Reviews and More

A few months ago, I listened to lectures from The Teaching Company for the first time ever. That course was called History of Science, and I enjoyed it so much that I decided to give some more courses a try. I was pleased to find a nice selection of Teaching Company titles at one of the public libraries in my area, and ended up choosing a series called European History and European Lives: 1715-1914.

Taught by Jonathan Steinberg, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania, the series provides profiles of 35 of the “most influential people who lived during the 200 most difficult years in the history of the West”. The subjects of the lectures include kings, queens, scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and artists, and endeavor to show how these people influenced the course of history — and the world — during their lifetime.

European History and European Lives: 1715-1914 consists of 36 lectures, each lasting for about 30 minutes. The first lecture is an introduction to the course, and provides an overview of what Dr. Steinberg intends to do in the next 35 lectures. Each subsequent lecture then deals with the life of one particular person, as Steinberg tries to show how and why that person was important in a historical sense.

All 35 biographical lectures more or less follow the same pattern. First, Steinberg spends about 15 minutes setting the stage for the person whose life he is about to discuss. If it’s a king, Steinberg tells about what’s happening at court or on the international scene at the time. If it’s a scientist, Steinberg tells what’s going on in the general scientific community at the time. Second, Steinberg spends about 10-13 minutes or so talking specifically about the subject’s life and what he or she did that made a lasting impact on the world. And third, Steinberg spends the final few minutes of the lecture providing some analysis of that person’s life. Why was he or she important? Was the situation in Europe better or worse after the person left office or died?

The lectures proceed in chronological order, beginning with those who were prominent in the early 18th century (Augustus the Strong, Robert Walpole, Samuel Johnson) and ending with those who were prominent in the early 20th century (Leo Tolstoy, Alfred Dreyfus, David Lloyd George). This is an effective approach that allows students to see how some of these lives intertwined and affected each other.

Some of my favorite lectures from the course were the ones about Bismarck, Prince Metternich, Napoleon, Robespierre, George Eliot, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Marie Antionette, and Samuel Johnson. I learned quite a few things about these people that I didn’t know, and even ended up reading some more biographical materials about them after listening to these lectures.

If I had to mention one negative, I’d say that 30 minutes simply wasn’t enough time to treat the subjects adequately. After each one, I was left wanting much more, which was kind of frustrating since I then had to go to a different source to find what I needed. I understand why Dr. Steinberg had to include so much background material before actually getting to the subjects’ lives, but I gladly would have sacrificed information about the setting in order to hear more about the people.

Even so, I still thought European History and European Lives: 1715-1914 was a fantastic course. All of the people featured in the lectures were interesting and certainly worthy of inclusion. Plus, I loved Dr. Steinberg’s delivery of the material. His voice was easy to listen to, he clearly knew his stuff, and he explained everything as thoroughly as possible given the time constraints. I highly recommend this series!

Now that I’m working out at a health club three times per week, I’m going through audiobooks at a faster rate than ever before. I love nothing more than to listen to a good story while I’m walking on the treadmill, so that means I’m always looking for new books to load onto my iPod. I’m much less picky about what I listen to while I workout than what I actually sit down to read, and as a result have been trying a bunch of different authors based on recommendations from friends.

That’s how I recently came to listen to something called Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke, a book classified as a “cozy mystery”. What’s a cozy mystery? I couldn’t find a definitive answer to that, but many websites seem to put that old TV show Murder, She Wrote in the category. I guess that means you have an amateur detective in a small town who stumbles across a murder and is so nosy that she (usually the protagonist is a she) keeps prying until the case is solved. That describes Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder to a T, so I’ll go with that.

Plot Summary (with possible spoilers): Hannah Swensen is a 29-year-old single woman who lives a quiet, uneventful life in the small Minnesota town of Lake Eden. An avid baker, Hannah owns a popular eatery called The Cookie Jar, where she and her 19-year-old assistant Lisa regularly serves the locals her special coffee and homemade cookie creations. When she’s not working, Hannah simply likes to spend time at home with her one-eyed cat Moishe.

Things get a bit more exciting in Lake Eden after Hannah discovers Ron LaSalle, a delivery driver for the Cozy Cow Dairy, dead in his truck one morning. He had been shot through the chest while making his rounds. There was no evidence left at the scene — except for a handful of Hannah’s own Chocolate Chip Crunches.

Not wanting her business name associated with something like murder, Hannah decides to help brother-in-law Bill, the town deputy, solve the case. The rest of the novel then deals with Hannah’s investigation, which consists mostly of retracing Ron’s steps on the morning of the murder and then questioning everyone who may have come into contact with him that day. Along the way, we get to meet other Lake Eden residents, get a glimpse of Hannah’s almost nonexistent love life, and get several cookie recipes to try out.

My Reaction: This was the first time I’ve ever read a so-called “cozy”, and I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the result. I didn’t expect the plotting to be so straightforward and simple. I mean, at times I felt as though I were reading a story aimed at junior high school kids because of how watered down everything was. This style made for a quick, easy read (or listen, in my case), but that’s about all this novel had going for it.

Another thing I didn’t like about Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder was the way the suspects were paraded out — and eliminated — one by one until we got to the actual killer. Most of the mysteries I read present a handful of suspects near the beginning, and it’s not until the end that the detective is able to rule everyone out except the killer. That type of setup builds suspense and keeps readers guessing.

But in this book, Hannah would latch on to a possible suspect, would question that person closely, would verify the person’s alibi, and then would cross the person off her list and move on by asking herself, “Well, if it wasn’t this person, who else could it be? Oh, how about so-and-so?” This process was repeated four or five times, which made for pretty boring reading.

Another thing I didn’t like about this book were a few small details that the author got wrong. For instance, Fluke talked about Ron LaSalle being a high school football star whose dreams of being drafted by an NFL team were shattered after he suffered an injury. Well, high school kids can’t be drafted by the NFL. There’s a rule in place that says players must be out of high school for three years before they’re eligible for the draft (remember the Maurice Clarett saga?). Instead, Fluke should have written that LaSalle’s dreams of getting a college scholarship went down the toilet.

In addition, I didn’t like the part where she said that the killer flashed $1,000 bills at Max to get him to open the safe. The Treasury Department stopped distributing large denomination bills like back in 1969, and Federal Reserve banks destroy any that they receive. Yes, there are possibly a few still circulating, but the chances that a number of them ended up in Lake Eden, MN are very slim. (I know this is a minor nitpick, but it was just sooo distracting when it came up in the book!)

I actually did like Hannah Swensen, so that was one positive aspect of the novel. Also, I’ve heard that this first book was by far the weakest in the series, which I guess is understandable. So even though I didn’t particularly like Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, I think I’ll give a few more of Fluke’s books a try before writing her off completely!

If you’ve been following my book reviews for the past year or so, then you know that I’m not a big fan of the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly. A friend of mine gave me a bunch of Connelly’s books on CD, which is why I “read” them in the first place, but I haven’t been particularly impressed with the novels thus far and have had a hard time figuring out why so many people seem to like them.

However, the tide turned with Trunk Music, the last Connelly novel that I read. That one had a good mystery and left out many of the elements that I found so annoying in previous books, making the listening experience far more enjoyable. And I’m happy to say that the trend has continued with the Angels Flight, which I just recently finished. Maybe there’s some merit to Connelly’s reputation after all!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Detective Harry Bosch and his partners Jerry Edgar and Kiz Rider are called in to handle a very sensitive case when high-profile African-American attorney Howard Elias is found shot to death on the Angels Flight funicular railway in Los Angeles. The case is sensitive because Elias has built a career out of suing bad cops in the LAPD. He routinely gets clients off by proving that police officers used unnecessary force or planted evidence, and has been responsible for a number of officer suspensions.

In fact, Elias was currently in the middle of a major lawsuit against four members of the LAPD when he was gunned down. Elias was suing the cops on behalf of a man named Michael Harris, who was wrongfully accused of murdering Stacey Kincaid, the young stepdaughter of one of the richest men in L.A. Since Harris is black and Stacey Kincaid was white, racial tensions throughout the city were at an all-time high — particularly since the events are taking place just a few years after the Rodney King riots rocked the city.

During the criminal trial Harris was found not guilty after Elias successfully argued that LAPD cops planted Harris’ fingerprints on one of Stacey’s schoolbooks. Elias was then about to embark on a civil suit against the department for monetary damages, but was murdered before the case could go to trial. The brutal, personal nature of the murder suggested that the killer knew Elias and was exacting revenge for something. To Bosch and the media, it looked like a cop was responsible.

The rest of the novel deals with the investigation as Bosch and his team try to piece together everything that happened in the days leading up to Elias’ murder. Along the way, they make some shocking discoveries regarding the original Stacey Kincaid murder as they slowly uncover the killer’s identity.

My Reaction: As I said above, I thought Angels Flight was better than other Connelly books I’ve read thus far because of what was missing rather than what was there. For example, I was relieved to see that Connelly more or less eliminated the love story subplot that usually can be found in his novels. Yes, there was some stuff about the problems Bosch was having with his wife Eleanor Wish and there was one sex scene, but other than that, the novel mostly just stuck to the case at hand. That made for much more interesting reading and a faster pace to the book — both of which I appreciated.

Another thing I noticed was that Bosch didn’t act as much like a Bruce Willis/renegade cop character as he has in previous novels. I always thought that Bosch’s “fuck you” attitude towards every other cop he interacted with was way over the top and consequently not very believable. In Angels Flight, however, this attitude was toned down quite a bit — and with good results. Bosch was still a tough guy who wasn’t about to take shit from anyone, but he came off as less of a caricature in this book, so I finally ended up liking him as the protagonist.

Of course, Angels Flight wasn’t a perfect book; I still had a couple of problems with it.

For example, I thought the Kincaid pedophile ring was an interesting angle that wrapped up far too quickly. I was hoping that Connelly would build on that angle and keep going with the twists and turns, but obviously that’s not what he chose to do. Instead, he paved the way for yet another of Bosch’s enemies to bite the dust.

Wow, how convenient for Bosch that everyone in the department who opposes him sooner or later ends up dead. Making Chastain the killer was weak… and ultimately predictable given Connelly’s propensity to have the Bosch universe work out just so. Does he ever write a book where there aren’t dirty cops involved?

Now that Chastain is gone, who else is left to clash with Bosch and make sure he doesn’t run roughshod over departmental rules and regulations? Irving? Billets? Should I just go ahead and put those two in the death pool now?

Besides rolling my eyes at the fact that Chastain turned out to be the killer, I have to say that Angels Flight was pretty entertaining throughout. It was a very fast-paced novel, and I enjoy these quick reads every once in a while. I think this is a Connelly book that I would actually recommend if someone asked!

The first John Grisham novel I ever read was The Firm, back in 1992 when I was in high school. It was a kind of fast-paced legal thriller that I’d never encountered before, and since I was entertaining thoughts of becoming a lawyer back then, I loved the book. From that point forward, I read just about every Grisham book I could get my hands on — right up until The Runaway Jury, which I didn’t like very much at all. A few years after that, Grisham moved away from legal thrillers, and I didn’t much like those efforts either.

So when I heard that Grisham was back with the type of novel that made him famous in the first place, I was decided to give him another chance. I checked the audiobook version of The Appeal out from my local library, listened to it over the course of a couple of weeks, and was supremely disappointed with the result. This didn’t seem like the same guy who wrote The Firm, that’s for sure!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The novel opens at the very end of a major trial. The jury has reached a verdict, and calls have been placed to the plaintiff, Jeanette Baker, her attorneys Wes and Mary Grace Payton of Payton & Payton, and the army of lawyers for the defendant, Krane Chemical.

Baker had sued Krane Chemical for the wrongful death of her husband and son after they succumbed to cancer as a direct result of imbibing toxic drinking water contaminated by Krane’s illegal dumping practices. The case was long and tiresome, and Wes and Mary Grace had essentially bankrupted their firm in order to get through the trial, but they were confident that they would get a favorable verdict. And they did — to the tune of $3 million in actual damages and $38 million in punitive damages.

The verdict then kicks off a series of events that comprise the bulk of the novel. Carl Trudeau, the billionaire majority stakeholder in the group that owns Krane Chemical, is determined not to pay a dime to Jeanette Baker or the Paytons. As Trudeau watches his net worth shrink by $1 billion (at least on paper), he arranges a special meeting with a “consultant” in Florida who tells him that the surest way to wipe out the original verdict would be to buy a seat on the Mississippi Supreme Court so that when the appeal made its way to the top, the ruling would be overturned.

The novel then shifts gears and focuses on the upcoming election for a seat on the state supreme court. Trudeau’s contact, Tony Zachary, runs a complex network of dummy corporations set up expressly for the purpose of helping get the “right” politicians elected and reelected across the country. The team selects an unknown lawyer named Ron Fisk to challenge incumbent liberal judge Sheila McCarthy, who would almost certainly uphold the verdict against Krane if the case came before her.

The rest of the book then deals with Zachary’s continued efforts to get Ron Fisk to the Supreme Court; Trudeau’s behind-the-scenes machinations to first devalue, then increase the price of Krane stock in order to come out of the situation even richer; and the Paytons’ attempts to remain solvent until a payout on the verdict can be made.

My Reaction: I didn’t like The Appeal one bit, as I felt it came up short in several areas. The biggest problem I had with the novel was the fact that the plot went in so many different directions. At first, I thought it would focus on the Paytons and/or Jeanette Baker. Wrong. Then I thought it would perhaps focus on Carl Trudeau and Krane Chemical. Wrong again. Instead, it focused on the Supreme Court election and Ron Fisk, a character that wasn’t even introduced until about one-third of the way through. By that time, I was already invested in the other storylines, and didn’t want to switch to something completely different.

A second major problem I had with The Appeal was the lack of three-dimensional characters. Because Grisham chose to jump back and forth between the various plots, he didn’t spend enough time developing any of the characters. The Paytons received the most attention early on, which is why it didn’t make sense that Grisham would change things up. Trudeau never materialized into anything more than a caricature of an evil corporate raider, and I couldn’t get a feel for Ron Fisk at all. The result? I didn’t care what happened to any of these characters, which of course took me right out of the story.

If there’s one thing I did like about The Appeal, it was the ending. It would have been far too convenient to have the payout go through, so I’m kind of glad Grisham deliberately went after the non-Hollywood ending. Nevertheless, that wasn’t enough to redeem the book for me.

I realize this novel is Grisham’s way of saying that state supreme court justices shouldn’t be elected, and he probably has a good point. However, that doesn’t necessarily make for an exciting story; it certainly didn’t in this instance.

Overall, I was quite disappointed with The Appeal. Has Grisham lost his touch or am I just expecting too much out of him?

These days, I mostly fill my reading time with lighter fare from the likes of Agatha Christie, John Grisham, Stephen King, and Michael Connelly. There’s nothing wrong with that, as I’ve read more than my fair share of classics over the years and need a break from the heady stuff once in a while.

Nevertheless, I occasionally feel guilty about the lack of substance in these reading materials, and force myself to read something from The Guardian’s list of the 100 greatest novels of all time. That’s why I decided to tackle Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil, the No. 15 entry on the list, a couple weeks ago. (And in case you’re interested, I’ve now read the top 25 novels on the list and 61 of the titles overall.)

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Written in 1845, Sybil, or The Two Nations (the full title of the novel), deals with hot-button political issues of the day. Specifically, Disraeli, who was Prime Minister of the UK in 1868 and again from 1874-1880, wrote about the extreme differences between Britain’s rich and poor. The wealthy landowners enjoyed excesses beyond all imagination, while the poor working class endured squalid conditions that were barely able to sustain human life.

Disraeli couches his opinions in the form of a novel with two distinct storylines. The first is a basic love story between Charles Egremont and young Sybil Gerard. Sybil is the daughter of Walter Gerard, man of modest means who has aligned himself with Stephen Morley and others in an attempt to unite workers and bring British industry to a screeching halt until workers start receiving fair wages for their efforts.

Egremont, an aristocrat whose family owns a great deal of property, first meets Morley and Sybil when he poses as a reporter under an assumed name and goes to live among the regular folks to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Egremont immediately falls in love with the kind, innocent, angelic Sybil, but he doesn’t dare to reveal his feelings or his true identity.

Disraeli intertwines the Egremont/Sybil story with passages detailing Morley and Gerard’s work, as well as with depictions of daily life of the rich and poor. Eventually, both storylines mesh as the major players cross paths with one another and the novel proceeds towards its optimistic conclusion.

My Reaction: I thought Sybil started off very slowly. It was hard to get into the flow of the novel because Disraeli kept jumping back and forth between Egremont and the Gerards. Since these people lived in totally different circumstances and since I didn’t know enough about the novel to expect these scene shifts, I was extremely confused by what was going on. This confusion soon led to boredom, which led to me putting the book down after every couple of pages, etc.

But once I got past the first quarter of the novel or so, things started to pick up. Sybil was an interesting character, as was Egremont, making it easy to become invested in their love story. I wasn’t quite as interested in the struggles of the working class, however, so those parts remained slow for me. Things might have been different if I knew anything about that period of England’s history, but as it was, none of the things Disraeli was writing about seemed all that relevant anymore.

Overall, I had mixed feelings about Sybil. Parts of it were good, but this is not a novel that I can envision myself reading again and again — as I do with several other favorites. As such, I have to quibble with The Guardian’s high placement of the book on the Top 100 list. Obviously I’m no literary scholar, but I certainly wouldn’t rank Sybil as the 15th greatest novel ever written. Oh, well… de gustibus non est disputandum!

Although I usually like Agatha Christie’s recurring characters (Poirot, Hastings, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppenece), I can’t really say the same about Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Battle. He has appeared in several of Christie’s novels, mostly as a secondary character in a Poirot mystery, but I’ve never gotten a specific feel for what he’s like. I can’t remember his physical description, so I have no definite picture in my mind whenever the character appears.

As a result, I haven’t enjoyed past Battle books, such as The Secret of the Chimneys and The Seven Dials Mystery, and was therefore skeptical about how much the 1944 novel Towards Zero would appeal to me. But after a slow start, I found this book to be a surprisingly enjoyable read.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The novel opens with lengthy descriptions of two separate events that seemingly bear no connection to each other. First, we read about the botched attempted suicide by a man named Andrew MacWhirter. We get very few details about the circumstances leading up to his attempt, nor is there really a follow-up before Christie cuts to a scene at a private girls’ school. There, we learn that Supt. Battle’s daughter has been accused of a series of petty thefts at the school, and that she has actually confessed to the crimes despite the fact that she never stole anything. Again, there’s no follow-up before Christie gets to the main plot.

Wealthy old Lady Tresselian is having an annual September gathering at her sprawling Gull’s Point estate. Her guests include family members as well as acquaintances, and chief among them are Neville Strange, her late husband’s ward; Neville’s first wife Audrey Strange; and Neville’s current wife Kay. The presence of Neville’s ex as well as his current wife makes everyone uncomfortable, and causes a lot of tongues to wag, but there’s definitely a reason for this, so the careful reader would do well to pay attention.

Anyway, after a slow build-up, Lady Tresselian is found brutally murdered in her bed. Because she was wealthy and left nearly everyone in the house a substantial amount of money, there are plenty of suspects with the good old-fashioned motive of sheer greed. Superintendent Battle, who was vacationing nearby, arrives on the scene to investigate, and soon discovers that all of the evidence points to Neville Strange as the killer.

The only problem is, the case seems too easy. The killer appeared to be sloppy and careless, leaving behind clues that any amateur detective could follow. That’s when Battle gets suspicious and thinks that perhaps there is more to the case than meets the eye.

The rest of the novel then deals with the continuing investigation, and all of the different theories that Battle tests out. Christie gives the reader plenty of red herrings, making it difficult to guess the real answer before everything is revealed in the end.

My Reaction: I found Towards Zero a bit difficult to get into at first because Christie started out with those two scenes that (seemingly) had nothing to do with the main plot at all. Of course, by the end it all made more sense, but still….

Once the action shifted to Lady Tressilian’s estate, however, I soon became engrossed in everything that was going on. I couldn’t quite figure out what was up with Neville Strange and his two wives, but I knew that one (or all) of them would be involved in the crime, so I tried paying extra-close attention whenever they were around. Even so, I couldn’t guess the outcome of the mystery.

I thought this was one of Christie’s better novels, though I wouldn’t put it in my personal top 10 simply because I thought some of the characters’ actions were a bit hard to believe. I do have to say, though, that the whole idea of the murder victim not being the intended victim at all was a nice twist, and I loved the reasoning behind the obvious framing of Neville.

Overall, I thought Towards Zero was a worthwhile read. If you have the patience to stick with it through the slow beginning, then you’ll be treated to an interesting murder mystery with a unique solution!

Books filled with political satire are typically not found on my reading list, but I’d heard so many great things about America the Book by Jon Stewart that I decided to forget my usual reservations with the genre and check this one out. After all, Stewart would be discussing current events, so his jabs at the government should be easier to understand than, say, the ones Swift took at his government in Gulliver’s Travels, right?

So I grabbed the audiobook version of America the Book from the library last week and set about listening to Jon Stewart and a bunch of guests read the text.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): America the Book is presented as a mock civics textbook that attempts to explain the history of democracy in the United States. Starting back with a quick look at the discovery of America and the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock and moving through to the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, and the Continental Congress, Stewart immediately sets an irreverent, biting, and very funny tone that will be maintained throughout the book’s nine chapters.

Stewart goes on to cover such topics as the President, Congress, the Judicial branch, Campaigns and Elections, and the Media in subsequent chapters. Each chapter is filled with Stewart’s spot-on observations and criticisms of the subject at hand, and ends with hilarious Discussion Questions and Classroom Activities. As a bonus, there are even a few humorous guest essays from people like Stephen Colbert, Ed Helms, and Samantha Bee.

My Reaction: I was very impressed by America the Book, and found myself laughing out loud a LOT while listening to this book. I’ve never watched a single episode of The Daily Show before and am not too familiar with Jon Stewart, so I was really taken by surprise at how funny this book was.

I have a feeling Stewart is a liberal, but he takes shots at both Democrats and Republicans in the book. People like Clinton, Kerry, Reagan, and Bush jr. are all targeted at some point, and I felt the criticism levied at each of these individuals was well deserved. In fact, most of the complaints Stewart has about the government are warranted on some level, which makes the book even better.

The best part of America the Book is that Stewart scatters actual tidbits of knowledge in with the satire, making it a great refresher in American history for those of us who have been out of school for ages. I’m not saying you should prepare for a citizenship test with this book as your primary source material or anything like that, but it does contain at least a few solid facts.

After checking out other customer reviews, I realized I made a huge mistake by listening to the audiobook version instead of going with the regular printed text. Apparently, the real book has a bunch of funny illustrations, drawings, and charts, as well as lots of little “Were You Aware?” boxes that contained additional fun facts and info. Obviously this stuff couldn’t be included in an audiobook, so I completely missed out on some funny material.

Overall, I thought America the Book by Jon Stewart was excellent. It definitely lived up to all the hype, and will have you laughing at our government no matter where your political loyalties are. I highly recommend this book if you’re in the mood for something funny!

I was looking forward to reading The Moving Finger because it’s a Miss Marple mystery. I mentioned in my review of The Body in the Library that I was disappointed at how Miss Marple was barely even involved in the investigation. She didn’t appear in the novel until almost halfway through, and she operated on the fringes rather than taking center stage like Hercule Poirot.

Well, apparently that seems to be the way Agatha Christie handles Miss Marple mysteries, because the spinster detective was again hardly a factor in this title. Fortunately, as with The Body in the Library, the basic plot of The Moving Finger was solid enough and interesting enough to keep me turning the pages despite Miss Marple’s absence.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The novel is told from the point of view of Jerry Burton, a former pilot who is recovering from injuries suffered during World War II. On the advice of his doctor, Jerry and his sister Joanna move away from the hustle and bustle of London to the more rural setting of Lymstock. There, Jerry is sure to find the peace and quiet he needs to help his injuries heal up quickly.

Soon after their arrival in Lymstock, however, Jerry and Joanna find that things aren’t as idyllic in the town as they first thought. Someone has been sending anonymous letters to various residents, accusing them of various moral transgressions. The accusations are often vague, but nevertheless set the recipients on edge. Not even Jerry and Joanna are immune from the writer’s wrath, as they soon get a letter of their own insinuating that they’re actually lovers, not siblings.

At first, most people were willing to pass the letters off as a nasty prank, but then a woman commits suicide soon after receiving one of these missives. That puts a much more serious spin on things, so the police are called in to investigate.

The investigation really leads nowhere, which frustrates Jerry. He takes it upon himself to start finding out as much as he can about the letters and the people who received them in an effort to root out the writer. He’s able to make some headway, but it’s not until Miss Marple is called in by a friend that the pieces of the puzzle start falling into place.

My Reaction: As I said above, I really enjoyed this book despite the fact that Miss Marple plays such a limited role in it. I found Jerry Burton to be an extremely likable narrator, so it was easy to get drawn into the story. I was immediately curious about the anonymous letters, and couldn’t wait to find out what the writer’s real motive was.

I thought the plot development in this story was very believable, what with Scotland Yard initially getting involved and then going away as the months passed and no new clues turned up. Usually in mystery novels, the police stay on a case until it is solved, but here their involvement was intermittent.

It was great that Jerry stuck with the investigation and was instrumental in helping Miss Marple solve the crime. I just wish more of the solution had come about “on stage” so to speak, instead of occurring in scenes that the reader wasn’t privy to.

I really could have done without the Jerry/Megan subplot, but I know that Christie likes these little romances, so the resolution of that particular story was predictable.

Nevertheless, I thought The Moving Finger was a very good read, and I rate it as one of my favorite Agatha Christie books so far. It’s fast-paced and interesting, with a viable solution to a believable murder. I recommend it!

Many years ago, a college professor of mine gave me a reading list of personal favorites that she wanted me to try. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco was on the list, but from everything I’d heard about the 1980 novel, it didn’t sound like something I’d be interested in. However, since I recently came across the audiobook version on cassette tapes(!) at my local library, I decided to finally give it a try. Unfortunately, the novel turned out to be everything I’d feared it would be: long-winded, full of obscure references, and boring.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The Name of the Rose is narrated by a Benedictine monk named Adso of Melk. Now an old man, Adso tells the story as a memoir or a flashback to the year 1327 when he was just a novice traveling with William of Baskerville, a Franciscan friar. The two are headed to a secluded monastery in the mountains of Italy where there is set to be an important debate on the most pressing religious topics of the day.

Once they arrive, however, Abo of Fossanova, the abbot of the monastery has some terrible news: one of the monks was found dead that morning, and he would like William to investigate the case to see whether or not foul play was involved. Abo asks William to take over because he wants an objective outsider to handle the inquiries, and also because he has heard of William’s great skill in observation, logic, and reasoning. William readily agrees, so he and Adso soon begin their investigation.

But the two visitors run into obstacle after obstacle, as none of the monks seem all too willing to help them. Even Abo places roadblocks in their way by forbidding them access to the labyrinthine library, a place that William is sure is critical to unraveling the mystery. After several more bodies are found on the monastery grounds, the case becomes even more urgent, but Abo is as unrelenting as ever about granting access to the library.

Nevertheless, by bits and degrees, William and Adso get the information they need in order to uncover the killer’s identity. The fact that they do so through accident, guesses, and sheer luck delivers a blow to William’s ego; but of course the end result is the same.

My Reaction: First of all, let me state right off the bat that I know I don’t fit into the audience Eco had in mind when he penned this tome. According to the extensive author’s note at the end of The Name of the Rose, Eco never thought that “unsophisticated” readers would ever be interested in a novel about 14th-century monks. He apparently is a learned scholar of that period, so it seemed natural to him to set his story in that time, but he clearly didn’t intend for this book to be a work of popular fiction.

That probably explains why there are so many long, tedious discussions about philosophy, logic, and religion throughout the novel. These passages might be interesting to people familiar with the late Middle Ages, but they only served to put me to sleep. If I hadn’t been listening to this book on tape, I can almost guarantee that I wouldn’t have finished it. The only way I was able to get through it was by tuning out as the narrator droned on through this stuff.

I’ve read other reader reviews of this novel, and one frequent complaint was that there were so many long, untranslated Latin lines and paragraphs in the text. I wholeheartedly agree with this. Even though I studied Latin for six years, I mostly had no clue what these passages were about, so I don’t know if they were relevant to the story or not. Either way, this just gave me another reason to periodically tune out from the book.

The mystery itself was pretty interesting, as was the library. If Eco had concentrated only on those things while leaving out all the other stuff, this would have been a book I could like. Then again, I guess that just goes to show that I’m not the sophisticated reader that he had in mind while writing. Indeed, I read some reviews from people who are experts in the period, and they thought the novel was wonderfully entertaining with lots of inside jokes poking fun at various historical figures.

Overall, The Name of the Rose simply wasn’t my kind of book. Those who are more learned than I might enjoy it, but I sure couldn’t. If you’re an average person like me, you’ll probably want to give this one a pass.

I used to be a huge Stephen King fan when I was in junior high. I read all of his early stuff and was genuinely terrified by it, which of course was the reaction I was going for. But in the early 1990s, I began moving away from King (I think Needful Things was the last book I read as a new release), and didn’t go back until the 2006 novel Lisey’s Story. I enjoyed that one, mostly because it was such a departure from what King had done in the past, so I decided to give his latest novel Duma Key a try as well.

While there were some elements of the vintage Kind stories that I remember from all those years ago, I found that this new book wasn’t as engrossing as I had hoped. It started out well, but soon petered out, culminating with a lame ending that didn’t seem like much of a payoff considering all that had gone before it.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The story opens shortly after 57-year-old Edgar Freemantle was in a serious accident at a construction site. The pickup truck he was sitting in was crushed by a crane, causing Edgar to lose his right arm entirely and damaging his right leg severely. There was also some head trauma, so Edgar now struggles with words, forgets things, and battles extreme rage.

After Edgar’s wife of 25 years asks for a divorce, Edgar decides to take his doctor’s advice and get away while he rehabs. Being a millionaire, Edgar has plenty of options open to him. He ends up choosing to rent a house on Duma Key off the coast of Florida for a few months, and soon leaves Minnesota for the new place.

Duma Key is pretty much deserted, giving Edgar plenty of time to think and paint — a hobby his doctor advised him to take up again. After a while, Edgar starts feeling some “phantom limb sensation” where his right arm used to be, and notices that these feelings coincide with an urgent need to paint. When this urgency surfaces, Edgar goes into a trance-like state and paints some very good stuff, all without being much aware of what he’s doing.

As the story progresses, Edgar learns that there’s some kind of sinister supernatural force or being behind his sudden artistic prowess. With the help of a fellow Duma Key inhabitant named Wireman, as well as a college-boy assistant named Jack Cantori, Edgar must uncover the source of this being, destroy it, and make things right with the world again.

My Reaction: I didn’t like Duma Key very much, as it was an incredibly uneven book. For one thing, King spent so much time developing the main character that other characters suffered in the process. While readers knew all about Edgar, I was left wanting to learn more about Elizabeth Eastlake’s history — in a more coherent form than the bits and pieces King scattered throughout the main narrative.

In addition, I thought too much focus was placed on Edgar’s whole painting process. One or two detailed descriptions would have been sufficient, but King went way overboard and described so many that I lost count. I know that Edgar’s paintings were crucial to the plot, but still… the author could have easily trimmed the book by 100 pages (without detriment) by eliminating a bunch of the painting scenes, and readers like me would have been greatly appreciative of that.

Also, I was very confused about Elizabeth’s part in the whole Perse situation. Was Elizabeth helping Edgar or was she out to hurt him? Because wasn’t it Elizabeth who told Edgar to sell as many of his paintings as possible? But then it turned out that selling was a mistake because those who ended up with paintings (Kamen, Tom Riley, Ilse) died as a result. Shouldn’t Elizabeth have known something like that could happen? Wouldn’t it have been better to advise Edgar to burn or otherwise destroy the paintings? That didn’t make sense to me.

The final “showdown” with Perse was a huge letdown as well. Throughout the novel, King spent time trying to build this doll up as some kind of overwhelming force that has cost so many people their lives over the years. So I was naturally expecting more of a struggle between Edgar and Perse than we actually got. He basically just scooped the thing up, stuffed it in a flashlight, and that was that. Granted, there’s not much that an inanimate doll could do without having human instruments to work with, but I was hoping that Perse would turn Wireman into a killing machine or something — anything — that would put Edgar’s life in danger and make the whole situation seem more urgent.

Speaking of urgency, that’s what was lacking in this whole novel. Edgar was never in any immediate danger, and could easily have just taken Perse up on the offer to walk away and never look back. This kind of take it or leave it conflict doesn’t do much to ratchet up the tension in a story, so most of the book was actually very boring.

On the whole Duma Key suffers from an overly long buildup, little conflict, lack of scary elements, and a ho-hum resolution. This is not the Stephen King I remember reading in junior high school, that’s for sure!

I first read Anita Shreve five years ago after a friend gave me Fortune’s Rocks while I was laid up in the hospital for a few days. I couldn’t put that book down, and though I haven’t actively sought out Shreve titles since then, I do read her from time to time. I have liked Shreve’s work more often than not, so when I recently saw the audiobook version of her 2007 novel Body Surfing available at my local library, I checked it out without even thinking twice.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The New Hampshire beach house that served as the setting of Fortune’s Rocks and several other Shreve titles is the backdrop for Body Surfing as well. This time, the house is owned by Mr. and Mrs. Edwards, a wealthy couple from Boston who like to spend their summers at the beach with their grown children, including the beautiful 18-year-old Julie. The main character of the novel, however, is 29-year-old Sydney Sklar, Julie’s SAT tutor.

Sydney comes with an interesting past, having been divorced and widowed before age 30. She has taken a real liking to the simple, innocent Julie, but also knows that Julie is destined to disappoint Mrs. Edwards since there’s no way the girl will be able to get into one of the top colleges that the mother has her heart set on. Julie has some kind of learning disability that the Edwards family is inexplicably reluctant to acknowledge, so Sydney feels her work with the girl is just going to waste.

The main plot starts to take shape after the family’s two grown sons Jeff and Ben arrive to spend their vacation time at the beach house. On the very first night of their arrival, Jeff, Ben, and Sydney venture out to the ocean for a moonlit body surfing session.

While under water, Sydney distinctly feels one of the brothers brazenly run his hand up and down her body. She’s shocked, but doesn’t come out and say anything. Instead, she resurfaces and notices that Ben is close to her, while Jeff appears to be some distance away down the shore. Sydney assumes that it must have been Ben that touched her like that. She is instantly revolted, and from that point forward wants nothing at all to do with Ben.

The complete opposite is true with Jeff, though, as Sydney and Jeff slowly fall for each other, with Jeff breaking off his engagement to another woman in order to be with Sydney.

The rest of the novel then deals with various problems that arise as a result of the Sydney-Jeff coupling, not the least of which is a nearly complete break between the brothers that affects the entire Edwards family. There are several twists along the way, and everything culminates in a big reveal that shows just how wrong Sydney was about several things.

My Reaction: I had a lot of problems with this book, particularly after it became apparent that Sydney was going to end up with one of the brothers. I usually like the way Shreve handles romance and relationships in her novels, but this was definitely an exception. There were so many ridiculous aspects of the Sydney-Jeff pairing that I never bought their relationship for a minute.

First, I thought it was incredibly childish for Sydney to be so revolted by what she thought was a deliberate touch from Ben that she didn’t even confront him about it. I mean, she was so disturbed by the incident that she couldn’t bring herself to accept so much as a beer from the man at a party later on, yet she never said anything to him? No way! She was 29, not 9. I half expected her to run away from Ben screaming, “You have cooties! You have cooties!” at some point. Yes, her reaction was that childish.

I suppose you could make the argument that she didn’t want to jeopardize her job, but that doesn’t hold water. It was a summer tutoring gig, not something Sydney was planning on doing for the rest of her life. If she was so damn uncomfortable and grossed out, surely she could have told Ben off, packed her bags, and left. End of problem. End of story too, which I guess is why Shreve had her main character act like such a 19th-century prude.

Another aspect of the Jeff-Sydney dynamic that I didn’t buy was the way that Ben just let them ride off into the sunset together even though he knew Jeff was simply out to spite him. The fight scene between the two brothers on the night Julie disappeared comes to mind here. At that point, we’re supposed to believe that Ben had fallen hard for Sydney, which is why Jeff swooped in to scoop her up (this was revealed later).

Yet Ben, who knew full well that his brother had a long history of doing such things, never once said a word to protect Sydney, whom he was supposed to care so much about? Again, this was completely implausible. Perhaps if this novel had been set in the Victorian age, it would be easy to believe that people would just bite their tongues and not say anything, but in 2002 (or whenever this was set), that scenario would never play out the way Shreve described it. People confront each other. People announce others’ shortcomings to the world. They don’t keep it all bottled in like that.

Also, I didn’t like the way the book ended, with Sydney cavorting in the ocean with Ben in a scene that recalled the earlier body surfing scene. Although the author didn’t come right out and say so, I felt that there was definitely a hint that Ben and Sydney might end up together (especially with the way Ben was hoping to meet her at Julie’s art show in Montreal). It just didn’t seem logical for Sydney to want to be part of that family in any way, so the ending came off as incredibly contrived.

If there was anything I liked about this novel, it’s the fact that I listened to it in audiobook form. It was read by actress Lolita Davidovich, and I thought she did a wonderful job with the performance. She has one of those calm, comforting voices that are easy to listen to for extended periods, so that was definitely a plus. I also liked the fact that Body Surfing was a short, quick read. At least I didn’t invest too much time in it!

Overall, Body Surfing is not one of Shreve’s better novels. If you’re looking to get into this author, I suggest starting with something else first. Fortune’s Rocks would be my choice!

As a fan of the FOX television show Bones, I decided that it would be fun to try reading one of the books that the series is based on. Before going in, I knew that the original Temperance Brennan in Kathy Reichs’ novels is vastly different from the Emily Deschanel portrayal on TV, and that the Booth character doesn’t appear at all. Moreover, I knew that the setting of the novels was not Washington, D.C., nor does Temperance assist the FBI with their investigations.

I was fine with these differences because I figured that the basic storylines and characters would have to be pretty special for a television network to take interest in the first place, so while I would certainly miss the flirty Bones-Booth banter, I was hoping that I’d at least be treated to an interesting mystery in Déjà Dead. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Dr. Temperance Brennan is an American forensic anthropologist from North Carolina who has decided to spend some time working in Montreal. She is recently divorced, has a 19-year-old daughter in college, and thought that a change of scenery would be just what she needed.

We soon see that Temperance doesn’t really fit in with her co-workers, who are mostly chauvinistic males. They don’t listen to her ideas and they treat her with barely veiled contempt, which made me wonder why she even bothered to work there in the first place.

Things on the professional front heat up when two bodies are discovered hidden in the woods. The victims were both women, were both tortured in a similarly gruesome fashion, and were both dismembered postmortem. After examining the forensic evidence and comparing it to past unsolved cases, Brennan becomes convinced that they’re looking for a serial killer. Her higher-ups, however, disagree.

So Brennan takes it upon herself to pursue the serial killer angle. She ends up in several dangerous situations, and eventually discovers that she herself is on the killer’s list of targets.

The rest of the novel then deals with how Brennan tries to uncover the killer’s identity, flush him out in the open, and bring him to justice.

My Reaction: First of all, I have to say that even though I was prepared for the novel to be different from the TV series, I didn’t realize just how different everything would be. I mean, the only common denominator between the two is the name of the main character, Temperance Brennan. Other than that, there’s absolutely no indication that the show and the book are even related. So that was a bit of an eye-opener.

Another surprise was how boring this book was. I’d heard a lot of good things about Déjà Dead from mystery readers on different forums and so forth, which made me look forward to reading this. But it was pretty boring right from the start — and I think the biggest reason for this was Reichs’ writing style.

Reichs uses so many similes and metaphors throughout the book that it became too much of a distraction. Sure, some description is necessary, and similes and metaphors can help make for some memorable passages. But Reichs completely overdid it here. Frankly, I’m surprised that her editor didn’t make her eliminate half of this crap. It would have saved a lot of unnecessary pages, that’s for sure.

Moreover, Reichs spent way too much time describing every minute thing that Brennan did during her day. I mean, if Brennan was just packing a bag to go on a stakeout, Reichs felt that warranted several paragraphs worth of descriptions, from unzipping the bag to picking out clothing and equipment to zipping the bag again, slinging it over her shoulder, and finally walking out to her car. Seriously, half of the descriptions in the book were completely unnecessary. Five pages about different types of saws? Really?

And finally, I didn’t like this book because there was hardly any focus on forensic anthropology. This was basically a run-of-the-mill mystery, and Brennan’s profession had nothing to do with her ability to solve the case. At least on the TV show, the clues and evidence gathered from forensic analysis of the bones actually plays a role in catching the killer.

Overall, I thought Déjà Dead was a poorly written novel with an uninteresting plot, unlikable protagonist, and incredibly uneven pacing. It took me several weeks to get through it, and now that I’ve finished, I just wish I would have given up after the first few chapters. It was not worth my time at all.

For every superstar pro football player who makes it to NFL and pulls down multi-million dollar salaries for years, there are countless third-string journeymen who knock about the league accepting short-term contracts with any team that will have them. These are the guys who were top athletes in high school, and just good enough in college that pro teams decided to give them a look. Though they know they’ll never have a Hall of Fame career, they’re not quite willing to give up the dream yet.

Rick Dockery, the protagonist in John Grisham’s 2007 novel Playing for Pizza, is just this sort of man. His unwillingness to admit defeat after being ignominiously run out of the NFL lands him in Italy playing football for pizza, beer, and a tiny salary. Dockery’s time in Parma, and the realizations he makes about himself serve as the basic plot of Playing for Pizza.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Up by 17 points with 11 minutes left to play in the AFC Championship game, the Cleveland Browns are forced to turn the game over to third-string quarterback Rick Dockery for what should be little more than mop-up duty after both their first- and second-stringers were knocked out with injuries.

However, Dockery proceeded to throw three interceptions during those 11 minutes, including one that was returned for the game-winning touchdown. Never mind that Dockery was hit hard enough on that play to land him in the hospital for three days with a concussion. The monumental collapse made Dockery a marked man with the Cleveland fans, earned him the position of Biggest Goat in sports history on a columnist’s list, and turned the 28-year-old into the league pariah. The Browns released Dockery from his contract almost immediately, and no GM would return his agent Arnie’s calls.

Then one day, Arnie offers Rick the only gig he could find: a five-month contract worth 2,000 Euros per month to play for the Parma Panthers in the Italian football league. Rick has never heard of Parma, much less the Panthers, so he at first resists the offer. But when it becomes perfectly clear that the NFL isn’t going to be an option anymore, he accepts.

From there, the plot takes on a predictable aspect as Grisham combines the typical elements of classic fish-out-of-water scenarios with the expected scenes of an underdog sports team that overcomes the odds to win the big game. On the one hand, Rick encounters problems with the language, life, and culture of Parma as he learns to adjust to his new situation. On the other hand, Rick deals with misfit teammates, tries to shake off lingering demons from his NFL career, and ultimately becomes the on-field leader he has always dreamed of being.

My Reaction: This didn’t feel like a John Grisham book at all. I’m not saying that just because it’s not one of his typical legal thrillers; I can understand why he’d want to branch out every once in a while. What I mean is that there wasn’t anything distinctive about the plot or characters that made me want to keep turning the pages. It’s like Grisham outlined the story and then handed the actual composition tasks over to a ghostwriter or something. It was all very anonymous and very bland.

For one thing, the plot itself was highly predictable. There are just so many different ways a sports story can play out, you know? Grisham did the expected thing here, by making Rick come into Parma with heightened expectations surrounding him (a “real” NFL quarterback), having the team go on a losing streak as they face bigger and bigger obstacles, and then finally having them pull together to win games, turn their season around, make it into the playoffs, and win the championship.

Seriously, that plot could have been written by any student in a college writing course.

The non-football aspects of the novel weren’t much better. At first, when Rick was attending operas and starting to hit on that soprano, I was worried that this subplot would develop with Nicholas Sparks-like syrupy sweetness. Fortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, Grisham went in a different direction and gave Rick an American girl to fall for.

Overall, I thought Playing for Pizza was a subpar effort from John Grisham. He has built his reputation on writing tightly plotted books with great action and a number of twists and turns along the way. But Playing for Pizza had neither a strong plot nor strong characters, and was a big letdown in the end. The best thing I can say about the book was that it was short and made for a quick read.

One of my favorite television shows these days is Cold Case, where a group of Philadelphia homicide detectives routinely reopen murder cases that years — and often decades — old.

That’s the same principle that Agatha Christie used in her 1942 novel Five Little Pigs (which has also been published in the US as Murder in Retrospect). Unfortunately, the same storytelling gimmicks that work so well on TV with Cold Case simply don’t have the desired effect on the printed page. As a result, I found this book pretty boring to read, and had to struggle to get through it.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Private detective Hercule Poirot’s latest case is an unusual one. His client is a young woman named Carla Crayle who lost both of her parents at a young age. Carla’s father Amyas, a famous painter, was murdered, and her mother Caroline was sent away to prison for the crime. Caroline died a few years later, but not before writing Carla a letter proclaiming her innocence — the first time she had ever done so.

It’s now 16 years later, and Carla wants Poirot to review the case files, interview the other people who were at the Crayle residence at the time of the murder, and see if he can find out anything that the police might have overlooked. Poirot is at first skeptical, but soon relents.

He then sets about interviewing the five people who were present when Amyas Crayle was poisoned. They are Meredith Blake (an herbalist whose coniine solution was used to kill Crayle) , Phillip Blake (a stockbroker and Amyas’ best friend), Elsa Greer (a young woman half Crayle’s age who was sitting for a portrait and who was having an affair with the painter), Cecilia Williams (the governess), and Angela Warren (Caroline’s younger sister).

Poirot convinces all five to write down as detailed an account of the events leading up to the murder as they can. He knows that the reports probably won’t be 100 percent accurate given all the time that has passed, but he’s convinced that he’ll learn enough from them to make a pronouncement as to Caroline’s guilt or innocence.

The rest of the novel consists of these five different reports, as well as the conclusions Poirot draws from them. Indeed, he learns that Caroline Crayle was truly innocent, and in the final scene lays out precisely what happened on that fateful day before revealing who the real murderer is.

My Reaction: I liked the idea of Poirot investigating a murder that took place so long ago, and I read on Wikipedia that Christie was the first mystery writer to use this sort of plot device. However, I found the execution to be extremely boring.

It was very tedious to read through all five accounts of what happened on the day of the murder. Yes, there were small discrepancies that I should have been on the lookout for if I wanted to make a guess as to who the murder was, but in all honesty, I found it difficult to focus that closely on the narrative. The reports were written, so there weren’t any conversations to break up monotony or change the pacing of the story.

Furthermore, since the characters were essentially introduced via these narratives, it was hard for me to get an idea of what they were like. The reports mostly talked about Amyas and Caroline, so I had a good sense of who those two characters were, but not any of the suspects.

As far as the murder itself went, I thought it was fairly well planned out. At least three out of the five suspects had sufficient motive to want Amyas dead, and I thought Christie’s solution was highly plausible and satisfactory. Even so, this book wasn’t any fun to read because of the problems I’ve just mentioned.

Overall, while I appreciate what Christie was trying to do in Five Little Pigs, I can’t say that I liked this novel very much. The beginning and the end were decent, but that long stretch in the middle that contained the same story told over and over again ruined it for me.

I’m doing pretty well in the reading department this year. Even though we’re still in early March, I’ve already read (or listened to) 12 different titles. Unfortunately, not many of them have been classics, so that’s something I’d like to work on.

I most recently completed Playing for Pizza by John Grisham, but haven’t written up my review yet. I’m also in the middle of yet another Agatha Christie book (Towards Zero), which unfortunately, is pretty boring. I’ve got two Christie reviews queued up and ready to publish (Five Little Pigs and The Moving Finger), and will try to get those up sometime this week.

Speaking of Christie, it’s a lot of fun reading an author whose works literally span decades. In her earliest novels, the detectives had very few truly scientific tools to work with. But as time progresses, Christie introduces the use of fingerprints to place suspects at the scene and autopsy analysis to give an accurate estimate of the time of death.

I also notice this sort of thing in the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly. When the series first stats out in the early 1990s, Bosch has to stop off at pay phones whenever he had to make a call. Later on, however, he carries a pager, a cell phone, and a laptop computer. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he also starts buying online auto insurance or using online dating sites in future books!

Anyway, back to the point of this post. Here are the next five books on my “To Read” list:

1. Body Surfing by Anita Shreve (audiobook)
2. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
3. Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli
4. Angels Flight by Michael Connelly (audiobook)
5. Duma Key by Stephen King

Nicholas Sparks is one of those modern authors that I always see on bestseller lists. People who like his works really like them, while those who hate his books really hate them. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground at all.

I’m one of those readers who is leaning towards the “hate” side, though I honestly haven’t read enough of his stuff to make a complete judgment yet. I’ve checked out The Notebook and True Believer, and didn’t feel that either was worthy of all the buzz and good reviews.

Nevertheless, I decided that I would give Sparks the benefit of my personal “three strikes” policy against authors, meaning that I would have to read at least one more of his books before writing him off as a lost cause. That book turned out to be The Choice, which I recently completed.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The story takes place in the small town of Beaufort, North Carolina starting in the 1990s. That’s when we meet Travis Parker, a handsome, adventurous, successful, life-loving veterinarian with a close-knit group of friends he’s known since childhood. Travis seems to have it all — except for a special woman to share it with.

Enter Gabby Holland, Travis’ new next-door neighbor. Gabby first meets Travis when she goes over to his house to confront him about his dog Moby. Gabby’s own dog Molly is pregnant, and Gabby’s sure it’s because Travis allows Moby to wander around the neighborhood without a leash. Travis tries to explain that Moby was neutered years ago, but Gabby doesn’t give him any room to argue.

The first two-thirds of the book go on to describe how Travis and Gabby overcome that inauspicious start to fall in love — all in the course of a single weekend (in typical Sparks fashion).

The final third of the book flashes forward 11 years. Travis and Gabby are now happily married and have two girls of their own. Their life seems rather idyllic, until one terrible night when Travis runs their car off the road in a rainstorm. He escapes with a few injuries, but Gabby sinks into a coma as a result of the accident.

She stays that way for 12 weeks, after which point Travis is faced with “the choice”: Does he comply with the wishes laid out in Gabby’s living will and pull the plug, or does he listen to his heart and keep her on life support just a bit longer in the hopes that she’ll eventually recover.

My Reaction: First, I was surprised that I didn’t absolutely loathe The Choice, as I did the two previous Sparks titles that I read. I found that the story moved along at a brisk pace, there weren’t any dumb subplots at all, and the two lead characters, Travis and Gabby, were actually pretty interesting. That made it easy to stick with the book, as evidenced by the fact that I finished it in just three days.

That being said, however, I didn’t exactly like this book. I thought it was ok, but nothing spectacular. It follows Sparks’ typical pattern of love at first sight = eternal, burning love that never dies — something that just seems so damn hokey these days. I mean, he had Travis and Gabby fall in love over the course of a single weekend, which was completely unbelievable.

Moreover, their marriage was full of joy and bliss, with nary a disagreement or fight cropping up to cast a cloud over the idyllic scene. Again, a very typical Sparks scenario that just doesn’t mesh with real life.

I found the whole “choice” part of the story to be incredibly predictable. Obviously, there wouldn’t have been a choice involved if Travis had intended to follow Gabby’s wishes, so what was the point of dragging that part out? If Sparks was trying to build tension, he failed miserably, as I can’t imagine any reader who would actually think for a moment that Travis would opt to pull the plug.

And Gabby waking from her coma at the end… well, yeah, another “happily ever after” here. What a surprise. Only not.

I really didn’t like the way Sparks chose to have Travis dismiss the living will as a sign that he loved Gabby, as if those who follow living wills and remove their spouses or relatives from life support are somehow giving up on them. That’s a terrible message to send, and rubbed me the wrong way.

At any rate, I’m not going to count The Choice as a strike against Sparks. Out of the three books I’ve read by him, this is probably the one I’d recommend over the others. As such, I’m not writing Sparks off just yet, and will read at least one more of his works in the coming months.

I don’t read too many modern books because I find that my experiences with them are usually hit or miss. The only time I hear about contemporary authors is when they generate lots of online buzz or when their books shoot to the top of the NY Times Bestsellers list. Sometimes the books live up to the hype and give me fun new authors to read (JK Rowlings, Dan Brown); other times, I’m left wondering what all the fuss is about (Michael Connelly, Nicholas Sparks).

So when I heard about The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini practically nonstop when it reached bestseller status back in 2005, I had reservations about reading it. The story sounded interesting enough, but I had a hard time believing that the book was as astoundingly superb as gushing critics and readers would have people think. I therefore held off on reading it until a few weeks ago — and feel that I didn’t miss much by waiting all this time.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The Kite Runner tells the story of two young boys growing up in Afghanistan during the 1970s. Amir, the narrator, is the only son of Baba, a wealthy and respected businessman in Kabul. Hassan is the harelipped son of Baba’s servant Ali, and therefore acts as Amir’s servant. Both boys lost their mothers at an early age (Amir’s died in childbirth, while Hassan’s ran away to join a dance troupe), so they only have male influences in their lives.

Amir and Hassan are pretty much inseparable as children. They play together after Hassan finishes his daily chores, and Amir often reads books to the illiterate Hassan afterwards. Later, Hassan would serve as audience for budding novelist Amir’s earliest stories. Despite all this, Amir never called Hassan his friend because Hassan was a Hazara and therefore considered to be inferior.

As the boys get older, Amir’s treatment of Hassan becomes increasingly shabby. He teases Hassan for being illiterate, intentionally misleads him about the meaning of words, and humiliates Hassan for no reason. Nevertheless, Hassan remains a constant, steady companion who would do anything for Amir.

One day, something happens that changes the course of both of their lives forever. After Amir wins a big kite tournament, Hassan takes off to run (retrieve) the last kite that Amir defeated. As he gets the kite, Hassan is surrounded by a group of older bullies led by the evil Assef. Assef beats and rapes Hassan — as Amir, too scared to help, watches from a distance.

Amir is so beset by guilt about his inability to act that he can’t stand to see Hassan anymore. He therefore accuses Hassan of stealing from him, after which point Ali insists that he and Hassan move away (over Baba’s tearful protests). Later, Amir and Baba move to the United States, leaving Hassan and Ali behind forever.

The middle stages of the book deal with Amir’s new life in California, and then the last section covers Amir’s trip back to Afghanistan at the request of an old friend of Baba. When in Kabul again, Amir learns of a way to find some measure of redemption for his past actions by risking his life to save Hassan’s son.

My Reaction: I really enjoyed the first part of The Kite Runner, the section that dealt with Amir and Hassan’s childhood in Kabul. The dynamic between the two boys was very intriguing, and I was immediately drawn into their world. This would have been an excellent book had Hosseini chosen to focus solely on Amir and Hassan, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

My interest in The Kite Runner flagged considerably when Amir and Baba moved to America. I didn’t care about Amir as a character in his own right; he was only interesting in terms of his relationship to Hassan. I didn’t want to read about his college days, or how Baba ended up working at a gas station, or how hard it was to adjust to American life. Nor did I want to read about Amir’s courtship of his future wife, his marriage, and their troubles conceiving a child. This was incredibly boring, and brought the pace of the plot to a grinding halt.

Of course, the middle part was necessary in order to set up the all-too-contrived third act, in which Amir goes back to Kabul to rescue Hassan’s son Sohrab. That part of the novel was simply ridiculous in terms of all the things that happened. Assef turned into a murderous Taliban official, but agrees to fight Amir “to the death” for the boy — and Assef has enough honor to tell his men to let Amir go if he emerges from the room. Oh, riiiight. I can really see that happening.

And then Sohrab saves Amir from Assef by shooting him with a slingshot, just as his father had done a quarter of a century before? Sure. Also, one of Amir’s injuries happens to leave him with a split lip, a “harelip” of his own to mirror Hassan’s? Uh huh.

Let’s not forget the biggest coincidence of all: Amir’s lawyer says that the easiest way for Sohrab to come to the United States is on a Humanitarian Visa, but that’s also the most difficult to obtain. It would be better to leave the boy at an orphanage in Pakistan for a year and then try to adopt from there. Then, after Sohrab tries to commit suicide, Amir’s wife calls with the news that they got the Humanitarian visa after all. Huh? How did that happen? I don’t know, because Hosseini didn’t bother to explain.

So to recap here, I thought the first part of The Kite Runner was fantastic, the second part was lame, and the third part was too far-fetched to be believed. As a result, my overall impression of the novel was not that great. Add Hosseini’s pedestrian prose to the mix, and my rating for The Kite Runner falls to below average. I give it 4.0 stars out of 10.

A friend of mine recently told me about an excellent series of home educational courses that she discovered years ago. The courses are provided by The Teaching Company, and consist of audio or video lectures about certain subjects delivered by prominent university professors from across the country. The courses are quite expensive (ranging from $199 for an audio download to $374 for DVDs), but my friend swears that they’re worth it.

To prove her point, my friend let me borrow the CDs for one of the courses she purchased. It’s called The History of Science 1700-1900 and is taught by Dr. Frederick Gregory, a longtime professor at the University of Florida. The course consists of 36 lectures (at approximately 30 minutes per lecture) spread across 18 CDs — and it was indeed excellent!

Each 30-minute lecture covered a different topic that showed how science developed in these two centuries. Obviously, 30 minutes doesn’t provide enough time to go in-depth on any of these topics, but it is enough for a casual listener to develop a better understanding of what was happening in science during the two centuries covered in the lectures.

Almost every scientific luminary of the time made an appearance at some point during the lectures, including Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Carl Linnaeus, Luigi Galvani, Antoine Lavoisier, Louis Pasteur, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), and more, as Dr. Gregory discussed topics ranging from theories of motion to classification of living things, biology, evolution, electromagnetism, chemistry, physics, biology, embryonic development, molecular theory, astronomy, and so on.

I found the lectures in this series to be extremely fascinating and interesting. Dr. Gregory did a wonderful job of not only telling about all the major events of the time, but also explaining the significance of those events — and he did so in a way that was easy to understand (without being condescending). You don’t have to be a science major to enjoy this course; you just have to be curious about the subject in general.

I particularly enjoyed the earlier lectures in the series, and was awed by the way early scientists set about trying to understand the world they lived in. There were some absolutely brilliant thinkers back then who have helped bring all of the scientific disciplines to the advanced states that they are in today.

While I personally find the prices of this and other Teaching Company courses to be far too high for my tastes, I would certainly recommend these lectures to anyone who doesn’t mind spending that much money. As for me, I’ll continue to borrow lectures from my friend whenever possible, and I’ll definitely visit a few different libraries around here to see if any of these courses are available to check out.