12 Days to Christmas

Opening Sentence of the Day: American Lion

"It looked like war."

-- American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham (referring to the 1832 secession threat by South Carolina).

This is another off my LibraryThing Early Reviewer list. It is also my "white" book for the Colorful Reading Challenge. Once I finish it, I will have only a "blue" book to go to complete that challenge.

I know nothing about Andrew Jackson except that a mob crashed his inaugural party at the White House. So far, it is very lively and reads like a novel. No wonder Meacham won the Pulitzer prize for history for this one.

13 Days to Christmas

Review of the Day: The Fire

The Fire is a complicated adventure novel involving a centuries-long search for a famous chess set and the solution to its mysteries. Parallel stories set in present day and in the 1820s track the efforts of the Black Team and the White Team to find the missing game pieces, discover the meaning of The Game, and figure out just who is on which team -- and if it matters.

This is definitely an adventure story rather than a thriller. It is full of symbolism and riddle-solving, all interwoven with history, but it is more Mists of Avalon than Da Vinci Code. The story unfolds but never heats up.

The story drags as the characters dither and, while the plot is moderately interesting, it is not an exciting book. There is a lot of talk about the heroine being in danger, but there is never any actual danger. The only deaths occurred in the past and usually involved historic figures. There are no chase scenes, sneak attacks, near misses – no immediate risks or sense of suspense at all.

The big conclusion when the heroine solves the mystery of The Game once and for all is a big snooze. At least the solution of The Da Vinci Code was profound – blasphemous, but profound. The solution of The Game is no more profound than a brochure for a New Age spa.

14 Days to Christmas

Opening Sentence of the Day: How to Save Your Own Life

"I left my husband on Thanksgiving Day."

-- How to Save Your Own Life by Erica Jong.

After working diligently on my Guilt List for the last couple of weeks, I am treating myself to a book that I want to read for no reason other than the pure enjoyment of it. This is a sequel of sorts to Fear of Flying a book that I enjoyed way more than I thought I would.

As an extra bonus, this one is on the Anthony Burgess list of Top 99 novels, so I will make some headway on one of my lists. But I did not realize that until after I started reading it.

15 Days to Christmas

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Fire

"Solarin gripped his little daughter's mittened hand firmly in his own."

-- The Fire by Katherine Neville

 Neville wrote the precursor to this book, The Eight, in 1988. I haven't read that one, but this is supposed to be OK as a stand alone. It is also being heralded as the next Da Vinci Code, which gives me mixed feelings.

16 Days to Christmas

Teaser Tuesday: The Italian Lover

It was going to be a difficult shot, a huge scene to mount, and she still didn't have written permission to use the piazza, though the mayor, whom she'd taken to lunch at Cibreo, with Franco Bevilacqua and Michael, had promised that there would be no difficulties.

And they still had the sex scenes to do, and they'd have to be careful because they couldn't release the film with an NC-17 rating.

-- The Italian Lover by Robert Hellenga

I picked this teaser because this book is about making a movie. If you aren't interested in how movies get made, this book won't be interesting to you. I'm trying to expand my brain to take an interest, but I find myself reading through this quickly. I love the parts about being in Italy, but I am not drawn into the story.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

17 Days to Christmas

Mailbox Monday

Only one book came into my house last week for Mailbox Monday (other than Christmas gifts for other people).

Bend Sinister by Vladamir Nabokov

This was his first novel published in America (I think I read that right). I want to read more of his books, because when I read them, I love them. I was a little frustrated by Lolita because I couldn't catch all the references and word jokes, but I loved Pnin and Pale Fire is permanently on my Top 10 list of all-time favorites.

18 Days to Christmas

Review of the Day: Good for the Jews

Good for the Jews is a spirited, engaging novel set in the high school academic world of Madison, Wisconsin. When the charming – sometimes floundering – heroine, Ellen Hirschorn, becomes romantically involved with a much older man, she uses her new connections to help her guardian figure out whether he is the target of anti-Semitism.

Spark presents an alluring cast of characters, each complete with enough quirks and foibles to make them absolutely realistic, if not entirely lovable. Spark does not shy away from showing the mixed-up muddle of people -- their thinking, their actions, or their politics.

Lines such as "The anti-Semitism of the left. If you're going to see it anywhere, I guess it would be here in Madison" demonstrate Spark's sharp eye for ironic contradictions.  Nothing is black and white and none of her characters are totally sympathetic or unsympathetic.

The ending is a little rushed, which is all the more disappointing because the rest of the book is so enjoyable. But Good for the Jews is still a great story with a lot more going on than in a typical novel of modern day manners.

OTHER REVIEWS

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

19 Days to Christmas

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Italian Lover

"Saturday night."

-- The Italian Lover by Robert Hellenga

What is with the books I'm reading lately and their lame opening non-sentences?

Here's the whole first paragraph:

Saturday night. End of September. Florence, Italy. Margot Harrington excused herself from a table at Il Fiasco in Via dei Servi, saying that if she had another grappa she'd be too tired to walk home and that if she drank another espresso she'd never get to sleep.

Now, starting with that last sentence -- the first full sentence of the bunch -- would have been a bang-up way to start the story. Skip the stepping stones and go straight to the front door.

20 Days to Christmas

Review of the Day: A Century of November

In A Century of November, W. D. Wetherell tells the heartbreaking story of Charles Marden's quest to understand his son's death. Marden travels from British Columbia to the scarred, still smoldering battlefield in Belgium where his son died shortly before the November 11, 1918 Armistice that ended World War I.

This is a beautiful book, poetically written. Wetherell creates images with words – snowy train tracks through the mountains, street celebrations that verge on riots, misty moonscapes of battlefields laced with barbed wire – that linger even after the emotional impact of the story begins to fade.

One small drawback is that the book is very short, so some of the scenes seem truncated. As with most quest literature, the hero encounters several people along his journey who help or teach him in some way and then drop out of the story. In a longer book, these episodes can be drawn in more detail, or there are enough of them that a pattern is more apparent. But in a short book, the quick comings and goings of side characters feels a little choppy.

That is a minor criticism for what is otherwise a forceful book. They are making A Century of November into a movie, which could be very good because Wetherell’s evocative images should translate to the screen easily.

NOTE

Wetherell won the Michigan Literary Fiction Award for A Century in November. The book was published by the impressive University of Michigan Press.

OTHER REVIEWS

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

21 Days to Christmas

Oh Come, All Ye Faithful (Readers)!

'Tis the season to give books for gifts.  Thankfully, the Internet Review of Books just posted their Holiday Gift Guide that is as full as a stuffed stocking with ideas for the bibliophiles on your list.

22 Days to Christmas

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Tricking of Freya

"You want a bit of Birdie?"

-- The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley

Odd first sentence. But it quickly becomes clear that the narrator is talking about her aunt, nicknamed "Birdie," and is about to tell a story about her.

In fact, the first couple of pages are odd, until you realize that the narrator is writing a letter to an unknown cousin, Birdie's child. Once things fall into place, the book takes off and is incredibly good.

I am reading this because I got it from LibraryThing and am diligently working through my Early Reviewer list so I can get back in LibraryThing's good graces. But it totally sucked me in. It is a complicated story, well told, and is all about Iceland and Icelandic immigrants -- a topic I know nothing about. It is really interesting and entertaining.

23 Days to Christmas

24 Days to Christmas

Time to start my blog advent calendar.

I love Christmas.

Teaser Tuesday: Good for the Jews

"'The anti-Semitism of the left. If you're going to see it anywhere, I guess it would be here in Madison.'"

-- Good for the Jews by Debra Spark

What I love about this book is that Spark doesn't shy away from showing the mixed-up muddle of people -- their thinking, their actions, their politics. Nothing is black and white.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

Between vacation, Thanksgiving, and putting up the Christmas tree this weekend, there wasn't any time for book shopping. But my Mailbox Monday list is not entirely blank, thanks to the communal stack of books at our rental cabin.  One of my favorite things about a vacation is finding books up for grabs, left behind by prior visitors. On this trip, I found one book left behind that I was excited about:

Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin



I'm looking forward to this one!

And in keeping with the community spirit, we left behind the book Hubby finished: In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic by Valerian Albano. For cabin visitors like my husband who really only enjoy a book if it involves sled dogs, glaciers, and cannibalism.

Massacred for Gold -- Review Coming Soon

Readers interested in the experience of 19th Century Chinese immigrants or the development of the American West will want to read Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon, Gregory Nokes's thoroughly researched account of the murders of over 30 Chinese gold miners in 1887.

My review of Massacred will appear in the December issue of the Internet Review of Books on the 15th.I'll post it here on Rose City Reader after the IRB December issue finishes its run.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Good for the Jews

"Smoke at the horizon."

-- Good for the Jews by Debra Spark
Does an incomplete sentence count as an opening sentence? Oh well. It gets much better very fast. I was immediately plunged into the connected lives of two families in the high school academic circle of Madison, Wisconsin.

Review of the Day: Incidents in the Rue Laugier

The story of Maud Gonthier’s marriage to Edward Harrison is not a happy one. Looking back on their years together, their daughter – the self-described “unreliable narrator” of the book – creates a story to explain the sighs, attitudes, and distance she perceived between her parents.

Incidents in the Rue Laugier involves family conflicts and class differences, a doomed love affair, and a marriage that ultimately was, in its own crabbed way, successful. But Anita Brookner presents more than an interesting story – she examines the nature of marriage and the struggle to build a joint life using limited individual resources. As Maud described her marriage:

There was a slight additional loneliness in her increasing isolation from everyone but her husband, but her own calm good sense was there to remind her that she was not at home, that she had never expected to be at home, and that those who did not rely on their inner resources, as she had been obliged to do, were forever condemned to weep in other women’s drawing rooms . . . .

Like Maud’s life, this is a quiet book worthy of reflection.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Opening Sentence of the Day: A Century of November

"He judged men and he grew apples and it was a perilous autumn for both."

-- A Century of November by W. D. Wetherell

So begins Charles Marden's quest to understand his son's death, killed in battle in France in 1918.

This is a beautiful book. Heartbreaking, but beautiful.  They are making it into a movie, which should be very good because the book is full of images that will translate to the screen easily.

Teaser Tuesday: Massacred for Gold

"Not only did the Chieftain delay nearly a year before reporting the murders, the April 19, 1888, edition that finally carried the story was missing from the newspaper's files. Rick Swart, the editor of the Chieftain, helped me search through the musty cardboard boxes containing the newspaper's early editions, kept in the basement of the Chieftain's one-story Bowlby-stone building in Enterprise." -- Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon by R. Gregory Nokes This quote exemplifies the book by showing the detail Nokes includes about the 1887 massacre of over 30 Chinese gold miners in Oregon's Hell's Canyon (for further example, he had earlier explained what "Bowlby-stone" is), as well as his personal involvement in the more recent investigation. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday

Before leaving for vacation, I had time for a quick visit to one of my favorite used book stores -- Booktique, run by the Friends of the Lake Oswego Library -- to stock up for Mailbox Monday. Altered States by Anita Brookner (my new favorite) Citizen Vince by Jess Walter (Edgar winner) Author, Author by David Lodge (an old favorite) The Sins of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno (guilty pleasure)

Box of Books

My vacation box of books includes several off my Guilt List and LibraryThing list. I look forward to cozying in the cabin for the next several days, reading in front of the fireplace.

I over packed, but better to bring too many books than to come up short.

Massacred for Gold by Gregory Nokes



A Century of November by W. D. Wetherell



The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley



Good for the Jews by Debra Spark



Portland Noir, edited by Kevin Sampsell



The Italian Lover by Robert Hellenga