The Killing of Crazy Horse superb history, superb story telling

Book 28: The Killing of Crazy Horse by Thomas Powers

My daughter noticed the book on my reading table.

"Haven't you read enough books on that subject?" she asked.

Whether that subject is Crazy Horse or Custer or the settling of the West, the answer, which must first be considered against the book itself, Thomas Powers' stunningly vigorous The Killing of Crazy Horse, is "no." Absolutely, completely, a thousand times "no."

The answer might well be different if it were a different book on the table, but Powers has taken a story familiar to so many of us and made it fresh again. The Killing of Crazy Horse is that rare work of non-fiction -- informative, yet entertaining. It is both superb history and superb story telling. 

Impeccably researched, part of the strength of this book is the approach Powers takes. An approach unlike any other author has taken.  The standard riff is to write about Crazy Horse and Custer, these two crazy kids on wildly disparate paths that are destined to intersect on the high plains of Montana. 

Custer's appearance here is little more than a cameo.  While the story, principally, belongs to the Lakota warrior Crazy Horse, Powers spends a great deal of time focusing on the soldiers (George Crook and William Philo Clark) and their Indian scouts (William Garnett and Frank Grouard) who were charged with ending the depredations of the hostile northern Indians by means either fair or foul.

Powers also delves into the relationship between Crazy Horse and Red Cloud, Woman Dress, He Dog and Little Big Man. Although Crazy Horse cared little for the power and recognition that followed his legendary exploits, other Indians leaders, including some who had been his friend since childhood, were envious of his reputation and sought to undermine his standing with the soldiers.

Undermining Crazy Horse was all too easy to do. He talked little, often letting others speak for him. He kept himself isolated, not only from the soldiers and settlers, but other Indians too. Finally, it seems clear that many soldiers -- who saw Crazy Horse as the Indian responsible for the slaughter of Custer and his troops -- wanted his death.

To re-tell a story we know so well, a story whose ending can never change, and to make it come alive again is an extraordinary feat.  Powers' prose -- stately, vibrant, colorful -- is a splendid match for this near-mythic tale of the American west.   

A story told in The Killing of Crazy Horse as if for the first time.

Ackroyd's The Death of King Arthur lacks passion, romance

Book 27: The Death of King Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, retelling by Peter Ackroyd

Simon Armitage's 2008 translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was a powerful and majestic work. Peter Ackroyd's retelling of Le Morte d'Arthur is a prosaic effort that reduces this legendary tale to banality.

The passion, majesty and romance of Le Morte d'Arthur are missing in The Death of King Arthur.  Yet upon reflection, perhaps the fault lies not with Ackroyd's "retelling," but in the very notion of chilvaric tradition.

In a classic contradiction, knights boast of their honor. These are men filled with overweening pride, contemptuous of women and the lower caste, who do not hesitate to engage in lies and other deceit when it serves their purpose.

The most common deceit is to hide or withhold their identity to achieve some minor end.  And, although they profess to be good Christian men, these knights do not hesitate to engage in adultery or to murder someone who stands in their way.

Lancelot is among the worst.  He professes to serve Arthur and to esteem Guinevere above all other women. Yet he does not hesitate to cuckold Arthur.  Ultimately, Lancelot and Arthur go to war against one another and, although Mordred plays a part, it is Lancelot who so weakens Arthur's army that his kingdom inevitably crumbles.

Here is a representative fight scene between Tristram and Lancelot:

"The knight with the covered shield at last spoke out. "Sir," he said, "you fight better than any knight I have ever known. What is your name?"

"I am reluctant to tell you, sir."

"Really? I will not hesitate to tell you mine."

"Then speak."

"Fair knight, my name is Sir Lancelot du Lake."

Tristram was astounded. "Sir Lancelot? Is it really you? You are the knight I love and admire most in the world."

"Now tell me your name."

"I am Tristram de Liones."

Lancelot fell to his knees. "Jesus, why are we fighting?"

My thoughts exactly. 

Perhaps the fault does not lie with Ackroyd, but with the story itself.  Senseless fighting, betrayal, adultery, cruelty, overweening pride are too much with us today to seem romantic or the stuff of great passion.

Atkinson's Human Croquet is flawed, but entertaining

Book 26: Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

There is promise in Kate Akinson's second book, Human Croquet. Promise that only occasionally manages to escape the black hole of the book's faults.

The major problem is that Kate Atkinson is not Kurt Vonnegut Jr. In Vonnegut's celebrated novel Slaughterhouse Five the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, becomes unstuck in time. Isobel Fairfax, the 16-year-old protagonist of Human Croquet, also appears to have become unstuck in time or, perhaps, she's been teleported to a parallel dimension. Neither Isobel nor the reader are certain at first.

As it happens, neither explanation proves true.  There is another reason that Isobel is jumping from the present to the past and the future. It has to do a with tree in the family garden.  

Whatever the explanation, the literary device that Atkinson uses to tell Isobel's story is distracting and unnecessary. As her in splendid debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Atkinson furnishes the reader with a riveting character who has a compelling life story.  Unlike that novel, Human Croquet goes off the rails. The story is lost due to the confusion brought on by the smoke and mirrors the author conjures to tell Isobel's story.

If Atkinson had confined herself to telling Isobel's story, Human Croquet would have been a more pleasing book and a more successful one. In her zest to present the reader with a book as accomplished as her first, Atkinson over extends herself.  Inventiveness gives away to invention, creativity to an artificial construct.

If, ultimately, Human Croquet does not succeed it is because we see too much of the writer and not enough of the story, which is -- for that -- a very good story.

Isobel's mother is missing. Her father, who vanished and presumably dead, mysteriously returns after several years, a new wife in tow. Where is her mother? Why did her father vanish with no explanation? 

Human Croquet is worth reading for those answers. Atkinson's talent -- and she is one of the finest novelists writing today -- shines through.  Atkinson is particularly given to astonishing "degrees of separation." Characters are connected in ways that the reader never anticipated; ways that enrich the story and our experience. 

She is also one of only a handful of novelist who can be genuinely funny.

Fans of the lady will want to read Human Croquet, both for the story and to chart her development as a writer. Readers unfamiliar with her work are recommended to pick up Behind the Scenes at the Museum or When Will There Be Good News? Two books in which Atkinson's skill as a writer are on full display.

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The completion of Human Croquet advances me in a reading challenge that I have taken up in 2011.

The challenge was issued by The Roof Beam Reader. The 2011 TBR (To Be Read) Pile Challenge is to read 12 books from your to-be-read pile in 12 months. I have read three of my 12 since undertaking the challenge. This is where I stand:

1. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
2. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
3. War and Peace by Mr. Tolstoy
4. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
5. The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker
6. Under the Dome by Stephen King
7. White Noise by Don Delillo
8. Yogi Berra Eternal Yankee by Allen Barra
9. The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
10. Winter in the Blood by James Welch
11. Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
12. Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson

Alternates:
Reservation Road by John Burnham Schwartz
Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich

Penny masterful storyteller in Bury Your Dead

Book 25:  Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

My admiration for the novels of Louise Penny increases with every book that she writes.  

With each novel, there are six now, Penny's mastery of her characters, plot, pacing, setting and the demands of the genre has grown and developed until it is clear that she is one of the finest mystery writers working today.

Her 2010 release, Bury Your Dead, is testament to Penny's mastery of the mystery. Indeed, she doesn't give the reader only one mystery to unravel in her newest work, but three.

As the novel opens, Penny's principal character, Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, is visiting an old friend in Quebec. It soon becomes clear that Gamache is recovering from physical and psychological wounds suffered in a devastating attack in which Gamache's second-in-command Jean Guy Beauvoir was also injured and other Sûreté officers killed.

The story behind the attack, which haunts Gamache, unfolds through the course of the novel.  Naturally, Gamache is also reluctantly caught up in a murder in Quebec.

The third storyline involves Jean Guy who is sent to the village of Three Pines to reopen the murder investigation of the Hermit, who was killed in Penny's preceding novel, The Brutal Telling.

From Quebec to Three Pines, from the present to the past, Penny skillfully interweaves the three story lines into a single compelling story of singular skill and artistry.

Confessions on an infatuation with an 11-year-old girl

Book 24:  A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley

I suppose that I should be cautious in admitting my infatuation with an 11-year-old girl. But there it is.

Fortunately, the girl, Flavia de Luce, is the fictional creation of Alan Bradley. A Red Herring Without Mustard is the third novel to feature Flavia, who is something of an amateur sleuth. 

In this book, a vicious attack on a gypsy woman Flavia has befriended is followed by a murder, which revolves around a burglary ring that's stealing antiques, replacing them with knockoffs and selling the originals.

The plot is secondary. In these novels, a delicious twist on the English cozy, the crime -- generally murder -- serves largely as a device to engage young Flavia, who is a piece of work.

As mentioned, Flavia is an amateur sleuth. She's also a talented amateur chemist with her own laboratory in a wing of the family home.  In a passage that captures Flavia perfectly, she's made nauseous by the odors emanating from a hospital cafeteria, but finds the smells wafting from the hospital morgue quite enchanting.

Flavia is also 11 years old to the core. She gets around on her trusty bicycle and is given to skinned knees and soiled dresses. She also delights in annoying her two older sisters, generally with some clever chemical concoction, but she's not above stealing the chocolates left on the doorstep by a besotted suitor.

Bradley's series is delightful. The three books -- a fourth has been announced -- have each been a thoroughly delicious read.  
 

Faulks on Fiction is lively, accessible and informed

Book 23: Faulks on Fiction by Sebastian Faulks

Faulks on Fiction is like nothing so much as auditing a college class taught by your favorite professor about your favorite books.

It is a lively, accessible and informed survey of some of the best known characters in British literature.  My one disappointment in reading it is that I'm not aware of a similar work on behalf of American writers and their creations.

Faulks wrote this series of essays, which he wanted to call Novel People, as a companion to a BBC television series. The book (and presumably the TV series) is divided into four parts -- heroes, lovers, snobs and villains.  The structure isn't altogether necessary and a less obsessive-compulsive reader than I should feel free to read as their interest or whimsy leads them.  

The essays range from long-established characters -- Mr. Darcy, Tom Jones, Pip, Fagin and Emma -- to more current creations such as Chanu Ahmed from Monica Ali's Brick Lane and Barbara Covett from Zoe Heller's Notes on a Scandal.  

Popular literature is also explored.  There's a fascinating essay on James Bond, who is found among the snobs. In 2008, at the behest of the Fleming estate, Faulks wrote a new James Bond novel. His insights on his research into the character and Fleming's style of writing are fascinating.

Any lover of literature is bound to enjoy Faulks on Fiction.  And, like me, they're going to be eager for the TV show.

Prince of Nothing trilogy is two books too many

Books 21 & 22:  The Warrior Prophet and The Thousandfold Thought by R. Scott Bakker. 

My sons will be disappointed, but I did not much care for R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy.

The trilogy begins with The Darkness That Comes Before, continues in The Warrior Prophet and concludes in The Thousandfold Thought. Although it doesn't really conclude after three books and 1,600 pages.  Bakker has already completed the first book in a second trilogy, and one can only assume a third trilogy will follow that.

Which is part of the reason that I'm not a fan of the current crop of fantasy series. These authors don't know when to stop.  Tolkien gave us The Hobbit and then three books in The Lord of the Rings series, and that was that.  Today's it's a lifetime enterprise.

But that's a minor quibble.  Let me quickly list a few of the reasons I cannot fully embrace Bakker's work:

It's murky, especially in the second and third books.  It feels to me that Bakker loses control of his material. The result is that it's often difficult to understand exactly what's taken place or why.

Bakker's philosophical musings kill the narrative.  What I want most is a story, a rollicking narrative that's totally absorbing. I found that at times in The Darkness That Comes Before where the pace and action were crisp and absorbing.  But in the books that followed, the quasi-religious, mystical components weighed down the narrative.  Hell, there were times that the story came to complete halt.

I am troubled by the Consult.  1) They appear to be an alien race, and, for me, that intrudes upon a story of sword of sorcery. 2) Their sexual deviancy is a disturbing and unnecessary storyline.

Kellhus, the Warrior-Prophet, the Prince of Nothing, etc., etc., is a sociopath. In an epic such as this, Kellhus needs to be a hero, someone larger than life. I understand that Achamian is the true hero of this story, but Kellhus' role when placed against the overall context of the story demands that he be something more than a manipulative "other."

The bottom line is that there is too much that I don't like compared to parts I admire. I will say that Achamian's story line is intriguing and his growth as a character is the best part of the entire series. I'd like to see what Bakker will do with Akka going forward, but I don't believe I care enough to read another book, certainly not another three books.

Early reader

Photos often need little explanation. This suffices here: my granddaughter reading.

Snared by The Darkness That Comes Before; a reading challenge update

Book 20: The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker

As a rule I avoid the fantasy series by such prolific authors as Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin. I am put off by the impossible to pronounce names of characters as well as the length of the individual books that stretch into yet another book and yet another.

So how did I find myself in my current situation? I just finished reading The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker. I find myself 577 pages into his The Prince of Nothing series and I still have two books to read.

How did I wind up in this situation? My oldest son sent me the series as a Christmas present. My youngest is thrilled, waxing enthusiastically about the characters in this fantasy trilogy that he claims is his “favorite.”

The call of blood must be answered.

Yet, I admit to some reluctance even after I started reading. The convention for a fantasy series of this nature demands that the significance of the book’s opening be murky. Who is this man? His mission? Who are these people? What is this world? How the fuck do you pronounce this name?

Yet within 100 pages, perhaps fewer, I found myself totally absorbed by this story of a great Holy War, of magicians and mighty barbarian warriors. Bakker’s feat in fashioning this world and this cast of characters is impressive. The book is totally absorbing and, despite its vast size, a quick read because of the author’s skill in pacing and in storytelling.

So much so that I within minutes of taking down book one I have taken up book two.

And as with me, so with you, there is more to come, my friends, Much more. In the fullness of time.

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The completion of The Darkness That Comes Before advances me in two reading challenges that I have taken up in 2011.

The first challenge was issued by The Roof Beam Reader. The 2011 TBR (To Be Read) Pile Challenge is to read 12 books from your to-be-read pile in 12 months. I have read two of my 12 since undertaking the challenge. This is where I stand:

1. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
2. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
3. War and Peace by Mr. Tolstoy
4. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
5. The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker
6. Under the Dome by Stephen King
7. White Noise by Don Delillo
8. Yogi Berra Eternal Yankee by Allen Barra
9. The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
10. Winter in the Blood by James Welch
11. Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
12. Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson

Alternates:
Reservation Road by John Burnham Schwartz
Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich

Further progress in this challenge awaits the completion of Bakker’s Prince of Nothing series.

The second challenge is the Chunkster Challenge, specifically the “Mor-book-ly Obese Challenge. I am attempting to reading eight books all with a minimum page count of 450 pages and three of those eight must be at least 750 pages.

Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove weighed in at more than 900 pages. Bakker’s The Darkness That Comes Before (paperbound) was 577 pages (not counting appendices).

Six books remaining in this challenge, two of more than 750 pages.

National Book Festival to be Two-Day Event, Sept. 24-25

February 7, 2011

The 11th annual National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress, will become a two-day event this year. The festival will be held on the National Mall between 9th and 14th Streets on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2011, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and on Sunday, Sept. 25 from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., rain or shine. The event is free and open to the public.

Several festival-related events will take place in the weeks preceding the beloved yearly festival, which celebrates the joys of books and reading. More information will be posted as planning for the festival continues at the festival’s website, www.loc.gov/bookfest.

"Fans of the National Book Festival have urged us to make it a weekend-long event for many years," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.

"Last September, during our wonderful 10th-anniversary celebration, we crossed the threshold of a million festival-goers over the life of the festival – and we look forward to welcoming millions more festival-goers of all ages for many years to come," Billington said. Some 150,000 book fans attended the festival of 2010.
The 2011 National Book Festival will feature award-winning authors, poets and illustrators in several pavilions dedicated to categories of literature. Festival-goers can meet and hear firsthand from their favorite authors, get books signed, have photos taken with mascots and storybook characters and participate in a variety of learning activities.

The Pavilion of the States will represent reading- and library-promotion programs and literary events in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. trusts and territories.

The popular Let’s Read America Pavilion will offer reading activities that are fun for the whole family. The Library of Congress Pavilion will showcase the cultural treasures to be found in the Library’s vast online collections and offer information about popular Library programs.

The 2011 National Book Festival will be made possible through the support of David Rubenstein, co-chairman of the National Book Festival Board and many other generous supporters.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, is the world’s preeminent reservoir of knowledge, providing unparalleled collections and integrated resources to Congress and the American people. Many of the Library’s rich resources and treasures may be accessed through the Library’s website, www.loc.gov, and via interactive exhibitions on myLOC.gov.

Swamplandia!, Running the Books and Known to Evil

Book 17: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

I confess, I don't get it.  Swamplandia! by Karen Russell that is.

Oh, I understand the pre-publication hype that accompanied this novel. Russell is one of those "20 Under 40" writers chosen by The New Yorker as the new literary vanguard. 

Yet, for me, the reality of the novel doesn't meet its expectations.

Swamplandia! is the story of the Bigtree family. There's mom and dad, Hilola and Chief, and their three children, Kiwi, Osceola and Ava.  The family, who live on an island, run a little tourist attraction. Hilola wrestles gators and dives into a pit full of the creatures.  Chief is the master of ceremonies, while the children perform various functions from selling popcorn to helping with the lights.

The enterprise falls on hard times when Hilola dies of cancer. Kiwi and Chief head to the mainland. Both seeking work to help offset the family's mountain of debt. Chief finds employment in a nearby casino, while Kiwi goes to work for the World of Darkness, a newly opened amusement park that's pulled all the tourist away from the gators.

Ava and Ossie are left to sort for themselves on the island.  Ossie falls in love with a ghost and later elopes with her immaterial lover. Ava, accompanied by a weird island Bird Man, sets off to rescue Ossie from the depths of the underworld. She learns, of course, to no one's surprise that there is no ghost or no underworld, but that hell is here on earth.

Russell's snarky take on the tourists who visit Swamplandia! and the World of Darkness reveal the influence of Jonathan Franzen.  I also thought of John Irving while reading this novel.  Remember Irving's ongoing fascination with bears and wrestlers? Here's its gators and ghosts.

It's difficult to understand exactly what Swamplandia! is meant to add up to.  A longish story on Louis Thanksgiving, the dead Dredgeman that Ossie's fallen in love with, takes up a chunk of the novel.  Otherwise, it's Ava in pursuit of the missing Ossie, cameos by the Chief and Kiwi learning to swap insults with the best of them while adjusting to life on the mainland.

I didn't much like Swamplandia! or its gator or ghosts.

 Book 18: Running the Books by Avi Steinberg

Based on its subtitle, "The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian," I expected more about books in Running the Books. Books play a role, but a minor one.

Running the Books is really a memoir of a Harvard-educated Jewish nerd's experience working in a Boston prison library for two years. 

So much of the book seems predictable: conflicts with the guards, developing inappropriately close relationships with a few of the prisoners and prisoners who make lavish plans for their future only to be gunned down on the outside or fall victim to the drugs that landed them in prison in the beginning.

Running the Books falls short of being a compelling work. The best that can be said is that it's mildly interesting.

Book 19: Known to Evil by Walter Mosley

Leonid McGill, the reluctant hero of Walter Mosley's Known to Evil, is one of Mosley's best characters in many years.

Once a "fixer" for the New York underworld, McGill is attempting to go straight, launching a new career as a P.I.   But McGill's past, and the people that populated it, have a way of holding on.  They're either asking favors of McGill or he's having to turn to them for favors as he unravels the current mystery or protects his family from their own misdeeds.

The mystery at the heart of Known to Evil,  why someone is trying to kill a New York college girl, is merely a framework for these shady figures from McGill's past to re-enter his life.  All of which provides a satisfying friction as McGill is forced to make choices he thought he'd put behind him.

When Mosley truly devotes himself fully to the thriller, he's as good as any genre writer today. Known to Evil displays Mosley's talent at its fullest and finest.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry an American epic

On the way to San Antonio they passed two settlements -- nothing more than a church house and a few little stores, but settlements anyway, and not ten miles apart.

"Now look at that," Augustus said. "The dern people are making towns everywhere. It's our fault, you know."

"It ain't our fault and it ain't our business, either," Call said. "People can do what they want."

"Why, naturally, since we chased out the Indians and hung all the good bandits," Augustus said. "Does it ever occur to you that everything we done was probably a mistake? Just look at it from a nature standpoint. If you've got enough snakes around the place you won't be overrun with rats or varmints. The way I see it, the Indians and the bandits have the same job to do. Leave'em be and you won't constantly be having to ride around these dern settlements."

"You don't have to ride around them," Call said. "What harm do they do?"

"If I'd have wanted civilization I'd have stayed in Tennessee and wrote poetry for a  living," Augustus said. "Me and you done our work too well. We killed off most of the people that made this country interesting to begin with."

Book 16: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

There is a Dickensian quality to Larry McMurtry's elegiac epic of the dying Western frontier.

Dickensian in the vivid minor characters that inhabit this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. From Blue Duck, a bloodthirsty Indian who leaves a trail of death in his path, to Lippy, the piano player in the whorehouse with the leaky stomach; from Po Campo, the trail drive cook who refuses to ride an animal, to all the cowboys and Indians and sporting women, who make this novel such a vivid and interesting stew.

Dickensian, too, in its scope. Lonesome Dove is principally the story of Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call, two former captains in the Texas Rangers, who are now leading a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. But it is also the story of Jake Spoon, who once rode with McCrae and Call, and has now fallen into bad ways. Lorena Wood, a sporting woman who dreams of San Francisco. July Johnson who rides out of Arkansas in search of justice and a runaway wife. 

Lonesome Dove is nearly a thousand pages in length, yet McMurtry might have written a thousand pages more and still had stories to tell. The stories that McMurtry does consign to these pages are captivating; at once romantic and brutally candid. Death rides the trail with the Hat Creek cowboys as does a taste for sweet-young whores and bad whiskey.

The cowboys battle heat and cold, thirst, grasshoppers, snakes and river crossings, while living in fear of Indians who are rarely seen, but whose promise is always lurking beyond the next hill. The cowboys are a naive and sentimental bunch, given to hard work and long silences.

McCrae and Call are like two halves of one man. McCrae is a garrulous old philosopher and it is impossible to read this novel without conjuring an image of Robert Duvall as McCrae in the TV mini-series. Call is as reticent as McCrae is talkative. He's a brooding man, who wanders away from the campfire each night because of his preference for solitude. 

Lonesome Dove is a novel that will long endure. It is a true American epic, defining the West and its passing, celebrating (and sentimentalizing) the men and women who claimed a hard country during a brief interlude as wildness gave way to civilization.

+ + + + +

Lonesome Dove is the first book I've completed that meets the criteria for two challenges issued by other bloggers. The Chunkster Reading Challenge's Mor-book-ly Obese challenge calls for reading eight chunksters, including three books of 750+ pages. At 945 pages (paperback edition), Lonesome Dove easily meets that requirement.

The second challenge, from Roof Beam Reader, is called the 2011 To Be Read Pile Challenge. The idea is to take 12 books that have been on your bookshelf or "to be read" list for more than a year and actually read those books in 2011. One down, 11 books to go.


1. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
2. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
3. War and Peace by Mr. Tolstoy
4. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
5. The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker
6. Under the Dome by Stephen King
7. White Noise by Don Delillo
8. Yogi Berra Eternal Yankee by Allen Barra
9. The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
10. Winter in the Blood by James Welch
11. Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
12. Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson

Alternates:
Reservation Road by John Burnham Schwartz
Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich

Mockingbird a powerful and affecting story of persistence and loss

Book 15: Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine

 Winner of the 2010 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine takes place in a small Virginia community in the weeks following a shooting at the local middle school.

Two students and a teacher were killed in the shooting. The story is told through the eyes of a 10-year-old girl, Caitlin whose brother was among those slain. Caitlin has Asperger's syndrome.

The choice of Caitlin as the narrator is at once a risky, yet inspired decision on Erskine's part.  Risky because of the inherent difficulty in portraying Caitlin in a realistic manner. Erskine must convince the reader that the character on these pages represents an authentic inner portrayal of an autistic child. That she does exactly this says much about her talent as a writer and her keen observational skills.

Inspired because Caitlin interprets the world quite literally. Told to experience the world as if she was wearing someone else's shoes, she wonders how they would ever fit. She sees the world in black and white. Too, Caitlin is plain spoken. She says what she thinks. Although she intends no harm, some find Caitlin's candor rude.

Because a child's understanding is limited, because a child is inclined to remark on the obvious, a child narrator allow an author to furnish the reader the story in small pieces, allowing tension to build and understanding to emerge page by page rather than in a rush. Like a chess grandmaster, Erskine is able to use Caitlin in such a satisfying fashion.

Caitlin's brother, Devon, helped her cope with the world. Now that he is dead, she must find her on way. We follow her as she seeks to make friends and to find closure, both for herself and her father, who is virtually paralyzed with anger and grief at the cruel and unexpected death of his son.

Caitlin befriends a young boy. We later learn that his mother was the teacher who died in the shooting. She also crosses the path of another boy, a classmate, whose cousin was one of the shooters. Perceived as evil, although he had no hand in the shooting, the boy is shunned by other children.

Alongside Caitlin, we learn a little something about finesse in human relationships and in the importance of persistence -- an attribute that Caitlin is really good at.

"You have to Work At It . . . ," Caitlin tells her father. "You have to try even if it's hard and you think you can never do it and you just want to scream and hide and shake your hands over and over and over."

A Virginia resident, Erskine developed the idea for Mockingbird following the shootings of 33 people at Virginia Tech University at Blacksburg in April, 2007. She has fashioned a powerful and affecting story, filled with humor and pathos.  It is a book not just for any age, but for the ages.

                                                                                  - - -

Erskine is among the participants at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville. She will appear Thursday, March 17, at Buford Middle School.

Al Jaffee's Mad Life; Lippman's I'd Know You Anywhere

Book Thirteen: Al Jaffee's Mad Life by Mary-Lou Weisman

In the prologue of her biography of Mad Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee, Mary-Lou Weisman introduces the concept of the "plausible impossible." It's the concept that allows Bugs Bunny to run off a cliff, across a yawning chasm and onto the other side.

"It is the guiding comic principle -- at once thrilling and ridiculous -- that lies at the heart of cartooning," Weisman writes. "This willing suspension of disbelief has a logic all its own. What keeps Bugs aloft, what makes the impossible plausible, is not looking down.

"It is a talent that eighty-nine-year-old Al Jaffee has displayed in his life as well as his art."

Indeed. Born in Savannah, Georgia, Jaffee was reared for almost six years in a Lithuanian shetl. He lived -- vermin-infest and always hungry -- among extreme poverty and extreme neglect on the part of his mother. Before his 12th birthday and the outbreak of war, Jaffee returned to America, where he was reunited with his father.

But the reunion was brief.  His father, once a successful businessman, had fallen on hard times and Jaffee and his two brothers (a fourth returned to America months later) were shuttled between family members, where they were sometimes welcome, sometimes not.

Jaffee also had trouble adjusting to his American classmates as well as to the culture of his homeland that now felt like a foreign country.  He never truly felt at home and always feared that he would once again be uprooted.

Art emerged, both in Lithuanian and later in America, as a way for Jaffee to find acceptance. His talent also led to his admission to a special New York high school. There he met Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman, who became his colleagues on the Mad staff.

Before joining Mad, Jaffee worked at Timely Comics for Stan Lee where he wrote and drew Patsy Walker. 
 
Jaffee established his reputation as a great American cartoonist in the pages of Mad, principally as the creator of the Mad fold-in and the feature Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.

Weismnan's biography is an engrossing and loving tribute to a talented cartoonist and absolute proof that the plausible impossible is possible as long as you don't look down.

Book Fourteen: I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

I'd Know You Anywhere ranks as Laura Lippman's finest work. 

This tension-filled and disturbing novel, is the story of Eliza Benedict, the only survivor among a series of young girls kidnapped, raped and murdered by a West Virginia youth.

Since that event, years before, Eliza has managed to get on her life back on track. She is happily married, living with her husband and two children in Bethesda, Maryland. But there is a shadow looming.

Walter, who kidnapped and raped Eliza, and now grown old in prison, is scheduled to be executed soon. He reaches out to Eliza. It's clear he wants something, but what is not immediately apparent. Yet Eliza wants something too -- answers. She wants to know why the other girls were murdered and she was not. The question haunts her.

Lippman is skillful at ratcheting up the tension through the various assaults on Eliza's happy and orderly life. There is not only Walter's unwelcome intrusion into her life, but that of a woman who has taken up Walter's cause and is campaigning against the death penalty; an unprincipled journalist/blogger; and the mother of one of the victims, angry because Eliza might have saved her daughter, but did not.

I'd Know You Anywhere is a superb and riveting thriller.

Accepting the Chunkster Challenge

Early this month I wrote about my discovery of bloggers issuing reading challenges to other bloggers and readers.
I accepted a challenge offered by the Roof Beam Reader, the 2011 to be Read Pile Challenge.

Now, I'm accepting another -- the Chunkster Reading Challenge.

This challenge is about reading big books. A "chunkster" is defined as a book, fiction or non-fiction, that's 450 pages long or longer.

The challenge has different levels: the Chubby Chunkster is to read four books 450+ pages; the Plump Primer is to read six; the Do These Books Make My Butt Look Big? challenge is to read six books, two between 450-550 pages, two between 551-750 pages and two books of more than 750+ pages; and the Mor-book-ly Obese challenge calls for reading eight chunksters, three of 750+ pages.

I may be crazy, but I'm going to strive to meet the Mor-book-ly Obese challenge. In part, because the Chunkster Challenge and the Roof Beam Challenge overlap. In part, because, well, I like the challenge.

War and Peace and Lonesome Dove will make up two of those eight chunksters. I have others in mind and will furnish updates when I get started with the challenge in February.

I should also mention the Foodie's Reading Challenge. I've already contributed one book, Four Fish, to this site and hope to add more as 2011 unfolds.

Pike shines in starring role in The Sentry

Book Twelve: The Sentry by Robert Crais

Joe Pike began his literary life as a sidekick. He was Robin to Elvis Cole's Batman. Suddenly, in the span of three books all that's changed.

Pike is now a leading man. And his star power has never been more in evidence than in The Sentry, the newest thriller from author Robert Crais.

As the novel opens, Pike saves a restaurant owner from a severe beating by two gang members.  As a result of his timely intervention, Pike meets the restaurant owner's niece.  They share a quiet moment, she confides in him -- sharing a picture of her daughter -- and Pike asks if he can see her again. She says yes, but that meeting doesn't happen again until very late in the novel.

The young woman and her uncle vanish. Pike believes they've been kidnapped by gang members seeking retribution. But, as with any good thriller, things aren't what they seem. Pike and Cole soon discover that the couple aren't fleeing an L.A. gang, but a psychopathic killer who is working for a Bolivian drug cartel.

There are many twists and turns en route to the finale, delivered with typical brio by Crais. 

Fans of Elvis Cole, and there are many, will be pleased to know that he's very much a part of The Sentry. He's clearly not the star of the show, but his appearance is far more than a cameo.

Cole plays a key role late in the novel as deadly events unfold. And, with his wise cracks and steady patter, Cole is the perfect contrast to the silent, lethal Joe Pike.

The Sentry is another stellar effort from Robert Crais.

Gordon-Reed on Andrew Johnson; Carl Hiassen on the cult of celebrity

Book Ten: Andrew Johnson by Annette Gordon-Reed

Randy Newman's album, Good Old Boys, is the perfect antidote to Annette Gordon-Reed's biography of Andrew Johnson.

An antidote isn't necessary due to anything Gordon-Reed has done, but rather it is needed due to the pernicious racism of the 17th President of the United States.

Newman explodes the notion of racism in his music. Johnson dashed the dreams of thousands of Freedmen in the heady days following the end of the American Civil War and set back their cause for nearly a century.

"Johnson's attitude toward blacks, or 'niggers' as he termed them in private conversation, was resolutely negative," writes Gordon-Reed. "It would be impossible to exaggerate how devastating it was to have a man who affirmatively hated black people in charge of the program that was designed to settle the terms of their existence in post-Civil War America."

Despite the task of writing a biogrpahy about such an unappetizing American politician as Johnson, Gordon-Reed provides a balanced portrait of the man who succeeded Abraham Lincoln as president. Her work fits admirably alongside the other uniformly superb biographies that make up Times Books' American Presidents Series. These are small books -- normally under 200 pages -- that focus on the individual's tenure as president.

Gordon-Reed notes, for example, that Johnson was a self-made man. He was born amid extreme poverty and later apprenticed to a tailor. In time, he fled the tailor and his hometown, ultimately migrating to Tennessee where opened his own tailor shop, married and found his way into elective politics.

Johnson was unusual in that when the Civil War broke out, and Tennessee left the Union, he remained loyal, continuing to serve in the U.S. Senate. He was selected Lincoln's running mate for his second term and became president when Lincoln was assassinated. He served only the one term, during which he was impeached and came within a single vote of being unceremoniously removed from office.

Gordon-Reed notes that Johnson believed that the South "never really left the Union because secession was a legal impossibility." Whatever his curious political beliefs, it is true that Johnson betrayed the thousands of African-Americans bound in slavery in the South, and millions of their descendants, by his resolute belief in white supremacy and in his desire to quickly restore the status quo following the war.

It is a sad chapter in American history. One that took generations to set right, if such a wrong can truly ever be set right.

Book Eleven: Star Island by Carl Hiaasen

I can think of few authors who so successfully explode pretension and greed as Carl Hiaasen. And, one should add, explode these fine attributes in such a damnably funny way.

Hiaasen's target in Star Island is the cult of celebrity that enthralls so many Americans today. He takes on narcisstic, talentless pop singers (think Jessica Simpson), whose true talent is their ability to ingest vast quantities of alcohol and drugs and engage in promiscious sex; their entourage from enabling parents to agents to PR flaks; and, finally, the paparazzi who prey on the famous and near-famous because of our endless appetite for scandal, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

The story isn't really important here. A few familiar faces do stroll across these pages, including Skink, the former, Florida governor who has abandoned the State Capitol for the Everglades, and Chemo, the pock-faced murderer with a weed whacker for an arm.

Star Island is funny, very funny. And, as with all Hiaasen's work, the bad guys get their comeuppance and good things happen to good people.

On Zero History and The Sherlockian

Book Eight: Zero History by William Gibson

Damned if I know what William Gibson is up to in Zero History. 

It's his third novel to feature Hubertus Bigend, a Belgian who runs the viral marketing and cool-hunting agency, Blue Ant. Bigend made his first appearance in Pattern Recognition in 2003, his second in Spook Country in 2007.


Spook Country also introduced us to Hollis Henry, former lead singer of the fictional '90s band the Curfew. Hollis returns in Zero History, relcutantly back in the employee of Bigend. After the economy crashed Hollis's vow never to work for Bigend again must give way to the prospect of a lucrative payday.

Hollis was exploring "locative art" for Bigend in Spook Country. Now, she's trying to identify the creator of a mystertious "secret brand" of clothing called Gabriel Hounds. 

Also returning from Spook Country is Milgrim. Then a high-end junkie, now in recovery, Milgrim is off on a mission for Bigend that involves military uniforms. It seems there are lots of young men who don't want to be in the military, but who want people to think they are -- and Bigend senses an opportunity to control an important market.

Unfortunately, Miligrim has unintentionally drawn the interest and anger of a former special ops officer who is attempting to corner the market on combat wear as a way of concealing his illicit arms deals.

All this brings a sprawling cast of characters together in a climatic ambush that's over almost before it begins.

In the course of Zero History there's a nifty little surprise associated with Gabriel Hounds and a character from Pattern Recognition. The other delight of Zero History, which has been true of Gibson's work from the beginning, are all his shady, shadowy minor characters, which introduce a decidely Dickensian spirit to his writing.

Gibson once wrote about a not-too-distant future, now he's writing about a present that seems to exist in a parallel universe only a step or two removed from our own. It's all fun and cool, even if I don't understand what it's all about.

Book Nine: The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

I should like The Sherlockian more than I did. It's based on real-life events. A diary and papers belonging to Holmes' creator Arthur Conan Doyle did go missing after Doyle's death. And a foremost Holmes scholar did turn up dead, under mysterious circumstances, after announcing he had recovered Doyle's lost papers.

Author Graham Moore takes us down parallel, but related paths to explain what might have happened to the missing papers and the dead scholar. 

One path involves Harold White, a newly minted member of The Baker Street Irregulars, the world's premiere Holmes society, who is off to investigate the scholar's murder and re-locate the missing diary. The second path involves Doyle and Dracula author Bram Stoker, friends in real life, and recounts what the diary contains (all fictional, of course) and how it came to be missing.

The novel doesn't quite deliver. The tale of Doyle and Stoker is more intriguing than the implausible adventures of Mr. White, who never emerges fully formed as a character. 

Ultimately, White and another character do something that simply does not feel right. It's not merely unlikely, it's improbable. Moore presents it as a satisfying and appropriate conclusion to the novel, but for this reader it was quite the opposite. 

The best thing that can be said about The Sherlockian is that the cover design for its dust jacket is stunning.

Four Fish a chronicle of the poisoning and plundering of the seas

Book Seven: Four Fish by Paul Greenberg

Despite its Seussian title, there is nothing whimsical about Paul Greenberg's 2010 book. Four Fish is a grim reckoning of the world's dwindling fish population.

Four fish that commonly find their way to our dinner table and that have been especially mis-managed -- salmon, tuna, bass and cod -- provide the framework for Greenberg's chronicle of the poisoning and plunder of the seas. It's all here: the destruction of native habitat, the overfishing, the decimation of forage fish at the bottom of the food chain, the self-interest and greed.

Not that Four Fish is a screed.  A passionate fisherman, Greenberg provides a balanced account, relating valiant efforts to pull us back from the brink.  Most of those efforts entail some sort of fish farming. Sadly, even here, Greenberg believes we've gotten it wrong; attempting to farm salmon or sea bass, for example, while more suitable and sustainable fish such as barramundi or tilapia have been largely ignored.

Yet the most sobering observation Greenberg makes is how little impact the informed and conscientious consumer may have: "Choosing a fish that is well managed or grown on a farm that uses sound husbandry practices is most definitely personally satisfying. One feels 'good' when one eats 'well' . . . But the public's choosing of 'good' fish in the marketplace has little effect on the actual management of wild fish or the practices of growing farmed ones."

Greenberg writes that consumer awareness campaigns that lead us to leave certain fish off the menu have not significiantly reduced fishing pressure on those species.

But there are steps we can take. In his thoughtful conclusion, Greenberg offers a set of priorities to protect the world's remaining wild fish. Those priorities include "a profound reduction" in worldwide fishing. According to Greenberg, the United Nation estimates the world fishing fleet is twice as large as the oceans can support. He advocates that we move from heavily extractive fishing vessels to an artisanal sector of "respectful fishermen-herders that will steward the species, as well as catch them."

Other suggestions include establishing significiant no-catch areas, global protection of unmanageable species and protection of the bottom of the food chain. He also offers thoughtful principles to guide us as we continue to domesticate fish for human consumption.

Anyone who cares about the food they eat or the state of the world's wild animals will find Four Fish a thoughtful and important book. The challenge is to put the books into the hands of politicians and industry leaders throughout the world who can effect the changes enumerated here and pull us back from the brink of destruction.

The Anniversary Man a rewarding thriller

Book 6: The Anniversary Man by R.J. Ellory

As a rule, I don’t like novels about serial killers. And I didn’t much care for R.J.Ellory’s first book, A Quiet Belief in Angels, which – that’s right – was about a serial killer.

Which makes me wonder why I ever read Ellory’s second book, The Anniversary Man, which is also about – altogether now – a serial killer. But I did read it, and although Ellory stepped to the plate with two strikes against him, he wound up delivering, if not a walk-off home run, certainly a nice stand-up double.

 Let’s dispense with the baseball metaphor and just say The Anniversary Man was a solid hit.

Conceit and characters make this book entertaining.  The conceit: someone’s killing people, on the anniversary of past serial killings and in a manner frighteningly similar to those past murders. 

The characters are a lonely cop, Ray Irving, and John Costello, a researcher for a New York newspaper  who survived an attack by the so-called Hammer of God killer when he was 15. His girlfriend was not so fortunate.

The attack left its mark on Costello physically and emotionally. He has a deep-rooted obsession with serial killers and is the first to notice that there’s a pattern to the seemingly random murders.

Costello and Irving form a shaky alliance to catch the killer. Naturally, as the death toll mounts, Costello is Irving’s main suspect.

Ellory manages to deliver a thrilling climax that is altogether fitting without being obvious.

I’ve got a friend urging me to read Ellory’s third novel. Looks like that’s going to happen.