you can't always get what you want --- but sometimes, you can

I was clicking around last week when I found an old black and white movie on TCM. Nothing unusual about that, right? But I lingered on this one for a few minutes, sucked in more by the atmosphere than by the dialogue. A young woman was having tea with a much older woman in a large, old Victorian room. The older woman was chastising the younger one about, it seemed, transgressions in the past towards the young woman's sister, complete with flashbacks to a happier time. The tone was moody and nostalgic and somewhat foreboding. You know, I thought to myself, I am in the mood to read a book that strikes just that tone.

I went to the library and, almost unbelievably, found the perfect book. It is The Distant Hours by Kate Morton. I will tell you straight away this is not great literature. But it is a good, solid, entertaining read that kept me interested throughout its 600 pages. The book has the requisite pair of elderly twin sisters, but (amazingly) they got along, had always gotten along, and had never changed places with each other. There is a big, old moldering house in the British countryside, there is a fey, heartbroken sister, and there is a decades-old mystery to be solved. Our fresh-faced young narrator solves the mystery (of course) and in the process, learns a great deal about her own past - which, surprise! turns out to be entwined with the sad history of the great house.

I know. I know. It sounds like you've read it before. So have I. But the author took some interesting new turns in this familiar tale, and her writing, while a bit florid in places, is deeply satisfying in others. For me, it was the right book at the right time, and the value of that cannot be under-estimated.

a good murtle, a good book - life is good

Julie came down to spend some time with me the other day and we went on a murtle. (sp?) The Mancine family lexicon is rich with words that are either re-purposed, mis-used, or just plain made up. "Murtle" is one of the latter, and it means, roughly, to wander about, when used as a verb, or an outing, when used as a noun, as it is here. Anyway. We wanted to drive down to Catonsville proper to find the local yarn shop, Cloverhill. We found it easily enough, and were pleased to find it bustling with customers who were both buying yarn and sitting and knitting.

We were delighted to find that there is a downtown Catonsville with shops and restaurants and off-street parking. Definitely something to explore another day. We were most excited to find the local public library, and, in fact, Julie pulled in the parking lot so we could check it out. We found it to be architecturally reminiscent of the Elyria Public Library on Washington Avenue. A large one-story box of a building with a local history room in the basement, the Catonsville library is actually a branch of the Baltimore Public Library System. This is exciting to me because it means I have that whole system to draw from.

I went to the reference desk to apply for a library card and was delighted to find that with the proper identification (which I had) I could get my card right away instead of having to wait for mail to arrive at my new address. So I got a library card! And I checked out a book! Yes, it's all that exciting to me. And it was not just any book that I checked out - it was a book by my favorite mystery writer, Carol O'Connell, that I had not yet read.

Carol O'Connell is the author of the Mallory books, a hard-boiled detective series set in contemporary New York City. I love everything about that 9-volume series (all of which Ben gave to me one Christmas) except for the fact that the ninth book, Find Me, seems to be pretty clearly the end of the series. O'Connell also wrote Judas Child, a stand-alone book that was so compelling and so incredibly well-written that as soon as I finished reading the last page, I flipped the book over and read it all again. I almost never do that.

This is all prelude to saying that the book I checked out of the library the other day is another stand-alone entitled Bone by Bone. O'Connell's books are not for the faint of heart - not so much because they are violent or gory, which they sometimes are - but because they are so heartbreaking. The author deals with "the damage that humans can do to each other" as the Library Journal says in its review of this book. O'Connell's characters are badly damaged, but, for the most part, manage to function in spite of that, frequently in ways that will break your heart.

In Bone by Bone, a man is summoned back to the small resort town where he grew up - a town he has not seen in the twenty years since his teenage brother disappeared there. His brother is returning home, "bone by bone" and the protagonist must determine why. There are perhaps too many suspects and too many red herrings, but having read all of O'Connell's other books, I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. This was a book to be read slowly and carefully, and now that I have finished it, perhaps for a second time. Yes, it's that good.

a ghost story for an autumn evening

Spoiler Alert: I read The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters last night. Eventually, I will be reviewing it here. If you haven't read it yet and are thinking about reading it, you may want to skip this post. I am giving it all away.

I have always been a mystery reader. Like most kids of my generation, I raced through the Nancy Drew books and my brother's Hardy Boys mysteries. Probably unlike most other children, I went on to read my father's Fu Manchu books, which for some inexplicable reason were stored on a low shelf in my bedroom closet. Next was his big book of Sherlock Holmes, which was more to my liking, and I have been reading mysteries pretty much ever since. Murder mysteries, police procedurals, cozy mysteries, ghost stories - I like 'em all. I like mystery series a lot, too, if I manage to get in on the ground floor and read the series straight through.

The pleasure for me, and I suspect all mystery readers, is to figure out "who-dun-it" before the author reveals all at the end of the book. It's a delicate balance. If I figure it out too soon, I feel the author has not done a clever enough job. If I don't figure it out at all, I'm a bit frustrated. I like my mysteries to be pretty formulaic. A crime is committed. Leads are pursued by one sort of detective or another. The guilty party is discovered. I don't like ambiguous endings. And when the author resorts to a clever trick like the unreliable narrator, I find that particularly infuriating.

The first time I ran into that particular literary device was in Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, one of the first books I read by the renowned mystery writer - and also the last. As I read the book, I picked up the clues the author placed for me, like Hansel and Gretel following the bright pebbles back out of the forest after their first successful foray into the darkness. I was so engaged, so trusting. Imagine my surprise when I realized that the author, whom I trusted absolutely, had deliberately led me down the wrong path. It seemed so unfair. It seemed like cheating. I was done with Agatha Christie, and have tried to avoid stories told by unreliable narrators ever since.

So, to review: no ambiguous endings, no unreliable narrators, oh, and very important, no harm to animals, especially dogs. I don't care what kind of murder and mayhem may rain down on the humans in the story (I watch SVU and Bones, remember) but I cannot bear to read about or think about harm to innocent creatures. The book I read last night turned out to have all three. Who knew?

It started out well enough. Set in post-WWII Britain, the author's story of a great house and a great family in decline are familiar enough territory, but she does it well. She takes her time setting the stage, which I like. I became concerned, however, when the first ghostly "incident" involved the beloved family dog. This better not be headed where I think it is, I thought, but it was. I soldiered on, skipping several of the worst pages, and managed to put that behind me. I realized fairly quickly that my narrator was not to be trusted, so I was on the lookout there, but I honestly did think the author would tell all in the end. She did not.

Oh, she left enough clues so I could figure it out to my satisfaction, but I was disappointed that here, too, she took me over such well-travelled ground. Bad things happened to people when the narrator was asleep (think Morbius and his raging id in Forbidden Planet or the Johnny Depp/John Turturro character in Secret Window). Eventually, the narrator has his heart's desire - not the girl, but the mouldering great house he had violated as a child and never forgotten. I have to say, I was very satisfied with the way the author bracketed the rest of the book with scenes of the narrator wandering alone in the huge, old house.

To tell the truth, I realize that I enjoy thinking back on the book more than I enjoyed reading it. Perhaps that's not so bad, as it will surely stay with me longer that way. It would have been nice to have both, though.

fool me once...

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

I hesitated for a long moment when I realized who the author of this book was, but I brought it home anyway. My bad. I hated the author's huge best-seller, The Time Traveler's Wife, and only finished it because much of the story took place in the Chicago neighborhood where Tom and Kristy were living at the time. Well - no surprise - I hated this one, too.

Once again, the author clumsily tackles the supernatural, but instead of a time traveler, this time she deals with two sets of twins and a g-g-g-ghost. (Pretty scary, huh?) I figured out almost immediately that one set of twins had pulled the old switcheroo. (Don't they always?) It took the entire book, however, for the author to reveal that fact.

It's hard to imagine a premise more ridiculous than someone becoming "unstuck in time" but the author manages it here with her ghost who comes back to life and has a baby with her bereaved lover. Hope you weren't planning on reading this book because I guess that would be a pretty big spoiler if you were. On the other hand, now you won't have to waste your time on it like I did.

on why I insist on reading books in the order in which they are written

After making what I hope was my final "deposit" at the library yesterday (I take the books there that Jason doesn't want) I decided to go in and look for books for a change. I was excited to find what I thought was the next book in a series I have been reading for some years.

In 1994, author Laurie R. King wrote The Beekeeper's Apprentice, the story of a young woman who meets, and most improbably, falls in love with a retired Sherlock Holmes. They marry, and she becomes his Watson, traveling the globe with him and helping the master of deductive reasoning solve matters of international intrigue. There have been more hits than misses in the series, and the last book I read was by far my favorite, so I was thrilled to find The God of the Hive on the New Books shelf.

After reading a few pages, I realized that I had clearly missed a book, and that basically the entire plot was based on what happened in that earlier book. I stopped reading. I was torn. Should I start the other book I brought home with me? Should I go back to the library and search the shelves for the missing book? Perhaps I made the wrong decision, but I decided to press on. And that may be why I found this book so confusing for so long, and why, ultimately, I didn't enjoy it as much as I might have.

Part of the problem was the fact that the author starts the story from the points of view of four different characters. Now, that is just too many. Had I not known her style of writing from the previous books, I would have been utterly lost. As it was, I struggled to to keep things straight, and I don't enjoy that. I did settle into the book about halfway through, but I don't know if that was through my efforts or the author's.

Through the many references to the previous book, I believe I already know the "surprise" ending, so I probably won't be adding it to my reading list. Like all mystery readers, I prefer to solve the mystery on my own. What's the fun of it if I already know?

looks at books

As promised, here are reviews of the books I brought home from the library last week.

Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies

This is a memoir detailing the break-up of the marriage of a television actress and a pompous, womanizing, poetry professor. Here's why it was a must read for me: The actress has a recurring role on Law & Order: SVU as the wife of detective Elliott Stabler. A life-long New Yorker, she left New York and followed her husband to his teaching position at --- Oberlin College. Yes, that Oberlin College. I probably need to devote an entire post to how deeply entwined the little college town of Oberlin, Ohio is with memories of my childhood and my dad and our time spent there. Suffice it to say, I know that town.

Gillies is not a professional writer, and the book is written in a conversational tone - pretty much like the tone I try to use here. You know me, you're interested in me, and in what I have to say. And I was interested in what she had to say. I was fascinated by the town as she described it, and was amazed to find that she lived right down the street from a friend of mine who has lived in Oberlin for years. (She didn't know the author - I asked her.) I tried to picture Gillies in the bead shop or the Ben Franklin, but I couldn't quite manage that.

The author doesn't pull any punches, and the gut-wrenching passage where she kneels in the snow to beg the other woman not to destroy her children's happiness is overly-dramatic, sure, but as the song lyrics say, love has no pride, and that rang true to me. I love how she frames that scene from the perspective of an elderly professor watching from his window, and the knowledge of him there is what gets her up off her knees.

This memoir offers what no one can resist - a peek inside the lighted windows of the lovely old house we walk past on a crisp evening, and the reassurance that the people who live there are, after all, just like us.

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The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

I have been fascinated by Nikola Tesla since the first time we saw the huge statue of a seated Tesla on Goat Island near Niagara Falls. As I read the attached plaque, I wondered why I had never heard of this brilliant inventor who illuminated the entire world. I vowed to learn more about him, and in the years since have read everything I could find about this eccentric genius. There hasn't been much, so I was excited to read a review of this novel several months ago, and even more excited to find it on the library shelf.

I am very disappointed by this book. The author wrote in such a detached style that I could never get into the book. I felt like I kept waiting for the introduction to be over and the story to actually begin, but by the time I was fifty pages into the book, I realized the narrative wasn't going to change into a smooth readable style. The dual plots chugged along, but Hunt never lingered long enough to engage us. The passages where the author repeated what had been written elsewhere about Tesla were not well integrated and stood out like they had been written in neon ink.

Hunt had a good idea when she attempted to describe the New Yorker, the hotel where Tesla lived until his death in 1943, but her attempt fell short of the mark, and I will have to learn about it elsewhere. The author also failed to capture the magic of New York City at the turn of the century, something which I would think would be difficult to do. The secondary plot of the fictional chambermaid was depressing more than anything else, and really, Tesla's declining years were depressing enough on their own.

To learn about the greatest inventor of the 19th and 20th centuries - and, possibly, of all time - read Margaret Cheney's biography, Tesla: Man Out Of Time, or, really, just google Tesla. You'll be amazed by what you find. I guarantee it.

don't buy this book, part 2

My steadfast readers will remember that almost a year ago I posted a book review I had written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers. I never understood how in the world that particular book was selected for me as there are just so many good books out there - and that wasn't one of them. Neither is this book, but, as promised, here is my review of it.

Any Given Doomsday by Lori Handeland

I wanted to like this book. I really did. And I think it started out well. I quite enjoyed the early chapters of the book set in Milwaukee. A fresh voice, a fresh locale, what's not to like? I didn't even mind the multiple types of supernatural beings thrown at me with each turn of the page. “Charmed” is one of my guilty pleasures, after all.

The author began increasingly to lose me, however, with each of her successive sex scenes. I understand this kind of soft-core porn has been de rigueur in paperback romance novels for a long time, but I don’t read them. It’s not that I’m a prude – I’m just not interested. When I realized that the transfer of some types of supernatural power could only happen during hot sex, that just seemed too silly for words to me. Pretty quickly the plot became a vehicle to get from one sexual encounter to the next. Bor-ing.

I understand this is the first book in a new series for this author, and I do appreciate getting in on the ground floor with the first book in a series. However, I prefer to see each book end with a strong resolution, which was definitely lacking here. I don’t think this book can stand alone, and that is a drawback for me, since I won't be reading anything else by this author.

you knew it was coming...

...as surely as the night follows day. Here is my list of the worst books of 2007. One caveat: these are the books I actually finished and didn't like. There were probably a handful of books that I started and pretty quickly knew weren't for me, and so gave up on them. I am usually pretty good at choosing books and don't bring home too many clunkers.

There are only three books on this list, and the third one is the worst, although not by much. Take my advice, and don't read these books!


1. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon - My God. This book was so bad. It was like a black hole. I couldn't finish it. I couldn't give up on it. And I couldn't read anything else. I finally slogged all the way through it, but it took forever. A really bad translation, perhaps? Surely it wasn't this poorly written in its native Spanish. I read this because it received many rave reviews on LibraryThing - but then so did The DaVinci Code.


2. Twin Killing by Marshall Cook - At first glance, this appeared to be a typical cozy little who-dun-it. It was not. I suppose I could have forgiven the second-rate writing if the author had not constantly thrown in references to the strong religious beliefs of all the characters and our brave fighting men in I-raq, but that was not the case. The play-by-play at a high school football game was excruciatingly boring, and the passage where the author tries to describe an erotic dream of lovemaking from the POV of his female protagonist was laughable and embarrassing. Far better writers than him have attempted that and failed.This book needs a warning label: Cloyingly sweet and heavy-handed. Not for those who appreciate fine writing.

3. On the Road to Heaven by Coke Newell - Reviewed in an earlier post, this was the worst book I read this year. I would have never even started it, let alone finished it, but that I felt an obligation to LibraryThing to complete and review the book.

favorite books of 2007

One of the best things that happened to me in 2007 was joining LibraryThing, the online community that I mentioned in an earlier post. When I joined LT, I was inspired to start reading again after a several year hiatus, and, in fact, ended up reading 123 books last year. Looking over that list of books, I decided to cull my favorites and post them here. I ended up with seventeen books, and thought, what the hell, why not the best seventeen books of the year? The only order these are in is the order in which I read them; that is to say I probably read the first one in January or February, and the last one in December.

I was delighted to realize that while the majority of the books are fiction, as usual, it is a slim majority, indeed, with nine of the seventeen books I selected being fiction and eight of them non-fiction. I made a conscious effort to read more non-fiction this year, with Julie's excellent assistance at selecting books.

Without further ado, here they are, and I hope you find something that looks interesting to you.


1. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons - I loved this comedy of manners about a bright young thing from London who goes to stay with her cousins in the country and decides to re-arrange their lives. The cousins are straight out of a Thomas Hardy novel, and never know what hits them.

2. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott - I really loved this book. The author is so encouraging and honest in what she writes.

3. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - I was concerned that this book wouldn't live up to all the hype, but I absolutely, un-reservedly enjoyed it. A wonderful first book for this author.

4. Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer - This is a fascinating - and really scary! - look at the Church of the Latter Day Saints. It details the history of the church, but also focuses on the heinous murder of a young Mormon woman and her daughter, brutally killed by two of her polygamous brothers-in-law.

5. Find Me by Carol O'Connell - The latest Mallory book. I sat up one night and read the whole thing. Once again the author takes the NYC detective on the road - this time down fabled Route 66. O'Connell expertly weaves Mallory's personal quest into the search for a serial child killer who has been burying bodies along the road for decades. I cried as I read the last page of this book, and that is very unusual for me.

6. When Madeline was Young by Jane Hamilton - I enjoyed this book so much. The narrator reminisces about his childhood growing up with his parents and his sister and his father's first wife, Madeline, who was severely brain-damaged as a young woman. This is a hauntingly beautiful novel.

7. Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell - I knew immediately I would enjoy this author's irreverent and smart-alecky writing style, but I didn't realize how much actual history I would learn from her. I want to go on an assassination vacation!

8. Going Back to Bisbee by Richard Shelton - I really enjoyed this book so much. After having visited friends in Sierra Vista, AZ earlier this year, I have seen much of what the author describes in this book. So I was interested in it from that aspect, but I also really enjoyed his witty and informative writing style. And his love of that part of the country shines through in every phrase and paragraph.

9. Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart - What a delight this book is! The author spent the summer of 1945 in New York City with her best friend, where they both worked at Tiffany's. She writes in such a sweet, straightforward way that is all the more charming for its simplicity.

10. The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard - This may have been the best book of the year for me. An atmospheric mystery set at West Point during the time that Edgar Allen Poe was a cadet there.

11. The Unnatural History of Cypress Parrish by Elise Blackwell - This was a very interesting little book, to be read in small doses and savored. On the eve of Hurricane Katrina, an old man remembers the great flood of 1927 and the events that led up to the destruction of his home and many others in southern Louisiana.

12. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane - This book created such a steadily building sense of dread in me that I finally had to read ahead to the ending. I hate it when I do that! And it was so surprisingly sad, as well.

13. The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of my Life by Pat Conroy - I love Pat Conroy, and his cookbook is written in the same wonderful, personal style as his novels.

14. Miss Alcott's E-mail: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds by Kit Bakke - I picked this book off the library shelf and put it back a couple of times before I actually brought it home and read it. I don't know why I hesitated, as it is a delightful and informative book.The author's idea is to send an email to Louisa May Alcott and see what happens next. What happens is a combination of memoir of Ms. Bakke's life in the turbulent 1960s, a biography of Louisa May Alcott, and an extremely readable history of the time in which she lived.

15. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid - A young Pakistani man strikes up a conversation with an American in Lahore. He shares the story of the time he spent in the U.S. as events which seem to be beyond the control of both of them unfold. The narrative style of the book worked very well here, with the unsaid as important as what was said.

16. Letter From Point Clear by Dennis McFarland - There was a lot more to this book than I initially expected. Adult children of a dysfunctional family is a topic that has been done time and again, but this author came up with an interesting interpretation.

17.Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman - This is a really delightful collection of essays on the joys of books and reading. I bought a copy of it for Julie for Christmas.

don't buy this book

I mentioned in a previous post that I am a proud member of LibraryThing, an online forum where booklovers can catalog their libraries and discuss books and why they love them. LT offers an Early Reviewers program, where selected members receive free copies of recently published and pre-pub books. A requirement of receiving these books is that one must write a review and post it on LibraryThing. Members who have blogs are asked to post reviews there, as well.

I received a copy of On the Road to Heaven by Coke Newell late last week, and this is my review of it. I must say to my loyal friends and blog readers that I do not recommend this book. Well, read the review and you will see that.


On the Road to Heaven by Coke Newell

As a life-long atheist who finds Mormonism to be one of the more ludicrous of the Christian sects, I don’t feel qualified to comment on the religious merits of this book. However, as an avid reader who deeply appreciates a well-written book, I can tell you unequivocally that this isn’t one. The author offers the book as an homage to Jack Kerouac, with frequent quotations from his work throughout. I must state that I find any comparison to Kerouac an insult to that fine author.

The novel, a thinly veiled autobiography, appears to end before the protagonist’s 20th birthday. Unless that protagonist’s name is Holden Caulfield, I am not interested in his teenaged, self-absorbed, philosophical musings. Perhaps this book would best be marketed to the Young Adult crowd, who may find these ramblings unique or meaningful; although I would be concerned that they might be impressionable enough to buy into some of the author’s conclusions.

The author, a former PR man for the LDS, uses the house publishing company, Zarahemla Books, in an attempt to package his adolescent life story as "a love story about a girl and a guy and their search for heaven – a lotta love, a little heaven, and one heck of a ride in between." In reality it is just a public relations guy trying a different tact to sell his product, the Mormon religion.

a book review

I guess it's kind of odd that with all the reading I have done over the past couple of months, I haven't included any book reviews on my blog. I have read some really interesting and thought-provoking books, and I do write short reviews of them on LibraryThing, but that is more for my own reference.

I recently read a book, however, that I do want to share. It is Miss Alcott's E-mail: Yours for Reforms of All Kinds by Kit Bakke. I took it off the new book shelf at the library and paged through it several times before I actually brought it home with me. It is a difficult book to describe. Although considered "fiction", it is actually part memoir, part biography, and part social history.

The author, Kit Bakke, must be a few years older than me as she was very much a participant in the turbulent political conflicts of the 1960s. Seriously. She was a member of the Weather Underground. As a middle-aged wife and mother, she is now wondering how she can stay vitally involved in the important issues of today. She decides to "contact" a woman of a similar age who was known to be an ardent reformer all her life - Louisa May Alcott. So Kit e-mails her, and Miss Alcott replies. Okay, you do have to suspend belief for that part, but I don't have a problem with that. The important thing is the dialogue between the two of them.

When Kit e-mails Miss Alcott, she details her own early life of activism, and then shares what she has learned from books and letters and diaries about Miss Alcott's life among the great thinkers of her day; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, her neighbors, foremost among them. Miss Alcott, when she replies, reminisces about her life as a writer and ardent abolitionist, and corrects some of the misconceptions we commonly hold about her.

You might think otherwise, but this literary device really works. The imagined interplay between their two personalities is fresh and believable, and, my gosh, I learned a lot. Not only about Miss Alcott's early life in a commune and her brief stint as a nurse during the Civil War, but about Kit Bakke's years on the run from the United States government, as well. And the author does an admirable job of presenting the slippery concept of transcendentalism so that even I can understand it.

I enjoyed the book a great deal, so I did something I have never done before. I e-mailed the author and told her so. And you know what? She e-mailed me right back and thanked me. How cool is that?