Bobcat and Other Stories

I am behind in blogging about great books.  It  may because I've been learning to love short stories, courtesy of Rebecca Lee.  She wrote Bobcat and Other Stories, and I learned about it on a twitter feed from Algonquin Books.  Here are some of the tweets that caught my attention:

"it's the book pulling me from my reading slump..."

"highly imaginative stories"

"just witty and lyrical prose that I found so memorable and strong"

"am forever grateful a story like Fialta exists"

I don't know that I can do better than some of those quotes, because her stories defy easy characterization.  I can only say that "imaginative" is a word not up to the task - her stories draw you into somewhat strange, even bizarre, stories and characters that feel completely real and possible.  And the range is great - she can even switch first person from male to female without a misstep.

I loved this book, and can't wait until she writes more.  In fact I reread her stories immediately after finishing them.  Can't remember ever doing that right away.

Meanwhile I have moved on to Alice Munro and will write more on that later.  For now I can say that Rebecca's stories are far more diverse than Alice's.  Alice is writing about a particular place and a particular period - beautiful but I think I am starting to understand her.  Rebecca is out there...no idea where she pulls those stories from...and I like being surprised by that.

The Third Son

When in doubt about a book I'm thinking about reading, if it's an Algonquin title I'll give it the benefit.  I don't know what their mission is as a book publisher but I really should see if I can find it.  They have such original stories - from authors I might not find through the usual channels.

Julie Wu's book "The Third Son" was set in Taiwan - a country I know little about - but why don't I know more?  Maybe this is one of the reasons she wrote this book.  It was set in the 1940s (mostly) when Taiwanese rule changed - seemingly randomly - and with more bad news coming with each political party or country's domination.  It's just now occurring to me that this was also the story of the third son - Saburo or Chia-lin (depending on the political ramifications).  His family had an absurdly hostile way of favoring the first son in the family - not only favoring him, but withholding, food, love and kindness towards the third son.  Seemingly randomly - and with more bad news coming at each life event.

The writing was a little hard to follow - a bit stilted - but I got the feeling this was intentional as the writing was from Saburo's perspective.  He lived in multiple worlds within his family and community, and would later live in multiple places.

Yet he found love - he found resolve - and he found his own way.  I liked it - glad I read it.

Adoption and Romance

I'm really not sure how my Amazon recommends and collected "books to read" notes landed me on these two titles in the past week, but I had a good week of escapist reading.  Good enough to hold my attention, serious enough to make me think the books were worthy - but really they were romance novels and just kind of fun to read.

The first book I read caught my attention because it was pretty clear that it was going to be about a woman that found her daughter she had given up for adoption and I was curious about the topic.  My Aunt Sharon searched for her birth son and has been reunited for several years so I thought it would be an interesting read.  The other plot line involves her first love and the father of the baby - I won't say more :)

I think the cover art on this book is completely wrong.  Maybe there's a beach scene because it's summer reading?  This book is also about adoption - and a mystery surrounding a photograph taken when the woman was a child - and also a romance!  But I don't recall any scene in the book being set at a beach - although they are from California.  So anyway don't judge this book by it's cover.

This is the description of the book from GoodReads:

"While preparing for her wedding, Julia DeMarco comes across a famous photograph of a little girl in front of a Russian orphanage-and sees her own eyes staring back at her. But Julia is not an orphan, nor was she adopted. She knows where she comes from-or does she? Suddenly, the people she has loved and trusted are tainted by suspicion. The one person who is willing to help her is reckless photographer Alex Manning, who will journey with her toward the dangerous truth-while trying to hide a secret of his own."

Doesn't that sound like an interesting plot?  I liked it and thought it was perfect summer romance / suspense plus the adoption plot made for my weekly theme.

Willa Cather

In an earlier post I mentioned my neighbor Sher.  We had a short-lived book club - just three people - until her husband was transferred to Issaquah.  The first book we read was her suggestion - Willa Cather's My Antonia - a book that had been on a list of hers for a long time and she wanted to finally read it.

I loved that book - it was beautiful.  The Professor's House is another of her novels, and like Sher, it has been on my Amazon wish list for a while and I finally decided to read it.

I think when I read books that the quality of the prose is the most important thing to me - in reflecting on books I love the story is important, but it's secondary to the prose.  When an author gets both things right it's such a gift to read their work. 

The Professor's House is a bit disjointed - in fact when I read the last page I didn't know it was finished.  I was on my iPad and flipped to the next page and it asked for a book review.  I did that twice I was so surprised.  It's not a bad ending it just didn't feel finished.  So I will say that the story is not as good as the prose, but parts of the story are really really well done.  I went online to read what others said about the story and the best description I found was an analogy of the three distinct parts of the book:  they're like a turquoise bracelet, with the middle the beautiful centerpiece joined by the silver on either end.

I guess I should provide some plot summary - the book is about a professor in his late 50s who achieved some success and his family convinces him to build a new house.  He doesn't want to move, so he keeps renting his old house so he can work in his familiar study, and the first part of the book is about how life has moved on for the rest of his family and he wants it to stay the same.  (sort of - forgive the brevity)  We learn about all the members of his family and the conflicts between them.

The second part of the book is the story of Tom Outland - a former student who became friends of the family and then died in the war.  This is the "turquoise" of the story - a wonderful account of Tom's younger life and his discovery of a cliff dwelling community in the southwest.  The last part of the book is about the professor himself.  It's the weakest part of the story, but Cather writes so beautifully it's still very enjoyable to read.

So my advice on Willa Cather is to read My Antonia first.  If you love it, you will want to read The Professor's House.  Also I thought it was cool that the professor's house had a view of Lake Michigan.  My favorite body of water.

Sense of an Ending

This is not a long book, I read it in two settings - although really I spent more time with it but do not recommend trying to read it at the end of the day.  You want to be wide awake for this one.  I liked the beginning setup of friendships made at school, and it was clear this would frame the book.  Having just returned from a weekend reunion with my dearest college friends this struck a chord with me.

I just love and treasure writers who know how to write!  The story was interesting but the writing was amazing.  Julian Barnes sets a mood that is impossible to avoid - even if you wanted to, which I didn't.  It was enigmatic and melancholy - intelligent and plain spoken - the perspective is from Tony Webster, the main character, and he tries to be honest and truthful with his life, even when it's difficult to look back and remember what actually must have happened.

A lot has been written about the ending, and I had to reread it myself to make sure I understood.  In any case, I am so glad I spent time with this book.

Caleb's Crossing

Not sure how I came across this book - I have a spider-web approach to finding books I think I'd like to read.  Sometimes it comes from Amazon book lists, sometimes from annual lists of books to read, not often enough from friends who are reading (yes, that's you - a thinly veiled request for contributions to my blog).

Geraldine Brooks won a Pulitzer for one of her earlier books, and she lives on Martha's Vineyard.  The historical fact that this historical fiction is built around is this:  a young son of a chieftain from the island became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard in the 1660s. 

The story is told by Bethia - other reviewers have said it would be more aptly titled "Bethia's Crossing".  My favorite part of the book happens in the first few chapters when she is a young girl exploring Martha's Vineyard, sneaking to learn lessons taught to her brother, and learning the island's secrets from Caleb. 

I don't know if this is a plot spoiler, but I do think it's important to know that Bethia experiences death of loved ones over and over again.  It got a bit predictable rather than sad.

Usually it's easy for me to say I liked or didn't like a book.  I kept going on this one even though I wanted to stop.  Cathy Heiser told me it was a universal thumbs up from her book club so I kept reading.  I think the real evidence is that I wanted to stop reading it, but didn't.  So I guess I liked some of it, but it wasn't a favorite.  How's that for an ambivalent review?

Amazon to the rescue with Shelfari

Greetings!

 

Thank you for using Reading List by Amazon and for your patience as we’ve worked to make your book information available after LinkedIn deprecated their application program. Your Reading List information has been preserved and is available for import on Shelfari.com. 

This is the message I got in my inbox today, and it took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to retrieve my LinkedIn list and post it on the blog.  I haven't figured out where my reviews are, but at least I have the books!

Cool.

Open City: A Novel

I'm halfway through this book - it won all sorts of awards and I downloaded the sample from Amazon and really liked it, so bought the book.  I can only describe the writing as dense - every sentence is packed with meaning and words that I've never encounterered before.  It starts with the main character Julius walking through the streets of New York and I am enjoying reading it on my iPad so I can look up words and pull up google maps to see where he is.

But it's starting to read more like nonfiction than fiction.  Everything is told from Julius' point of view and the narrative is dark.  It meanders quite a bit - I think that's why there is so much walking - paralleling what you encounter on the streets of cities.  The story moves to Brussels and becomes even more somber as stories unfold about disenfranchised immigrants who fled impossible situations in their home countries.

I wish I could sense that this story is going to go somewhere, or if it will continue on its current path.  If I had a paper copy I would be flipping through for hints of redemption or hope.  I haven't got the hang of how to do that on Kindle.  For now I'm not sorry I've read this far, but think I will put it down for a while and decide whether to try and finish it.  Although I probably won't...I think a good book should leave the reader unambiguous about needing to turn the page.

http://www.amazon.com/Open-City-Novel-Teju-Cole/dp/0812980093

Yech and Double Yech

I know this blog is called books we love to share, but I think I need to make room for books we need to issue warnings.  "Don't read this!!!!"

So really I have no one to blame but myself and Amazon reader reviews.  I saw this book "How I Came to Sparkle Again" by Kaya McLaren and it looked like saccharine, but it was about a woman who'd lost her sense of who she was and returned to a ski town in Colorado to heal.  I ignored my better judgment partially because of the ski town thing.  The other thing that drew me was a review from an author I'd been wanting to read based on some book club reviews and perusing Amazon's recommends.  I had been keeping Kristin Hannah's book "On Mystic Lake" only wish list and she loved the book.

Well I barely got through the Sparkle book but I managed to finish it.  Felt like watching The Hallmark Channel and I was ashamed.  So then I thought "who is this Kristin Hannah?" and decided to read her book out of a weird kind of curiosity.  I couldn't believe it - the plot lines were nearly identical!  I think there may actually be a genre for it:  woman's husband cheats on her, she returns home to find herself, and meets a recently widowed man with a troubled daughter who desperately needs someone to help her cope with her mother's death.  Woman steps in, they fall in love, and she stays in the town she thought she left behind forever.

I only got about 10% through the Mystic book when I skipped to the end to confirm my suspicions.

So please don't read these books.  Please.

What's with Wisconsin?

I have been mentally trying to recreate my reading list I lost (really irked at LinkedIn...holding a grudge and avoiding their site for awhile).  Edgar Sawtelle was a wonderfully read - poetic about the Sawtelle dogs.  The Art of Fielding was wonderful, too - poetic about baseball and friendship.  I found A Reliable Wife stark and chilling, but I couldn't put it down.

It occurred to me that all three of these books were set in Wisconsin.  A state I only knew as the summer vacation of my younger life - Ken Murphy's classic log cabin on Spider Lake.  And then I moved to Wisconsin with my family in 2006.  Reluctantly moved for all the right practical reasons - job, school, proximity to Chicago.

First I fell in love with Packer fans.  Then the amazing cheeses that we discovered in Chicago but finally found at Nola's Fromagerie in Green Bay.  Then I visited Madison on a beautiful fall day.  I guess I've been slow to appreciate all that is uniquely Wisconsin, but these three books are proof that this state is a hidden, misunderstood gem of a place.

But I still hate the grocery stores and shopping.  Too many sweatshirts, not enough beautiful shoes.

Reading G is for Gumshoe

I have recently started reading mystery series.  I asked my friend Jack Frye what he reads and he told me about a book series set in the national parks.  Jack retired after a career as a librarian, so I thought I should consider his recommendation seriously. Plus he and his wife Marcy set the bar high for what to do in retirement.  They canoe, bike, sail Lake Superior and are game for anything without being fitness jocks.

Nevada Barr wrote the series with Anna Pigeon as the detective.  The books were so easy to pick up and read, yet intelligent enough to hold my interest.  I read several until the last one got a little gruesome on me.  I'm now reading Sue Grafton and Kinsey Millhone is the private investigator.  I am being true to the series and reading in order.  It's a little dated but I like Kinsey.

The great thing about liking a series is you've always got something to read when you don't have a good book waiting for you.  Not that these aren't good books but they're not great books, books you hate to end.  In fact you're always kind of glad when a mystery is solved and you can check that book off and mark a notch on your reading belt.  Sort of like watching Castle or Bones.

I think it's a coincidence that the protagonists are female, but maybe it isn't.

Falling Together

Just finished my third novel from Marisa de los Santos.  I love her characters, and I loved Pen and Will in Falling Together.  I had read some reviews that this book was not quite up to her first two, but I enjoyed this one, too.

Maybe the stories were better in Love Walked In and Belong to Me - but in each book she just knows how to use words in a lovely wonderful way.  Sometimes I don't know what kind of books I like - when people ask me what I read I can't really describe what draws me to a book.  How do you explain that you like books that are well written???  My favorite books might be thematically linked or primarily a similar genre, but I don't see it that way at all.

I hardly ever read nonfiction for pleasure - almost all the nonfiction books I read are related to work - strategy, marketing, consulting, innovation.  They never captivate me the way literature does.  I think it's the heart/head thing.  I really liked and valued Jim Collins "Good to Great" - but love?  No nuh-uh.

http://www.amazon.com/Marisa-De-los-Santos/e/B001I9TVFC

I lost my Amazon reading list!

I'm bereft!  I was trying to be good about adding books I was reading to the LinkedIn Reading List application - and when I looked for it this morning, pouf! it was gone :(

I was inspired by my former neighbor Sher Isenberg - inspired to read more books and better books.  She kept a notebook of books she had read, and books she wanted to read.  I just wanted it to be digital - always available, easy to share (not that I think many people ever looked at it).  So I'm going to give it another go via Google and hope they're decent enough to let me know if they decide to delete my stuff.

So here goes another blogger sending thoughts into the blogosphere - hope someone reads and especially hope someone recommends a great book.