Two for Texas by James Lee Burke

Posted on July 7, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Another good one from James Lee Burke; and such a quick read, too.

Son Holland and Hugh Allison escape together from a prison in Louisiana in an opportunistic and unplanned series of events that includes killing a prison guard. With Son struggling to recover from a gunshot wound, they flee into Texas, where the Mexican army is skirmishing with General Sam Houston’s troops, and various Indian tribes make up a plurality of fighting factions. It’s a lawless land, whose chaos does help Son and Hugh stay lost, but the brother of the murdered prison guard is on their trail. The older, more experienced Hugh (a friend of James Bowie) acts as a big-brother figure to the younger Son, who’s had his share of violence and hard times but retains some innocence and some righteous virtue, both for better and for worse. The two pick up an Indian woman, Sana, along the way, who will turn out to be an ally.

Son and Hugh decide to join Houston’s army as a defense against being recaptured and thrown in prison. Even if the tortures of their earlier incarceration weren’t unbearable enough, a return would mean certain slow, painful death. They catch up with Houston and spend several fateful months in the General’s camp, and are there during the battle at the Alamo, as well as Houston’s final defeat of Santa Ana’s Mexican army at San Jacinto.

My little paperback copy of this novel does not include any notes from Burke to tell me how much of this story is fiction. I surmise that Son and Hugh are entirely fictional characters. Certainly, the battles at the Alamo and San Jacinto are a part of history, as are the many big names Burke drops: Houston, Austin, Fannin, Milam, Bowie, Crockett, and more. But I think the story of these two men is Burke’s creation.

I enjoyed this quick read. At only 148 pages, it took me about a day in my free moments. It offers Burke’s usual fine descriptive writing, and I thought both of the main characters were well drawn: they had personality; they felt real; I was invested in their personal outcomes. The battle scenes and the rough edges on the soldiers, Houston’s ragtag troops, and the outlaw character of Texas at the time were all visceral and (in my embarrassingly limited knowledge) true to history.

An easy read with poignant characters and a good, readable (if cursory) history of the Texas Revolution, in Burke’s usual fine writing style.

[If you’re concerned: there is some blood-and-guts in the battle scenes, to be sure (how could there not be?) but it’s fairly conservative.]

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The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Posted on June 30, 2011 by pagesofjulia

THIS is how I like my nonfiction! See, Castaneda? Like this! I can’t exactly explain the difference. There’s just something very narrative, conversational, interesting about this. Similarly, Dethroning the King, Janet Malcolm, Annie Londonderry, etc. It’s not sensationalist; it’s just exciting. Written like a thriller or like a work of fiction, but no less serious a work of nonfiction for it. How to explain? Let me quote a very average paragraph for you, from page 27:

Each man recognized and respected the other’s skills. The resultant harmony was reflected in the operation of their office, which, according to one historian, functioned with the mechanical precision of a “slaughterhouse,” an apt allusion, given Burnham’s close professional and personal association with the stockyards. But Burham also created an office culture that anticipated that of businesses that would not appear for another century. He installed a gym. During lunch hour employees played handball. Burnham gave fencing lessons. Root played impromptu recitals on a rented piano. “The office was full of a rush of work,” Starrett said, “but the spirit of the place was delightfully free and easy and human in comparison with other offices I had worked in.”

See, that second sentence is long and convoluted and uses biggish words, but it flows and communicates; it doesn’t impede communication, and what it certainly doesn’t do is brag.

All right, rant aside, this is an excellent book! I started it Friday night and finished it Sunday afternoon. Not to repeat the back-of-the-book blurbs, but this work of nonfiction absolutely reads like a thriller; it’s difficult to put down. Very enjoyable. After years (literally) on my TBR shelves, I picked it up because I had such a groove going, after Annie Londonderry and Clara and Mr. Tiffany, two books set in the same era with overlapping locations – Annie in New York, Boston, and Chicago as well as all around the world, and Clara in New York, with the Chicago World Fair playing a role as well. I enjoyed both of these books so much, and especially the extra immersion in time-and-place I got by reading them back-to-back, that I wanted to go straight into The Devil and the White City next. And I’m so glad I did.

The story is this: Daniel H. Burnham, along with a huge cast of other talents and characters and against all odds, pulled together the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, better known to us as the Chicago World Fair. Concurrently, a man named Herman Webster Mudgett but known by his most-used alias, Dr. H.H. Holmes, murdered an unknown number of people, at least 27 but estimated as high as 200, in Chicago on the very edge of the fair grounds. Larson tells the story of the fair, of the serial murders, and of a larger time-and-place from the points of view of these two men, mostly, with side journeys into several other lives.

The World’s Fair is a character unto itself, as is the city of Chicago. Larson gives us the styles and morals of the time, and helps us to understand how it was that dozens of people, mostly young women experiencing a freedom unknown to their parents’ generation, could disappear into Holmes’ grasp. We see the wonder and beauty and ambition and angst of those who worked to produce the landmark event that was the White City, as the fair was known. We see the everyday struggles that allowed Holmes to methodically go about his evil pleasures.

Larson walks a fine line in trying to enter the heads of historical figures, especially the elusive Holmes, and still call his book nonfiction; but he’s got me convinced. He points out that everything in quotation marks is attributable, and defends the two murder scenes he chooses to portray with the evidence available to him in his research. In fact, as an aside, I enjoyed his “Notes and Sources,” and the brief story of his research there. He even mentions, in some cases, in which library or rare book room he found a particular elusive source. Further, also from Notes and Sources, page 395-6:

I do not employ researchers, nor did I conduct any primary research using the Internet. I need physical contact with my sources, and there’s only one way to get it. To me every trip to a library or archive is like a small detective story.

I know all of us booklovers (and librarians) enjoy that.

This is an engaging, riveting read. The historical value is vast. I’m always amazed by how the pieces of our history fit together. Am I the only one? I feel like there are so many names, personalities, and events in our history, but we learn them as individual bits; it’s always a little thrill when they come together in ways I don’t expect. For example, reading that Elias Disney worked as a carpenter and furniture-maker in the building of the fair, and went home to tell his sons, including little Walt, stories of the “magical realm beside the lake.” Isn’t that a charming little anecdote? Several of these connections are left in suspense, too; if your history is a bit weak in the right places, as mine was, you get these happy little surprises. I like that.

I found this book captivating, and I recommend it as a pleasurable read that may sneak some learning in on you. I invite readers of thrillers and evocative nonfiction to enter this fantastic, glittering, magical, and deadly – and true – world.

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did not finish: Mañana Forever? Mexico and the Mexicans by Jorge G. Castaneda

Posted on June 29, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I couldn’t do it. I wanted to like this book so much! In fact, I think I should just send you over to Raych’s review of Popular Crime, because I’m about to repeat everything she said, but about a different book. It’s funny how that works.

Mañana Forever? had a great pull for me. I was excited about getting to know “Mexico and the Mexicans” better; I like Mexico and the Mexicans, and I think they’re as apt as any country-and-its-people to make good book-fodder. The first bad sign was the preface, which dragged on and on in academic-speak, which rather goes against the impression I got (from product descriptions) that this books was written for Regular People. It also purported to outline the book’s goal, but instead went round in circles, as if still deciding what that goal might be. It listed and outlined the chapters, then told an anecdote involving H1N1 (the “swine flu”), and then GO chapter one. I began the book frustrated by the preface but ready to move on into the good stuff.

The first chapter nearly killed me. I like the idea of Nancy Pearl’s Rule of 50, but I couldn’t do it. I was too frustrated by chapter 1, which ends on page 33. (Ah, but the preface was 15. Do I get to claim 48 pages? That should be close enough. Really, two pages weren’t going to convince me. I promise.) Castaneda is Mexican-American himself, but just as I don’t belong to the camp that feels it’s okay for black people to call each other the n-word, I didn’t take to the negative lean of this chapter. It’s entitled “Why Mexicans Are Lousy at Soccer and Don’t Like Skyscrapers,” and the answer is, because they’re staunch individualists, always, no exception. Thus, no teamwork (soccer) and no sharing (apartment buildings – which aren’t necessarily synonymous with skyscrapers in my head, but whatever). He’s a bit critical, but more outrageously, he’s pretty vague in his justifications for his argument. When he completely lost me, though, was with math. Excuse me for holding an author of nonfiction (and an established academic, professor, PhD, and former foreign minister, in his third book) to this kind of standard, but. I offer you this sentence.

Out of a total of roughly 1 million homes delivered between 2004 and 2008, 800,000, or 97%, included one or two dwellings per plot, whereas only 32,000, or 3%, were vertical, multifamily homes, or in plain English, apartment buildings or ‘projects.’

1 million = 1,000,000. 800,000 is very easily divided into this number. I see 8 out of 10, is what I see. I’m no math major, but I’m pretty sure that 800,000 out of 1,000,000 is NOT 97%. I’m pretty sure that’s 80%. He lost me there, and lost me more in the next sentence, in which he says x over y “takes up much more space and thus more square feet.” After this, it was all I could do to not take out a red pen and start circling things. (This is a library book.) Rugged individualism is “often nearly always” self-sacrificial and self-destructive, and the chapter closes with this:

The individualism we have rapidly portrayed and criticized is just one of the multiple traits, though perhaps the most important one, that has become no longer just an obstacle, but an insurmountable hurdle to the country’s progress, as well as the heart of its past glory and unending fascination for the foreign regard.

No longer just an obstacle, but a hurdle! Gasp! No, Castaneda, you did not “rapidly” portray. These were the most difficult 33 pages I’ve read in recent memory. Sentences like this one required that I reread; I kept losing my place. This is the kind of writing I’m willing to be pretty forgiving of in galley copies (you know, pre-publication, don’t-quote-from-this-copy, still to be edited), but this isn’t a galley. I’m not sure if you should fire your editor, or if s/he should fire you. You have failed to grasp a reader who was eager to be grasped. The End.

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Jersey Law by Ron Leibman

Posted on June 28, 2011 by pagesofjulia

A hard-boiled legal thriller with lots of laughs and an accent that’s all Jersey, but with a sensitive side as well.

Accomplished D.C. lawyer Ron Liebman evokes a sharply realistic and very funny New Jersey underworld in his second novel, Jersey Law (following Death to Rodrigo). Fans of Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer will enjoy the well-meaning but mildly rule-bending team of Mickie and Junne, criminal defense attorneys for inner-city Camden’s drug dealers and lowlifes. They defend drug kingpin Slippery Williams; they spar with the DA; and they carefully balance the letter of the law with watching their backs. Junne (short for Junior), our narrator, places us firmly in the Camden streets with his conversational style, what he would call “street jive.” Don’t mind the sentence fragments; they make the book breathe in Junne’s terse Jersey voice.

Mickie and Junne have been friends since middle school, and have their practice down to a fine art. When one of their clients decides to testify against another, however, their loyalties are tested. If they warn the client, who is an old friend, men will certainly die, and they will have broken client confidentiality; if they don’t, it may mean their own demise. And then there’s their new secretary to worry about: Tamara is working hard to keep her nephew off the streets and out of the gang life. Tamara is an excellent example of one of Liebman’s strengths as a novelist: he creates funny, sympathetic characters we care about in spite of their flaws.

Junne’s large Italian family, Mickie’s womanizing and their shady lawyer-landlord fit perfectly in with the scenery. By turns poignant and suspenseful, Jersey Law is consistently funny, ending on just the right note for a sequel.

This review originally ran in the June 28, 2011 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

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Fallen by Karin Slaughter

Posted on June 24, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Police corruption, gang violence, family ties and a nascent romance entangled in this breathless, emotional ride through Atlanta’s underbelly.

Karin Slaughter’s latest work of suspense has all the elements her readers have come to expect: likable, well-developed characters; an array of strong women; fast-paced action; and surprising plot twists. This story of family relationships, with its underlying threads of romance, violence and taut suspense, will satisfy fans of Lisa Gardner or Lisa Scottoline as well as Slaughter’s own.

When Georgia Bureau of Investigations Special Agent Faith Mitchell arrives at her mother’s house to pick up her daughter, Emma, there’s blood on the door, and the baby’s been hidden in the shed. Retired Atlanta police captain Evelyn Mitchell is missing, but her house is not empty; Faith goes in with guns blazing, and the blood flows.

The clock ticks in the search for Evelyn as the case is further complicated by shifting suspicions and questioned loyalties. We share Faith’s concern for her family and her need to be involved, despite a clear lack of professional detachment. Her partner, Will Trent, aches to help her, but his past investigation of her mother’s unit compromises their relationship. Sara Linton, a local doctor with ties to law enforcement, struggles to balance her role in the case with a budding personal relationship with Will. Meanwhile, Amanda Wagner, Will’s boss and Evelyn’s best friend, might be playing both sides of the fence.

Slaughter weaves intense and unrelenting suspense while compelling readers to care about the very real and human characters involved, whose backgrounds and conflicting loyalties we sympathize with even as we see their flaws.

This review originally ran in the June 24, 2011 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

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guest review: Fire Season by Philip Connors, from Pops

Posted on June 23, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Today we’re visiting my father again, who’s traveling this summer. I put the screws on to compel him to buy a copy of Fire Season for himself to read on the road because I loved it so much (see here). I promised to buy it off him if he regretted the purchase; and I may, anyway, because I want to own a copy. Actually, though, I don’t know if it’s for sale. He did like it. I’m compiling some of his thoughts via email to share with you; they’re mostly in response to my original post (see link above) but I thought his slightly different perspective was worth sharing. Here’s Pops.

I finished Fire Season yesterday while I was camping in the finest of the rain forest valleys in Olympic NP, the Hoh river. I found it as exceptional as you said. The timing was impeccable; e.g. I was reading his passages about the magical meditative element of long walks… (or, I would say, endurance activities – you could read Bill McKibben’s Long Distance for a bit of the same; I found it wonderful, and you should know who McKibben is anyway for his potential to be one of the great environmental soothsayers of our time) …and it helped me decide a plan for my Monday walk: a full 10 hour day of wandering up and down the valley in rain and mist marveling at the magical forest – when I wasn’t daydreaming. I loved how he wove in stories of Kerouac, Edward Abbey, Chief Victorio, Alice the dog, Aldo Leopold, Cormac McCarthy, Gary Snyder (new to me) – and others. And we certainly learn about wildfires. Thanks for the tip.

So glad you liked it!! [And, incidentally, what safety precautions are you taking on 10-hour walks? Do you call Mom to let her know you’re going off on such things, and then call in when you return?]

And have you made the connection with current events? – with a massive fire burning for weeks now in eastern Arizona (the western borders of Fire Season) and today all around the Carlsbad Caverns area in NM (within the eastern horizon view of Fire Season).

Maybe not specifically those fires; but West Texas has been ravaged for months and it made my reading of the book a touch more personal. This spring race series, we raced two races in a row only to hear that the race course saw a wildfire start as we were leaving. (We promise we didn’t start these fires.) One was in Arksansas, one in central Texas. And we have a friend/teammate who tried to race in Ft. Davis, but the event was canceled due to one of the bigger fires we’ve seen; it swept across a considerable part of the state we’re used to driving and riding through. Close to home.

Did you also make the connection that we all went camping in the Gila Wilderness twice when you were 3 and 4 yrs old? (and that, because we had been there before you were born)

No, of course I don’t remember that, but very cool!

I really endorse what you said about his eclectic voice, and the many priceless vignettes he blends into his story. (I really wish I had read it with a highlighter!)

I also found him to be an endless stream of contradictions (perhaps we all are?) – he could be a sedentary slug for hours/days on end, but was also often driven to minimalist walks & overnights (an evening walk from a summit inevitably involves a serious down & UP!); he obviously functioned well in cities & bars, as well as wilderness; he became well versed in much wilderness language, yet succumbed to the elementary, pitiful, dreadful trap of the young fawn.

I cried over the fawn.

And, re: your comment about the contradictions. I am reminded of David Guterson’s The Other as well as Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild (the first, fiction, the latter non) – both books about young men going into the wilderness, thinking they wanted to get away from it all, but also strangely and paradoxically clinging to certain odd elements of society. As the protagonists of both books came to unpleasant ends, I think perhaps Connors has found the perfectly balanced way to do it! In fact, I think I mentioned balance in my initial review. The writing in his book is balanced; and his interactions with his world are balanced. His saintly wife helps him be balanced. I daresay we all aspire to a lifestyle like this; I know I do, and I think, Pops, that you do. But then, you’re closer than most of us right now!

Based on your and my reactions, I’m guessing that readers will appreciate many different aspects of this book. You particularly noted the lessons about wildfire & forest policy, which I knew much of already. I loved the many references and new details about Kerouac, Snyder and the various personalities of the Beat generation who so influenced my 60s & 70s, and subsequent characters like Edward Abbey and Dave Foreman.

You barely mention Alice! I thought she was an elusive minor character, disappearing for times but playing a key role at many turns. Moments were familiar to Barley’s world; like her unilateral retreat to accompany Martha home from the lookout summit, and her personality change from city to wilds. Most poignant – Alice evoked my most secret lonely moments, far up a mountain trail without Barley’s companion spirit, spunk and relentless energy. “Alice is the only living being I know who will take a forty-mile walk in the woods without any need of cajoling, planning, or consulting a calendar.”

My apologies to Alice; you’re entirely right… she was a special creature and character, and a neat side-story proving (yet again) that dogs are our best friends and offer relationships unlike what we humans can offer one another. Here, I’ll treat our readers to a picture:

Hops (brown) & Ritchey (short white hair) who live with Husband and I, and my parents' Barley (scruffy white hair)

Finally: “…the movements of my limbs help my mind move too, out of its loops and grooves and onto a plane of equipoise… If I weren’t a walker I suppose I would be a television addict, a dope fiend, a social butterfly.”

Because I had to look it up, I’ll share. Equipoise: an equal distribution of weight; even balance; equilibrium.

Thank you for your musings, Pops. I hope we’re (still) encouraging folks to find this book! I think I’m ready to call this my best read of 2011 to date.

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Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland

Posted on June 22, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I was attracted by the idea of this book when it came out in January, and I’ve just now gotten around to it. I’m really enjoying reading books pre-publication for Shelf Awareness, but it’s also nice to sneak one in every once in a while that’s NOT a thriller/suspense/murder-mystery. For that matter, I have some classics to read for the Classics Challenge, and I’ve been talking about Don Quixote…

But at any rate. Recently, on a whim, I picked up Clara and Mr. Tiffany, and it immediately grabbed me with its lovely writing, evocative of the artistic beauty the book revolves around. Clara, the narrator, works for a living in the 1890’s, and before the action of the book begins, has already had to choose between marriage (even… love?) and her passion for her work. Clara Driscoll, a real historical figure, was the artist behind much of the stained glass and the legendary lamps for which the Tiffany name is so famous. Vreeland has fictionalized her story for us here. Clara also has quite a bit in common with another historical figure I read about recently: Annie Londonderry took her extraordinary ride during the same years in which this book begins. It gave me a nice little thrill to recognize the historical setting, especially because the two female characters have so much in common. Reading these two books back-to-back allowed me to immerse myself even more in the times, and I’m tempted to head right into The Devil in the White City next. We’ll see.

I want to share a beautiful excerpt with you to illustrate the writing style.

…I carefully wrapped in a hand towel the one thing I had that no one could wrench from me – the kaleidoscope, his engagement gift to me. Bits of richly colored glass in a chamber served as his sweet acknowledgement that I’d had to give up my joyous work with just such glass in order to marry him. At the slightest turn of the maple-wood tube, the design collapsed with a tiny rattle of falling objects, and in a burst of an instant, nothing was the same.

Vreeland’s writing is quietly lovely and melodic; it expertly creates both a mood and a pacing to match the world in which Clara lives and works, and also evokes the colors, art, and beauty that involve her so deeply. Clara is an artist, first and foremost; she wants to design, to create, to replicate nature (she loves flowers, insects, the sea, leaves) and uplift the human spirit. As a woman at the turn of the century, though, she faces a number of challenges as a working woman, as a single woman, and as a craftswoman intent on earning a living, knowing she deserves one. She’s tormented by the frustrations of being unrecognized by Tiffany and by the world, as Tiffany (the man, and the company) receive accolades for her work. But she’s also tormented by guilt for what she thinks of as her narcissism – in that she desires credit at all.

Clara is a well-developed character. We see her progress, for example, as a feminist. She doesn’t set out with any high-minded ideals, but rather develops them as the world fails to treat her fairly. Clara heads up the Women’s Department at Tiffany, and her “girls” are described in varying detail; some of them become very real and sympathetic characters, and many of them serve to portray the experiences of immigrant workers in New York during this time. When their department comes under attack from the unionized male employees, Clara organizes the women to march into work together through a picket line – not striking, since the union doesn’t recognize them, but vilified all the same. This part of the story serves to underline that not all feminist demonstrators began as idealists or radicals, but rather that “regular” women were forced to stick up for themselves or die quietly. I appreciated that point.

Over the course of the book (spanning 1892-1908), she has a series of relationships: we meet her freshly widowed, she is courted by several men, and has a number of very close friendships. I found her heartfelt friendships, with men and with women, to be very touching. She struggles with love, with the idea that she’ll never find a satisfying romantic relationship with a man; with finding respect and fulfillment at work; with creating ideal art and beauty and being recognized for it. The story is of art, and of a time and a place, of love, and of women’s rights and a changing world. But mostly, it’s Clara’s story.

This was a beautiful book. The art and music bleed through the pages:

The sparrows of Irving Place were preening too, and gossiping pianissimo, and hopping about with an air of importance. Distant medleys of the city blended into a pleasant humming, punctuated at intervals by the Third Avenue elevated rumbling in a crescendo, grinding its brakes shrilly for the Eighteenth Street station, expelling its pfft of steam, then starting up again and fading away in a diminuendo.

I liked the historical aspects, too. As I like my hist-fict authors to do, Vreeland includes a note at the closing to explain where she took liberties. It does seem fairly clear that Clara Driscoll created many or nearly all of the leaded-glass lamps Tiffany got credit for; she did have two marriages; and a number of the figures in the novel did at least exist, with a few verifiable details. But much of the novel is purely fiction.

This was a really beautiful book, enjoyable to read, with a comforting, quiet rhythm and characters I cared about. It was a joy, and I recommend it.

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Towards Zero by Agatha Christie (audio)

Posted on June 19, 2011 by pagesofjulia

After my disappointment with going outside my known tastes, I have switched back to a tried-and-true. I’m sure somebody out there doesn’t like Agatha Christie, but they have yet to tell me to my face.

I had never heard of Towards Zero, and it involves neither Hercule Poirot nor Miss Marple. But it did have one of the most important Christie trademarks: a twisty-turny puzzle-plot that begs for the reader to try solving the crime before the end of the book. I, at least, am generally incorrect several times over because the plots of her books tend to double back on themselves so often.

This novel opens with a meeting of lawyerly minds (which you can see, incidentally, here), in which the title is explained. Most murder stories (and criminal trials), we are told, begin with the murder, when in fact the relevant story begins much, much earlier, and culminates in the murder as the result of all the previous action. Then we switch to the story at hand. In which…

Nevile Strange and his new wife, Kay, decide to visit Nevile’s mother-figure, Lady Tressilian, not at their usual time of year, but at the same time that Nevile’s first wife Audrey will be visiting. This, predictably, results in a number of uncomfortable, awkward, embarrassing moments and some conflict. (I found it interesting to observe the manners of the day which required referring to both women as “Mrs. Strange.”) Kay is rather bleatingly jealous and unsympathetic; Audrey is long-suffering and stoic but seems forgiving; Nevile is wont to refer to Audrey as “his wife” and ignore Kay, which of course irritates her still more. They make an interesting household, along with Audrey’s longtime admirer, Thomas Royde, just returned from overseas to pursue her; Lady Tressilian’s companion Mary Aldin; and visitor Ted Latimer, Kay’s childhood friend and admirer (parallel to Audrey’s Thomas, although rather opposite in temperament). So. All these folks in a classy country home together trying to be polite and play nice and dance around the love quadrangles, and then a murder takes place, and it’s one of those that could only have been committed by someone from within the household. Very Agatha Christie.

Love Suchet's Poirot.

Missing was Hercule Poirot’s biting wit, though. [Aside. Here is where I admit that I’ve never read Miss Marple! Only Hercule Poirot! Also, I grew up with Poirot on television as played by David Suchet and can’t hear or see him in any other way, for better or for worse. But didn’t he make a wonderful Poirot?] There wasn’t really much humor in this story, which is a Christie-staple in my mind, so that was odd; but it was very, very enjoyable without it, so no foul.

Into this closed household comes the vacationing Superintendent Battle and his nephew, the local Inspector Leach, to solve the crime. There are red herrings by the bucketful, and false leads, and I thought I knew whodunit SO many times, but Christie is a tricky one. The final scenes involve the Superintendent talking through the crime with the lot of them and eliciting a confession – also Christie trademarks. Finally, a little surprise romance which I did not entirely see coming topped off this charming, delightful, delicious little tale.

I love Agatha Christie. There’s a reason she’s hailed as a master (and Wikipedia claims she’s the all-time bestselling writer of books). I haven’t read anywhere near a majority of her works, but what I’ve read is always entertaining and clever and usually funny, too. Recommend.

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the Guardian’s list: 100 greatest non-fiction books

Posted on June 16, 2011 by pagesofjulia

More lists! Great fun! I found this list of the 100 greatest nonfiction-books according to the Guardian, thanks to Shelf Awareness, who had this to say in yesterday’s daily email newsletter:

Let the debate begin: The 100 greatest nonfiction books of all time were chosen by the Guardian’s book desk writers, who observed: “The list we’ve come up with rewards readability alongside originality, heaps praise on perfect prose and rounds it all off with a dash of cultural significance. It’s clearly a mug’s game to make any kind of claim for definitiveness but, whatever you make of our list and its (doubtless many) omissions and imperfections, there’s no question that it features a whole heap of truly great books.”

I was immediately interested, of course. Don’t we all love lists? The usual game is how-many-have-I-read, and I didn’t do all that well. It’s interesting to see what they chose, though, and to think about what I maybe *should* have read, or should read. I haven’t reproduced the entire list here – you can go read it at the above list, and you should! But I have reproduced some of the entries, recategorized. (Blurbs following titles are the Guardian’s, not mine.)

Books Already on my TBR shelf:
The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein (1933)
Stein’s groundbreaking biography, written in the guise of an autobiography, of her lover
-has been on my list for years; actually just brought home a copy a few weeks ago
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown (1970)
A moving account of the treatment of Native Americans by the US government
-has always been on my shelf. still haven’t gotten around to it
Dispatches by Michael Herr (1977)
A vivid account of Herr’s experiences of the Vietnam war
-not on my shelf, but I’ve seen it on my parents’ shelves all my life
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)
Wollstonecraft argues that women should be afforded an education in order that they might contribute to society
The Souls of Black Folk by WEB DuBois (1903)
A series of essays makes the case for equality in the American south

Books I have read:
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)
This account of the effects of pesticides on the environment launched the environmental movement in the US
– read as a kid, maybe grade school
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968)
The man in the white suit follows Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters as they drive across the US in a haze of LSD
-one of my all-time favorites
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947)
Published by her father after the war, this account of the family’s hidden life helped to shape the post-war narrative of the Holocaust
-of course. this is a staple. everyone has read this. right?

Read as part of my undergrad education in political science
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass (1845)
This vivid first person account was one of the first times the voice of the slave was heard in mainstream society
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (1859)
Mill argues that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1532)
Machiavelli injects realism into the study of power, arguing that rulers should be prepared to abandon virtue to defend stability
-my prof thought I’d be a JS Mill fan; but I reacted with far greater fascination (if not far greater sympathy) to Machiavelli. Go figure.
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651)
Hobbes makes the case for absolute power, to prevent life from being “nasty, brutish and short”
The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine (1791)
A hugely influential defence of the French revolution, which points out the illegitimacy of governments that do not defend the rights of citizens
Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman (1988)
Chomsky argues that corporate media present a distorted picture of the world, so as to maximise their profits

I also noted The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm (1990): An examination of the moral dilemmas at the heart of the journalist’s trade. Not specifically on my TBR list, but Janet Malcolm in general is; maybe I should move this one up the list. My TBR reads from her, already, are The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and (I already have my copy of this one) Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice.

I also just wanted to note the range of dates covered by this list: pretty wide! From
The Art of War by Sun Tzu (c500 BC)
A study of warfare that stresses the importance of positioning and the ability to react to changing circumstances
to
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (2008)
A vibrant first history of the ongoing social media revolution

Something else I really appreciated about the Guardian’s list is that they have invited debate. No list will ever be final or uncontroversial, as we know! I’m not going to be so ambitious as to start my own list of 100 nonfiction books; I’m overwhelmed enough by my own list of 100, which is of course still incomplete. (Hey, my life is incomplete. As are all of ours.) But I’m sure it is and will be a fascinating debate. Are there any you think really shouldn’t be on this list? And I’m sure there are lots that we could think of that should be… Just looking back at my aforementioned list of 100 for nonfiction, I find quite a few. Here comes more list-making: I’ve reproduced them for you here, with a few words about each. I’m not sure they all belong on the all-time list, for various reasons…

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot: I think this is an awfully important book. The only argument for is exclusion is its recent publication. I always wonder if a book’s importance will last the test of time. Although in this case I’m rather sure it will, I wouldn’t be against a sort of mandatory waiting period, if you follow.

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor: This one might be extra important to me personally, because of the insight it allowed me into my own recovery from a brain injury. Maybe not so universally applicable; but still, I’d say, worth consideration.

Pretty Good for a Girl by Leslie Heywood: The author’s story of being a young female athlete and battling the problems common to that demographic, including eating & exercise disorders and an unhealthy relationship with an older coach. Another important book. Although it sounds like a niche subject, I think the issues are large ones: the struggles of being female in a male world.

Ten Points by Bill Strickland: Okay, this is a little more niche; it’s a cycling book. But really, it’s the author’s story about being a bike racer, struggling to win, as metaphor for trying to overcome the abuse he was victim to as a child, and trying to not repeat the cycle.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley: How is this not one of the greatest and most important nonfiction books of all time? Really.

The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power by Travis Hugh Culley: Totally niche. Artistic little vignettes of life as a bike messenger in Chicago, enchanting to me as a (now former) bike messenger.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich: I recognize that the political leaning of this one may make it less universally appealing, but I thought there were some important points made. I fear its acceptance is harmed by the author’s obvious slant, which is a shame because I think her conclusions are true regardless of politics.

The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court by Peter Irons: I read this in college and found it instructive. It is, as the title says, 16 stories about regular people making history. A very readable way to learn judicial history.

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey: Nature, solitude, beauty. Poetic.

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck: Steinbeck’s travels in Americana with his dog. Maybe a bit too concentrated on US culture for the Guardian’s list? But there are others on their list that focus on certain countries or cultures.

Dethroning the King by Julie Macintosh: Again, a recent publication, so there’s that. But wow – an international tale of business, culture, hubris, and beer. C’mon.

Fire Season by Philip Connors: 2011 publication. However! This might be my favorite book of 2011 so far, and it tells so many important and poignant stories of history, public policy, nature, beauty, solitude, relationships… and does it so beautifully. I’m still raving about this book.

Okay, well. I don’t have any major arguments with the Guardian’s list, but I do submit Malcolm X’s Autobiography, and really Henrietta Lacks as well. What do YOU think they left off?

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did not finish: The Rocky Road to Romance by Janet Evanovich (audio)

Posted on June 15, 2011 by pagesofjulia

To be fair, I barely even started this audiobook. I was trying to expand my horizons a little bit. I’ve never read anything by Janet Evanovich! –shocking, to many readers of genre pop fiction, as she’s one of the bestselling romance/mystery crossover authors out there. She’s also one of the big names here in my little library. But then again, not so shocking when you consider I’m not a reader of romance, really. I am a huge fan of mystery novels, but hers are known to be cozy, funny, romantic/sexy mysteries, which isn’t my style. But, so. I wanted to broaden my reading world and thought I’d pick up one of hers, just to know what I’m missing.

I’ll give JE the benefit of the doubt and assume I picked the wrong one. To be fair, this is a romance – not mystery – title, and not one of her more popular, just judging from circular numbers in my library.

I didn’t even make it through one cd. What I did get was the beginning of the sparks flying between Daisy – cute, hard-working, quirky – and Steve, boss at one of her several jobs and obligatorily hunky, mysterious, and distant. The dialog and general writing was just so stilted, and the characters so pat, that I couldn’t take it. I was eye-rolling so hard I couldn’t watch the road, which was a hazard, so I hit eject. The narrator, C.J. Critt, didn’t help matters any, but I don’t think I should blame her necessarily; she was playing along with the book.

I’m being completely honest about the fact that I couldn’t stand this audiobook. But note the qualifications: not my genre or my style; and not Evanovich’s star character (that would be Stephanie Plum, of the numbered series starting with One for the Money).

I think I’m still determined to give JE a try, but will aim for a Stephanie Plum mystery next time for sure. (Thanks to my mother, with whom I mostly share reading tastes, and who enjoyed One for the Money although not outrageously much.) This one made me grit my teeth.

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