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.

New Books!

The Leopard by Jo Nesbo
Now that winter break has arrived, and I was smart enough to have presentations the last week of school, I have a clear schedule ahead for pure, unadulterated pleasure-reading - yippee!!  The first book I finished was the follow-up book to The Snowman (written about in an earlier post).  Nesbo is a Norwegian writer who creates some creepy bad guys, flawed heroes, and twisted plot lines.  In other words, his books are page turners.  His lead homicide detective in Oslo is Harry Hole (again, not like a hole in the ground but "Hoo-lay" - sounds much more foreign and cool to say it that way regardless.)  We first find Harry in the bowels of Hong Kong, madly in love with his opium pipe, trying to escape the demons of his past.  As the beautiful young detective convinces him there's another serial killer in Sweden, Harry's addiction to murder proves stronger than his addiction to drugs, and thus...the story unfolds.  Nesbo is a master at leading his readers, and his detectives, in one direction and then twisting us all up in knots, only to find ourselves at a new junction.  The plot moves from Oslo, to the countryside, to the Congo, and back as we, the readers, continue predicting who the murderer might be.  At times the Scandinavian names can be confusing, so putting down the book, and picking it up weeks later, can be problematic.  Besides, you will want to know 'who dunnit.' There's a few stomach churning moments, so this book is not for weak stomaches, but if you like a good mystery, this is a great one.
The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian
I've read a few of Bohjalian's books before, and he tends to be a fairly eclectic writer.  Midwives was a story of a home birth gone wrong and the legal repercussions that followed, The Double Bind was a story of a mentally ill girl, a horrific rape, and the characters of The Great Gatsby, Skeletons at the Feast was a historical fiction on Germans and their lives during WWII, and The Night Strangers was a fantastical magical book on a small town in New England and a pilot trying to recover from a plane crash.  As you can see, Bohjalian doesn't seem to have a 'set' genre.  However, I have always been unable to put his books down; he has a compelling writing style, not what I'd call 'lyrical' but a very good story-teller.
His latest book, The Sandcastle Girls, while having some similarities in style, is so very different that it's hard to know where to begin.  It is the story of the Armenian genocide and begins in Aleppo, Syria in 1915.  The main characters are Armen, an Armenian engineer and Elizabeth Endicott, a Bostonian WASP.  Part historical fiction, part drama, part mystery, and part love story, it is also the story of a world gone awry, where over a million Armenians were murdered, marched through a deadly desert, raped, starved, and forgotten by a world where religious jihads were not covered 24/7 by CNN.  The stories of these women (always women and children, as the men were systematically annihilated) is difficult to read at times, heart-breaking and inspiring.  I dreamt of them at night, and could not wait each day to grab this book once again.  Read in just two days, I would say that Sandcastle Girls is Chris Bohjalian's masterpiece.  This is a book for men or women, any age (though the stories of brutality may be too raw for middle school and younger), and is a piece of history we should all know.  It is not a book I will forget any time soon.
The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

I have been waiting impatiently for Morton's newest book; her last one The Distant Hours seems to have come out years ago (okay, July 2011 - but it seems like forever).  I stumbled upon Kate Morton a couple years ago because I liked the title and cover of her first book The Forgotten Garden - rather shallow of me, but what a brilliant find.  Morton combines some of my favorite literary pieces - historical fiction, gothic mystery, a little bit of a love story, and complex characters.  I tend to get a bit obsessed with her books as she writes of days gone by in England, but always manages to weave in today's world as well.
 In The Secret Keeper, the main character Laurel is a rather well-known character actress in England today, but has some serious issues that need to be uncovered, due to the secrets of  her mother's past.  The plot line is split amongst the present day as the children gather at their mother's death bed, the Blitz in London of 1941, and Australia and the childhood of another leading character.  To say more might give things away and I'd hate to be a spoiler.  Sufficient to say, this is a fabulous "Brain-Candy" book that will not disappoint you.  And instead of the 'stage littered with bodies,' I found myself smiling and delighted as I turned the last page.  Delectable book that I absolutely could not put down.