Book Reviews
Excerpts from all the reviews published on this blog. Click the “Original Review” link for the full review. Click here for all my amazon reviews.
The Thirty Years War
by Peter H. Wilson
Original Review: July 15, 2010
Let’s compare this book to Desmond Seward’s book on the Hundred Years War. Seward covers his topic in sufficient detail in only 300 pages. That book moves quickly and is fun and interesting. But it takes Wilson eight chapters (almost 250 pages) to even get to the beginning of the Thirty Years War. And Wilson throws so many people and places at us without enough maps or family trees that trying to remember who’s who and where’s where makes the book even more frustrating. We get emperors, kings, dukes, princes, knights, bishops, generals, electors from German states, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Italy, Holland with cities, towns, provinces, principalities, protectorates and trying to keep track of who is in charge of what place and where that place is in relation to the next place is impossible or at least it was for me.
How Rome Fell
by Adrian Keith
Adrian Keith has written a detailed account of the end of the Roman Empire that makes a good argument for why the Empire fell. The book starts from the high point of the Empire in 150AD and works its way to the end of the Empire in the West in 476AD and beyond. Keith shows us how the Empire ultimately had a weak base simply because the man with the biggest army could make a claim to be Emperor. This meant that any general with a strong army could claim to be Emperor which meant that letting any general have a strong army was risky for an Emperor.
The Czechs
by Hugh Agnew
Being half Czech, I was hoping that this book would give me an interesting history of the Czech people. Unfortunately the book is far from interesting and although it does cover the history it does it in a way that can only be described as boring at best. It is apparent (at least it seems that way) that the author did not do much research into the early history of Bohemia or at least didn’t care to spend much time writing about it.
Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century
by Mike Dash
Original Review: January 6, 2010
In February, 1894, Charley Becker put on the uniform of a New York City police officer. Twenty one years later, the state of New York executed him for murder. In 1894 the NYC police department was completely corrupt. The department was designed to make it impossible for a police officer to live on his salary, forcing him to accept bribes. Officers who gave trouble to their superiors were sent to outlying parts of the city where access to bribes from gamblers, pimps, and prostitutes was hard to find. Officers who maximized their bribes and passed a percentage of the money up the line to their superiors found themselves in the best parts of the city.
Take the Cannoli
by Sarah Vowell
Original Review: November 24, 2009
Vowell takes us on a journey along the “Trail of Tears,” as she travels the same path which her Cherokee ancestors were forced to travel when they were driven from their homes by Americans. She spends a few days at the Chelsea Hotel where Sid Vicious might have killed Nancy Spungen. She heads to Hoboken to discover the town where Frank Sinatra grew up. She tells us the history of a street corner in Chicago and then explains the lessons she learned from taking band in high school and from watching the movie the “Godfather.”
Rizzo’s War
by Lou Manfredo
Original Review: November 23, 2009
As far as the story goes, nothing really happens. The detectives have a few cases but none of them are interesting, even the big one that completes the story. And the ending of that case is so contrived as to be unbelievable. And does NYC really have motorcycle gangs running through the city selling drugs and being ignored by the police? In a crime novel, the most important thing is making you care about something and then putting that something in some kind of danger. The detectives who we are supposed to care about, I assume, are never in any danger. The only character who is in danger we know virtually nothing about so it is hard to care what happens to her.
The Crying Tree
by Naseem Rakha
Original Review: August 17, 2009
But it is the last 1/3 of the book that ruins the story. If the author had simply followed through with the story without trying to add a crazy twist, this would have been a very good story. Instead she adds an absurdity to the story. I don’t want to give it away but imagine if you were reading a story about a man trapped on a 20th floor balcony in a fire. Smoke is billowing out of the windows. Will he somehow survive? Can he be rescued? Suddenly an expert on fires appears and explains that the smoke actually isn’t smoke but steam from a leaky steam pipe. But there is still nothing that can be done and the person might as well jump. And everyone agrees. Huh? That is absurd! And yet that is the kind of absurdity that happens in the story.
No Sense of Decency
by Robert Shogan
Original Review: July 22, 2009
In the Spring of 1954, Senator Joe McCarthy was one of the most feared men in Washington. In the Summer of 1954, McCarthy had lost his power and no one was afraid of him. What happened in between was the Army-McCarthy hearings and why the hearings changed everything was because they were on TV. For thirty-six days, America got to see Joe McCarthy and what they saw they didn’t like. His fall from grace in the eyes of America gave the Senate the nerve to censure him.
Doctor Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain
by Kirsten Menger-Anderson
Original Review: July 10, 2009
This book is a collection of short stories with the vague link of occurring in separate generations of one family. The author tries to show a history of quack medicine through the eyes of one family but really the link to the single family is vague at best and does nothing to make the stories better or make them more interesting. Each chapter is a separate story that has little or no relation to the prior story so they either stand alone or not. For the most part they do not.
An Arsonist’s Guide To Writer’s Homes in New England
by Brock Clarke
Original Review: June 14, 2009
The cover of my copy of this book quotes reviews from the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly that describe the book as wildly, unpredictably, and searingly funny and as absurdly hilarious. I can only assume the the authors of those reviews either didn’t read the same book as I did or have very different senses of humor. The word “hilarious” is especially over the top for this book. I will admit that I was mildly amused three or four times while reading and perhaps even laughed out loud once but that was it. But, that isn’t to say that this was a bad book. In fact, I would say that it was actually a fairly good read. It just wasn’t very funny.
Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa
by R. A. Scotti
It’s 1911. A hot summer’s day in Paris. The guard at the Louvre is asked where the Mona Lisa is by an avid fan of the painting who is working on a copy. The guard replies that he does not know, perhaps it is being photographed. A few hours later with the painting still missing, panic spreads through the Louvre as it is suddenly realized that the master work of Leonardo da Vinci has been stolen. Pablo Picasso would be questioned in the theft and a friend of his arrested. The Mona Lisa would remain missing for two years and its return would stir controversy and debate.
The Partly Cloudy Patriot
by Sarah Vowell
The essays cover various topics including trips to North Dakota to see where Teddy Roosevelt lived during his sojourn in the west, a cafeteria at the bottom of the Carlsbad Cavern, Tom Landry, Canadians, and growing up with a fraternal twin sister. Other topics include the presidential election of 2000 and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. It is these essays that seem like ancient history now and reading them makes you wonder if Ms. Vowell would feel the same way eight years after writing them. And overall, there is no theme to carry the book along. These are just random essays that Ms. Vowell wrote for various publications in the period from about 1998 to 2002. They vary in quality and, after ten years, interest. Do I really care what Ms. Vowell thought about Tom Cruise ten years ago?
Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F.
by Stefan Aust
I grew up with protests against the Vietnam War and with radical leftist organizations like the Weathermen and the RAF. The RAF were perhaps a little more mysterious because they were in far off and, at the time, divided Germany so I was always interested in them. When I discovered this book by Stefan Aust I was excited about the opportunity to read it. I was soon very disappointed. It’s not that there isn’t a lot of interesting information in the book. The problem is that the author didn’t actually go to the trouble to write a book.
The Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah Vowell
But first, this book is not about the Pilgrims or Thanksgiving. She skips ahead to after the Pilgrims have landed and discusses the other Puritans who landed north of Plymouth Rock and settled in Boston and Salem. In fact, what she is really aiming to discuss is the writing and experiences of John Winthrop, one of the key Puritans, the one who wrote about “the city on the hill” that Ronald Reagan so misunderstood. The book is about the struggles of Winthrop to control Massachusetts and his religious colony when faced with men like Roger Williams who found most of the Puritans not pure enough but still believed that the state had no business interfering in religious beliefs. Williams founded Rhode Island (after being kicked out of Massachusetts by Winthrop) on the basis of separation of Church and State at a time when disagreements about the proper indenting in the Bible could lead to wars. And if your knowledge of Anne Hutchinson doesn’t go beyond her river or parkway in the Bronx, you will be fascinated by her story.
The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror
by Beverly Gage
Original Review: April 20, 2009
Very few people recall the event. Even many of those who every day pass the pock marked wall on Wall Street have no idea what happened there on September 16, 1920. That day a horse drawn wagon full of dynamite exploded outside the J.P. Morgan building, killing 39 people and injuring hundreds, many very seriously. Until the Oklahoma City bombing, it was the deadliest terrorist bombing on American soil.
The Housekeeper and The Professor
by Yoko Ogawa
Original Review: February 1, 2009
The book is written from the point of view of a woman hired to be a housekeeper for a retired math professor. The professor was in a car accident that damaged his brain, destroying his short term memory. Every day she arrives to do her job and the professor has no memory of her ever being there before. When the professor finds out that the housekeeper is a single mom with a young son, he insists that the boy come to his house every day and even though he has no memory of the invitation, the professor is thrilled to see him each day. What brings the three together is the professor’s love of mathematics and his ability to share that love along with the love of baseball that they all share.
That Went Well: Adventures in Caring for My Sister
by Terrell Harris Dougan
Original Review: January 22, 2009
The book is really about the author and her experiences and Irene is mostly pushed to the back of the story. Even when the author is working to create a world for Irene, Irene isn’t in it very much. We read about the author’s hard work to create services for the mentally disabled but little about what effect any of this had with the relationship between her and her sister. But most of the book is about the author’s college days, or her working on a film festival, or meeting some famous person. I could easily have lived without knowing any of these things and instead learned more about her relationship with her sister.
Sweetheart
by Chelsea Cain
Original Review: January 6, 2009
A novel doesn’t have to be 100% believable but if an author is going to make the story absurd, she has to at least build up to the absurdity. In this novel the author makes no effort to make any part of the story the slightest bit believable. Right from the start we get Archie who is back on the force in spite of constantly popping pain killers. Does anyone really think a man who takes four Vicodin at a time would be trusted with a gun?
Kentucky Clay
by Katherine R. Bateman
Original Review: December 13, 2008
I got a bad feeling about this book while reading the introduction. The author tells us that she is an historian but she never was interested in her own family’s history even as her parents and grandparents tried to pass down their many stories to her. But now that she is a parent and a grandparent herself, she has decided to record her family history for her own children and grandchildren. Right away the feeling I got was that a medieval historian was writing a book about American history because she felt guilty for ignoring her family’s history. OK, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a bad book, does it?
The Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah Vowell
Original Review: December 10, 2008
Second, the text… The book in not nearly as good as Ms. Vowell’s earlier books. Her wandering through “The Brady Bunch” and “Bewitched” did not move the story along and was not particularly humorous. Her frequent allusions to the Bush administration were funnier but dated the book and would probably not be funny in a year or two. And bringing up Ron Paul will surely make many readers think, “Who?” not too long from now, if not now. Anyway, Ms. Vowell has obviously done extensive research and her book is rather interesting ignoring Marsha Brady’s broken nose.
The Good Thief
by Hannah Tinti
Original Review: December 9, 2008
There is a basis for a good story somewhere in the book. The idea of an orphan being adopted by a con-man, thief in order to help him steal is not a bad idea for a story. But this book simply fails to make anything out of the story. The writing simply lacks the excitement or even the descriptive language that could take this story somewhere. Perhaps I am not the target audience for this book but I found it a difficult struggle to get through and can not recommend it.
Islam: The Religion and the People
by Bernard Lewis and Buntzie Ellis Churchill
Original Review: November 19, 2008
Islam is one of the world’s most important religions. With more than a billion adherents in 56 sovereign nations and growing minorities in many other countries, it is important that those of us who are not followers of Islam at least understand it. This books offers a basic look at Islam and the Muslim people throughout the world. Unfortunately, it leaves many unanswered questions and answers many questions that seem trivial at best.
Sarah’s Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
Original Review: October 24, 2008
It isn’t often that I find a book that I can recommend without reservation. This is one of those books. The story is fascinating, emotional, and pulls you in. You won’t want to put it down but you will so you can think about what you have just read. You will have to remind yourself to take a breath. It will make you cry and cheer.
American Lightning
by Howard Blum
Original Review: October 14, 2008
In 1910 there were a series of explosions across the country. Some believed the bombings were the work of anarchists while others thought they were more likely caused by workers in the fight between the working class and capitalists. The bombings were destructive but bloodless until October 1, 1910 when 21 employees of the Los Angeles Times were killed when an explosion ripped through their building. But was it the work of angry workers or company owners hoping to blame the unions? Enter Billy Burns, the greatest private detective of his day.
Our Lady of Pain
by Elena Forbes
Original Review: September 13, 2008
London is a used well as a backdrop in this “noir” mystery where it is always either snowing, raining, or night time. The author creates a dark atmosphere which permeates the story and helps creates a sense of impending evil. It’s not the greatest mystery ever written but as an entertaining read it fills the requirements. If you are looking for something fast and cleverly written, then you can do a lot worse than “Our Lady of Pain”.
The Coasts of Bohemia
by Derek Sayer
Original Review: September 10, 2008
The back of the book makes the claim that the book is a “comprehensive history of the Czech people.” Unfortunately this is not true. Turn to any page and instead of reading about an event in Czech history, you will read about a sculptor or magazine editor and how they felt about some event that is never actually explained. The book is a struggle to get through if you are not already familiar with the history of Bohemia. If you don’t about the Slansky trials of the early 1950′s, don’t expect to know more after reading this book other than what books were banned. And for some unexplained reason, the author decided to end his book in 1960, just before the the reforms that led to the Velvet Revolution. I learned much more about Czech history reading “Under the Cruel Star” than I did reading this book.
Original Review: August 12, 2008
If you can get past the narration by these adult six year olds, there is an interesting story here. There is a unique humanity to the characters (other than Sol) that makes the book hard to put down. It is worth giving a try. I will add that the final section of the book was by far the best. It made me interested in finding a novel about life in Nazi Germany from the viewpoint of a child.
Dexter in the Dark
by Jeff Lindsay
Original Review: July 31, 2008
It’s sad to see such a good series descend to this level. This book was a real disappointment. It’s hard to know where to start but the overall premise of the book, that Dexter’s “Dark Passenger” is actually a supernatural possession by some kind of child of Moloch an eternal something-or-other, lacks so much believability that it ruins the entire series. What made the first two books so good was that Dexter was the sociopath trying to live in the real world. His “Dark Passenger” was simply a different part of Dexter’s personality. The success of the books was that we rooted for Dexter and his “Dark Passenger” in spite of him being a sociopath. But how can we root for some horrible monster that possesses Dexter and forces him to kill?
The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
Original Review: April 21, 2008
This is the last time that I let Gil Grissom recommend a book for me. Yes, I let a fictional character from a TV show pick a book for me to read. The story is a fairly simple and uninspired Gothic “horror” story. There are some ghosts who never really do anything and a governess who overreacts to everything. The idea that perhaps the governess is insane and this isn’t a simple horror story, in my opinion comes from the fact that it is impossible to justify reading this story without that conundrum. Besides the plot being rather pedestrian is the writing of Henry James. He uses sentences that are confused, confusing, and in many places indecipherable. At 120 pages, the book is probably 100 pages too long.
The House at Riverton
by Kate Morton
Original Review: March 24, 2008
Kate Morton has written a very entertaining novel. She cleverly intertwines the story of 98 year old Grace Bradley remembering the past and 14 year old Grace Bradley experiencing it. Morton creates characters that are interesting but at the same time their mistakes are frustrating but make them seem more human. Morton’s characters live life as a series of mistakes connected by failures to learn from them. Morton creates wonderful imagery with her writing and it is easy to see that her degree in English Literature was not wasted.
Every Day Lasts a Year
by Christopher R. Browning
Original Review: February 25, 2008
In 1986, Christopher Browning’s parents died together in a tragic car accident in NY. Among the items he inherited was a box containing letters sent from Poland, the former home of Browning’s father. At first Browning ignored the letters but at some point as his grief for his parents receded, he realized what he had found. These were letters from his aunts and uncles sent to his father during the the period from 1939 to 1942 from Poland. Since Bowning’s Polish relatives were Jews living in Nazi occupied Poland, the value to history of this correspondence became apparent. None of Browning’s relatives survived the war but they live on in these letters. Dora, who found romance in the Krakow ghetto; Klara who held on through her faith in God, Genka who saw no hope but only blackness ahead; Luisa who held her optimism through it all; as well as many others letter writers.
Original Review: February 24, 2008
Her descriptions of how the hurricane changed the geography of the places it struck, how it changed the economy of the area, and mostly how it effected the people are all well captured. By showing us through the eyes of a few witnesses, the author gives us more than just a glimpse into that terrible day. The horror of the storm is shown through the deaths of so many adults and children. Scotti’s writing is good – journalistic – if not poetic. The pictures are well chosen to help tell the story. The pictures and maps of Napatree, for example, before and after the storm shows a beach crowded with homes turned into a vacant sand dune. The maps show a barrier beach moved, breached, and destroyed.
Blood and Thunder
by Hampton Sides
Original Review: December 26, 2007
It’s hard to come up with enough superlatives to describe this book. Hampton Sides has written a book about the life of Kit Carson and the period of American history that Carson lived in that can only be described as perfect. Sides tells us not just the story of Kit Carson but also the many other fascinating characters who shaped the history of the Southwest. He keeps the story moving by concentrating on the key events of the 1840s and 1860s that led to the US conquering the West from Mexico and the battles that eventually led to the decline of the Native population.
The Echo Maker
by Richard Powers
Original Review: November 23, 2007
If you spent a week reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat while watching the Hallmark Channel, you might end up writing this novel. Mark Shluter has crashed his truck and his sister, Karin, quits her job and dumps her boyfriend to take care of him. But Mark suffered a brain injury in the accident and insists that his sister is not his sister but someone pretending to be his sister. A famous neurologist, Gerald Weber, arrives to see Mark so he can write about him in his next book. And some cranes fly through town on their way to Alaska.
Curse of the Narrows
by Laura M. MacDonald
Original Review: October 22, 2007
The book tells the story of the events leading up to the human error that caused the collision but that is only a small part of the story. By page 70, the explosion has occurred and the city lays in ruins. What follows can be divided into two stories; the story of the survivors and the story of those who came to help the people of Halifax. The same day as the explosion saw relief efforts from across Canada and the US but especially from the city of Boston which had a relief train on the way to Halifax within 12 hours of the explosion. Ms. MacDonald tells the story of relief efforts struggling through the mountains of New Brunswick in a blizzard that suddenly appeared the night of the explosion. We learn about the efforts of the Red Cross as they use the lessons they have learned from the San Francisco earthquake to quickly provide relief to Halifax.
Run
by Ann Patchett
Original Review: October 1, 2007
Ann Patchett has managed to take a potentially interesting topic and write a novel in which nothing of particular interest happens. Normally, we think of a novel as having some kind of conflict, some kind of challenge, or something that makes the main characters analyze the assumptions they have lived with until that point. But nothing like that happens in this story. The characters are confronted with a potentially challenging situation, meeting their birth mother, and they go hang out at the track, make their bed, and fall on the ice.
Under a Cruel Star
by Heda Margolius Kovaly
Original Review: September 27, 2007
The book starts with the deportation of the Jews from Prague, where Kovaly lived, to the ghetto of Lodz in Poland. She describes the horrors and the death she encountered there. She then skips ahead to the last concentration/slave labor camp she was in before the war ended. She describes how she tells the German man who runs the factory about the extermination camps, a topic with which he seems to be utterly unfamiliar. And although the part she tells us is fascinating, she leaves out much of the story that she tells him. Finally she tells us of her escape as she is being marched away from the advancing Russian armies, her return to Prague, and her rejection by all the friends she had left behind. By far this is the best part of the book.
Petain: How the Hero of France Became a Convicted Traitor and Changed the Course of History
by Charles Williams
Original Review: September 17, 2007
After reading this book, I certainly know more about the sex life of Henri-Philippe Petain then I ever expected I would. But then when an author is writing about a man who sleeps with every woman he can, including the widows of the officers that died under his command, it is a hard subject to avoid. Petain was a hero to all of France after World War I and a traitor after World War II. We can easily think of many men who died too young, John Kennedy, Will Rogers, Buddy Holly. DeGaulle suggested that Petain died too old.
The Thin Man
by Dashiell Hammett
Original Review: August 8, 2007
But the main failure of the book is in failing to do what the movie does best, make a couple of Nick and Nora. There is no Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson feel in the book. Nora mostly hangs around comforting Dorothy and keeping Mimi from smacking poor Dorothy around. When the killer is revealed and the case solved, Nora isn’t even around, she’s back at the hotel. Rarely is a movie better than the book it is based on (Jaws come to mind) but this is one book that is poor compared to the movie.
In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote
Original Review: July 21, 2007
It started with a few sentences in the back of The New York Times about a seemingly senseless murder in Kansas. Truman Capote read this brief article and decided to invent a completely new genre of writing, the non-fiction novel. This book is the result of Capote’s research with Harper Lee and moved the murders of the Clutter family from the back of The NY Times to the front of the bestseller lists.
To Kill A Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
Original Review: July 20, 2007
But beneath all this hatred is a story of love and innocence and of growing up. Growing up deep in the South during the heart of the Depression, Scout, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill learn a lesson about the hearts of men, that although there is darkness in men’s souls that there is also a brightness that can be reached.
A Right To Die
by Rex Stout
Original Review: July 11, 2007
Paul Whipple doesn’t want his son to marry outside of his race. It’s not that he doesn’t like white people, but a black man marrying a white woman in 1964 is trouble. Whipple wants Nero Wolfe to help him find a way to break up their engagement. Wolfe would normally reject job like this but he owes a debt to Whipple because of an incident that had occurred in the distant past when Whipple helped him solve a case.
The Second Confession
by Rex Stout
James Sperling’s younger daughter has expressed an interest in a young man named Louis Rony and Sperling doesn’t like him. He is convinced that Rony is a communist and to a dedicated wealthy capitalist like Sperling, being a communist is about the worst sin a man is capable of committing. He wants Wolfe to find sufficient proof so that he can get his daughter to drop Rony. Wolfe is reluctant to take the case but in the end he does, after all Sperling is willing to pay a lot of money.
And Be A Villian
by Rex Stout
Nero Wolfe needs a case and fortunately a murder occurs right on the radio for Wolfe to solve. One of the guests on the Madeline Fraser radio program has been poisoned. At first it looks like the murderer may have killed the wrong person but Wolfe isn’t so sure. So he offers the host, the station, and the sponsors (the victim was killed with poison placed in a sample of the soda of one of the sponsors) for the opportunity to hire him to solve the case and they all jump at the chance.
Fer-De-Lance
by Rex Stout
Original Review: June 25, 2007
But solving the murder is only a small part of the story. It is the narration of Archie Goodwin, the wonderful dialog, and the uniqueness of Nero Wolfe, that make this a fun story to read. There is little mystery in the actual murder but watching Wolfe crack the case and figure out how to get the evidence against the killer is pure joy.
Bag of Bones
by Stephen King
Original Review: June 12, 2007
I used to read everything Stephen King wrote. I read Carrie when it first came out in 1974 and became an instant fan. But somewhere back in the 80′s, I stopped reading his new books. I suppose that as his books grew longer and longer and my reading preferences switched to non-fiction, King was just pushed off of my reading list. But my daughter Beth enjoys a good zombie or ghost story so I thought what better author for her to read than Stephen King, one of the masters of the genre. So while Beth and I were at the bookstore picking up Salem’s Lot and Cell for Beth, I noticed this book. I don’t like to read the the summary of a book normally found on the back because I think they give away too much of the story, but I did read the reviews and they spoke of a book that was not a typical King horror story so I decided to give it a try.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer
This book is about autism, and the World Trade Center, and family, and the bombing of Dresden, and learning to live with loss, and learning to forgive. The book is about people who have been broken, broken by their experiences in a cruel world full of fear and hatred. But they learn to cope with their pain by searching for meaning in their loss. That is what Foer uses as the basis to build this amazing story.
Mayflower
by Nathaniel Philbrick
But this book is not simply about those first few years in the New World. Just one generation after the arrival of the Pilgrims, just 100 years before Lexington and Concord, the bloodiest war in the history of North America was fought. King Philip’s War saw the slaughter of 15% of the Native Americans in New England with many more sent off to the Caribbean into slavery. The Pilgrim population was also decimated (one in ten white men died) leaving the Pilgrims poorer and less able to defend themselves ultimately forcing them to ask for a Royal Governor to protect them.
Dearly Devoted Dexter
by Jeff Lindsay
Poor Dexter. All he wants to do is chop up a pedophile who has a taste for killing young boys and the whole world is scheming to keep him from his one true love, killing. The problem starts with Sergeant Doakes, a fellow officer in the Miami Police Department. Doakes has looked into Dexter’s soul and has seen something he didn’t like so he has been following poor Dexter everywhere. So Dexter has been hanging around with his girlfriend Rita, drinking beer on her couch, and playing hangman with Rita’s kids.
Darkly Dreaming Dexter
by Jeff Lindsay
It’s hard to believe that a book that makes a hero of a serial killer could be so enthralling, humorous, and enjoyable but Jeff Lindsay has suceeded in creating a sympathetic sociopath. Writing the book in the first person is ingenious as it lets us see into the mind of Dexter and allows Dexter to talk to us and show us his self-deprecating, sarcastic humor. I could like Dexter (even if he could never actually care about another person) if it wasn’t for that little character quirk of occasionally letting The Dark Passenger, as he refers to his compulsion to kill, take control and drive him to unspeakable acts of cruelty.
The Dante Club
by Matthew Pearl
Original Review: April 30, 2007
Although using historical figures in a mystery can be interesting, the problem is that since we know that none of the members of the Dante Club were murdered by a serial killer in 1865, it’s hard to create much sense of danger. Normally, an author will add additional fictional characters, make us care about them, and then put them in danger so that only the heroes of the story can save them. But Pearl doesn’t go this route, instead putting his main characters at risk but this doesn’t create any real tension. In fact, Pearl seems to realize this so the danger he places his characters in is quickly dispelled. The book starts off fairly well for the first chapter but then drags as Pearl introduces the Dante Club. A big problem is the dialog.
A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess
Original Review: March 14, 2007
You would think that it would be impossible to write a book about a 15-year old rapist/murderer and somehow have him come out as a sympathetic character. Burgess has achieved that remarkable feat in this book. The genius of it is in the use of the first person and in the use of slang to give voice to Alex. The slang also serves to make the violence almost comical as instead of kicking someone in the mouth, Alex describes giving a tolchok into the rot and knocking out a few zoobies. So even though the book is full of violence and rape, the language removes us from it in such a way that the book feels less violent than it is. Although this may seem like it would make the book hard to read, it all makes sense when read in context.
1776
by David McCullough
Original Review: March 5, 2007
Other events which occurred in that year such as the publishing of “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine and the signing of the Declaration of Independence are barely mentioned and then only in how they affected General Washington’s command. The book ultimately is a brief discussion of the siege of Boston, the fall of New York City, and the battles of Trenton and Princeton. Unfortunately, McCullough is not a very good battle historian. His descriptions of the action make it very difficult to picture how the battles were fought and he includes no diagrams or illustrations to help explain the battlefield action.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers
Original Review: February 16, 2007
Even the writing style is annoying as he writes these long, boring run on sentences that go on to discuss how he and his brother are the coolest people on the planet and how he can throw a Frisbee higher and farther than anyone which the San Francisco Chronicle thinks is the Zen of Frisbee but that I think it is just attempting to write stream of consciousness sort of like you are James Joyce but Joyce took years to write Ulysses and the paragraphs here read like they were written in an afternoon after a couple of beers while Oprah’s playing in the background and you really wish that you were back in the car driving to the nude beach because hanging out with your brother is a lot more fun than writing a book…
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World
by Mark Kurlansky
Original Review: February 8, 2007
What about the book in general? It is what is best called pop-history. Short chapters that mention a topic but go into depth on nothing is the rule. A perfect example is his discussion of the three cod wars between Great Britain and Iceland. You will find very little detail on a topic that could have been very interesting. Instead Mr. Kurlansky moves quickly through the wars apparently to keep to his sixteen-page chapter limit. We don’t even get a detailed chapter on the star of the book, the cod. The simple fact that cod is a good source of omega-3 fatty acids isn’t even mentioned.
The Worst Hard Time
by Timothy Egan
Original Review: February 4, 2007
Without the grass to hold the dried, cracked soil to the ground the dust storms started. It became the worst the man-made ecological disaster in American history. The Great Plains turned into a desert of deadly dust storms. The movie The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of one fictional family that fled the dust storms. The book, The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan tells the story of those who stayed. Egan traveled through the Plains interviewing those who lived through the Dust Bowl era and their stories as told by Egan are unforgettable. This is the story of Ike Osteen who grew up in a dugout on the prairie and lived through hundreds of dust storms. He tells of static electricity from the storms so powerful that wire fences glowed, plants died, and the shock from shaking a man’s hand could knock you over. This is the story of Jeanne Clark whose lungs are scarred from the dust pneumonia that nearly killed her when she was just a child. This is the story of Melt White whose father was a cowboy on one of the largest ranches in the world and watched the Plains turn to dust. This is story of families who stayed in the Dust Bowl simply because they were too poor to go anywhere else and refused to believe that next year would be as bad as this year.
The Great Influenza
by John M. Barry
Original Review: January 25, 2007
John M. Barry has written a fascinating account of the influenza epidemic of 1918. But the book is a lot more than just a review of the flu. Barry starts out by examining the state of the American health system at the time of the epidemic and how it reached that state. He explores the revolutionary changes to medicine that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th century and the people who led those changes. He shows us why, even today, a cure for influenza is beyond our reach, explaining in layman’s terms how the influenza virus changes to become deadly and changes again to lose that deadliness. He explains how an endemic virus can lead to an epidemic of unimagined proportions.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
by Umberto Eco
Original Review: January 8, 2007
I have often joked that I would rather read Umberto Eco’s shopping list than many of the so-called popular novels. In this book, Eco goes to prove me wrong. Eco has written a book that is a struggle to read, not because it is deep, complex, and rich but because it is an utter bore.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
Original Review: December 29, 2006
The story itself is a framework that Haddon uses to show what autism might feel like from inside the mind of an autistic person. There is a logic to the mind of Christopher and by using the first person Haddon makes Christopher a believable and understandable and sympathetic character. This makes even the common place become engrossing as we struggle with Christopher to perform the simplest of tasks. For example, buying a ticket and getting on a train becomes a page-turner as Christopher struggles with crowds and noises and smells.
Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants
by Robert Sullivan
Original Review: December 20, 2006
…Which brings up the side trips on the journey. Almost anyone in New York who has something to do with rats is a potential target for a chapter. Many of these people are not the least bit interesting and the claims they make are unsupported by any evidence but the author simply reports them as fact. His writing fails to cover any subject in any depth.
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
by Kim Edwards
Original Review: December 12, 2006
…Sometimes people try things and actually fail. But not in this book. In an interview at the back of the book, Edwards says she identified with all her characters and perhaps that is the problem. I couldn’t identify with any of them, even Caroline who seems saintly for taking Phoebe but I was left wondering how she could leave Norah thinking that her baby died?
The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold
Original Review: November 28, 2006
…I found this book hard to put down, but at the same time I found it hard to pick up. There is so much pain in this story that it is hard to endure at times. But ultimately the story is uplifting. This is a story of how love can overcome any obstacle. Sebold writes beautifully and her characters seem to come to life, even those who are no longer living. I can strongly recommend this book.
Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
by Simon Winchester
Original Review: August 4, 2005
This book is a fascinating examination of the eruption of Krakatoa. Simon Winchester gives a vivid account based on eyewitness testimony of the eruption itself and the destruction that the explosion of August 27, 1883 wrought upon the people living in Indonesia. The tales of ships trapped in pitch black ash, ships thrown miles into the jungle, waves 150 feet high sweeping people off cliffs that were thought to be safe, and skeletons found thousands of miles away on floating rafts of pumice all help to build a full sense of the horror and tragedy of that day. Almost 40,000 people died that day, most from the sea waves caused by the collapse of Krakatoa into the sea and Winchester’s writing and use of first person sources brings the events of more than 100 years ago to life.
Prime Obsession
by John Derbyshire
Original Review: September 12, 2004
Writing a book about something as obscure as the zeta function for the non-mathematician is a daunting proposition but John Derbyshire is up to the challenge. In a book on a topic like this, you expect the author to not be afraid to discuss complicated mathematics. By starting off slowly and holding our hands as he moves through the math, Derbyshire makes complex mathematical functions understandable even to someone who hasn’t looked at calculus in more than twenty years. Derbyshire breaks the book up so that the odd-numbered chapters cover mathematical details and the even-numbered chapters cover historical background of the story. So even if you do get lost in the math, you still can still follow the story which is fascinating in itself.
Random Thinking » Blog Archive » The Book Meme wrote,
[...] How many books have I read so far this year? This is easy to answer because I review every book I read so the answer is 23. You can see all the reviews here on my blog and over at my amazon profile. [...]
Link | October 8th, 2007 at 3:59 pm