The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Many years ago, I took a reluctant trip to Gettysburg National Park. It was a reluctant trip because I didn't consider myself a Civil War buff and I could think of a lot better ways to spend a day than reading a bunch of historical markers and staring at statues of men who made questionable decisions. I was a fool. By the time I had finished making a tour of the battle, using one of the audio guides you can buy in the gift shop, I was emotionally exhausted. "Seeing" the battle through the words of the people who had been there, walking some of the same paths they had taken....I'd never felt anything quite like that. This book had the same affect.

The Killer Angels puts a very human face on a singularly remarkable event in US military history. Shaara uses his source material to make a great read with true character arcs, a living and breathing setting, and most importantly, something that leaves the reader with as many questions as answers.

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The Gypsy's Curse by Harry Crews

The Gypsy's Curse by Harry Crews


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Dark, twisted, funny, imperfect ending.... everything I like in a story! This book is a perfect example of the southern-gothic sub genre, southern-grotesque. Not only is no one perfect in the world of this book, no one has a flaw too small to be examined and exploited by the other characters. Most of them, however, for all their imperfections, show a surprising amount of heart when you look beyond the surface, and that's what this book is about - going beyond appearances.

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Mania by Craig Larson

Mania by Craig Larsen


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Disclosure: I received this book for free through the Goodreads First Reads Program.

Read in the context of this being Larsen's first published work, this is pretty good book. It's a little disjointed, perhaps a little over populated with characters (mostly noticible when they conveniently disappear, as in the case of the girlfriend who's forgotten for the sake of a whirlwind trip out of town by the protagonist), and it definitely takes too long to get to anything that resembles a clue, both for the reader and the accused. However, the motive for the crime is wonderfully contemporary, the Seattle setting made my desire to see that damp but lovely piece of the US all the stronger, and Nick, the under achieving younger brother is well written with a surprising amount of depth for someone with seems intent on floating through life.

I look forward to seeing what Larson can do in the future, perhaps with a slightly tighter mystery.

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Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A mystery set in an asylum for the criminally insane during the days of shock therapy, lobotomies, and pharmaceutical LSD makes for plenty of disturbing supporting characters. A hurricane takes a classic horror setting and makes it more dangerous for the US Marshals sent to investigate an inmate/patient who's gone missing. This is a LOT of background to tell a story in front of, but Lehane does a good job of making the plot every bit as complex as his location - maybe too good of a job. The story twists, and twists, and twists some more, but that's because there's really not a lot of room for forward movement before everything becomes clear. This is a very good gothic read, but the mystery is a little weak.

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Rootabaga Stories by Carl Sandburg

Rootabaga Stories by Carl Sandburg


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a set of stories that belongs on every "read aloud" shelf, right next to all the Dr. Suess books and the Brothers Grimm and all those Little Golden Book collections. Sandburg's prose begs to be heard - reading it to yourself is loses the rhythm and alliteration and all those other poetry tricks that he was a master of. Sandberg wrote these for his children, wanting them to have fairy tales that related to their very American upbringing, and these stories do ring with commerce and expansion and industrialism, but in a way that makes them admirable traits, not something to apologize for.

The two book set I read was beautifully illustrated by Michael Hague, a perfect match of author to artist.

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The Bird Room by Chris Killen

The Bird Room by Chris Killen


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
(Discosure: I received this book for free through the Goodreads First Reads Program)

What started out as a really good dark humor story devolved into a much less complex, although definetly darker, observational narrative. Killen has written some deeply flawed characters, and as much as I love flawed characters, that's not enough to make up for a plot that ends about 2/3 of the way through the book for one of the main characters and goes absolutely nowhere for the rest of the characters. This might have made a great short story, but stretching it out to novella length brings on a lot of repetition of the character's actions and inner dialogs. Perhaps that was the point, that these people have no depth beyond what we're given, but then I have to wonder why in the beginning of the story there's so much originality in how they perceived themselves and each other. That was before the story turned into a "there's no 'there' there.

What we're given as a setting (London, or some other very large British city) shows that Killen can be economical and descriptive at the same time. My favorite line from the whole book, in fact, is more about where the story takes place rather than who it's about: A character is lamenting that she has to go to a certain store because at the other, more preferable ones, she might run into people she doesn't want to see. Despite the fact that she lives in one of the most populous, conjested cities of the world, she wishes she could live "...somewhere more anonymous,like the rainforest or the sky". Killen's characters are people who couldn't lose themselves anywhere.

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Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
As a historical, this is an interesting book. As fiction, it's an entertainingread but could have used an editor that would have prevented the author's research from interupting the story. By that, I mean, there are passages of the book meant to provide setting but read like something lifted directly from a "Daily Life In Victorian England" article. We're not reading what the character was a part of, but instead we get what the character observes, as if they too were removed by 100 years or so. Honestly, would a young woman comment on the fact that her mother had survived her child bearing years? Perhaps the ver precocious Alice of this book would - she shows remarkable observational skills when the story needs it, and then she loses them when they would require the author to take a position on what happened between the Liddel family and the man that would become known as Lewis Caroll. That is perhaps my greatest criticism of this book: If you're going to write real person fiction, have some conviction of plot! Decide what happened and tell that story. If the known facts can't don't fit your story, well, it is/ fiction. But don't dangle a question in front of your readers to keep their attention and then refuse to answer it.



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Nighrs In Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks

Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Over the years, I've had so many people recommend Nicholas Sparks books to me that I finally had to give it a go. If this book is any indication of what his others are like, I think I'll just keep waiting for the movies. That's what this book read like - a novelization of a screenplay. There's nothing that is demonstrated through dialog or actions - there's no depth. It's a fluffy, predictable tear jerker with the message that you need to live today because you don't know what tomorrow brings. Good message, but when the consequences are the same for everyone, where's the risk of ignoring them? This is extremely light reading, too light for me.

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The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Bulgakov's Satan is a trickster, rather than an angel with an axe to grind, and that alone makes this a very refreshing read. Add to that the speed at which plot threads appear, twist, weave, and then sometimes disappear altogether make this a book that challenges you to stay caught up with it, and you have something quite unlike any other book I've ever read. My only criticism, and this is the difference between 4 and 5 stars in this book, is that the middle third of the book reads a little like a collection of short stories, or maybe a serial bound together - it's episodic compared to the smooth flow of the beginning and end of the book. It's a small flaw, but in a book that's as much about pacing as it is about character, it stood out.

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Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (Audiobook read by Virginia Leishman)

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This story must be judged by the standards of the time it was written. There wasn't a lot of competition for the reader's time, that is, if a person had the time and ability to read (or access to someone who could read to them, because illiteracy or poor eyesight were a factor even for the upper classes in Defoe's time), they didn't have shelves and shelves of fiction to choose from. Long meandering stories were the 17th/18th century's version of today's television series. In that context, Moll Flanders in a damn good story. It's a woman facing every kind of obstacle a female of that era could encounter, some of her own making, some brought on by society. She starts her life over more than once, not always in a better position than the life she left behind. The first person narrative is truer to form than a lot of more current, more well regarded books, and despite the archaic vocabulary, quite funny and easy to understand.

I listened to this book rather than read it for two reasons: 1) I knew I'd never finish it if I read it; 2) Defoe would have written this knowing it was likely to be read aloud, and so I thought it would be a more authentic experience. Virginia Leishman has a lovely voice that fit the story perfectly.

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Family Dancing: Stories by David Leavitt

Family Dancing: Stories by David Leavitt


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
These are the stories behind the scenes of a Norman Rockwell painting. These are the stories of families that look so good on the surface, but what's really going on is going to cause massive scars that may never heal. Leavitt worked with the same theme: a family member who either never felt like they belonged or because of a recent event knows they won't be a part of the family much longer. All of the stories are about isolation either by choice or circumstances, and obviously, they're not happy stories. I liked all of them, but my favorite was "Dedicated" about a self-made family of three friends who are bound by their weaknesses rather than their strengths.

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Beyond Sleep by Willem Frederik Hermans

Beyond Sleep by Willem Frederik Hermans


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A short review of this book would be to say that it is a funnier, softer, and slightly less dire story than Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild or David Guterson's The Other. That doesn't mean that Alfred Issendorf's trip to the northern most part of Norway as part of a loosely formed scientific expedition is any less adventurous, simply that the plot of the pure wrongness of him making such a trip keeps the story light, even when the worst things happen. And while it's clear to the reader that the scientific discoveries Alfred wants to make and the personal discovery he needs seem unlikely to happen, this a great read about a journey, both physical and emotional.

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The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen

The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
There's no doubt that Mullen did some research for this book, because any one who has read a couple of non-fiction books about Dillinger and his ilk are going to recognize that a lot of the anecdotes that have been recorded about those men show up in this book, only it's the fictional Firefly brothers of the title who are living the events. Certainly, sometimes the real criminals get a mention, but readers of Bryan Burroughs' Public Enemies (which Mullen does acknowledge as one of his sources) will find a lot of this fiction more than vaguely familiar.

There's a bit a paranormal to this book, with characters who seem to be unable to die. This allows them to confound the reluctant FBI agent assigned to stop them as well as become mythic heroes to the general public. (Again, sound familiar, 30's true crime fans?)

A mystery thread weaves itself through the story: Who betrayed the brothers before their first death? And why? Mullen attempts to use non-linear story telling keep that secret hidden until the very end, but I think most readers will see the answers coming so far in advance they'll wonder how the brothers didn't figure it out.

Aside from its meanders into other genres, this is a decent work of historical fiction. The locations and time period are more than back ground, they have as much dimension as any of the characters, and as the Firefly brothers move through the Depression era MidWest, its where they are that is more interesting than what they're doing.

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Bloodroot by Amy Greene

Bloodroot by Amy Greene


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book brought an interesting question to my mind: Do you blame bland story telling on the writer or the character when the book is told in first person? Okay, so I only entertained the question as a way of explaining how the first part of this three sectioned book could be so engaging, so vivid, and the rest of the book almost mind numbing, even with a plot straight out of my favorite genre, Southern Gothic. Yes, it is the author's fault if four of her six characters almost ruin a great tale when they spend too much time retelling without bringing anything new to the story, develop and lose personal insight for no apparent reason other than ease of story telling, and worst of all, don't follow the beautiful rhythm set up by the first section of the book.

Greene knows her setting and that is one of the saving graces of this book. The towns and isolated cabins of Bloodroot Mountain enliven the slowest moving parts of this book. The idea of weaving together each of the characters own narratives is intriguing, and the first third of the book shows that Greene knows how to tell a good Southern Gothic story without literally telling the story.

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Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

Suttree by Cormac McCarthy


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There is a line near the end of this book that will stick with me the rest of my life. It not only describes the entire journey of this masterpiece, but it's a bit a sound bit of advice on how to get through life.

"He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him."

Such is the story of Cornelius "Buddy" Suttree, a man who cuts himself off from his family but discovers that he can't cut himself off from caring for others. The story is told the way life flows - dragging along at times, mundane details threatening to drown us (or, in the case of McCarthy's lush descriptions, immerse us), and then something happens, a flash flood of change, whether you were ready for it or not. The book is episodic, characters dropping suddenly from sight, maybe reappearing later, maybe not. Plot lines build and then dead end with limited resolution, others read like day-in-the-lifes. People are happy and joking in one moment, a few paragraphs later and things turn incredibly dark. Like real life, there's not much foreshadowing or an all knowing narrator to hint at what's to come. There's just a man, making the best of the life he's been given.

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