NEW BOOKS!!

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
   This is an amazing non-fiction book, focusing on one of the particular slums of Mumbai.  I had heard about it for months, seen it on numerous 'must-read' lists, but just hadn't felt compelled to read it, thinking it would be far too depressing.  Ultimately, I listened to it on audible.com, therefore I'm not even going to attempt to spell out any of the names! Suffice it to say, it is not a book I will forget any time soon.  The story begins with the focus on a Muslim family of garbage collectors, with a son who is the 'king-pin' amongst the other boys, has a sickly father and a rather temperamental mother.  We also follow the story of a social climber and politician who will literally do anything to ensure her, and her daughter's, movement up the ladder.  And yes, we are introduced to a caste system that is, unfortunately, still alive and well in India, no matter how
'modern' they say they are.  We see the graft in government, the corruption in the police, the complete absence of medical care and education, and the true horror of the slums of Mumbai.  Well worth your time, though your stomach will churn in spots and your mind will want to deny that humans are treated as such.

The Paris Wife by Paula McClain
Admittedly, I am a historical buff and a fan of books based on real people.  This one is a doozy.  I had avoided McClain's book, as I'm not really much of a fan of Ernest Hemingway.  In a college lit class, I was forced to read The Sun Also Rises, never completely understanding the dynamics of the characters, or to be honest, really caring.  I finished the book wondering what all the fuss was about Hemingway.  Since then, I have studiously avoided teaching any of his works in my English classes, perhaps unfairly, perhaps not - it remains to be seen. However, the story of his life is quite fascinating, and The Paris Wife covers his first five years of writing, his marriage to a slightly older woman, and the life of the 'Lost Generation' in 1920's Paris.  I studiously avoided reading about Hemingway on Wikipedia, so I could discover for myself the interesting facts and tidbits of his life.  Most intriguing to me, was the inspiration for The Sun Also Rises - and yes, it now sits on my high school desk, waiting to be read once again (I'm hoping 30 years later, I will see the value).  Through these five years, we meet many of the 'biggies' of American literature, such as Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and my personal favorite, the drunken and crazy American couple...the Fitzgeralds.  Read in just two days, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
I had read the inside flap of this book frequently, never really that intrigued by the idea of a couple who lives out on a deserted island, keeping the lighthouse. Was I ever mistaken.  This is one of the most beautiful books I have read in a quite some time - I HIGHLY recommend it.  The story line is simple; .a baby is found in a rowboat - the couple keeps it.  Fast forward...let the drama begin.  The woman is a protected, beloved only child after her brothers are killed in WWI, while her husband is a decorated veteran, traumatized by his own wartime experiences.  Their marriage is complex and complicated by their inability to bear living children, as well as his PTSD.  The other character, however, is the lighthouse. The island itself sits between the Indian Ocean and the Southern Sea that leads to Antarctica; it is a world unto itself.  I found myself fascinated with the life of a keeper, wondering when the looming houses became automated and ended a way of life for so many.  First time author Stedman can write, seriously.  Her writing is lyrical, poignant, yet not verbose; she gets to the plot line without droning on endlessly about the scenery, yet keeps one reading as she draws out the quiet mystery and drama.  Loved loved loved this book.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
In my search, as an English teacher, for a non-narrative, non-fiction book to teach at the high school level, everyone kept referring me to a Gladwell book. He has three bestsellers - The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. After looking at the three of them, I decided perhaps his latest one would be the most high-interest for students.  However, I found it wasn't just about my students; I was hooked from page one and finished it the next day.  The story looks at the studies and statistics surrounding people and companies that succeed, exploring the idea of "what makes one successful."  Needless to say, I was shocked by some things, not by others.  For instance, our favorite line to our girls their entire childhood and still into adulthood is...Work hard and good things happen.  Outliers taught me that still holds true, though 10,000 hours seems to be the needed turning point for success.  However, so much more exists that aids in one's success...when you were born, your cultural background, and so many other things I had never even considered.  This is an engrossing, fascinating book - I highly recommend it.

Ghostman by Roger Hobbs
Early one morning last fall, I saw my friend Chuck Robinson at the gym.  Consumate bookseller and owner of literally the BEST independent bookstore to be found, we, of course, engaged in our usual conversation about our latest favorite books.  I was in awe over Yellow Bird, and he was fascinated by a new young author he had just met, as well as his first novel that Chuck literally could not put down.  His words to me were..."Someone should put this young man to work for the FBI - he knows far too much about the underworld."  Hobbs is a 23 year old young man, recent graduate of Reed College, and since it takes a couple years to the actual publishing phase...you can do the math on how young he was Ghostman.  This is a rock-n-roll, hold onto your pants, edge of your seat, and every other cliche, kind of thriller.  A 'ghostman' is a person who doesn't actually exist, living so far off the grid no one can find him.  Our hero (who knows what his real name actually is??) is a professional thief and he's got a bit of a problem on his hands, as well as a past history that plays into his current situation.  Hobbs weaves the two stories seamlessly together, creating a page-turner like no other.  As Chuck's blurb said on the back of his book..."we will be reading this young man's work for years to come."  Hobbs is the real deal and Ghostman is a legitimately awesome read.
when he wrote

NEW BOOKS!

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Remember how when we were young, we wondered how Beverly Clearly knew exactly how kids thought, acted, and played?  And how Judy Blume understood mixed-up tween emotions, and young love?  I'm convinced that John Green is a closet teenager, because he sure 'gets' high school kids.  I've read Looking for Alaska, and have Paper Towns on my 'to-read' list, but all my students have been telling me to read The Fault in Our Stars.  They were right.  It's been my SSR book at school these last couple weeks, and each day I regretted leaving it behind. Although it's listed as a YA book, it's also been on top of the New York Times bestseller list for weeks.  The main protagonist is Hazel, a high school girl who can't attend high school, a teenager who is never going to be a young woman, and a tough, sassy, realistic fighter-of-thyroid-cancer.  We know from the outset that Hazel is terminal, she's got 'mets' that just don't go away and she can't really breathe without her canula of oxygen.  She has 'normal' parents, an intriguing cancer-support group, an obsession with a book, and then...in walks Augustus Waters.  To say more, would be to give it away.  Let's just say, you will laugh, you will cry (unless your heart is made of stone), and you will never forget the story of some pretty incredible teens.

The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell
When you read the inside flap of this book, it definitely sounds intriguing...two girls left alone, 'abandoned' by their parents, living with the neighborhood pedophile who feeds them, but where have their parents really gone?  It almost sounds like a gothic mystery, as the setting is the seedy side of Glasgow and secrecy seems to permeate the girls' household and their relationships. Within the first ten pages, I just about chucked it - the woman cannot write, is all I could think.  It was just one comma splice after another - O'Donnell needs to learn what ending punctuation is, seriously.  However, I realize that's my own "English-teacher-issue" so I plowed into the story anyway, and it quickly sucked me in.  O'Donnell creates deliciously quirky characters:  Marnie, the slutty yet brilliant older sister who handles her insane life with shocking equanimity, Nelly, the asperger-ish spectacularly gorgeous but looney-tunes younger sister, the neighborhood pedophile who really isn't a pedophile but a lonely gay men who misses his dead lover, and of course, the creepy parents who loved drugs more than their kids.  Enter a wickedly rigid grandfather and you've got a delightful recipe.  It is quirky, not for people who like 'cookie-cutter' characters and plot-lines, but for those of us who like to color outside the lines, it's a wonderful book.

A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

If you like stories of Appalachia, the people, their issues, plus a little mystery, this has all those ingredients.  It is a story of a small North Carolina town, where the inhabitants have all grown up in each others' pockets, know all the family secrets, and have a hard time 'policing' their own.  It is the story of a crazy church who likes to 'test' their congregants with lil things like poisonous snakes and fire, and a young mute boy who winds up dead.  While at first, I thought the story was about finding out who killed Stump, it really isn't...it's more about scarred family ties, unhealthy love, and secrecy that kills.  Three characters narrate the story - Jess, the younger brother, Clem, the local sheriff who has his own demons, and Addie, the elderly midwife who sees what's coming but is helpless to stop it.  I often wished their personal voices were more individualistic - Jess didn't seem to talk like an eight year old boy, nor Addie like an old mountain woman - but the story is good, not great, but good.  So much 'meat' was left on the bone to explore, especially surrounding the creepy pastor, but it would probably be a good book club book just to talk about some of those issues.

Indiscretion by Charles Dubrow
At first glance, I thought...been there, done that.  I've seen the movies and read the books about the perfect couple and the husband who can't keep his pants zipped.  Heck, we've seen that story time and time again in the media, with politicians and CEO's.  However, 24 hours later, with this 388 page book finished, I could argue that point.   Each time I counted down the pages, determined to go to bed when that next chapter ends, yet I just couldn't do it.  First-time author Charles Dubrow can WRITE, yet he doesn't have an ordinary style.  He chooses a Gatsby-esque narrator, a peripheral character named Walter, and quite often he writes in a disconcerting present-tense fashion, when we all know darn good and well that Walt is telling a story of times past.  And with that, Dubrow sucks you in.   The Gatsby connections don't end with the narrators - we have the golden couple, Harry and Claire, we have the 'sinful' city of New York, the summer getaway on Long Island, and a narrator that we question whether to trust, or not. Walter does a good 'Nick Carraway', giving us tidbits of the story, as well as pithy comments about greed, love, youth, etc.  It is the story of how a 'perfect' life can unravel, and it makes us wonder...what is enough, really?  This would be a fantastic book club book, as I cannot wait to discuss it with my friend who loaned it to me (yes, she read it obsessively too).  Fair warning - lots of sex (and I mean lots) - but I didn't feel it was meant in a "Fifty Shades of Grey" kind of way, but more  purposeful in how avarice, gluttony, even selfishness can squeeze one's life into a shape never meant to be.  Shades of a Shakespearian tragedy as well, Indiscretion is a must-read.

The Given Day/Live by Night by Dennis Lehane

   While you may not have read a Dennis Lehane book yet, I bet you've seen one of the movies based on them...Gone Baby Gone or Mystic River (admittedly, two of my favorites).  Lehane usually writes of Boston, of gritty detectives, of the 'seamier' side of life.  I love his style which is tautly written, with surprising bits of humor in turn.
   His trilogy of books, however, takes a bit of a different turn.  Lehane begins with The Given Day, a thick, meaty book on an Irish-Catholic family of Boston policemen at the turn of the century.  The main character of that book is Aidan (Danny) Coughlin, the golden-haired child and son of a Boston police detective, followed by one brother who is a city attorney and the youngest boy who is merely the neglected baby of the family.  That book includes a union riot, the great molasses explosion in Boston, as well as a new young Red Sox player by the name of Babe Ruth.  I listened to it while I cleaned a newly remodeled house a few years ago and believe me, the time sped by with Lehane's wonderful story-telling and a great Irish narrator.
   His second in the series is Live by Night.  The main character this time around is Joe Coughlin, the youngest brother who grew from a teenage hooligan to a young man of rather questionable character.  The story moves from Prohibitionist and mob-ridden Boston, to the 1930's in Tampa, Florida, covering much of the history of the rise of the underworld.   Joseph is an intriguing dichotomy of a man, one who is capable of murder, but who reads every book he can get his hands on. One who can blackmail a policeman, run a brothel, and orchestrate a jail-house coup, yet also feel empathy for a religious evangelist and share a deep love with his father.  He is an intriguing, complex, and rather compelling character, who you want to strangle sometimes, yet continue to cheer for regardless of his behavior.  Lehane once agains creates a riveting historical book of family drama, crime, and passion.  While I would recommend reading The Given Day first, it is only because it is such a great book - it's not necessary whatsoever to the understanding of Live by Night.  Both are long novels, but well worth the effort.  I also appreciate the fact that the second in this series took a few years to follow the first, and is easy to see in the finely-researched and extremely well-written prose.  I look forward to the third in the years to come.

The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley

   If I hadn't had to eat, sleep, and grade essays, this book would have been finished in one day.  Due to those daily and job-related necessities, it actually took me two days to read this book.  In other words, it's a humdinger. It's also one of those books that has burned itself a bit into my memory, not because of any pretty writing, complex characters, or poetic settings, but because of the waaaay too-real possibility of its plot line.  You see, I remember the avian flu scare back about ten years ago, walking into New York city's Chinatown, seeing deserted streets and empty restaurants.  I remember the following scare of 'pig' flu in 2009, as my daughter got on a plane headed to Hong Kong, with every face covered in a surgical mask.  I also remember H1N1 back in the fall of 2009, as it decimated college campuses and schools.  I usually ignore the stories, figuring it's the media attempting to scare the public into getting their flu shots.  However, after reading The Things That Keep Us Here, I doubt I will ever hear a 'flu' report quite the same way again.
  The main character, Ann, is just like many of us busy moms, having put her life and marriage on hold to parent the two children she has left, after losing a son to SIDS, dealing with marital as well as financial problems, a bratty teenager, and a cranky neighbor.   Her soon-to-be- ex-husband is a research veterinarian (never knew there was such a job) who comes across a pond filled with thousands of dead birds.  Creepy enough, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.  As the story unfolds, we watch not just our country, but the world fall apart in the most massive pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Influenza killed over 5% of the world's population.  However, it is not just a story of disease, but a story that asks the question over and over again, what would you do if...?  Thought-provoking and well-written, it is a story of family, of loss, of hardship, of love, but mostly of choices to be made.  It would be an intriguing book club choice that would appeal to a variety of ages as well as both genders.  I highly recommend it.

The Fifth Assassin by Brad Meltzer

While in the airport, after a long weekend away, I just wanted a thriller to read on the airplane so...I quickly downloaded The Fifth Assassin by Brad Meltzer.  It looked like my type of book, filled with assassination plots, tidbits of American history, and of course, a mystery.  I was pleasantly surprised that it was a bit more than just a "Number One Best-Seller" (geez, so was Shades of Grey and I am SO never going there with a self-published book!)  Meltzer, though,  has created an intriguing character, Beecher White, who is an archivist in Washington, D.C.  He is also a member of a special lil group of people called the Culper Ring who are supposed to protect the president.  However, what if the president is rather unlikeable, unethical, and all-around unpleasant?  Aah, there's the rub.  The story throws in all kinds of historical trivia that I admittedly get a kick out of, along with background into Beecher's childhood (the typical nerdy kid with the other square pegs that don't fit).  At times, I wished I had read his first book, The Inner Circle, as they repeatedly referred to the story prior to this one which was a bit frustrating.  I will also admit, Meltzer isn't an exceptionally pretty writer - he obviously writes to have a #1 best-seller (in other words...quickly).  However, it's a decent story and if you're a fan of American history, you'll like the trivia.  Good vacation book, but poor book club choice - not enough 'meat' on the bone.

The Phantom by Jo Nesbo

Per my previous post, I am a HUGE Jo Nesbo fan (think Girl with a Dragon Tattoo and you get the general drift of his mysteries - in other words, not for the faint-hearted).  His favorite Oslo detective, Harry Hole (not 'hole' - Hoo-lay) is, for once, in a rather decent spot in life.  Working as a debt-collector for a Hong Kong gambler (think mafioso and the strong men who collect the 'dues' and that's Harry's job), no longer using opium or alcohol to dull his pain, he has made a semblance of a life in China.  However, Oleg, the son of his ex-love, finds himself in an Oslo prison for a drug murder and it's up to Harry to get him out.  Sounds pretty straight forward and simple, doesn't it, like every other tradebook mystery ever written?  However, Nesbo is never a cookie-cutter writer; he's always got twists and turns that a reader never sees coming and The Phantom is no exception.  I've read three of his Harry Hole books now, and I must say, this one is my favorite.  More than any other book, it explores Harry's many demons, his inability to form relationships, his desire to be 'normal,' and the implicit yet completely atypical heroism of this uniquely intriguing detective.  I'm still wondering about the ending, hoping and praying for yet another book in this series.  If you like a gritty, well-written mystery series, I would highly recommend Jo Nesbo (but not if you live alone and read at night...creepy at times).

Once We Were Brothers by Ronald Balson

   Besides being a murder mystery junkie, I am also a dedicated lover of Holocaust literature.  I find the stories of human nature both disturbing and redemptive, giving me glimpses into the human heart and soul (both good and evil) that remind me of what is needed, and not, in the world today.  I constantly tell my students "the more you read, the smarter you get;" I find books about WWII and the victims of this terrible time period to be not only instructive, but typically unforgettable.

   In Once We Were Brothers, I found absolutely everything necessary to a page-turning, deliciously good book.  We meet the main character, an elderly Jewish man named Ben Solomon, who is accused of the attempted murder of Chicago's most respected, and financially generous philanthropist, Eliot Rosenzweig.  Of course, Ben needs a good lawyer, and who better but a down-on-her luck, doer-of-good-deeds woman like Catherine Lockhart?  Before she defends him, however, Ben insists on telling her his story, every familial, heart-breaking, historical detail. Catherine wonders...is this long story necessary?  However, Ben is a mesmerizing story teller, and as he relates his life story, we, like Catherine, are pulled into his world of a small Jewish town in Poland, into the lives of the Solomon family and the 'son' they foster and we too begin to wonder...is Eliot Rosenzweig who he says he is?  Neither my daughter nor I could put this book down, reading it in just two days.  If you like history, if you like love, redemption, victory against all odds, evil doings, and seekers of justice, you will love Once We Were Brothers.  I did.