A Hundred Summers – Beatriz Williams

Memorial Day weekend, 1938 finds Lily Dane and her family back in their idyllic and unchanging summer community Seaview, Rhode Island.  Lily is somewhat happily resigned to spending another quiet summer with her six year old sister until she discovers news that takes her breath away.  After years away her ex-best friend, Budgie  is coming to reclaim her family home joined by her husband, Lily’s ex-fiance.

Matters grow more complicated as we come to learn that Budgie is one of those friends that one might be better off not having.  She tends to draw trouble like a lightning rod though (perhaps a sad, drunken lightning rod.) and it may be that she doesn’t actually like Lily all that much. A fact that Lily probably knows well enough.

It is Nick Greenwald, the ex-fiance, that truly broke Lily’s spirit  Tall, handsome, intelligent, wealthy and compassionate and now someone else’s husband.

Though it becomes clear that things are not as they seem it is not until the end of the book that the depths of misunderstanding, and deliberate obfuscation become apparent.

Sling this into your beach bag and while the hours away.

Jaime Bohler does a great spotlight on this book and the author here 

And for a particularly good review of the audiobook I would encourage you to read Literary Hoarders Review here

You can buy A Hundred Summers from Amazon, your local bookstore or perhaps borrow it from your library.

The Returned – Jason Mott

I was intrigued by this book even before I heard the hype. “Brad Pitt has purchased the rights to this book as a TV Series – It’s shooting in 2014!” “All the women who have met Jason Mott have crushes and all the men want to start bro-mances, he is SUCH a great guy!”

However the only thing that tells you about the book is that people are talking. I’m here to say it’s for a good reason. This book made me a bad mom…I’ll make your lunch after I finish the next chapter…10 pages!”

What makes the book so compelling is somewhat difficult to describe. We are introduced to Harold and Lucille Hargrave, an elderly couple who are spending their years doing what most elderly couples do – read, church, tv…up until the moment when a gentleman brings a child to their door. This child, is one of the first of the returned – their son who died in 1966 and looks the same as he did the day he died having drowned in the river behind their home.

How this couple reacts, and the town and country reacts to the increasing phenomenon of “The Returned” is fascinating.  I just kept reading and reading wanting to know the answer – what would happen, will we find out what caused this – how will this resolve itself?

I was very surprised to discover, about half way through the book – that I was a little “more all right” with those loved ones that I had lost.  That their passing was suddenly – a little less painful.  I can neither explain nor promise that you will have the same reaction but I thank you for it Mr. Mott.

If you are looking for something different, that will entertain and provoke you this fall, I strongly recommend The Returned – due to come out in September 2013.

In the meantime “The First” sometimes referred to as “The Returned part o.5” is already available…if you are on a Kindle it’s  free I haven’t read it yet…downloaded but…

Here is what you Jason Mott has to say about his three spin off stories:

From Jason Mott’s introduction for Kindle Readers:

“The FIrst”  is about a man named Edmund Blithe, who died suddenly when he was struck by a bus while on his way to work, leaving behind a fiancee to grieve the loss.  Edmund is the first of the Returned, and it is his mysterious homecoming that sparks the global upheaval in the novel.  He is mentioned only in passing, but as the impetus for the events in the novel, I was compelled to bring his to try to life in a bigger way, and to illuminate the complex range of emotions of lovers being reunited after tragedy has torn them apart.  It has been a year since Edmund’s death, and his fiancee has only just begun to let him go.  When she is faced with his return, she is naturally confronted with a mixture of disbelief, fear, relief and elations.  With this story, I wanted to examine a loss that was still new – a love only freshly resigned- and to explore the transcendent powers of the truest kind of love “”

He also has two other stories, The Sparrow, and The Choice.  After he describes each of them he says “Ultimately, my sincerest hope is that these stories encourage you to reflect on the people you care about.  The goal of The Returned is not simply to brood on death and loss, but to remind us that our loved ones are always a part of our lives, whether we hold them close in the late-night hours, or let the bonds with which we cling to their memories slip and slowly drift away.”

You can pre-order The Returned from Amazon, make a note to buy it from your local bookstore or put a hold on it at your library.

A Beautiful Truth – Colin McAdam

I asked someone from SoHo books which book they were most excited about this season and without a moment’s hesitation she handed me “A Beautiful Truth” by Colin McAdam.
At it’s most basic level – this book struck me as intensely honest. The story begins with Walt and Judy. Walt,’s first wife died in a car accident and so he learned quickly and painfully precisely what was most important in his life. When he met Judy he treasured her with our without children. Judy was a devoted wife, trying to figure out how to live beyond her desire to have children. Despite their difficulties, they were happy. One day Walt saw a clown with a chimpanzee and he was struck by the notion of these creatures – so similart to human, and yet not. He made inquiries and eventually secured a chimpanzee to adopt. If you have ever seen Project Nim, then you will not be surprised by anything that happens.

There is no way that I could pretend to know a chimp’s point of view no matter how much I have followed Jane Goodall’s work in the Gombe National Park, and yet – it rung true.

There is at times a disjointed feel to the book that also is appropriate to both the story and the setting. McAdam manages to lightly and naturally touch on many of the different aspects of the lives of chimps in captivity over the last 40 years.

Who are these creatures in relation to humans, what rights have they or we over one another? How and where are we different? How shall we move forward, what is the nature of love. Over the course of this novel my mind kept prodding me with all sorts of questions and,…if not ‘re-assessments’ then perhaps simple shifts in the way I understand the world.  Something I consider a gift when reading.

If you come across Colin McAdam’s works – read it and see what answers you have to these questions…perhaps your mind will be changed.

Columbine – Dave Cullen

Post -Newton School shooting I wasn’t sure if I was up for an in depth re-cap of the shooting in Columbine in 1999.  Numerous people said that they couldn’t put the book down and I can see why. Despite the difficult subject matter Dave Cullen presents a compelling dissection of the tragedy.  So often when things happen we look for straightforward explanations – who is to blame, why, etc. Indeed – this is what most of the reporting is directly after a tragedy of this magnitude….and it is generally not factually correct.  As the story unveils going from witness accounts to the diaries/weblogs of Eric and Dylan to police reports one is provided with the full scope of the actions and lives of the boys that culminated in this horrific event.

It is a hard book to listen to though perhaps not as hard as I would have thought.  There was so much  misinformation that was spread about the event that has never been adequately dispelled.  I found myself listening and thinking, wait..what? That didn’t happen that way?  Perhaps most interesting is the reflection about how these big events are dealt with and understood with a particular emphasis on how the media gathers and reports information when tragedy strikes. I wouldn’t necessarily call it an indictment – more he explores and helps us to understand how these things happen – it may change the way that you listen to the news.  (disclaimer, I tend to prefer to read a long, well researched article rather than the constant updates and STILL it changes the way I listened to the news).

Cullen goes to great lengths to provide all information in a fair and reasoned manner. Other reviewers – notably those *from* Columbine tend to be the ones that feel he did not tell the story well, or that he was one sided in some way.

For those that enjoy reading about current events, journalist style explorations of events, or even crime lit – this book is for you.

You can buy Columbine on Amazon, from your favorite book store or borrow it from your local library. (now available in paperback)

 

For more reviews, please check these out:

ErikaMiller  .  Ginger Musings  .  A Crowded Bookshelf  .  NYTimes Book Review

The Devil in Her Way – Bill Loehfelm

The Devil in Her Way chillingly starts with a quote from Mary Shelley :

I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe.  If I cannot satisfy the one. I will indulge the other.

Having not read any Bill Loehfelm before “The Devil in Her Way” I asked a friend that reads a lot of suspense if she had heard of him, she hadn’t.  When I began to describe the main female character (In fact that is how I got – female protagonist) – she rolled her eyes and went on to say how bored she got reading suspense where a 98 pound 5″2 woman takes down 30 men without a bruise and solves the mystery in no time.  I said “It’s not like that at all”.

Maureen Coughlin was first introduced in “The Devil She Knows”.  When the book starts she is late 20’s year old waitress who has made a number of probably not the best choices.  She witnesses an event, the bad guy goes after her (and since I have yet to fully read the book and wouldn’t want to add a spoiler) bad stuff happens and she decides to become a cop.

The Devil in Her Way begins when she has graduated as a fully fledged police officer and joins the New Orleans PD.  One of the sub-themes of the book is how the effects of Hurricane Katrina is still affecting New Orleans and it is interesting to see from an outsider’s perspective.

“The scale of what happened in New Orleans, though, a loss like that hitting a whole city at once, a city bleeding out like a murder victim with her throat cut, going empty of people first in a flood then in a trickle, that was  a hard thing for her to get her mind around. Even those times her life had changed overnight, she’d at least awoken in the same bed in the same city the next morning, with her people, few in number as they may have been surrounding her. (68)

“New Orleans was like some bizarre cross between the third world, Maureen thought, and an enlightened civilization that had advanced beyond ordinary American worries.  And here she was in the middle of it, gun on her belt, badge on her chest.  Sweating her ass off.” (82)

As I said, to my friend, Maureen Coughlin is not this waif that gets out of trouble scot free…she is also not a 6″2 body builder.  She is just a very real sort of woman (believably woman, hats off Bill).  What gives this book 4 stars for me is not only the tight suspense filled story line, but the writing.

Towards the end of the book her commanding officer notes : “But you, you’re special.  Your heart’s gonna get crushed into a thousand tiny sparkly little shards.  And then the city’s gonna force feed you the wreckage and then laugh at you while you cough it back up.  It won’t hold your hair back for you while you’re hanging over the bowl, neither.  It’s not that kind of town.  Make some friends.  Keep them close.  And when the shit gets deep, far beyond what you can stand, just hold fast and don’t give up.”   He shrugged. “It ain’t poetical, but it what it is.”(238)  Which I trust is also a promise that we will see more of Maureen Coughlin.

You can pre-order a copy of The Devil in Her Way: A Novelon amazon,  or perhaps your local bookstore or library.

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books (April 30, 2013)

Another review, but from a New Orleans Perspective that you should check out is Cate Root.

Always Watching – Chevy Stevens

Heather Simeon, a fragile, beautiful young woman comes into Dr. Nadine Lavoie’s hospital having tried to take her own life.  Perennially sad, she is currently suffering from the emotional aftermath of a miscarriage and the guilt she feels that her own actions may have caused her to lose the baby.   Dr. Lavoie learns that it is not simply a matter of the collateral guilt that women typically feel during this time, but something more.

As Heather’s story unfolds, Dr. Lavoie begins to realize that the spiritual center that Heather is talking about is a re-incarnation of a commune where she spent time with her brother and unstable mother as a teenager.

One of the most compelling things about Dr. Lavoie is that she is very human.  Though she is a respected, successful psychologist she doesn’t have a picture perfect life. After the death of her husband their daughter ran away from home. As Lavoie struggles to piece together her past, help those under her care, she uses her free time to try and find her daughter on the streets of British Columbia.

The story becomes more and more taut as we journey with Lavoie to see if she will  be able to break down the walls of her past in order to save herself, her patient, and her daughter.

You can pre-order Always Watching on Amazon or mark your calendar for June 18th to get it from your local book store

*Readers were first initially introduced to as a peripheral character in Chevy Stevens first book, Still Missing.

Other Links and articles of interest:

Chevy Stevens Website            Reviews by “Julz Reads” and “This Oilfield Wife”

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (June 18, 2013)

Me Before You – JoJo Moyes

Overheard in the library “I just read Me Before You…you HAVE to read it, it is SO GREAT”…

I put it on my holds list…possibly before the woman who had just had it recommended to her.  I refuse to have a category for Chick Lit because people who love chick lit don’t need to be told and people who feel they don’t like chick lit will immediately discount a book if it falls into that category. Instead, let’s just say that this is definitely a poor girl meets rich boy story. (see my blog on Crazy Rich Asians to learn how I feel about that and note that I am keeping up with my promise!) but there is a lot more to “Me Before You” than that.

We first meet Will Traynor in the prologue.  Wealthy, successful.  His girlfriend (tousled in the bed after a night of lovemaking)  pouts about all of the vacations that he is considering because most of them involve some sort of adventure sport and she would much prefer to lie by a pool in Bali.  He leaves to go to work,the valet advises that it’s too rainy for his motorcycle , so Traynor tosses the keys over, turning down the man’s offer to call a cab for him. As he crosses the street to get catch a cab he is run down by a car.   (page 4, not a spoiler)

In the first chapter we are introduced to Louisa Clark. Twenty-six years old, she spent the last six years working in a cafe which she has just been informed is closing down and she is jobless. A particular hardship since she lives at home with her mother, father, grandfather, sister, and her sister’s young child and she and her father are the only ones providing for the family.  She is happy but her life is surrounded by a certain dreariness – “I remembered, apple juice is expensive”.    She tries to find another job but none of them are particularly suitable and she is not interested in becoming an exotic dancer or phone sex…actress as suggested by her job counselor.  Suddenly, an unusual opportunity is suggested – “Care and companionship for disabled man”.  Without any experience but desperate for a job she reluctantly agrees to go for an interview; to her very great surprise she is hired on the spot.

She doesn’t have to do any ‘personal care’ because there is a medical professional (Nathan) who comes in to take care of all that sort of thing – her main job is to be friendly, entertaining and to do light housekeeping.  The single strange caveat is that the position is only for 6 months.

When describing this book – most of the people use gifs to demonstrate their overwhelming love and inability to describe how much they love the book.  As noted above I grabbed the book on an overheard recommendation but wasn’t particularly motivated to read it until yesterday.  I don’t know the moment that I switched from reading in a La la la type manner to putting aside everything else I had to do for the day so that I could finish the book but that is what happened.

The end was deeply emotionally satisfying (to me) without being twee.  I would recommend it though perhaps not for those that love a certain type of Chick Lit.

This book is available for purchase through Amazon, and may be available at your local bookstore or library.

Abstinence Teacher – Tom Perotta

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perotta brings us to a small town in NJ,  to introduce us to Ruth Ramsey, a human sexuality teacher.  She works hard to pass on the information that she feels  young people need to know to make important health decisions, her basic theory being “pleasure is good, shame is bad, and knowledge is power.”

One day, in class a student makes a statement that oral sex is disgusting, like licking a toilet and proceeds to list all of the std’s that can be contracted during this particular act.  She goes on to ask why anyone would do it. Ruth begins her response by saying, “Some people enjoy it…”  It is only after she is charged with using her class to promote this particular act, that she realizes that she may have been baited.

Several months later, as she is struggling to adapt to the new curriculum of abstience, she meets Tim Mason, former rockstar (and all that that implies) now spiritual warrior of the Tabernacle evangelical church, her daughter’s soccer coach.

After a particularly difficult game in which his own daughter had been knocked out for several seconds, he gathers the girls in a post game prayer.  It sends Ruth right around the bend.  In her eyes this isn’t a simple matter of giving thanks, it  religion is being thrust, inappropriately upon her daughter.

During a time when many schools and towns are grappling to come to terms with some sort of sexual health education format that parents find useful and appropriate, The Abstinence Teacher highlights many of the issues that are consistently under discussion.  Should sex education be part of the school curriculum.  If so, should anything other than abstinence be taught.  How is the behavior of teens any different today from what it was during their parents generation. How do our own histories affect our grown up decisions?

This is the first book I have seen that has almost equal numbers of ratings on Amazon. The bar graph of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 stars are all almost equal. This is not a life-changing, must read book – nor is it one in which all characters are dealt with equally.  Many readers reported that they felt the Christians were portrayed in a one dimensional manner.  Others said that the gay couple was stereotypical and one dimensional.  The point I would make is that the most fully fledged characters are the Ruth and Tim.  Finally some readers complained that the ending left them wanting, it was too abrupt.  I disagree.  I felt that the ending was natural – furthering what began at the end of the book would have either begun another, far less interesting novel OR would have been rendered the ending commonplace.

You can buy The Abstinence Teacher from Amazon, your local book store or borrow it from your local library.

Paperback: 384 pages

Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin; Reprint edition (September 2, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0312363540

James Patterson, Thank you

This is not a book summary, I just wanted to take a moment to thank James Patterson for taking a stand and publicly supporting bookstores and libraries.  The moment I came across this, (I believe, in my MuckRack Daily) I shared it with everyone I know and our esteem for Mr. Patterson raised remarkably.  My hat is off to you Mr. Patterson.

Certainly we are living in a time of change.

Booksellers and especially libraries are places where authors and their works are treasured and recommended.

More importantly – libraries are gathering places for all.  Support yours, and if you don’t like your library – take action to make it better.  There are a lot of outstanding libraries out there…see what they are doing and how they are doing it to make yours worth your donations and tax dollars.

For a full review and interview with James Patterson about his ad campaign – please read this article in Salon.

 

The Power of Habit : Why We do What We Do In Life and Business – Charles Duhigg

Reflections on the power of habit likely precede even Aristotle’s “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”  Wordsworth noted “Habit rules the unreflecting herd.”  Most of the axioms you have ever heard about habit are true. Often times we hear these ‘self-evident’ truths and proceed with our days. It is not until we are trying to change a lifestyle or habit that we shake our heads, thinking that all of these parables are nice but wonder how can we take that information to make it work for us. This is where Charles Duhigg’s book enters the stage.

As he points out in the preface, “Each chapter revolves around a central argument : Habits can be changed, if we understand how they work.”(xvii)

As Daniel Pink notes, this book is not “a magic pill but a thoroughly intriguing exploration of how habits function.”  The long and the short of it is  that on a very basic level, our actions run along our neural pathways in much the same way as a river courses through the land, following the path of least resistance, winnowing away earth so that the river becomes more embedded along it’s path.  However unlike a river (philosophers, your objection is noted) we have the ability to reflect on our choices, put a dam up, and choose a different path.

Unless this is your field of interest you will likely be astounded at how many levels our habits affect our day to day actions.

The military is “one of the biggest habit-formation experiments in history” (xvii) and when Duhigg was in Baghdad he heard of a major who was conducting ‘an impromptu habit modification program’. (xviii)  The major had “analyzed videotapes of recent riots and had identified a pattern : Violence was usually preceded by a crowd of Iraqis gathering in a plaza or other open space and over the course of several hours, growing in size.  Food vendors would show up, as well as spectators.  Then, someone would throw a rock or a bottle and all hell would break loose.”   The major met with Kufa’s mayor and asked if they could keep food vendors out of the plazas.  A few weeks later a gathering began, chanting, angry slogans, but when the crowd became hungry and there were no food sellers, they went home. (xviii)

The major noted that he “had spent his entire career getting drilled in the psychology of habit formation.” (xviii)   Everything from maintaining focus amid the chaos of battle to exercise to working along side people he couldn’t normally stand. (xix)

“Understanding habits is the most important thing I’ve learned in the army,” the major told me. “It’s changed everything about how I see the world.  You want to fall asleep fast and wake up feeling good?  Pay attention to your nighttime patterns and what you automatically do when you get up.  You want to make running easy?  Create triggers to make it a routine.  I drill my kids on this stuff.    My wife and I write out habit plans for our marriage.  This is all we talk about in command meetings.  Not one person in Kufa would have told me that we could influence crowds by taking away the kebab stands, but once you see everything as a bunch of habits, it’s like someone gave you a flashlight and a crowbar and you can get to work.” (xix)

Since I’m pretty sure that the major doesn’t want to be my life coach and I’m not going to join the armed forces at this stage in my life, I’m very glad to have The Power of Habit to help understand why I do things and how to change.

If you would like to buy The Power of Habit you may do so on Amazon or at your favorite local book store.