narrator knew about and referred to things that didn’t happen until decades after the story takes place (he mentions things like time zones and squeegees that didn’t exist in 1830, for example, not to mention philosophical and scientific theories that didn’t develop until much later, such as evolution). But once I decided to let that all flow over me, I enjoyed the book. It certainly packs a lot into its 206 pages.

OTHER REVIEWS

Living Life and Reading Books
Bibliofreak

Book Note: The Inheritance of Loss

I have mixed feelings about The Inheritance of Loss, the 2006 winner of the Booker Prize. The story was complex and engaging, but it seemed to end in mid-stream.

iPod in the Car

One reason I get through a lot of books is that I listen to audio books on my iPod. (See lists over on the right.) I get audio books on cd from the library, load them into iTunes, then transfer them to my iPod. Easy! And it lets me carry around a dozen books in my purse. Most iPod users probably were born understanding how to use them in every situation. Not me. Figuring out how to plug my iPod into my car's stereo system took me several days. I did some consumer research and finally decided on the AVB Cassette Adapter. Now, obviously, that only works if you have a cassette player in your car. Otherwise, you have to get one of the wireless adapters that are significantly more expensive and/or had mediocre performance reviews. I wanted to keep things as simple as possible. I've been using cassette adapter thingy for a year now and it works like a charm. Also, I just ordered one for my mom and the price is down to $9.99! Good grief, that's cheap! I use the car adapter with the Griffin Technology iPod charger to keep the gizmo juiced up.

Review of the Day: The Adventures of Augie March

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow won the National Book Award in 1964. The story follows the life of the eponymous hero from childhood in Chicago, through a sojourn in Mexico with a zany huntress, to life on the seas in the Merchant Marines. Full of Bellow's over-the-top characters and riddled with discourses on Big Ideas, Augie is a great American hero. Bellow is a treasure.