Scenes from the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. -- Part I

D.C.'s own George Pelecanos, the U.S. Capitol in the background.

Below, Michael Connelly, creator of the Harry Bosch series.

Scenes from the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. -- Part II

Doris Kearns Goodwin (above) is the author of the unrivaled Team of Rivals.

Geraldine Brooks (below) wrote the Pulitzer-Prize winning March

























Julia Glass, author of The Whole World Over and Three Junes.

Just, Wills, Chabon and Munro: Pick Three

81. Forgetfulness, Ward Just. Fiction , 9-9, p. 258

How to describe the novels of Ward Just? Think of LeCarre, Furst and Greene, but there is also something here of Pete Dexter and Edith Wharton. Just writes of the manners and mores of the covert world of espionage. There is a certain way things are done, a protocol, as is unveiled in the French interrogation scene in this novel – in its violence, both tangible and latent, it is almost difficult to read.

Forgetfulness is a superb novel, exploring both forgetfulness – and the ways it may come, such as death and senility – and memory's opposite, remembering, and how its persists, taking root like a pernicious weed.

Forgetfulness is the story of Thomas Railles, an expatriate American painter, who has performed a few jobs for the CIA because two of its agents are old high school friends. When Railles' French wife, Florette, dies a violent and unexpected death it appears to be a random incident, but then, one cannot be certain that it was not driven by revenge for ancient acts. Railles' old friends promise that the murderers will be found and brought to justice. Railles is haunted by Florette’s death and by his work on behalf of the agency.

Just deserves a broad and enthusiastic audience of readers. He is one of America’s finest novelists of the past four decades.

82. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon. Fiction, 9-13, p. 297

Boy meets boy. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy falls in love with boy. Boy is confused.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon’s first novel, is the story of a young man confused about his sexual identity. One assumes it is Chabon’s own effort at working out his sexual identify, although a reader must be careful about assigning such autobiographical leanings to a novelist’s work.

There are many, many books to read. In How to Read a Novel, John Sutherland says that today more novels are published in one week than Samuel Johnson had to deal with in a decade. As he calculates it, “it would take approximately 163 lifetimes to read the fiction currently available.” Given Sutherland’s sobering statistic give this book a pass and move directing to Chabon’s later works.

83. Open Secrets, Alice Munro. Short Stories, 9-19, p. 294

Alice Munro is the best writer of short stories today. Not one of the best – the best. I have read many of these stories before. I suspect I will read them again and again. Many current novelists would be well served to closely read Munro. She can capture a world in a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph that would take others pages.

84. Henry Adams and the Making of America, Garry Wills. History, 9-24, p. 404

This book is not for the casual reader of history, but it will greatly reward the diligent student of history. It is a fascinating look at the legacy of Jefferson and Madison as seen through Henry Adams’ ambitious multi-volume history of America.

Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah a powerful, engaging narrative

80. Guests of the Ayatollah, Mark Bowden. History, 9-6, p. 637

Mark Bowden is the author most likely to wear the crown abdicated, due to age and time, by David Halberstam. Bowden, like Halberstam, is one of the few writers today who is capable of taking multiple interviews, secondary accounts and voluminous personal research and constructing a coherent and engaging narrative.

This is the feat Bowden has accomplished in his extraordinarily readable Guests of the Ayatollah, an account of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis that toppled the Carter Administration, launched Ted Koppel’s Nightline and permanently transformed America’s relationship with the Middle East. Bowden demonstrated in his fine Black Hawk Down that he was exceedingly capable of weaving various accounts into a riveting and readable whole. Guests of the Ayatollah is a better, thoughtful, more complex book.

Bowden’s goal, in part, is to show how the hostage’s lived and survived during their 444 days of captivity. He does so vividly in an empathetic and powerful narrative. Bowden also demonstrates the impact of the crisis on both the Carter Administration and the Irianian leaders and students as well as leading us, step-by-step, through the misadventures of the failed rescue mission.

The hostages emerge as real people. Not so much heroes–although there is a heroic element to their suffering, strength and courage– as ordinary people making the best of extraordinary circumstances. President Carter warrants our sympathy perhaps as much as the hostages. He is a hopeful man whose Christian conviction leads him to believe that a resolution is possible – where none exists. Carter strives to do his best for the hostages and their families, and for America, but events conspire to undermine his Administration and, ultimately, his political career.

The hapless Iranians – the students, the secular leaders and iron-hearted mullahs – come off for the worst, as one might expect. No one in Iran ever anticipated so much of the fall-out that resulted from the seizure of the embassy – branded an outlaw nation for flouting the laws of diplomacy, a war with Iraq and a backlash against the Islamic faith in view of the students' failure to convince the American people of the righteousness of their cause.

Guests of the Ayatollah's 600-plus pages slip by with impressive speed; the book reads like an espionage thriller by LeCarre or Furst. It is skillfully told and impeccably researched. Let us hope Bowden wears his crown for many years to come.

(Bowden appeared at Washington, D.C.’s Politics & Prose this summer as part of the book tour to promote Guests of the Ayatollah. Also in attendance were former hostages Bruce Laingen, acting U.S. ambassador to Iran, and John Limbert, second secretary in the political section. Each testified to the accuracy of Bowden’s account. That, it seems to me, is the best and most powerful endorsement an author can receive.)

Perhaps he doth protest to much: but I'm a collector not a book dealer, really

Richard Ford was at the Folger Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C. Friday evening. He was part of a trio of authors participating in a William Faulkner Birthday Reading: New Orleans Night.

There was no question I would attend. The PEN/Faulkner Reading Series is a great event—readings by notable authors, followed by a book signing, wine and hors d’oeuvres.

Besides, six of the seven books that I have by Ford are unsigned, including a first edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day. I purchased a half-price ticket (more money for books), packed up the books and headed to the Folger.

Ford read from Percy Walker’s The Moviegoer. The reading, in Ford’s honeyed southern drawl, was the most entertaining and engaging of the evening.

At the reading’s conclusion, I darted into the reception room, heading for the author’s tables and a place at the front of the line. Ford grabbed a drink and visited with admirers before making his way to the table, where an impressive line of fans had formed.

“Are you ready to sign some books?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “You’re just going to sell these on eBay.”

I protested. I’m a collector. 2,500 books. My wife wishes I’d them on eBay, but no, these are destined for my shelves.

“You probably haven’t read any of these.” I protested once more. I had read them. All of them. Well, not Rock Springs, but it’s on the pile of books to be read some day.

Ford did sign the books. We chatted about his new book, sequel to Independence Day and The Sportswriter, and the tour that will bring him to back to Washington next month.

I was pleased he signed the books, but I fixated on the idea that he thought I was a book dealer. This has been happening a lot lately.

This summer Ivan Doig, one of my favorite authors, appeared at Politics & Prose, the premiere independent bookstore in Washington, if not the nation. I had a lot of books for Doig to sign. I waited, through the reading, the questions, the line of admirers waiting to have their books signed.

“I just made that fellow a lot of money,” he growled as I approached. He looked at me and my stack of books with an accusatory glare. “I’m not a dealer,” I assured him. “I’m a collector. These aren’t going to be sold.”

Doig signed, as Ford had, but I thought he eyed me doubtfully from time to time as he made his way through the stack of books I’d placed before him.

I’m not entirely certain why an author cares if a dealer waits in line, gets a book signed and then sells it on eBay or some other Internet site. Perhaps it’s just the idea that someone – not the author – is making a great deal of money on a single copy of a book. But that’s been going on long before eBay came onto the scene. As for me, some of the books were purchased used, from dealers, but others were bought at full retail.

No matter, I don’t want authors thinking I’m a book dealer, selling the fruits of their labor on eBay. What can I do?

I know – I’ll start dressing better.

Burke's Irene Kelly series makes nice light reading

79. Remember Me, Irene, Jan Burke. Mystery, 9-2, p. 303

I’ve been a fan of Jan Burke’s Irene Kelly series since reading Bones in 2000. Kelly is a reporter, married to a cop. She has a sister, two dogs and a cat. Invariably her work as a reporter leads her into mystery and intrigue. In the dozen years I was a reporter and editor I never solved a single murder and I’ve never known a colleague to do so either. Nor was I ever stalked by mad man (or woman for that matter), kidnapped or held hostage.

So Irene’s fictional career is far most interesting than the work-a-day world of most journalists. That’s OK because Burke’s novels are wonderfully entertaining. Kelly is a vibrant, spunky character and Burke does a fine job in bringing her and her cast of supporting characters to life.

The mysteries are not extraordinarily complex. Most often it’s not about whodunit or why (that’s usually clear early on), but how Irene will extricate herself from danger. This reader is grateful that Irene’s been successful through nine novels.

10 Essential Michigan Books

In its August 30 edition, City Pulse, which is printed in Lansing, Michigan, published an article on the “Ten Essential Michigan Books.” Here they are:

1. The Hiawatha Legends by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
   

2. The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway
   

3. The Dollmaker by Hariette Arnow
   

4. Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver
   

5. Dopefiend by Donald Goines
   

6. Farmer by Jim Harrison
   

7. Braided Lives by Marge Piercy
   

8. Letters from the Leelanau by Kathleen Stocking
   

9. Rivethead by Ben Hamper
   

10. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
    

A Michigan friend, who sent me the article, asked why Richard Ford and Joyce Carol Oates were missing. Good question. The list was compiled by Chicago writer and Lansing native Theodore McClellan. There was no criteria given for the selections. It appears all the books on McClellan’s list are set in Michigan.

A second list, by City Pulse contributor Bill Castanier, included Ford’s The Sportswriter and Oates’ Them. It also included The Sporting Club by Tom McGuane and Waiting for the Morning Train by Bruce Catton.

Fforde's The Fourth Bear is all in good fun

78. The Fourth Bear, Jasper Fforde. Fiction, 8-29, p. 383

When Goldilocks carried out her home invasion of the Bear family’s domicile, there was a fourth bear present which led to tragic consequences for the self-absorbed young woman. The identity of that fourth bear, the reason behind Goldilocks’ brutal demise and much, much more are answered in The Fourth Bear, Jasper Fforde’s hugely entertaining second Jack Spratt novel.

Other questions that are answered include why there is a campaign for the right to arm bears, the dangers of the “cuclear” bomb and whether the psychotic Gingerbreadman is a cake or a biscuit.

The pleasures of Fforde’s novel are the same as those found in the Broadway production, Wicked. The witches of Oz are so much more interesting with a back-story than in the virtual cameo appearance they’re granted in the movie, The Wizard of Oz. Just so with Jack Spratt, Punch and Judy, the Gingerbreadman and various other Persons of Dubious Reality (PDR) who appear in Fforde’s two novels featuring Spratt’s Nursery Crimes Division.

It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Fforde goes to incredible lengths to set up a lame joke, only to have the characters comment on his efforts and the lameness of the joke itself. But it’s all good fun and when he’s on, as he is much of the time, Fforde is one of the few authors capable of eliciting a true laugh out loud from his reader.

Man Booker Prize Longlist

The judging panel for the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction announced on August 14 the longlist of books for this year. The longlist of 19 books was chosen from 112 entries; 95 were submitted for the prize and 17 were called in by the panel of judges.

Chair of judges, Hermione Lee said: "Judging the Man Booker Prize puts you through almost as many emotions as there are in the novels. We’ve tried to be careful and critical judges as well as being passionately involved. We have many regrets about some of the novels we’ve left off, and we could easily have had a longlist of about 30 books, but we’re delighted with the variety, the originality, the drama and craft, the human interest and the strong voices in this longlist. It’s a list in which famous established novelists rub shoulders with little known newcomers. We hope that people will leap at it for their late summer reading and make up their own shortlist.”

The judging panel for the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is: Hermione Lee (Chair); Simon Armitage, poet and novelist; Candia McWilliam, award winning novelist; critic Anthony Quinn and actor Fiona Shaw.

The 2006 shortlist will be announced on Thursday 14th September at a press conference at Man Group’s London office. The winner will be announced on Tuesday 10th October at an awards ceremony at Guildhall, London.

The longlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2006 is as follows:

• Carey, Peter Theft: A Love Story (Faber & Faber)
• Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton)
• Edric, Robert Gathering the Water (Doubleday)
• Gordimer, Nadine Get a Life (Bloomsbury)
• Grenville, Kate The Secret River (Canongate)
• Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down (Canongate)
• Jacobson, Howard Kalooki Nights (Jonathan Cape)
• Lasdun, James Seven Lies (Jonathan Cape)
• Lawson, Mary The Other Side of the Bridge (Chatto & Windus)
• McGregor, Jon So Many Ways to Begin (Bloomsbury)
• Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men (Viking)
• Messud, Claire The Emperor’s Children (Picador)
• Mitchell, David Black Swan Green (Sceptre)
• Murr, Naeem The Perfect Man (William Heinemann)
• O’Hagan, Andrew Be Near Me (Faber & Faber)
• Robertson, James The Testament of Gideon Mack (Hamish Hamilton)
• St Aubyn, Edward Mother’s Milk (Picador)
• Unsworth, Barry The Ruby in her Navel (Hamish Hamilton)
• Waters, Sarah The Night Watch (Virago)

And, no, I haven't read a single one of the books on this list.

The Whole World Over a terrific second book

77. The Whole World Over, Julia Glass. Fiction, 8-24, p. 509

Second books are not supposed to be this good.

Julia Glass emerged as something of a literary phenomena in 2002 when her first book, Three Junes, came out of nowhere to win the National Book Award. It was a very good book. The Whole World Over is better.

Cinematic in its construction, The Whole World Over focuses on the intersecting lives of four characters: Greenie, a talented baker and chef who leaves New York and her husband for New Mexico; Alan, Greenie’s unhappy husband; Walter, a gay restaurant owner looking for love and stability; and Saga a physically and mentally broken young women.

There’s nothing ground-breaking in the themes Glass explores – loss, love, the consequences of the choices we make and have made for us. The power of The Whole World Over is in the fondness we develop for Glass’ vivid characters, both major and minor. We’d like to sit in Walter’s restaurant, eat a slice of Greenie’s cake or sit in her kitchen in the cool morning as she bakes. Glass' success, and it is considerable, is that her characters inhabit a larger world than the pages of her book. They also inhabit our imagination.

Three blurbs on three books

I should feel bad, I know. I haven't posted to this site in weeks. And I would feel bad if I weren’t so far behind in my reading that I can’t seriously considering blogging. Vacation (three baseball games in three days in three states), a temporary re-location (from Washington to Chicago) and new work responsibilities have taken its toll. I normally read a minimum of 100 pages a day, yet when I look at my book list I finished James Lee Burke’s Pegasus Descending on August 3^rd and its taken until the 24^th to finish another novel. I’ll address that novel soon, but until then I have three blurbs for three books.

74. Pegasus Descending, James Lee Burke. Fiction, 8-3, p. 356

This won’t be well received, but I’m going to write it any way. I’m giving up on James Lee Burke. I think his novels have become derivative . . . of James Lee Burke. Reading his newest novel I have the distinct sense that I’ve read it all before. It seems lately that Burke takes the same characters, scenes, settings, even phrases, tosses them into the blender of his word processor and a new novel emerges. I think I’m even more disappointed that his main character, Dave Robicheaux, never changes. Dave is supposed to be a smart guy, but he keeps repeating the same mistakes from book to book to book. Dave and the novels he appears in have become tiresome, formulaic and disappointing.

75. Francis Crick Discoverer of the Genetic Code, Matt Ridley. Biography, 8-3, p. 210

HarperColllins’ Eminent Lives series – a collection of brief biographies of a diverse group of notables – is a worthy successor to the Penguin Lives series. Matt Ridley’s biography of Francis Crick is an entertaining and informative read. Crick is an interesting figure, notable, if for no other reason, in that he was brilliant without being eccentric. As with any book about science or math (at least for me), the particulars challenge my comprehension, yet it is amazing how much of DNA and its components – the double helix, the sequence of the amino acid residues in proteins, the four types of nucleotides (adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine) – are remotely familiar.

76. Positively Fifth Street, James McManus. Poker, 8-16, p. 385

James McManus’ highly entertaining Positively Fifth Street is a minor classic in the small, but fascinating genre of books devoted to poker. McManus wrote his book just before the sport(?) became a cultural phenomenon due to ESPN’s broadcast of the World Series of Poker. McManus went to Vegas to write an article for Harper’s magazine on the Ted Binion murder trial (of Binion's Horseshoe Casino fame) and the recent success of women in what had been an exclusive all-male club. A gambler at heart (“the heart of a cliff diver”), McManus blows part of his advance from Harper’s on a qualifying tournament for the WSOP. He not only qualifies for the WSOP, but reaches the final table; a stunning accomplishment for an amateur player. In addition to his coverage of the murder trial and a riveting account of his tournament play, McManus ponders his justification for a lap dance (research) and the psychological and emotional motivations of the gambler. Let’s just you can equate risk with sexual excitement, losing with sexual excitement, winning with sexual excitement and sexual excitement with, well, cards, chips and nubile, young lap dancers. Masturbation plays a role in there somewhere, too. Just read the book – it’s the nuts.

A Reading List

I’ve been “tagged” to develop a book list by responding to nine questions. So, here goes:

1. One book that changed your life:

The Road Less Traveled, Scott Peck

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:

My Antonia, Willa Cather

3. One book you’d want on a deserted island:

Let’s stretch one into three: Tolkien’s Rings trilogy.

4. One book that made you laugh:

Just about any book by Bill Bryson. The same is true of Carl Hiaasen. Lucky You comes to mind.

5. One book that made you cry (or feel really sad):

Bambi did it. More recently, Ian McEwan’s Atonement.

6. One book that you wish had been written:

On Writing: My Life As a Novelist by Biblio Baggins.

7. One book that you wish had never been written:

Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler.

8. One book you’re currently reading:

Positively Fifth Street, James McManus. The Whole World Over, Julia Glass.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:

Love’s Labour’s Lost, William Shakespeare.

Talk, Talk the Peggy Lee of novels

73. Talk, Talk, T.C. Boyle. Fiction, 7-31, p. 340

T.C. Boyle’s Talk, Talk is the Peggy Lee of novels – it leaves you asking, “Is that all there is?”

It’s the ending that’s disappointing, especially because Boyle’s takes the reader on a stomach-churning ride of anxiety and anger in the first couple of hundred pages. The opening, when the novel’s protagonist, Dana Halter, is hauled to jail, is particularly squirm inducing. It is Boyle’s skill at enlisting our identification with and sympathy for Dana, who is deaf, that makes his finish feel so incomplete. Cast in today’s psychobabble: There’s resolution, but not closure.

Dana is the victim of an especially pernicious form of identity theft that includes the theft of her “base identifiers.” In effect, the thief has adopted her identity as his own. An outraged Dana and her boyfriend, Bridger, track down the thief, following him as he flees from California to New York. The thief, whose real name is Peck Wilson, is off-the-charts disgusting. A former restaurateur, he’s smooth and smart and displays genuinely good taste in food, clothes and cars. He also exudes a sense of entitlement and has very real anger management issues.

Dana and Bridger ultimately confront the wayward Peck outside his mother’s home in upstate New York. Bridger winds up hospitalized, while Peck – incensed by this violation of his privacy (I said he had an air of entitlement) – stalks Dana, determined to exact his revenge, setting up a final confrontation.

But the conclusion, which the reader has been anticipating since the early pages of the novel, is flat and unsatisfying. Boyle mails this one in. I know that he can do better (see Drop City). After I’d put down the book, I wanted to call in Carl Hiaasen to wrap this one up. No one – absolutely no one – punishes their bad guys in a more satisfying manner than Hiaasen. And to this reader, that’s what was needed here. Someone needed to put a hurting on this creep.

Guardian blogger: Reading is Hot

Sarah Crown, who blogs for the Guardian, reveals the conclusion to an Internet survey conducted for Borders: Reading is hot. According to Crown, A third of those surveyed said that they "would consider flirting with someone based on their choice of literature."

"Not just any book will do," Crown writes. "Erotic fiction, horror, self-help books and the dreaded chick-lit were all, in fact, deemed turn-offs when it came to love between the covers. The genre most likely to help you pull - the itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny yellow polka dot bikini of the books world - is the classics, followed by biography and modern literary fiction (think Zadie Smith and Sebastian Faulks, rather than Dan Brown and Martina Cole)."

Taylor's A Summons to Memphis a finely drawn tale of upper crust manners and mores

71. A Summons to Memphis, Peter Taylor. Fiction, 7-27, p. 209

Violent emotions seethe beneath a veneer of manners and mores in Peter Taylor’s A Summons to Memphis. The 1986 novel of a proper, but perverse Memphis family won Taylor the Pulitzer Prize and was the capstone of a lengthy literary career.

Echoes of Edith Wharton reverberate throughout Taylor’s work. Both authors bring a surgeon’s skill, an artist’s sensitivity and a sociologist’s remove to their writing as they peel back the customs of the upper class to reveal the passions that lurk below the surface.

Wharton explored the mannered cruelties of Old New York. Taylor dissects the honeyed machinations of the Old South. In particular, he explores and exposes the conventions of the Memphis upper crust, whose traditions, manner of dress and speech display subtle, but important, variations from that of their counterparts in Nashville or Richmond, Lexington or Louisville.

A Summons to Memphis is the story of the Carver family; the father, George, and his three adult children, two daughters and a son. The children nurse unspoken hurts and resentments against their father – a needy despot whose rigid, unbending control over his family seems to extend from cradle to grave and which is always portrayed as well-meaning and in the children’s interest.

Their resentment begins in childhood when the family is uprooted from a comfortable life in Nashville and reluctantly relocated to Memphis because of the father’s need for a fresh start in business. As the children age, resentment turns to anger as prospective engagements and budding romances are quietly, but cruelly, ended.

The anger lies buried, surfacing only in the most passive of expressions, until, soon after their mother’s death, the father, now quite elderly, contemplates a second marriage. Faced with the loss of their inheritance, alongside their empty, unfulfilled lives, the children take action.

It is not giving too much away to say that the marriage never takes place. The story is not about the aborted marriage, but in how the grown children use the conventions of Memphis high society to take revenge on their self-absorbed father. Ultimately, there are no winners in this finely drawn novel, only survivors.

A Summons to Memphis was Taylor’s penultimate book. A final collection of short stories appeared in 1993. Taylor died a year later in Charlottesville, Virginia.

72. A Death In Belmont, Sebastian Junger. Non-Fiction, 7-28, p. 260

It would have made a fine magazine article.

Fantasyland a dream read

70. Fantasyland, Sam Walker. Baseball, 7-25p. 344

Books on baseball are generally reserved for deepest winter as a vital aid in recalling sun-drenched fields, an expanse of the greenest grass and the bluest sky. Intrigued by the premise of Sam Walker’s Fantasyland, I slipped the book onto the top of my reading list in July rather than January. It was the right thing to do. Fantasyland, a season in the trenches of the arcane world of Rotisserie League Baseball, would have been of no assistance whatsoever in summoning images of summer in the bleak mid-winter. Instead, this account of a game within the game proved a delightful distraction from baseball’s current off-field mischief and misdeeds.

Walker, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, competes in Tout Wars – an annual competition among the so-called experts of fantasy baseball. Walker doesn’t simply want to write about the experience, he wants to win. He also views the opportunity as “a noble experiment. A chance to determine, once and for all, which device was better at predicting a ballplayer’s performance: the laptop or the human eye, cold, hard data or gut hunches and intuition.”

To assist him in the process, Walker hires a NASA biomathematician, who has a master’s degrees in mathematical modeling and human-factors engineering, and an employee in a produce warehouse, who is given to researching obscure biographical details about major league ballplayers. He recruits a woman who specializes in horoscopes for ballplayers and shamelessly enlists a sexy actress friend to play the role of a photographer at the annual league draft. Her mission, in which she succeeds admirably, is to distract the other team owners, while Walker executes his pre-draft game plan.

Is Walker’s game plan a success? Is soulless number-crunching or seat-of-the-pants intuition a better device for building a baseball team? The answers to these questions, which are answered to varying degrees in Fantasyland, are less important than the journey. Walker’s behind-the-curtains view of the fantasy leagues is always fascinating and often laugh-out-loud funny. It’s an excellent, and unusual, addition to the canon of baseball literature.

Peter Robinson's Piece of My Heart a perfect summer read

68. Piece of My Heart, Peter Robinson. Thriller, 7-23, p. 436

The best of today’s thrillers succeed because the recurring characters are like old friends. We’ve been with them through up and downs, shootings and near death, divorce, marriage, love affairs, problems with their spouse, children and co-workers. This is never more true than with Peter Robinson’s fully realized character, Chief Inspector Alan Banks.

In Playing With Fire, Robinson’s 2004 novel, Banks lost his lovely cottage in the Dales to fire. In the 2005 novel Strange Affair, Banks’ brother was murdered. In Robinson’s most recent work, Piece of My Heart, the most traumatic events confronting the Chief Inspector are mundane in comparison -- a run-in with his new superior and his son and his girl friend move in for an indefinite period of time.

Instead, we have parallel stories –a violent murder of a young woman at a rock concert in 1969 and, almost 40 years later, the bludgeoning death of a young rock journalist – that ultimately converge around a popular, local band that’s achieved international fame, the Mad Hatters.

It’s an ideal story for Robinson. Music has always played a part in his novels. We understand a great deal about Banks through the music he enjoys and his son is the member of a successful rock band. Robinson, along with Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, George Pelecanos and Robert Crais, is one of our best writers in the genre today.

Piece of My Heart is the perfect summer read.

69. Manhattan Noir, ed. Lawrence Block. Short stories, 7-24, p. 257

This is the third book in Akashic Books’ City Noir series that I’ve read. I didn’t like this collection nearly as well as I did D.C. Noir or Baltimore Noir. This was true largely, not because of the stories I liked, and there were several, but because of the stories I didn’t like. In particular, I didn’t think the story, The Organ Grinder, by the husband and wife team, Maan Meyers, really belonged in this collection.

James A. Garfield: The slow and unnecessary death of an American president

67. James A. Garfield, Ira Rutkow. Biography, 7-18, p. 139

The most recent entry in Times Books’ American Presidents Series, Ira Rutkow’s biography of James A. Garfield, is a petite volume, even by the standards of this series. It weighs in at a tidy 139 pages.

The brevity of Rutkow’s biography is understandable considering the all-to-brief arc of Garfield’s presidency. Elected in 1880, the Ohioan was inaugurated on March 4, 1881, shot on July 2 and died two and one-half months later on September 19.

Rutkow neatly summarizes Garfield’s early years, Civil War experience and Congressional career in the first 40 pages. It takes only another 40 pages to portray the “private” Garfield and to recount the machinations that led to his nomination on the 36^th ballot of the Republican convention, his subsequent election and the early days of his administration.

Nearly half the book is given over to the assassination attempt, the dismal state of Nineteenth Century American medicine and the cruel 80 days of suffering Garfield experienced before he succumbed. Rutkow makes a convincing argument that Garfield’s wound need not have been fatal, rather it was the inadequate and improper treatment he received that led to his death.

Charles Guiteau, the frustrated office-seeker who shot Garfield, even used this argument in his legal defense. “Guiteau relentlessly rehashed the case for medical mistreatment,” Rutkow writes. Guiteau admitted shooting the president, but noted that weeks after the assassination attempt a team of physicians concluded the president would recover. “Therefore, according to Guiteau’s rationale, ‘The doctors who mistreated him ought to bear the odium of his death, and not his assailant.’”

In a fascinating summation, Rutkow notes that almost 100 years later, in 1981, President Ronald Reagan suffered far more serious wounds at the hands of an would-be assassin. Yet because of the advances in medical care, Reagan was on his feet within 24 hours and returned to the White House, “fully able to conduct the nation’s business,” within 11 days.

In addition to being a published author, Rutkow is a clinical professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. His professional insight into Garfield’s treatment and into the state of American medicine in 1881 makes this an intriguing and exceptional read.

It is impossible to accurately appraise Garfield’s standing among American presidents; his tenure was all to brief. Rutkow observes that the 1883 passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is a fitting memorial to Garfield, but acknowledges his accomplishments as president were few. “James Abram Garfield’s presidency,” Rutkow writes, “is reduced to a tantalizing ‘what if.’”

By A Slow River a novel of rare insight and beauty

“Life is strange. It doesn’t give you warnings. It jumbles everything so you can’t pick and choose, and bloody moments follow moments of grace, just like that. It can make you wonder if man isn’t like one of those pebbles that lie on the road, lying in the same place for entire days until someone kicks it and sends it sailing through the air for no reason. And what can a pebble do?”

--By A Slow River (p. 115), Philippe Claudel

66. By A Slow River, Philippe Claudel. Fiction, 7-15, p. 194

By A Slow River, by French writer Philippe Claudel, is a haunting and lyrical novel. Set in an obscure French village during World War I, it is a story of loss and regret.

The war rages nearby, at once remote and immediate. Remote because of a hill that separates the village from the front line. “But for the hill, we would have had the war right in our faces . . . By the grace of the hill we managed to dodge it . . .” The distant explosions of the battles arrive “deadened and decanted.”

The village is further insulated from the war by the town factory. “Our men kept the factory going and the factory kept them. An order was handed down from on high . . . all workers were reserved for essential civilian service. And so at least eight hundred strapping local lads would escape the raging guns . . . Eight hundred who in the eyes of some were never men at all . . . “

And so the war does make its way into the village. It arrives with a steady two-way stream of men; it is seen in the eyes of the healthy soldiers who march forlornly to the front and it is felt most keenly in the silence of the wounded as they are carted, like so much detritus, to the rear.

Along with the soldiers’ cruel judgment, death also enters the village. A lovely schoolteacher is founded hanged with no explanation for her suicide. A 10-year-old beauty is found strangled, her body discarded in a canal that winds alongside the factory.

These two deaths are enveloped in mystery. As he labors to uncover the secrets behind the mysteries, the local policeman finds himself probing the mysteries of the human heart, including his own: “Despaiux was waiting for my answer. He stood before me, his contempt growing as I sat there, looking back at him—and beyond him—into the emptiness where I alone could see Clémence. He pulled his hat down and turned his back on me without saying good-bye. He walked off. He went home to his regrets and left me to mine. No doubt he knew—as I do—that you can live in regrets as in a country.”

Few novels contain the clarity and penetrating power of By A Slow River. It is an exquisite novel of rare beauty – in its prose and in its insight.

A visit to Des Moines book sale prep site

Business trips often contain unexpected pleasures.

Usually, for me, that means a side trip to a local bookstore. This week, in Des Moines, it was something totally different. I received a behind-the-scenes tour of preparations for Planned Parenthood’s annual book sale.

It’s easily the largest book sale in the Midwest. The tables are filled with more than 500,000 books, which are moved from the prep site to the sale site in six semi trucks.

This year the sale is September 14-18 at the 4-H State Fairgrounds.

Preparation for the sale, now held twice a year, goes on throughout the year. It all takes place in a building that was once a warehouse. It’s air conditioned; a previous building wasn’t.

Donations are received at the same building where the books are processed. It’s set up so that books can be left 24/7.

Donated books are sorted by volunteers, tossed into shopping carts and trundled off to other volunteers who evaluate and price the books. Volunteers have established areas of expertise; the woman who processes and prices romance books has gone so far as to identify about a dozen popular authors and, as much as possible, she puts all the books by each of these authors together. Her efforts have vastly increased sales in this category.

Once books have been priced, they are boxed by category. There’s a designation on the exterior of each box that indicates the exact table at the sale site where the box belongs. This expedites the process of setting up the sale site--organizers indicated that what once took 10 days now takes two.

In addition to the books there are magazines, records, DVDs and video tapes and puzzles. Other items are also donated, leading organizers to establish a garage sale of sorts in addition to the sale of books and related material.

An interesting feature at the sale itself is a storage area. Anyone buying large quantities of book can drop off their boxes and have those books processed for sale, while they continue to shop. In the past, organizers said they would often be tallying up a dealer’s purchases into the morning hours. Now, both purchaser and volunteer, get to go home at a more reasonable hour.