Book Review
When Jason leaves for an extended period of time, I usually get most of my reading done because I'm banned from watching any of the TV shows we DVR. Not watching them was actually my idea, because I know I don't want to sit through a bunch of episodes I've already seen, so it's actually a pretty good deal.
During the January exercise, on my way to visit Jen Gaj in Charleston, SC, I listened to Dead Irish, by John Lescroart, on CD. Here's the gist of the story provided by Publisher's Weekly:
"Dismas Hardy, an ex-policeman and lawyer who has withdrawn from his former life as a result of a personal tragedy, tends an Irish bar in San Francisco. When his boss asks him to investigate the apparent suicide of Eddie Cochran, Hardy agrees. Cochran was a friend and proving his death was not suicide will free the insurance money to his pregnant widow. As he becomes close to Eddie's parents, his emotionally distraught younger brother and family friend, Father Jim Cavanaugh, Hardy finds his life complicated by an encounter and renewed relationship with his ex-wife. Uncovering a botched drug deal arranged by Cochran's employer, Hardy believes he can show that Eddie was indeed murdered. But from that point his investigations come to a dead end. The killer, identified about two-thirds of the way through the story, proves to be as fascinating a personality as Hardy himself. Lescroart ( Rasputin's Revenge ) provides a surprise twist at the end."
I selected this book from the base library. It's amazing how much more quickly I pick a book when I have a squirming baby in my arms:) I really enjoyed this one and recommend it for some easy listening on your next long car trip.
Sometime between the January and February/March exercise, I read Water For Elephants, by Sara Gruen. It was selected by our 1/9 book club and it was a book I borrowed from Lynsey a long time ago. Here's another recap provided by Publisher's Weekly:
"With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen's romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds that drove her debut and its sequel (Riding Lessons and Flying Changes)—but without the mass appeal that horses hold. The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[...] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Despite her often clichéd prose and the predictability of the story's ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book."
While this book took a few chapters to get into, once I was about 30 pages in, I was hooked! It was a fascinating tale of life in the circus complete with a love story, the horrors of what animal treatment can be when a circus is faced with dire situations, and an old man's fond memories of what his life once was. I highly recommend this for anyone. And for those of you who aren't readers, it's going to be a movie!
During this same time, I also read George Bush's new memoir, Decision Points. I had been looking forward to reading this book since it's debut and I thoroughly enjoyed his recount of how he tackled certain decisions during his time in office. Here's a review by Booklist:
"George W. Bush’s decisions were all correct. It was just the aftermath that sometimes became muddled. That, at least, is the impression one gets after reading this surprisingly robust memoir. For those who have missed “43” in the public eye (and for those who haven’t as well), his voice is evident on every page. Cocky, defiant, and, at times (especially when speaking about his family), emotional, this is the George Bush who insists that “everybody” believed there were weapons of mass destruction, that much of the blame for the post-Katrina fiasco should be put on Louisiana’s local governments, and that Harriet Miers would have made a fine Supreme Court justice, given the chance. He does admit some mistakes (“Mission Accomplished”), but he stands by his big decisions and backs up his claims, which is simpler to do when the other side isn’t chiming in with their opinions and/or facts. Those who have followed Bush and his presidency will find many of the personal stories here familiar (how he stopped drinking; his whirlwind romance with Laura), but there are some fascinating reveals as well, including his affection for Ted Kennedy, his sometimes-complicated relationship with Dick Cheney, and his read-between-the-lines digs at Colin Powell. Some political memoirs (hello, Bill Clinton) are bloated journeys that devolve into pages and pages of, “and then I met . . .” Bush, smartly dividing the book into themes rather than telling the story chronologically, offers readers a genuine (and highly readable) look at his thought processes as he made huge decisions that will affect the nation and the world for decades. Many will ridicule his thinking and bemoan those decisions, but being George Bush, he won’t really care."
I liked the easily digestible format of this memoir and even for those left-wingers, I'd recommend it. It certainly showed me just how difficult such a job would be and made me wonder why anyone in his/her right mind would ever seek the presidency!
Finally, during Jason's trip to Ft. Picket from mid-February to early March, I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Maurakami. On a recommendation from Jen Gaj's boyfriend, John, (who was kind enough to give me the book), I poured over this novel from start to finish. Here's a review by Amazon.com:
"Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.
Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.
If it were possible to isolate one theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight.."
While this is a book I never would have chosen on my own, I could not put it down. What a wonderful tale of a man who goes in search of his missing cat and finds an entire world that he's never even thought about. I am sending this book to a friend who has shared books with me in the past, but would recommend it to anyone looking for something outside the norm.
If anyone has recommendations, please share. I've just started The Help, by Kathryn Stockett and am already sucked in. Always looking for new books to enjoy, so let me know!
During the January exercise, on my way to visit Jen Gaj in Charleston, SC, I listened to Dead Irish, by John Lescroart, on CD. Here's the gist of the story provided by Publisher's Weekly:
"Dismas Hardy, an ex-policeman and lawyer who has withdrawn from his former life as a result of a personal tragedy, tends an Irish bar in San Francisco. When his boss asks him to investigate the apparent suicide of Eddie Cochran, Hardy agrees. Cochran was a friend and proving his death was not suicide will free the insurance money to his pregnant widow. As he becomes close to Eddie's parents, his emotionally distraught younger brother and family friend, Father Jim Cavanaugh, Hardy finds his life complicated by an encounter and renewed relationship with his ex-wife. Uncovering a botched drug deal arranged by Cochran's employer, Hardy believes he can show that Eddie was indeed murdered. But from that point his investigations come to a dead end. The killer, identified about two-thirds of the way through the story, proves to be as fascinating a personality as Hardy himself. Lescroart ( Rasputin's Revenge ) provides a surprise twist at the end."I selected this book from the base library. It's amazing how much more quickly I pick a book when I have a squirming baby in my arms:) I really enjoyed this one and recommend it for some easy listening on your next long car trip.
Sometime between the January and February/March exercise, I read Water For Elephants, by Sara Gruen. It was selected by our 1/9 book club and it was a book I borrowed from Lynsey a long time ago. Here's another recap provided by Publisher's Weekly:
"With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen's romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds that drove her debut and its sequel (Riding Lessons and Flying Changes)—but without the mass appeal that horses hold. The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[...] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Despite her often clichéd prose and the predictability of the story's ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book."While this book took a few chapters to get into, once I was about 30 pages in, I was hooked! It was a fascinating tale of life in the circus complete with a love story, the horrors of what animal treatment can be when a circus is faced with dire situations, and an old man's fond memories of what his life once was. I highly recommend this for anyone. And for those of you who aren't readers, it's going to be a movie!
During this same time, I also read George Bush's new memoir, Decision Points. I had been looking forward to reading this book since it's debut and I thoroughly enjoyed his recount of how he tackled certain decisions during his time in office. Here's a review by Booklist:
"George W. Bush’s decisions were all correct. It was just the aftermath that sometimes became muddled. That, at least, is the impression one gets after reading this surprisingly robust memoir. For those who have missed “43” in the public eye (and for those who haven’t as well), his voice is evident on every page. Cocky, defiant, and, at times (especially when speaking about his family), emotional, this is the George Bush who insists that “everybody” believed there were weapons of mass destruction, that much of the blame for the post-Katrina fiasco should be put on Louisiana’s local governments, and that Harriet Miers would have made a fine Supreme Court justice, given the chance. He does admit some mistakes (“Mission Accomplished”), but he stands by his big decisions and backs up his claims, which is simpler to do when the other side isn’t chiming in with their opinions and/or facts. Those who have followed Bush and his presidency will find many of the personal stories here familiar (how he stopped drinking; his whirlwind romance with Laura), but there are some fascinating reveals as well, including his affection for Ted Kennedy, his sometimes-complicated relationship with Dick Cheney, and his read-between-the-lines digs at Colin Powell. Some political memoirs (hello, Bill Clinton) are bloated journeys that devolve into pages and pages of, “and then I met . . .” Bush, smartly dividing the book into themes rather than telling the story chronologically, offers readers a genuine (and highly readable) look at his thought processes as he made huge decisions that will affect the nation and the world for decades. Many will ridicule his thinking and bemoan those decisions, but being George Bush, he won’t really care."I liked the easily digestible format of this memoir and even for those left-wingers, I'd recommend it. It certainly showed me just how difficult such a job would be and made me wonder why anyone in his/her right mind would ever seek the presidency!
Finally, during Jason's trip to Ft. Picket from mid-February to early March, I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Maurakami. On a recommendation from Jen Gaj's boyfriend, John, (who was kind enough to give me the book), I poured over this novel from start to finish. Here's a review by Amazon.com:
"Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.
Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.If it were possible to isolate one theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight.."
While this is a book I never would have chosen on my own, I could not put it down. What a wonderful tale of a man who goes in search of his missing cat and finds an entire world that he's never even thought about. I am sending this book to a friend who has shared books with me in the past, but would recommend it to anyone looking for something outside the norm.
If anyone has recommendations, please share. I've just started The Help, by Kathryn Stockett and am already sucked in. Always looking for new books to enjoy, so let me know!
You should join Goodreads. Check it out. It helps me keep track of all the books I have read and all the ones that I have on my list to read while also getting recommendations from others with similar interest. I plan to read Ape House (Sara Gruen), The Glass Castle (Jeanette Wells) and also the Hunger Games series.
ReplyDeleteI loved Water for Elephants too! Just finished it... And I completely recommend the Hunger Games - they are also making that one a movie if you want to wait.
ReplyDelete