Scenes of Winchester England

Two scenes from Winchester England. The photo on the top was taken at the Winchester Cathedral -- yes, that cathedral; the one made famous in the Rudy Vallee-like song by the New Vaudeville Band. The annual book sale raises funds to purchase music for the choir. The photo on bottom is a close (alley) just off the city center.

I read two books during my travels: Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson and Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. I highly recommend both books.

Museum is Atkinson's first books and only cements her standing (with me) as one of the finest writer's in England today. It's a David Copperfield-like story of a young York girl. As Ruby recounts her life, Atkinson leaps back in time to tell the story of Ruby's mother and grandmother and their extended family.

Suite Francaise is the story of the Nazi invasion of Paris and the occupation of a French village. Nemirovsky is as unsparing of the Parisians and French villagers as she is the Nazis. Ironically, Nemirovsky, a Jew, died in the Holocaust. The uncompleted novel (actually two novellas) was discovered decades after her death by her daughter. We are the richer for this discovery.

Two very fine novels.

The Unnamed; these boots ain't made for walking

Timing counts for a lot. Tomorrow evening I fly off to England to spend eight days walking the 100-mile long South Downs Way. Yesterday, I finished The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris, a novel about a man who literally walks himself to death.

It's an odd novel and I'm not certain what to make of it. A novel of alienation and disaffection, perhaps; of modern man's need to constantly put distance between himself and the so-called good life he has fashioned for himself? You could say that.

At a minimum, it's a cautionary tale for me.

Tim Farnsworth is a successful man; he is a partner in a robust Manhattan law firm; he loves his wife and they seem to have a healthy sex life; he's a little distant from his chubby daughter, but loves her nonetheless. And then he starts walking.

Ultimately, Tim walks himself out of his job, away from his wife and daughter and his nice house and wherever his legs take him. Tim is baffled by this compulsion. Is he mentally ill or is it some disease of one? Is there a biological component? Whatever the root source of Tim's walking, by the novels end it has wrecked his mind and body, although he stills clings to love for his family and they for him.

His reunion with his dying wife and the meeting with his infant grandson are powerful and affecting scenes. Still, it is difficult (at least for me) to say what it all adds up to.

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When it comes to Canadian science fiction writer Robert Sawyer, I'm a fan boy. Watch is the second in his trilogy on an emergent consciousness that resides on the World Wide Web. I especially admire, and appreciate, Sawyer's ability to take aspects of science and dumb it down. I understand most of what he's writing about.

Sawyer also has created a nice cast of characters in the trilogy and the story -- with Rob's usual assortment of heroes and villains -- makes an entertaining read.

Thomson's debut novel is one fun read

To continue to believe in the mystery and magic of the Wizard, it's important not to pull back the curtain.

The same is true of certain books. It's dangerous to explore the premise because it's likely to fall apart. Such is the case with Keith Thomson's debut novel, Once A Spy.

The conceit of Once A Spy is that retired CIA agent Drummond Clark has Alzheimer's and a whole lot of people are concerned what Clark, now highly vulnerable, might tell other people. Consquently, Drummond's life is in danger from his own colleagues. So far, so good.

But despite the Alzheimer's, which damages his memory-retrieval process, Drummond still reacts like a spy. As the author explains through one of the characters, "Alzheimer's caused minimal motor impairment. Ten years from onset, patients could tie a tie, bake a cake, even create a web site." Or, in Drummond's case, fly a helicopter, conceive various schemes of escape and fire a variety of weapons with deadly accuracy.

If you think about it too long, it strains the bonds of credibility that a 60-something retiree with Alzheimer's is staying ahead of the bad guys, or escaping their nefarious clutches, as long (and as often) as Drummond manages to do. So, don't think about it. Because Thomson has given us a fun little novel. This is one great read.

Drummond is aided by his estranged son, Charlie. Charlie's a good guy -- and good looking -- but his downfall is the ponies. When the novel opens, Charlie owes a good deal of money to a Russian mobster because of a horse that finished well, but not well enough.

Charlie turns out to be a natural and together he and his father lead their pursuers on a merry chase.

Here's my recommendation: Block off a few hours, settle in to a cozy chair, suspend disbelief, have a little notepad handy to keep track of the body count and enjoy. And one other thing: Once A Spy doesn't read like a screenplay, but it's ultimate destiny is on the big screen. Join me in casting the movie to be made from this delightful book.

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I hate to express disappointment over Alberto Manguel's newest book, A Reader on Reading, but disappointed I was. Manguel's written some terrific books on reading, but -- despite the title's promise -- this isn't one of them.

A Reader on Reading is a series of essays that appeared in a variety of venues . . . the preface to books, magazine articles . . . that sort of thing. As such, some of the essays are very much about reading, but in others reading is a peripheral to the subject at hand.

There's some nice stuff here, but not enough to sustain a book. If you are unfamiliar with Manguel, I encourage you to pick up The Library at Night. It's a far more satisfying work.

Three novels, but not a single recommendation

Maile Meloy's short story collection, Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It, was one of the best books that I read last year. A Family Daughter, a 2006 novel by Meloy, won't be among my favorites in 2010.

It's an odd little novel. Ostensibly about a young California woman and her family there's an odd interlude in South American involving a beautiful, wealthy and narcissistic woman, her mother and her mother's adopted child.

There is the merest suggestion of the muscular writing and powerful insight Meloy displays in her story collection, but its only echoes. Unless you are interested in tracing the arc of a writer's growth, take a pass on A Family Daughter.

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Franklin Pierce by Michael F. Holt is another biography in the sterling Americans Presidents series by Times Books. There are other biographies on Pierce, a one-term President known more for his handsome appearance than his leadership, but I'm not familiar with any.

Holt's work, like Pierce's presidency, is not among the best in the series, but it's worth a day or two, and a 150-odd pages, to read this biography simply to know something about one of our more obscure presidents.

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I feel doubly cheated by Connie Willis' time travel novel, Blackout. For one, there's not much science in the science fiction. Blackout is largely the story of three historians trapped in London in the early days of World War II. That's fine, but if I wanted to read a history of WW II that's what I would have turned to, rather than a science fiction novel.

Why the three are trapped in the past is the second reason that I feel cheated. After almost 500 pages I discovered that Blackout is the first of two novels. I might have read Blackout in any case, but I certainly would have set it aside until this fall when its companion novel is scheduled for release.

The Ideal Reader

Per my post yesterday, I discovered the following quote today:

"The ideal reader is capable from falling in love with one of the book's characters."

The quote is from the essay, The Ideal Reader, from A Reader On Reading by Alberto Manguel.

Bradley's The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag is spot on

I have a colleague, a man in his early 60s, who confesses that he is in love with 10-year-old Flavia de Luce.

His passion for such a young girl might seem wrong, if not outright creepy, until you know that Flavia is a fictional character and that I, along with thousands of other readers, share his inordinate fondness for this coltish creature who seems to have escaped the boundaries of paper and ink.

Flavia is the creation of Alan Bradley and the star of his two mystery novels, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag. The novels, set in the idyllic English village of Bishop's Lacey, are as delightful and as clever as the titles suggest.

In the most recent book, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, Flavia sets out to solve the murder of a puppeteer. His death seems tangled up with a local farmer growing cannabis and the mysterious death of a five-year-old a few years earlier. There's also a former German prisoner of war lingering about the village for good measure.

The plots are engaging and Bradley's depiction of the residents of Bishop Lacey and its customs are spot on, but -- make no mistake -- Flavia is the star attraction. She is equally adept at detection and chemistry, as knowledgeable as she is fond of all manner of poisons, and dashes about Bishop Lacey's on her bicycle named Gladys.

She's precocious enough to enjoy dazzling the local police constable with her explanation of how she solved the murder and precious enough to doctor the chocolates given to her sister by an admirer with hydrogen sulfide, which will unleash the stink of rotten eggs when the candy is consumed.

Books don't come more enjoyable than Bradley's and characters more vivid than Flavia de Luce. We had are all cheered to know that the third book in the series, A Red Herring Without Mustard, can be expected in 2011.

On Lee's The Surrendered and McEwan's Solar

It has been weeks since I posted to this blog. Sadly, in that time I have completed only two books. Reading before blogging. If reading does not take place, the blog goes neglected as well.

For the first time in quite a while the pace of my reading has slackened. In the first quarter of 2010 I have averaged less than 10 books a month. It took all of seven days in April to complete Ian McEwan's new book, Solar, and it is hardly a voluminous tome (the redundancy here is for effect).

There is nothing for it, but to forge on . . .

The first of the two books that have taken so much time is Chang-rae Lee's The Surrendered. I confess I have been hesitate to write about this book. Not because I didn't like it, I did, but because it deals with such a weighty subject.

The Surrendered is about the horrors of war, particularly its brutal effects upon the innocent who are caught up in its madness. Recently, when Lee read from the opening chapter of his novel at Politics & Prose (that lovely little D.C. bookstore) the audience paused for a beat, perhaps a beat and a half, before bursting into applause at the conclusion of his reading. It is that kind of book -- sober, horrific, vividly realistic.

It will give any serious reader pause. It is a book in which you admire the skill of the writer even as you wonder if you really want to read a book on such a grim topic.

The Surrendered will certainly rank as Lee's finest work (at least something new supplants it), although it is not without its flaws. The best of the book is set in a Korean orphanage where three victims of war come together: an American soldier who served in the Korean conflict; a Korean girl, orphaned by the war; and the wife of an American missionary, who is a survivor of the Chinese-Japanese conflict in Manchuria.

The novel loses its way during those passages involving what passes for present time in the book. The soldier and the orphan girl, now a grown woman dying of cancer, are brought together by the woman's desire to find their son (it gets complicated), who is somewhere in Europe. But the reader does not care for this missing son and his very presence in the book seems arbitrary and a mere device to bring these two damaged souls back together.

If Lee stumbles, it is only that . . . a stumble and not a fall. The final passage links to the opening chapter in a skillful, almost breathtaking display of authorial command. Ultimately, The Surrendered is a flawed, yet heart-breakingly beautiful book that demands we see war for the horror that it is and acknowledge the great damage its wreaks on the guilty and innocent alike.

Because Solar is written by Ian McEwan we must read it. And we must acknowledge that it is written with skill, that it is highly readable, at times slyly funny and insightful, but -- and this isn't easy to say -- it is a disappointing book.

Despite it's title and it's cover (an image of our sun), Solar is not about global warming. It is about Michael Beard, a frowzy Nobel Prize-winning physicist who seems determined to demonstrate all on his own the concept of entropy -- that nature tends from order to disorder.

When we meet him, Beard is overweight womanizer, well into the dissolution of his fifth marriage and living off the tidy crumbs that fall to a Nobel laureate. By the novel's conclusion, his health is failing. He is morbidly obese, constitutionally unable to bypass a meal or a drink. He's fathered a child by one woman (despite his age and protestations never to become a father) and asked an equally frowzy waitress to marry him, while in the throes of sexual passion. And that doesn't begin to describe the state of Beard's career, which is disintegrating at about the same pace as his body.

The trouble with Solar -- more correctly, my trouble with Solar -- is that Beard is such an unpleasant shit, I don't care. Within pages I'm ready for him to get his comeuppance and be done with it. The book is not so funny or clever or insightful to continue to spend time with this creep.
Solar is a well-written dud.

The Say Hey Kid & Book Signings (Separate Topics)

The best thing that biographer James S. Hirsch has going for him in Willie Mays The Life, The Legend is . . . Willie Mays, the Birmingham kid who walked timidly onto the Polo Grounds only months after graduating high school and strolled boldly into the Hall of Fame more than two decades later.

Mays, the Say Hey Kid, who played baseball as we have seldom see the game played. He brought to the game an intensity and an intelligence and all encompassing skill that has earned him a place in that argument baseball fans love to have about who was the games greatest player.

Ruth? DiMaggio? Musial? Mantle? Aaron? Mays?

Maybe. If not the greatest, certainly one of the greatest. And Hirsch's biography, written with Mays' approval, makes a strong case for the long-time Giant. Hirsch emphasizes that Mays was a five-tool player -- he could hit for average, hit for power and run, catch and throw. And certainly, at times, do all those things with a flair that no one had seen before.

More importantly, Hirsch writes, "The 'five-tool' designation understates his skills by ignoring his intelligence, preparation, and guile. Mays was always better than the box score."

Mays brought a joy to the game. Hirsch captures that joy, and more. Any great biography of a baseball player must do many things. It must establish the player's "place" in the game. It must establish the game at the time the player played within the context of society. And it must be laced with lively anecdotes from this greatest of sports.

Hirsch does all those things. A bit of a "five-tool" performance from the author of Willie Mays The Life, The Legend.

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I haven't had the opportunity to have many books signed in 2010, but March has been an exception.

Peter Matthiessen was the National Geographic this week. He gave an impassioned speech about the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and signed three books for me, including his prize-winning Shadow Country.

Elizabeth Strout signed her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge last night and Colum McCann signed his National Book Award winner, Let the Great World Spin. Both appeared at Virginia's Festival of the Book.

Chang-rae Lee was at Politics & Prose early this month. He signed The Surrendered (which I am reading now).

And let's see, Helen Simonson signed her terrific Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, William Ferris signed his first book Blues From the Delta, David Corbett's Do They Know I'm Running came in the mail as did Blackout by Connie Willis and Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler and Jim Harrison's Warlock and a signed copy of the 20th anniversary of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is on its way.

Yeah, it was a good month.

The Blues Is A Deep Study

The blues, says author and scholar William Ferris, is a deep study.

Ferris brought some of that "deep study" to Charlottesville, Virginia, today in an hour-long presentation that was part of the annual Festival of the Book.

Ferris, a professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, spoke before a crowd of about 60 people at the Southern Cafe and Music Hall, a below-street-level venue just around the corner from Charlottesville's historic downtown. Ferris talked about his new book, Give My Poor Heart Ease, before tracing his journey through the South in a captivating talk accompanied by a powerful series of black and white photographs that he had taken.

James "Son Ford" Thomas first characterized the blues as a deep study. Ferris that Thomas, a black blues musician that he views as his guru, said, "Women is what gives me the blues." Ferris said the blues often deals with pain, especially lost love.

"The central theme of the music is solace," he said. "Not just to the musicians, but to all of us."

Ferris said his first book, Blues From the Delta, was a scholarly approach to the blues. It was a white man's approach to black music. In Give My Poor Heart Ease Ferris decided that he wanted the voices of the people he had met on his travels through the South to be heard.

People, he said, are living libraries.

The value of Ferris' work is two-fold. He has preserved the voices of the people he met in his research. Those voices can be heard, not only in his book, but literally in the DVD and CD that are included with it. Ferris noted that except for blues legend B.B. King all of the people featured in Give My Poor Heart Ease are now dead.

The second value of his work is that Ferris helps us to understand that the blues are a part of the fabric of the land and of the people from which it comes. He said the blues are a music of freedom.

Simonson's Grand Last Stand

An utterly charming comedy of manners, Helen Simonson's accomplished debut novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, recalls no one so much as fellow Brit Jane Austen.

The novel is a warm, wise and witty look at a beleaguered couple, courting in that staid and stately British manner, despite the disapproval of family and friends, who are smugly confident in their judgments.

The Major Pettigrew of the title is a widower living in the village of Edgecombe St. Mary. The Major doesn't realize how lonely he is until Mrs. Ali comes knocking at his door, collecting for the newspaper, as the novel opens.

The success of a comedy of manner lies in its ability to turn convention on its head. Simonson does this with the skill of an experienced novelist. And it is surprising how much material she has to work with: There's not only small-minded family members and snooty villagers, but the local aristocracy who is scheming with an American to subdivide his estate and grasping children who mistake text messages for genuine communication in affairs of the heart.

Neither the Major nor Mrs. Ali are quite what we'd expect. In his late sixties, the Major believes in his gun and golf, duty and decorum, but he's no stuffed shirt. He's a sensitive and observant man who truly wants to do what's right. Mrs. Ali is a shopkeeper of Pakistani origin and that's two strikes against her as far as Pettigrew's family and friends are concerned.

Here is a wonderful passage:

"Now, Mrs. Ali, we were wondering whether we could prevail on you to attend the dance."

"Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Ali. A sudden, shy pleasure lit her face."

"My aunt will not engage in public dancing," said Abdul Wahid. The Major could tell that his voice bubbled with rage, but Daisy only peered at him with condescension suitable for shop assistants who might unwittingly forget their manners.

"We were not expecting her to dance," she said.

"We wanted kind of a welcoming goddess, station in the niche where we keep the hat stand," said Alma. "And Mrs. Ali is so quintessentially Indian, or at least quintessentially Pakistani, in the best sense."

"Actually, I'm from Cambridge," said Mrs. Ali, in a mild voice. "The municipal hospital, ward three. Never been further abroad than the Isle of Wight."

"But no one would know that," said Alma.

If everyone in this novel doesn't live happily ever after, at least the people we care most about are off to a promising start as the book closes. Major Pettigrew does indeed make a last stand and, like all heroic Brits, he wins the day.

As does the reader of this absolutely engaging first novel.

Is The Blue Horse the future of publishing?

Do I have the future of book publishing lying near me on my dining room table?

The book is The Blue Horse by Rick Bass. Its a thin paperback book of 50 pages. The novella by the Montana writer was originally "published" on-line last year by Narrative Magazine, which exists entirely on the Internet.

Narrative later issued The Blue Horse in paperback. To my knowledge, it is only available for purchase via the Narrative website. On the back of the book, Narrative indicates that the book "is the first of a series of new Rick Bass novellas to be published by Narrative Library."

It would make sense that The Blue Horse is a model for future books. The on-line venue offers the opportunity to attract new readers, while testing a writer's strength with existing markets. Sufficient on-line interest would figure in the decision to publish a physical book and, because orders are only filled on-line, there would be no need for a huge print run, storage or distribution.

The book design is attractive and the printed product itself highly professional. The story shows Bass at his best: scenes of hunting, vivid descriptions of nature and an undercurrent of tension between the characters that leads to a surprising, yet satisfying, conclusion.

March reading

Three books read to this point in March: Rebel Yell by Alice Randall, The Possessed by Elif Batuman and The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell. And I'll confess that Cornwell's yarn is my favorite.

The Burning Land is the fifth book in Cornwell's Saxon series. Think of Robert E. Howard's Conan books only with impeccable historical research, superb pacing and unrivaled story-telling ability. Cornwell is the foremost practitioner of the historical novel, assuming the mantle from the late Patrick O'Brian.

The Saxon series features Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a fearless fighter and brilliant tactician. Uhtred straddles two worlds. He identifies closely with the Danes, brave pagan warriors, yet he is a reluctant tool of the Christian king, Alfred of Wessex.

Like Uhtred, Cornwell's novels straddle two worlds -- they are literate works that manage to be hugely entertaining.

How I wish Rebel Yell had contained even some of that entertainment value found in The Burning Land. I wanted to like this book. I didn't. At times, the writing had an annoying staccato feel to it and the book seems to have been written in code.

The book is the story of Abel Jones Jr. When we first meet Abel, he is a child, in a car with his mother and father, en route to the funeral of one of the young girls murdered in the infamous Birmingham church bombing. Pages later, in his second appearance, Abel is an adult, married to a white woman, dining and then dying in the Rebel Yell, a dinner theater reenacting Confederate battles.

Through reminiscences by Abel's first wife and a few friends, we review Abel's life as he progresses from the child of a black civil rights activist in Memphis to a spy for the CIA to minor figure in the Pentagon, where he has a hand in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Rebel Yell falls far short of its promise as a novel that will illuminate the fears and desires and hopes of black Americans growing up in the Civil Rights era.

The Possessed is subtitled "Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them."

I've been in Russian twice; once for three weeks and a second time for two weeks. Each time, prior to my departure, I read works of Russian literature -- Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Gogol. That gives me some grounding for understanding The Possessed, but only a little.

Batuman was a graduate student studying Russian literature. Her understanding of these works is profoundly deeper than mine. The result is that, at times, I am somewhat at sea when reading The Possessed. But only sometimes, because what makes this book so entertaining is Batuman's great eye for detail and her inherent sense of the comic. These qualities drive the success of The Possessed and guarantee that Batuman's writing career will be long and profitable.

And the cover illustration by Roz Chast is worth the price of admission alone.

February Reading List

10. The Hidden Man, David Ellis
11. Gutshot Straight, Lou Berney

12. Give My Poor Heart Ease, Voices of the Mississippi Blues, William Ferris

13. The Godfather of Kathmandu, John Burdett

14. Food Rules, Michael Pollan

15. A Quiet Belief in Angels, R.J. Ellory

16. Doors Open, Ian Rankin

17. The Mexican Tree Duck, James Crumley

18. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

19. After the Sundown, Pat Jordan

20. The Price of Love and Other Stories, Peter Robinson

21. The Farmer’s Daughter, Jim Harrison

22. To Hell on a Fast Horse, Mark Lee Gardner

Pulitzer, National Book Award winners meet in Charlottesville

There's a rare and exciting opportunity later this month in Charlottesville to see the 2009 winners of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award together on the same stage.

Colum McCann, winner of the National Book Award for Let the Great World Spin, and Elizabeth Strout, winner of the Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge, will appear together Saturday, March 20, at the Virginia Festival of the Book.

McCann and Strout will be joined by Lee Smith, author of Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, and E. Ethelbert Miller, author of The Fifth Inning, to present a program on American Accents: An Evening with Four Distinguished Authors. The program is at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville.

The books by both McCann and Strout are terrific. While literary awards are not always indications of excellence, these two books are among the very best written in recent years.

Organizers of the Virginia Festival of the Book are to be commended for putting together an exceptional program. Take a look at the festival's website. If you're a reader, and you live nearby, you will find something -- perhaps many things -- of interest.

Book 22, 2010: To Hell On A Fast Horse

Billy the Kid had the good fortune to die young. Pat Garrett the misfortune to live many years beyond that fatal night at Fort Sumner when Sheriff and Outlaw clashed.

As Mark Lee Gardner notes in his meticulously researched To Hell On A Fast Horse, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West, the pair "are forever linked . . . in legend, but historically, in the memories of their friends, and enemies."

Sadly, for Garrett, Billy has all the glory. In film and fiction, and popular memory, Bill Bonney is a dashing young gunslinger, while Garrett is generally a footnote -- the man who gunned down Billy the Kid. Some even contend Garrett's action was less than heroic, that he took Billy by surprise and never gave the outlaw a chance to defend himself.

As Gardner notes, Garrett's misfortune extended far beyond such criticism or a lesser role in popular imagination, then or now. As the glory of his exploits faded, Garrett fell on hard times as a result of a series of poor business deals and was ultimately shot in the back while trying to sell some valuable New Mexico land. His murder was never solved.

Gardner's book is a fitting tribute to Garrett and the Kid, providing the reader with a history of this now legendary Western chase that is both edifying and entertaining.

Book 21, 2010: The Farmer's Daughter by Jim Harrison

" . . . and the three of them drove over to a stream a few miles away and went swimming. Marcia had a boom box that worked off the cigarette lighter, a couple of six-packs on ice, and some baloney sandwiches, a regular Montana picnic."

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The theme that links the three novellas in this newest work from Jim Harrison may well lie in the Patsy Cline song, The Last Word in Lonesome is Me.

References to the song, written by Roger Miller, appear in all three novellas collected in The Farmer's Daughter, which is the title of the book and the first and finest of this trio of stories.

Alienation, a craving for the solitary life and the restorative value of wilderness are attributes linked to the three main characters; that and a line from the song: "My heart is as lonely as a heart can be lonely. The last word in lonesome is me."

The farmer's daughter is Sarah Holcomb, who, according to the first line of the story, "was born peculiar, or so she thought." Peculiar, she may be. Certainly, Sarah is a fiercely independent young woman, who cares deeply for her horse, her dog -- that she inherited from a grizzled old ranch hand -- and the ranch hand, whom she shamelessly flirts with, despite their difference in age. Sarah is also endearing and one of Harrison's most vivid characters.

Sarah is high school age through most of the story, which is largely concerned with her efforts at self-discovery, taking revenge for a rather clumsy sexual assault and finding a way to flee Montana, although she isn't going anywhere without her horse and dog.

Brown Dog Redux is the story of Brown Dog, a mixed race man who, to put it simply, is a mess. Brown Dog is a hound dog. He loves women. Fat or skinny. Tall or short. Young or old. When women are in his vicinity, Brown Dog has only one thing on his mind.

Despite this proclivity, Brown Dog manages to be a pretty good father to his adopted daughter Berry, who suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome. Brown Dog is wise enough to know that Berry does more good for him than he does for her; protecting him from the worst of his impulses, which -- if it's not women -- is booze.

Like Berry, the wilderness offers Brown Dog protection from himself. He literally flees to the wilds of the Upper Peninsula to fish and meditate, although that is not a concept known to Brown Dog.


The Games of Night is the oddest of the three stories. Harrison suggests that the protagonist, who is attacked by a wolf cub and carnivorous hummingbirds while a child, is some sort of werewolf, transformed by the viruses dancing in his blood.

It is this transformation, brought on by the full moon, that leads to the games of the night. The character has only a hazy memory of these "games," but they include lust as well as excessive physical appetite and exertion.

The Games of the Night contains a surprise appearance by novelist Louise Erdrich and her sister, Lise. Our werewolf is camping along the Bois de Sioux River near Wapheton, North Dakota, where the sisters grew up.

"Heard chattering on small gravel road. Two girls bird-watching on their old bikes. They looked Indiana or at least half-breed, from local Chippewa reserve. Said their names were Lise and Louise . . . I was sideways to them and when I turned they screamed, "Rougarou, rougarou, rougarou' and raced off on their bikes."

Harrison, now in his early 70s, has written some marvelous stuff in recent years. First, there was the The English Major and now The Farmer's Daughter. Each subsequent book is a literary treat that may not come our way again.

New Aquisitions

The Possessed, Elif Batuman
The Devil's Redhead, David Corbett
The Girl With The Glass Feet, Ali Shaw
The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver
Rebel Yell, Alice Randall

Two Banks' novellas highlight The Price of Love

The Price of Love and Other Stories by Peter Robinson collects two novellas -- both featuring Inspector Banks -- and an assortment of short stories. Banks figures in some of the stories, in others he does not.

Robinson is principally a novelist so this collection does not show him at his best. My sense is that if you are a fan of his work, and Inspector Banks, you will enjoy this collection. If you are unfamiliar with Robinson, I'd give it a pass.

After A False Spring, The Sundown

The failure of Pat Jordan's career as a professional baseball pitcher gave us one of the best baseball books ever written. A False Spring, Jordan's affecting account of his abortive pitching career, appeared in 1975 and quickly secured status as a sports classic. A few years ago, Sports Illustrated ranked it 37th among the 100 best sports books.

After the Sundown -- written four years after A False Spring -- is no classic. A minor work by a major player, it is a pleasing diversion. Its the difference between a sunny, Sunday afternoon and a pitcher with the good stuff rather than the great stuff. Yet what's important to remember -- it's still a sunny Sunday afternoon and someone is working carefully and competently for our pleasure.

After the Sundown is a series of profiles of former athletes: a pitcher (naturally), a race car driver, a football player. The game, if you will, has left each of these men behind, but they have not always been ready to leave it. Perhaps no writer is better equipped than Jordan -- a pitcher of great promise who never once stepped to the mound in the major leagues -- to tell these stories with empathy and understanding and grace.

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Still reading: The Price of Love and Other Stories by Peter Robinson
Next up: To Hell on a Fast Horse by Mark Lee Gardner

New Acquisition

To Hell On A Fast Horse, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner.

Blurbs on the rear jacket are by Hampton Sides, David Dary and Robert Utley -- that's an impressive collection of Western writers/historians.

Book 18, 2010: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The best non-fiction books have a strong narrative thread.

Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit, Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides and Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin are all superb examples of how non-fiction can be far more enthralling and entertaining than anything found in fiction.

We can now add The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot to that list.

Released earlier this year to critical acclaim, Skloot's book -- years in the preparation -- is part science, part biography and part horror story. At its most basic it is the story of HeLa, a line of cells commonly used in medical research around the world. The cells were taken from a Baltimore woman, Henrietta Lacks, in the 1950s without her knowledge or consent while she was being treated for cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The cells proved to be "immortal." Prior to the HeLa cells, all cells removed from a human and placed in culture had quickly died. The cancerous cells removed from Henrietta Lacks did not die.

But Henrietta's cells weren't merely surviving, they were growing with mythological intensity . . . They kept growing like nothing anyone had seen, doubling their numbers every twenty-four hours, stacking hundreds on tops of hundreds, accumulating by the millions . . . As long as they had food and warmth, Henriett's cancer cells seemed unstoppable.

Soon Henriett's cells had been shipped to medical laboratories around the world and were widely used in a variety of research. They were flown into space and exposed to nuclear explosions, and ultimately contributed to enormous scientific advances.

But the story of HeLa cells is not merely that of scientific progress. It is also the story of Henrietta Lacks and her family. Her children did not learn that their mother's cells had been taken and had survived or that they were widely used in medical research until decades after Henrietta's death.

The success of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks lies in Skloot's decision to tell the compelling life story of this poor Southern black woman as well as that of her descendants. In many respects, the book is as much about Henrietta's daughter, Deborah, as it is about her mother or the doctors and scientist who appear in these pages.

The horror surfaces in two respects. As an adult, Deborah discovers that she had an older sister who was confined to a mental institution not long before her mother's death. The cruel treatment afforded her sister emerges late in the book and is a haunting and sobering reminder of how poorly people suffering from mental illness or retardation can be treated in America.

Another horrifying aspect of the book is how indifferent science is to the Lacks family and how slow scientists and doctors were -- and continue to be -- in recognizing that the HeLa line of cells came from a fellow human being. Millions of dollars were made through the sale of the HeLa cells, yet Henrietta Lacks' children could not afford health insurance.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an important book that performs many valuable services. For example, Skloot's afterword explores the use of human tissue in medical research today, indicating that it is still largely unregulated. She has brought a measure of pride and comfort to the Lacks family. But her most valuable contribution is in revealing that the HeLa cells once belonged to a vibrant young woman, who loved to dance and to laugh and who loved her family.

Henrietta Lacks is the silent hero of this story and we all owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude for her enduring contribution to medical science.

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Skloot will appear at 10 a.m. Friday, March 19 at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville. She will join Jason Vuic, author of The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History, and Bethanne Patrick, author of An Uncommon History of Common Things, in a panel presentation, The Uncommon History of Many Things--from Cars to Human Cells.

Book 17, 2010: The Mexican Tree Duck

I still don't know exactly what James Crumley's The Mexican Tree Duck was about.

There's a kidnapping and drugs are being smuggled into the country. Somehow the beginnings of the dispute that is being played out traces back to the Vietnam War, but that is the extent of my understanding.

This is the second book by Crumley that I've read and I have concluded that his books are about attitude and atmosphere, rather than any coherent narrative. There is a lot of violence and heavy weapons and drug use.

I wish the the sum of the parts added up to something greater, but it doesn't. And I wish that I liked Crumley's writing better than I do, but I don't.

Doors Open cements Rankin's reputation

Books 15 and 16 comprise the range of reading experience, from fast-paced pleasure to a slog through a messy fraud of a book.

The pleasurable read belonged to Ian Rankin. Doors Open was issued in 2008 in Great Britain, but it was just released here last month.

Doors Open is the story of a dot.com millionaire who has grown bored. His boredom leads him into planning an art heist with a banker and an art professor. The heist goes well, but -- as you would expect -- nothing else does in this thoroughly entertaining thriller.

Rankin is one of the leading writers in the popular thriller/crime/mystery genre and Doors Opens only serves to solidify his street cred among readers.


A Quiet Belief in Angels is the first book from R.J. Ellory. Frankly, I hope it is his last. It's a misogynistic, disturbing mess; over-written from the standpoint of content and style. Obstensibly set in Georgia before WW II, the characters don't sound like crackers. This is one of those novels where every adult in well spoken and far wiser than almost anyone you've met in real life.

And then there are the errors of chronology. Early in the book, when a particular event takes place, it's 1943 and our narrator is 15. One hundred pages later, recalling the same event, it was 1942 and he was 14. I could let errors of commission like that slide if the entire book weren't so bad.

Every woman in this novel -- every woman -- dies a horrible and disturbing death. Yes, this book does have something to do with a serial killer, but the fate of some of these woman goes beyond that.

The writing, stylistically, is turgid. It might be accepted as elegant by some with its nascent dawns, but try reading it. This is the first book in a long, long time that I considered abandoning before I was midway through. I stayed to the end and now I'm wondering why.

Borders 1, Customer Service 0

I'm not the type given to rants. Not normally. Well, OK, once in a while maybe, but not on these pages. Not until now, not until returning from a failed shopping expedition to my local Borders.

Let's go back to Tuesday to set this up. Tuesday I went to Borders expecting to buy a book. It was just released that day and I had every reasonable expectation of finding it on the store shelves. Except it wasn't to be found. The computers said it was in the store, but I couldn't find it and a rare helpful employee couldn't locate it either.

I went back today. It wasn't on the table where the computer indicated it should be. I walked up to the checkout and asked for help. Essentially the woman blew me off. There was no one waiting in line, no one eagerly waiting to buy a book, but she gave a cursory glance to the sheet of paper with the book listed on it and said I'd have to go to the Information Desk. She'd have someone meet me there.

But no one did. I waited a while, looked a little longer and left.

I know Borders has experienced difficulties in the past. I know they are struggling to generate a respectable stream of revenue. Look at their music section, it's a shadow of its former self. I know that its employees labor under two expectations 1) get the books on the shelves and 2) take the customers money. But is a little basic customer service too much to ask?

This kind of experience is exactly the sort of thing that sends people to the computer to shop online or buy an ebook.

I can't say that I won't go back. I want books more than I want to stay angry, but I'm not going back any time soon. And there are multiple bookstores within easy distance of my workplace, so I can take my custom elsewhere for a while.

And while I am on the subject, is it too much to ask that bookstore employees know a little bit about books? I tried to buy Wolf Hall at this same Borders a few months ago and no one had heard of it. Presumably, they hadn't heard of the Booker Prize either.

Computers are handy things, and its especially nice to be able to look up an obscure title or two. But wouldn't you think Borders employees might know where to find certain titles, certain authors without resorting to electronic help?

I still like to browse, to hold books, to study the cover and the contents, so this isn't enough to send me online -- and sure as hell won't drive me to an ebook (but that's a rant for another day) -- but it is going to send me elsewhere. And I hope for a good long time.

This also seems like a good time to say something about independent bookstores. I buy from several -- Politics & Prose, Murder by the Book, the Mystery Bookshop in Seattle, Mysterious Galaxy -- and I often pay full price plus shipping. I do this because of the customer service I receive.

Independent bookstores live in a world of small profit margins that are largely made possible because they know books and they know their customers. Customer service ranges from book recommendations to signed books to books shipped with dust jacket covers and to occasionally throwing in those little extra promotional items that collectors love.

Suddenly I understand why people use their blogs to rant and rave. I have run out of choler much as I ran out of Borders this morning. Trust me, I plan to keep running.

New acquisitions

• The Savannah, Rivers of America series by Thomas L. Stokes
• Willie Mays The Life, The Legend by James S. Hirsch
• Phil Gordon's Little Black Book by Phil Gordon and Jonathan Grotenstein
• Phil Gordon's Little Blue Book by Phil Gordon