Venetial Betrayal by Steve Berry March 28, 2008

I’m afraid I give this a big “Eh.”

From Publishers Weekly
In bestseller Berry’s predictable third novel to feature Cotton Malone (after The Alexandria Link and The Templar Legacy), Malone takes on another villain bent on world domination, Irina Zovastina, supreme minister of the Central Asian Federation, who’s plotting to use a bioweapon to destroy Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Malone races around the globe trying to find the means to foil the minister, aided by longtime allies Cassiopeia Vitt, an enigmatic and deadly operative, and his former Justice Department boss, Stephanie Nelle. The answer may lie buried with Alexander the Great’s remains. Both the good and the bad guys let their opponents live in circumstances that make no sense except to prolong the plot, and the genuine mysteries surrounding the death of Alexander the Great receive short shrift. Despite some pedestrian prose (He shook his head. Choices.

Stone Cold by David Baldacci March 28, 2008

Two thumbs up - this is my favorite of the “Camel Club” books.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The modern-day paladins of the Camel Club are back in their third exciting adventure (after 2006’s The Collectors). Justice-seekers Milton, Caleb, Reuben and honorary member Alex Ford, a Secret Service agent, are led by feisty Oliver Stone, aka former CIA assassin John Carr. Their associate, Annabelle Conroy, is a slick con artist on the run after stealing $40 million from lunatic casino owner Jerry Bagger, who killed her mother. Oliver’s CIA past distracts him from Annabelle’s cause: his old unit, Triple 6, was responsible for the death of Raymond Solomon, branded a traitor during the Cold War, and now Solomon’s son, DHS security expert Harry Finn, is picking off Triple 6 members. Oliver could be next if Carter Gray, his former boss, reveals that John Carr isn’t really dead. Gripping, chilling and full of surprises, Baldacci’s latest reveals the anarchy that lurks under the slick facade of corrupted governments.

Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult March 28, 2008

(I often find Jodi Picoult’s books difficult to read - and this one is no exception.  I did, however, somewhat enjoy this read.)

From Publishers Weekly
Picoult’s new novel (following the acclaimed Plain Truth) is a story about rape and reputation, loosely based on The Crucible. Jack St. Bride comes to Salem Falls, N.H., after his release from prison. The former teacher and soccer coach wants to start a new life following a wrongful conviction for statutory rape. Unfortunately, Salem Falls turns out to be the wrong place to do it. He has no trouble landing a job at the local diner and winning the trust of the diner’s eccentric owner, Addie, but the rest of the town is suspicious. Things get dangerous when manipulative 17-year-old Gillian Duncan, whose father owns half the town, gets interested in Jack and tries to seduce him with Wiccan love spells. Then Gillian is assaulted in the woods, and Jack is accused of the crime. As the courtroom battle unfolds, many secrets are revealed, and Picoult’s characters are forced to confront the difference between who people are and who they say they are. The difference is considerable: despite the townspeople’s aura of virtue, by the end of the book we’re hard pressed to find any women who have never been raped or threatened, or any men who are really innocent of violence. While Picoult seems ambivalent about the power of Wiccan spells, she has no doubts about the power of sex and violence to change lives. Some of her characters, though, can be almost disturbingly forgiving. Genuinely suspenseful and at times remarkably original, this romance-mystery-morality play will gain Picoult new readers although her treatment of the aftermath of rape may also make her a few enemies.

Celebutantes by Amanda Goldberg and Ruthanna Khalighi Hopper March 28, 2008

From Publishers Weekly
Gawker.com meets Glamour in this insider’s look at Oscar week penned by L.A. junior royalty: Goldberg, producer Leonard Goldberg’s daughter, has worked for Todd Oldham; Khalighi Hopper, daughter of Dennis Hopper and Daria Halprin, produced and starred in the indie film Americano. After a disastrous turn acting and bedding her superhunk co-star, Lola Santisi, 26 and the daughter of famed director Paul Santisi, swears off actors and acting for good. But Lola agrees to be the Hollywood ambassador for Best Gay Forever designer Julian Tennant, to help get a major actress to wear one of his dresses at the Oscars. Lola woos an array of glitterari, each more self-absorbed than the next in the runup to Graydon Carter’s famed Vanity Fair bash, and competes against the ruthless Prada ambassador Adrienne Hunt for the plum actor bods. There’s up-to-the-minute star chatter and fashion name-checking throughout; wonderfully dead-on moments as Lola negotiates underlings to get on set; and a possibly fatal relapse of actor fever. The shallowness is more severe than Angelina’s neckline, but that’s the point, and it quickly becomes imperative to discover just who is going to wear Julian Tennant to the Oscars.

 Blurbs about the book:

“A terrifying comedy of Hollywood royalty: Celebutantes proves that A-list vanities are still the preserve of the very beautiful, the very brave, or the very, very silly.” –Plum Sykes, author of The Debutante Divorcee

“In Celebutantes, two daughters of Hollywood, Amanda Goldberg and Ruthanna Hopper, take us through the Oscar rituals of that mad and magical week with all the inside knowledge that they have grown up knowing.  They are remarkably adroit and witty story tellers.  Beneath the utter sophistication and gloriously natural name-dropping, there beats a very warm heart.” –Dominick Dunne

“Stylish intrigue, glamorous machinations and such juicy fun.  No one but Hollywood insiders like Amanda Goldberg and Ruthanna Hopper could tell the tale so perfectly.” –Michael Kors

“A hilarious ride through the bumpy Hollywood Hills, complete with a trillion genius nuggets of true insider dish and a silver screen ending.” –Jill Kargman, author of Momzillas

“Fashion, film stars and great fun—a young insider’s view of Hollywood!” -Anjelica Huston

“Celebutantes is a witty, incisive, under-the-sheets look at the chaos that is Oscar week.  I loved it.” –Jackie Collins

“An irreverent satire on Hollywood celebrity, delivered with a keen eye for the absurd, Celebutantes is a wise and witty page-turner.” –Arianna Huffington

“Nothing is stranger than reality and the reality of Hollywood and our celebrity obsessed culture is brilliantly captured in Celebutantes.  Amanda Goldberg and Ruthanna Hopper, both Hollywood insiders, use their wicked sense of humor and keen insight to craft a piercingly intelligent, funny and at times tragic satire of modern-day Hollywood. The authors simultaneously elevate the lives of the beautiful and the famous while also pointing out the emptiness and absurdity of contemporary values.” –Tom Ford

Pandora’s Daughter by Iris Johansen March 28, 2008

One thumb down.  Too bad!

 From Publishers Weekly
Orphaned at 15 and raised by her Uncle Phillip, the adult Megan Blair is an Atlanta pediatrician who hears terrified voices. Revelation comes when childhood friend Neal Grady, who is now a shadowy government agent, arrives to apprise Megan of her psychic powers. And to warn her: Molino-the relentless villain who killed Megan’s mother, believing her touch killed his son-is targeting Megan next. Molino thinks Megan was born to an ancient Sephardic family of psychics, and plans to force her to reveal the location of the Ledger, a book that contains the family’s secrets and finances. He then plans to kill her, if Megan, Neal and Neal’s sidekick, Jed Hartley, don’t find him first. Johansen increases the tension by alternating point of view, but two-dimensional characters, repetitious explanations and stilted dialogue make staying tuned difficult.

Dream While You’re Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg March 28, 2008

(Really enjoyed this - surprised by the ending.) 

From Publishers Weekly
A Rita Hayworth look-alike and her sister keep the home fires burning for young men going off to fight WWII in Berg’s nostalgic tale of wartime romance and family sacrifice. Hoping her boyfriend, Julian, will propose before shipping out to the Pacific, beautiful redhead Kitty Heaney discovers not only is she not engaged, but she’s enlisted as the delivery person for her sister Louise’s engagement ring from Michael, her boyfriend, who has departed for the European front. Distance makes Louise’s and Michael’s hearts grow fonder while Kitty discovers independence through her job at a bomber factory. As the months go by, Louise learns she is pregnant and Kitty meets an attractive soldier (one of many the girls encounter) at a USO dance. As the young soldiers offer a range of feelings about war from humor to anger, wonder to despair, Berg (We Are All Welcome Here; The Handmaid and the Carpenter; 2000 Oprah pick Open House) captures changing attitudes toward working women and single mothers in this sentimental celebration of a bygone era.

Happy New Year! January 2, 2008

I hope you all have had simply wonderful holidays.  I passed many fun hours with family, did much reading, and (obviously) did not do much blogging about said books.  Oops!  I did a little fun reading (Lee Child, Tami Hoag) and some great reading (The Sixteen Pleasures, Tallgrass) - I promise to write about the latter soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to share an excerpt from US News & World Report.  This magazine recently published a list of “50 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Life in 2008.”  Guess what one of the things was: READ!

Find a Book Worth Talking About

by Diane Cole

In his oh-so-ironic How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, French Prof. Pierre Bayard has made an international bestseller out of something that a new study shows Americans don’t need instruction in: not reading. At all ages, we’re reading less often and less well, according to the National Endowment for the Arts’ “To Read or Not to Read,” and the consequences sting.

Richard Robb of Mayo helped develop this ‘vision dome’ to immerse doctors in a scan, letting them travel through the insides of a heart.

More than income, social class, or education, says NEA Chairman Dana Gioia, the more you read, the greater likelihood that you will do well in school, be successful in business, and become involved in your community. The bottom line, he says: “Reading allows us to achieve more of our personal potential than almost any other activity.”

Neuroscience further backs up those contentions, says Tufts University child development Prof. Maryanne Wolfe. “Reading not only creates its own circuitry within the brain; that circuitry gives us the capacity to go beyond the text to new thoughts of our own,” says Wolfe, author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “My worry is that our children’s and our societal immersion into the ever more immediate, digital presentation format for text will short-circuit” part of that ability.

The antidote: Read on. These acclaimed books of 2007 will teach you how to…

Talk about politics by talking about history. In American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, historian Joseph Ellis recounts six critical episodes between the cusp of the Revolutionary War in 1775 and the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. By illuminating the arguments, compromises, and competing ideas of that time, Ellis provides contemporary insight into why these same issues perplex us today, in the form of partisan bickering among the government branches.

Talk about journeys you wouldn’t dare take. Combine armchair travel with time travel, add a splash of history and a large dose of adventure, and you’ll have a notion of Shadow of the Silk Road by British author Colin Thubron. Starting in Xian, China (in the midst of the 2002 SARS virus epidemic), and ending in the Turkish port once known as Antioch—the intrepid Thubron chronicles a contemporary trip, some 7,000 miles long, on the antique Silk Road trade route leading from Asia to the Mediterranean. The result: a sweeping yet unsettling portrait of lands amid political, social, and cultural upheaval.

Talk about the Bible, whatever your beliefs. Ancient commentators interpreted the Bible through the lens of tradition and faith; contemporary biblical scholars, versed in the science of archaeology, construe different meanings and intent. Where does that leave the modern reader? In How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, former Harvard Prof. James Kugel explains the arguments from both sides and in so doing brings us back to the Bible itself.

Talk about war and peace, as well as War and Peace. Ten years of teaching future soldiers at West Point taught English Prof. Elizabeth Samet how necessary books are for helping these young men and women think about their future, she writes in Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point. One favorite that comes up for discussion: Tolstoy’s War and Peace—which was also favored this year by two new translations.

Talk about loss and being lost. In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Ishmael Beah tells the harrowing tale of how civil war turned his idyllic village childhood in Sierra Leone into a nightmare life as a marauding child soldier. He gives witness to horror—and provides proof that rehabilitation is also possible. Another extraordinary memoir, Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying, records the toll Haiti’s civil war took on the author’s family, both in their native land and in their country of refuge, America.

Lottery by Patricia Wood November 19, 2007

“I am Perry Crandall and I am not retarded.”

 ”Perry Crandall has an IQ of 76, but is not retarded, as he’ll have you know: his IQ would need to be less than 75 for that, and he knows the difference even if others may not. Perry, the 32-year-old narrator of Wood’s warm-fuzzy debut, has worked at the same marine supply store for half his life and lives with his wisecracking grandmother Gram, whose gems of folk wisdom help him along.  But when Gram dies, Perry’s selfish, money-grubbing family members swoop in and swindle him out of the proceeds from the sale of her house—and then come a-knocking again when Perry wins $12 million in the Washington State Lottery.  Suddenly everyone is paying attention to Perry, but who can he trust? Even his friends from the marine supply store behave differently, and on top of everything else, Perry finds himself falling for convenience store clerk Cherry, who has problems of her own. Despite his family’s shenanigans and sinister maneuverings, Perry holds his own and discovers abilities he didn’t know he had. ” - from Publisher’s Weekly

I’m sorry to have just the quick blurb, but it’s Thanksgiving week and I wanted to get this up before I forgot!  I’m thankful for this book - it made me laugh from the belly, feel for those who are treated unkindly, and think about what it truly means to be both lucky & fortunate.

Read this book!!  Happy Reading - and Happy Thanksgiving!

The Other Mother by Gwendolen Gross November 19, 2007

While reading The Other Mother, I felt like an outsider peering in to the frontlines in the battle of THE MOMMY WARS.   The players: Eight months pregnant Amanda, a successful children’s book editor and dedicated New Yorker who picks up and moves to suburban New Jersey with her lawyer husband;  her new neighbor, Thea Caldwell, a full-time mother of three who still lives in her childhood home and who welcomes Amanda with brownies.  When the newcomers take extended shelter in the Caldwells’ basement following a damaging storm and, later, when Amanda hires Thea as nanny to her newborn, resentment, bitterness, and misunderstandings follwo.  The plot devise of these women’s feud is less compelling than their own inner demons, revealed through alternating narration.

In the end, though this book came highly recommended and is received strong reviews, I would not recommend it to many - I believe it was because I simply did not enjoy any of the characters.  It was not that I couldn’t relate to them (I can’t relate to Michelangelo, but I still enjoyed his story), I just did care for them.

So…. pick a different book up and happy reading!

The Sleeping Beauty Proposal by Sarah Strohmeyer November 13, 2007

When I was young, I read voraciously.  I read everything I could get my hands on… as long as it was an easy read, a great story, by a modern-day author, and something my Mom or Aunt Sue would label “Trash.”  (Yes, with a capital “T.”)

 My older self reddens as I admit that I was a romance-novel addict.  They were fun, quick, and easy to lose myself in their fantasty worlds of bodice-ripping rowdiness.

After reading a few “heavier” books, I’m still drawn to these chick lit books - not just romances, but mysteries.  I’m a love-to-dog-him reader of James Patterson, a huge Mary Higgins Clark fan, and noncommittal-but-always-willing-to-try anyone else with an intriguing dust jacket.

And yet, all too often these days I’m left disappointed with choices from this past favored genre.  The latest?  “The Sleeping Beauty Proposal” by Sarah Strohmeyer.  In this cute book, an admissions counselor watches her beau of four years giving an interview on TV and then proposing to the love of his life - imagine her surprise when she learns he didn’t mean her.  Our heroine of the hour decides to keep her mouth shut and enjoys being “engaged” while ex-boyfriend spends the summer and abroad.  Oh the hilarity that follows!

The plot had no holes and Ms. Strohmeyer’s heroine was comical and sweet - I don’t actually have anything bad to say about this novel.  It’s just that for me, I’m left feeling a little frustrated at myself that I wasted a few precious hours reading this instead of choosing to pick up “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” “Ireland,” or “Gone With the Wind” - all current choices on my “MUST READ” list.

It’s interesting how tastes change over time…  Happy reading!

The Agony & The Ecstasy by Irving Stone November 4, 2007

The Agony and the Ecstacy is the “biographical novel” of Michelangelo, but in addition, it is a beautiful story of the Italian Renaissance. Through Michelangelo’s eyes, the reader comes to know the Florence and Rome of his time. 

I have not previously read many biographical novels, but I imagine this must be one of the best.  Stone does a tremendous job of capturing the life of Michelangelo. Born into a family of stature that has seen better times, Michelangelo is eager to pursue a living as a sculptor. However, any work, no matter how creative or artistic, is seen as labor and of a lower class.  Michelangelo defies his father and at age 13 becomes an apprentice to a fresco painter.  His strength of character is shown through his determination to overcome the obstacles set by his family to achieve his dreams.  Michelangelo’s obsession with his work and a total lack of material wants also single him out, particularly in comparison with his peers (such as Leonardo da Vinci.)

The novel moves quickly through the events in his long life: from his work as a young teenager for Lorenzo de Medici (”Il Magnifico), to his first sculptures, to the creation of the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Cathedral.  Michelangelo’s work on the Pieta and David while still a man in his early twenties is astonishing.  It is pointed out several times in the book that sculpture such as Michelangelo created had not been attempted since the times of the ancient Greeks.  He was trained as a painter,  but Michelangelo’s true love was marble.

After the creation of the Sistine Chapel masterpiece, Michelangelo’s life becomes mired in political conflict, which causes his art to suffer. While still creating masterpieces, such as the tomb for Pope Julius II and his other fresco masterpiece, The Last Judgement, the remainder of his years are spent on fruitless tasks, such as developing ways to quarry marble, etc.

I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the arts.  Michelangelo’s private and artistic life are both fully explored and leave the reader with a greater understanding of the time period.

I also would recommend this book to anyone traveling to Italy.  Ryan & I just returned from a vacation through there; we stayed in Michelangelo’s home city of Florence and would have been content to never leave.  The streets and piazzas where Michelangelo and his peers walked were captured by Stone in true detail.  San Marco and Santa Maria Novella are extactly as Stone describes.   Seeing the statue of David and Michelangelo’s other works were all the more poignant for understanding the story behind them.

This is truly one of the best books I have ever read.  Go pick up a copy and happy reading!

Playing for Pizza by John Grisham October 9, 2007

Author John Grisham made his name and fortune writing legal thrillers such as “The Firm,” “A Time to Kill,” “The Pelican Brief,” etc. After a while, he went a different direction with short novels such as the comical “Skipping Christmas,” and the football story “Bleachers.”  In his latest, “Playing for Pizza,” Grisham returns to the short novel format with a bit of humor, a lot of football and food, and a demonstration of his love for Italy (previously shown in “The Broker.”) 

The story is familiar:  a pro athlete who has messed up so badly that he can only find a place to play the game he knows and loves in a land that is unfamiliar. Grisham’s Rick Dockery is an NFL quarterback playing American football in Italy.  Apparently, there really is an American-style football league in Italy, a land where football more commonly refers to soccer.  Italy’s “NFL” consists mostly of Italians who play for the love of the game led by salaried American coaches and a few salaried American football players. Grisham jumps into this world — as well as into the world of Italian cuisine and culture. The book is quick and fun — a snapshot of of Rick’s life in small town Italy.

I particularly enjoyed this book right now because Ryan & I leave for Italy soon.  So happy reading and CIAO!

Mad Dash by Patricia Gaffney August 27, 2007

I just finished writing about The Post-Birthday World and in that blurb, I said that there was a theme of questions and “What If’s” and no clear answers.

The theme continues with Mad Dash - but in a vastly different voice and with a very different, but satisfying, conclusion.

Two decades of marriage and one child later, Dash Bateman & her husband Andrew are finding that the opposites that once attracted them to each other are now the very same things that are keeping them apart.  Dash finds Andrew dull and tedious; Andrew finds Dash impetuous and rash. 

Rotating perspectives between the couple allows us to see how two people can interpret the same incident. 

While the ending might be just a little too perfect, the story is fun and the read a quick one.

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver August 27, 2007

from the jacket…

“Children’s book illustrator Irina McGovern enjoys a quiet and settled life in London with her partner, fellow American expatriate Lawrence Trainer, a smart, loyal, disciplined intellectual at a prestigious think tank. To their small circle of friends, their relationship is rock solid. Until the night Irina unaccountably finds herself dying to kiss another man: their old friend from South London, the stylish, extravagant, passionate top-ranking snooker player Ramsey Acton. The decision to give in to temptation will have consequences for her career, her relationships with family and friends, and perhaps most importantly the texture of her daily life.”

The subsequent chapters in this beautiful novel hinge on this one kiss - the parallel worlds that Shriver writes of answer the questions “What if she did?” and “What if she didn’t?”

This is not a moralistic tale - both men are honorable and life after either decision is not depicted in a way that a more predictable author would write.  Irina goes through each parallel life in a similar time period with many similar details; as Papinchak wrote in The Seattle Times, “replaying whole scenes with with slight changes is like listening to a symphony’s variations on a theme.” 

I love that the story shows that there are often no right or wrong choices - just different outcomes.  In addition to the beautiful story, many questions are also raised: how important is chemistry?  What role do shared values play?  How do your actions affect your family or your friends?

Please pick up this novel next time you need a good book - and don’t try too hard to figure out which was the best choice for Irina because Shriver beautifully keeps us from arriving at a clear answer.
 

1 in 4 adults say they read no books in the past year. August 21, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) — There it sits on your night stand, that book you’ve meant to read for who knows how long but haven’t yet cracked open. Tonight, as you feel its stare from beneath that teetering pile of magazines, know one thing — you are not alone.

One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and seniors were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn’t read any, the usual number read was seven.

“I just get sleepy when I read,” said Richard Bustos of Dallas, a habit with which millions of Americans can doubtless identify. Bustos, a 34-year-old project manager for a telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would rather spend time in his backyard pool.

Why do you have to choose?  I like to spend my Saturday mornings relaxing in our neighborhood pool with a book.  Granted, I have to accept splashing kids and soggy pages - but it’s free time well spent.

And get too sleepy to read?  Try don’t get enough sleep due to reading!  Back in college, I had to limit the reading I’d do for pleasure because I’d get absorbed in the story, stay up late to finish, and end up skipping class the next day.  (Sorry, Mom & Dad!)

That choice by Bustos and others is reflected in book sales, which have been flat in recent years and are expected to stay that way indefinitely. Analysts attribute the listlessness to competition from the Internet and other media, the unsteady economy and a well-established industry with limited opportunities for expansion.

After working at my Aunt Sue’s bookstore, The Book Bag, for so many years, I wanted nothing more than to run my own store - but with the flat sales referenced above and the dominance of chains like B&N and Borders, I don’t think it’s meant to be.

Friends - pick up a book!  One person at a time, one chapter at a time, we can make a difference - to these statistics and to our lives.  If you’re one of the one in four, you don’t know what amazing worlds you’re missing out on knowing.

article from CNN.com