Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Finished this less than 24 hours ago and the only thing that is sticking to my mind is that the singer in the first story looked and sounded like a character James Gandolfini would play. The plots are nothing new (non existent in Malvern Hills, and the dialog is labored to the point breaking at some point in each story. By the end, I felt like I was reading something Ishiguro thrown away rather than something ready to be published. To his credit, however, even garbage Ishiguro is readable if you want something fast and easy.



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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Somehow, despite the popularity of this book, I managed to escape ever having read a review or a detailed description. All I knew was that it was about a girl who has to survive a "The Most Dangerous Game" type of situation. Pretty strong stuff for YA fiction, and it turns out that the author didn't pull back from the dark side of such a plot. People must die, even good people. (No, I'm not marking this as a spoiler. Katniss, our heroine, makes that clear very early in the book.) Within the confines of the world Collins has built for the actual Hunger Games, life is not fair. The line between the haves and the have-not is drawn by proximity to the Capitol district of a post civil war North America, with those living the farthest away geographically also living the farthest away economically. That carries through to the participants in the Games, something invented supposedly to remind the various districts the repercussions of fighting against....and there is where the story starts to fall apart for me. There's no solid back story for the how and why North America remains a totalitarian state. What happened that obliterated that basic primal instinct of protecting the young? Why would people continue to have children in the outlying districts? Sure, there will always be people who go along to get along, but there will always also be people, people who don't even have children, who would stand up and say, "No, not the children". How did the citizens of Panem come to the point that they not only allowed their children to be killed year after year, but it becomes a popular entertainment if your child isn't included? Also, it doesn't make sense for a government to allow the second and third strongest competitors to be killed. In a society so interested in strength and beauty, wouldn't they be saved for breeding? I can imagine there are ways this could happen, but I want to know why they happened in this story.



I'm going to keep going with the series, partially because Collins has invented an intriguing character with Kstniss, but all because I want to see where she goes with a society that can't last the way it's been portrayed so far.



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Mentor by Tom Grimes

Mentor by Tom Grimes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This a memoir about that awful, wonderful, scary, magical journey that every author wants to take, the one that puts them in a place that when someone says "What do you do?" they can answer, "I'm a writer" without any fear of a followup question. Tom Grimes put in the hours, he did the revisions, he wrote and wrote and wrote. But still, it was a combination of good timing and talent that got him published. That's not great to hear if you're trying to make it as a published author, but at least Grimes is honest. Frank Conroy liked Grimes' work and was in a position to make things happen for him. Grimes never asks himself the question, "What if Frank had never saw my application?", something that could have happened very easily given the process to get into the Iowa Writer's Workshop. This is not a story about failure, so why look at what might have been? It's the story of more than getting by with a little help from a friend, it's about about one friend helping anouther's dreams come true.



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A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Really good historical, pretty good fiction. The blurbs on the back promised more than was delivered (I know, I should know better than to believe those), but there was a gothic tone to most of the story that made up for the weak tension. The predictable love triangle was saved by all of the characters being deliciously flawed.

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The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I really enjoyed the first third of this book, it had all the makings of a "I couldn't put it down". Unfortunately, the first third is the book, it doesn't expand on what it a fascinating plot device. What if someone could taste the emotions of the people who made their food? What if that person was a child? How would it change how that child sees not only their family, but the world around them? There would be good and bad consequences, right? In Bender's book, however, there seem to be no good consequences, and heidn't change her one bit. Her ability became nothing more than a contrivance to explore an unhappy family. What a waste of a good idea!

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The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


The setting and the historical aspect were interesting and informative. Perhaps a little too informative? There were no obvious information dumps, but there were times, especially when the story shifts to the weaver's portion of the story, that I felt I was reading a book entitled "Guilds in the Medieval Village" and not the fictionalized story of how a very famous tapestry came to be. As the the characters, when the're really all quite superficial and each only has one purpose in the story. What you learn about them at their introduction is all you'll ever need to know about them. My last quibble is the epilogue. If most of the characters are fictional, why tell their "what happened to" story in that way? Either it's a part of this story, or write another book.

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Juneteenth: A Novel by Ralph Ellison

Juneteenth: A Novel by Ralph Ellison

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


How do you judge a book that was unfinished at the time it was taken over by the editor? A book that was 40 years in the making, likely to have been published as three books if the author had finished it before he passed away? Do you judge it as a work in progress, a sketch book piece from the creaters of one of Western Literatures masterpieces? After all, Elisson never handed this book to his publisher and said "It is done". It seems unfair to judge it as a finished work bearing Ellison's name, but on the other hand, he's dead and probably doesn't care. The book IS published, it is promoted as a completed novel by the people who are making money from it (Ellison's estate as well as the publisher), so it should be held up to whatever standards the reader uses to judge other, more traditionally published books. In that case, I say that Juneteenth: A Novel, while no where near the glory of Invisible Man, is not a bad book. As character driven stories go, it's got the makings of something truly fascinating. Sen. Adam Sundraider's orgin story as Bliss, a boy raised to be a white preacher in the southern Black tradition by the charismatic Reverend Hickman, is not only a lesson in a history that could have been, it's good reading. However, as Bliss/Sunraider grows older, his trauma induced memories grow weaker. It's not that he stop remembering, he just doesn't remember things is a form that makes for good reading. Hickman disappears from the narrative for two long to explain why he was so important in the beginning. You can definitely spot that there where two books plotted at the time Ellison died, and Callahan's editing can't fill the holes between them.

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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, narrated by Simon Vance

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


An amazingly good mystery that takes the time to wrap up ALL the loose ends. My only quibble is that the clue that breaks the leading mystery could have been discovered sooner if not for a very obvious question that the investigator should have asked much earlier in the investigation. Larsson knows what to tell, what to show, and what to leave out, making for a story that moves along quickly, despite so much ground being covered. His characters are interesting and realistic, despite the heavy objectification of the females.

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Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I wanted to like this more. I know I'm supposed to like this more. However, clever does not equal funny, in my opinion, and you can see this book trying to be clever. Sure, the characters have some great lines, but in a story, should you be able to see those lines coming and groan when they arrive? As a historical fiction, it's good on the history side. The idea of two men running away from the French Revolution to post Revolution America is a good set up for comparing cultures and politics. That the two men come from two different backgrounds adds some depth. But the characters are so contrived to show off those backgrounds that I couldn't see them with any sense of realism. They're farcical in a realistic setting, and that's not a good read.

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The Secret Miracle, edited by Daniel Alarcon

The Secret Miracle by Daniel Alarcón

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This is as much a book for fans of writing as it is a book for aspiring authors. A series of questions are posed to a large (unwieldy if you don't recognize most of the names) of published authors and their answers are are given. Either some of the authors didn't answer all the questions or their answers didn't make the cut, because every author doesn't answer every question. That must be were the editing came in, I guess. This is a book about the personal habits and opinions of some writers - that's it. They all have different approaches to their craft, so in the end, this is a book that reassures that there is more than one way to finish a book.
As a reader, I found it interesting to learn a little something about authors whose work I have admired and those I haven't. Strangely enough, there were no surprises. Chabon is an arrogant word slinger and Colm Tóibín is a man who works for a living.

If you're looking for a book about the grind of writing, I'd recommend Steven King's "On Writing". King is in this book, but his nuts and bolts "put your butt in the chair" method is lost among all the artistic self-hype.

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The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell

The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Cornwell's take on the Arthurian legend is both violent and introspective. Of course there are battles: big battles, small skirmishes, fights between two men to settle disputes, fights between entire kingdoms to settle a slight. And Cornwell knows how to write battles so that the individual cost isn't lost in the description of the vast landscapes. But he also knows how to tell the story of what is going on inside the characters heads, why they fight or don't fight, and that there are emotions beyond greed that once turned the course of history. He approaches Arthur as someone who probably was a real man in some context, that all legend has its roots in a truth of some sort, but beyond borrowing a few key players of the legend and a very broad nod at the setting, this is his take on a war lord that was a good, if flawed, man, and the people he surrounded himself with. Cornwell also brings religion into the story more than most re-tellers of this legend, and the way he plays Paganism and the new upstart Christianity against each other is not only educational, it's amusing.

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Hypothermia: A Thriller by Arnaldur Indriðason

Hypothermia: A Thriller by Arnaldur Indriðason

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A basic procedural made more interesting in that none of the cases being investigated by missing persons detective Erlendur are "on the books" investigations. This is a realistic investigation: it's solved through dogged police work. That doesn't make for a flashy story, but it does make the heavy amount of coincidence believable in the end. The setting was entirely new to me, and I liked reading a book that was written as if I'd be familiar with the place. No heavy cultural or geographic information dumps, it was immersion from the very beginning.

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The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice by Laurel Corona

The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice by Laurel Corona

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I'm taking away a whole star for using Vivaldi's name in the title when he's only a reoccurring supporting character in the story. The theme of the story, how art can shape lives as much as lives shape art, is shown through the lives of two sisters, orphaned as infants and raised within the very interesting patronage system that made Venice the art center that it once was. As a romance, there's a distinct lack of any kind of passion, but the setting, as a HF, is pretty well done. There's a sense of receptiveness with the descriptive passages, a problem when your entire story takes place in what was a very insular, small town kind of city. I had the feeling that the idea for the story came first and that Corona invented characters to populate it - they weren't nearly as dimensional as the orphanage, casas, and of course, this being Venice, the canals.

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Dark Arrows Great Stories of Revenge Edited by Alberto Manguel

Dark Arrows Great Stories of Revenge by Alberto Manguel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The important thing to keep in mind when reading this collection is that the subtitle is "Great Stories of Revenge", not Stories of Great Revenge. As Manguel points out in his introduction, ...."there are many different types of revenge...", and it soon becomes apparent that what one culture calls revenge, I might call justice. A few of the stories go to the darker extremes, such as Henrik Von Kleist's "The Foundling" (so over the top, you'll think it was written by Alexadre Dumas); and August Derketh's "Miss Epperson" where the crime goes on and on but the retribution is swift. All of the writing is good (even the Faulkner story that I had to force myself to read), and this is a great way to get a taste of the darker side of some of the world's better and lesser known authors.

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The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Short review: loved the alternate history setting enough to slog through a rambling parody of a mystery. No, I don't think it was meant to be a parody, it simply read like one to me.

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Break by Hannah Moskowitz

Break by Hannah Moskowitz

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Taking the author's age (16 when this was written), this would be a strong 4 star rating. Also, the first three quarters of the book, regardless of how young the author was, would earn 4 stars. But it's a grown-up, read the whole book world when you publish, so there you have it - 3 stars.

Moskowitz does a beautiful slow reveal of the screwed up life that Jonah has partially been given and partially created for himself. It's a coming of age story, in that unless Jonah learns what he can and can not control, he's not going to make it alive. As this is something that a lot of adults never figure out, there is a real sense of danger of how far things will go, not only with Jonah's personal demons, but also in how he deals with the family and friends that his instincts tell him the truth about but his heart isn't ready to believe.

The story changes speed, unfortunately, when it starts to build for a climax rather than an ending. Yes, it makes sense that someone who's been doing horrible self destructive things would do something even more self destructive when pushed to his limits, but Jonah's never shown the least bit of impetuosity in his actions. He always put the needs of others first - that's how he got to where he ended up. If there was something that caused that sudden major personality change, I missed it.

But up until the change up of the finish, this was a very good book.

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Bysantium by Stephen R. Lawhead

Byzantium by Stephen R. Lawhead

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


3 1/2 stars, actually.

Three distinct 9th Century settings - an Abbey in Ireland, a Viking settlement in Scandanavia, and the cities and deserts surrounding Busantium, now known as Istanbul - make for a LOT of interesting historical fun and facts. The reader goes on a journey of discovery with Aiden, a young monk who starts out as part of pilgrimage to deliver a gift to the Emperor Basil. Along the way he's captured, the rest of the monks are presumed dead, he becomes a slave and is traded and loaned out as many times as an epic requires, and runs into enough intrigue to keep his classically educated intellect alive and kicking. The book is a fun read, in a swashbuckling/religious politics mash up sort of way. I'm not sure the plot needed to be quite so, well, byzantine, but with the title what it is, I can't say I wasn't warned.

The one thing that kept me from really liking the book was the portrayal of the Barbarians. Were they really so Hagar the Horrible? I understand cultural differences, but at times they verged on comic relief. Barbarians yes, buffoons probably not.

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City of Thieves by David Bennioff, Audiobook narrated by Ron Perlman

City of Thieves by David Benioff

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A coming of age historical fiction set during the siege of Leningrad (late 1941). Lev, the young man (who we know lives through his ordeal because the story is framed as him telling the story as an oral history to his grandson), is arrested by the Russian NKVD for looting, but instead of being executed, he's teamed up with diserter Kolya to achieve what would seem to be impossible at that point in time: find one dozen eggs to be used for the Colonel's daughter's wedding cake. During their quest, they meet, work with and against the best and worst of a city trying to survive. Kolya is the eternal optimist, perhaps a too perfect of match for Lev's naive feeling of eternal doom. When a pretty young sharpshooter is introduced to the story, the focus of the story takes an unfortunate (but great for a Benioff screenplay) turn from survival to falling in love, but in the end, every thing's pretty much what you'd been expecting. There are no surprise twists, just a good, basic war time story.

As a narrator, Ron Perlman is an actor. What that means is that when he's doing dialog, it's an engrossing story. When he's reading actual narrative, his voice is flat and dull. That makes the beginning of the book very hard to get through, and it's what makes this a three star rather than a four star book.

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Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life

Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life by Thich Nhat Hanh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A good book for those looking to learn how the Buddhist practice of living in this moment can be used to improve and possibly reduce bad eating habits. Some principals of Buddhism are introduced when they can be applied towards living a more healthy physical life, and very simple meditations are given to use to help one get through the smooth and the rough parts of the day. On the nutritional side, there's nothing new or ground breaking, but what is there is very well explained, especially when discussing how what we eat effects us on a chemical level.

If you've read any of Thich Nhat Hanh's writings before, you'll know that the man can see a positive way out of any problem. That's not quite the middle path of Buddhism, but it's certainly easier to grasp than the "life is suffering" truth. It's not that he sugar coats how hard it is to learn new habits and break the code, it's that he has faith that everyone can, and that belief is contagious, even on the written page.

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Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
As a historical fiction, this is a great book. Guterson knows his setting and he put some very interesting characters in a very interesting time period. There's no information dump going on here - everything you need to know about life on a NW Pacific Island in the 40's and 50's, including what it was like to be a Japanese immigrant or first generation Japanese-American is revealed naturally through the story telling process. The internment camps, as awful as they are, don't bring the story to a dead stop as so many historical fiction writers would allow them to do. As I said, this is great historical fiction.

However, it's also a mystery. Or at least we're supposed to believe there's a mystery. The problem is, anyone who'd read a fair share of courtroom mysteries (or watched at least one season of Law & Order) knows that if it's called a mystery, then obviously the first person accused probably didn't do it. Otherwise, where's the mystery? Guterson tries to build suspense by alternating between the courtroom scenes and everything that lead up to them, but honestly, if an author has to tell a story in non-linear style to keep the reader interested, he probably didn't have a strong enough story.

My rating break down would be two stars for mystery, four for historical fiction.

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