The Nobel Prize for Literature is usually given out on the 9 of October. I remember the date because it is my son's birthday. Again this year, Murakami was left out. This year, it was awarded to a French writer Patrick Modiano. I had never read anything by Modiano so I set up a list of his books to decide whether I approved of the selection. I don't! The saving feature is that his books are short and have to do with memories. In the case of Missing Person, it had to do with a detective who had lost his memory. I found it to be tedious. This is not to say that it is not well-written but there is no comparison with the skill,  style and universal themes in the writings of Mo Yan or Murakami. Mo Yan has his well-deserved Nobel Prize and Murakami doesn't. He doesn't need it.

Fiction Long List Announced for National Book Awards

By Alexandra Alter   September 17, 2014 6:40 pm September 17, 2014 6:40 pm

The long list of nominees for the 2014 National Book Award for fiction, due to be released on Thursday, is an eclectic collection that includes two debut volumes of short stories, a first novel from the lead singer and songwriter for the indie folk rock band the Mountain Goats and a dystopian novel, as well as works from literary heavyweights including Jane Smiley, Marilynne Robinson and Richard Powers.

Rabih Alameddine, ‘An Unnecessary Woman,’ Grove Press  Mr. Alameddine’s fourth novel, “An Unnecessary Woman,” is narrated by Aaliya Saleh, a reclusive 72-year-old woman in Beirut who translates works by Nabokov, Rilke, Donne and others into Arabic and stashes them away in her apartment without showing them to anyone.

Molly Antopol, ‘The UnAmericans,’ W.W. Norton & Company  In her bleak and occasionally comic debut short-story collection, Molly Antopol, who was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” writers in 2013, writes about a diverse cast of characters, including a former dissident from Communist-era Prague who worries that his daughter’s new play will paint a negative portrait of him and a young Israeli journalist who dates a widower still grieving for his wife.

John Darnielle, ‘Wolf in White Van,’ Farrar, Straus and Giroux  In his debut novel, Mr. Darnielle, best known as the lead musician and lyricist for the band the Mountain Goats, writes about a lonely, disfigured man who invented a popular role-playing fantasy game and runs the operation out of his apartment.

Anthony Doerr, ‘All the Light We Cannot See,’ Scribner​  Mr. Doerr’s novel unfolds during World War II in France. A blind girl and her father flee Nazi-occupied Paris and move to a seaside town, taking with them a precious jewel from a natural history museum. The father is arrested by the Germans, and a Nazi treasure hunter tries to track down the jewel.

Phil Klay, ‘Redeployment,’ The Penguin Press  Mr. Klay, a former Marine who fought in Iraq, captures the terror, boredom and occasional humor of war in his debut collection of short stories, some set in the Anbar Province of Iraq, and others in America as soldiers struggle to readjust to civilian life after being in combat.

Emily St. John Mandel, ‘Station Eleven,’ Alfred A. Knopf  “Station Eleven,” a quiet dystopian novel, unfolds in North America after a deadly super flu has wiped out most of humanity; a band of Shakespearean actors travels to scattered camps of survivors to perform plays.

Elizabeth McCracken, ‘Thunderstruck & Other Stories,’ The Dial Press  Ms. McCraken, whose novel “The Giant’s House” was a National Book Award finalist, has published her first collection of stories in 20 years. Among the nine stories are a tale about a successful documentary filmmaker who has to face a famous subject he manipulated and betrayed; one about a young scholar who is mourning his wife; and another about a grocery store manager who obsesses about a woman’s disappearance.

Richard Powers, ‘Orfeo,’ W.W. Norton & Company  Mr. Powers’s novels often have a cerebral bent, and in “Orfeo,” he threads together several of his favorite themes: music, patterns and genetics. “Orfeo” follows Peter Els, a 70-year-old avant garde composer who attempts to manipulate the genome of a common bacterium by splicing in a musical pattern. Homeland Security picks up on his plans and pursues him as a bioterrorist.

Marilynne Robinson, ‘Lila,’ Farrar, Straus and Giroux  “Lila” — the final book in Ms. Robinson’s trilogy of novels set in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa — centers on Lila, the troubled young woman who marries the elderly Reverend Ames, the conflicted Calvinist minister and narrator of “Gilead.”

Jane Smiley, ‘Some Luck,’ Alfred A. Knopf  Jane Smiley’s new novel, due out in October, takes place on an Iowa farm, where Rosanna and Walter Langdon, who have five children, live through wars and social and technological upheavals during the middle decades of the 20th century. 

I am looking at the list and thinking about which of these books would I like to read. How can a three or four line description peak my interest? Orfeo seems to be black enough to stimulate my interest; I don't particularly care for dystopian books; An Unnecessary Woman could be an interesting study in human nature. It seems to me that the greatest writers about human nature were the Russians. I just can't explain what makes me want to read a book.

What Do We See When We Read? (IMAGES)

The Huffington Post  | By Maddie Crum  Posted: 08/15/2014 4:41 pm EDT Updated: 08/15/2014 4:59 pm EDT

What do we see when we read? Designer Peter Mendelsund, who's behind a few iconic covers you might've seen on bookshelves, poses the question in his new book, and, fittingly, answers it in an aesthetically pleasing way, alternating text-only pages with visualizations of his argument. Although we imagine the experience of reading as similar to watching a film, the goings-on in our brains are entirely more nebulous when we sit down with a book than when we sit back to watch a movie.

He begins by describing Lily Briscoe, a principle character in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, who is painting the scene that Woolf's book describes with words. We as readers are asked to visually perceive both Woolf's words and Briscoe's painting -- two related, but separate images. What Mendelsund explicitly does is describe, with words and images, what we picture with our minds while reading words on a page. What he does more indirectly is defend the unique magic of reading, an art form that enlivens our ability to perceive creatively.

Studies show that reading is an especially effective means of stimulating the imagination, but Mendelsund isn't too concerned with studies. Instead, his book reads like a personal essay, with anecdotes about his and his friends' reading experiences. Mendelsund recalls the first time he read Anna Karenina, and discovers that he doesn't posses a complete memory of her appearance. Although he's aware of her hair color, her attractiveness and her "thick lashes," he notes that "our mental sketches of characters are worse than police composites." The mind, then, must fill in the gaps.

In a passage all readers are likely to relate to, Mendelsund questions whether the speed at which we read influences our imagination. He portrays one type of novel -- the type we're prone to breezing through -- as a pixilated road, like a Super Nintendo driving game. The other type, he suggests, is akin to a detailed impressionistic painting.

The rest of the article can be found at the following link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/15/reading-experience-book_n_5679757.html?utm_hp_ref=books

The books on my nightstand are piling up. The summer thrillers - beach books - are out.

Midnight in Europe by Alan Furst  Paris, 1938. As the shadow of war darkens Europe, democratic forces on the Continent struggle against fascism and communism, while in Spain the war has already begun. Alan Furst is widely recognized as the master of the historical spy novel. 272 pages published by Random House

The Antiquarian by Gustavo Faveron Patriau The first novel by a Peruvian writer.  Three years have passed since Gustavo, a renowned psycholinguist, last spoke to his closest friend, Daniel, who has been interned in a psychiatric ward for murdering his fiancée.  With sumptuous prose and haunting imagery, Faverón Patriau has crafted an unforgettable, labyrinthine tale of murder, madness, and passion that is as entertaining as it is erudite and dark as it is illuminating. 240 pages published by Grave Press  I am really trying to finish this book. I started out with great hopes: the idea sounds original and intriguing and I love reading Mario Vargas Llosa so what could go wrong? What has gone wrong is that it is turning into a kind of torture. The verbosity is not sumptuous but rather making it dull and boring and instead of creating imagery, it is putting me to sleep. So many pages and so many adjectives to arrive at what I suspected all along. Tedious. 

Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch When a medical procedure goes horribly wrong and famous actor Ralph Meier winds up dead, Dr. Marc Schlosser needs to come up with some answers. After all, reputation is everything in this business. His first book, The Dinner, demonstrated that the author can uncover the worst traits in mankind. 400 pages published by Hogarth

The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker  "A successful young author suffering from writer’s block journeys to New Hampshire to visit his former professor. Shortly after he arrives, the bones of a girl are found buried in the professor’s backyard. Now the professor has been arrested for the murder of the girl--who disappeared in 1975 at the age of fifteen--and the author has an idea: he will write a book based on the case that will ultimately exonerate his professor and jumpstart his writing. Already a massive best seller in Europe (and translated into 32 languages), The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair arrives in North America amid such wild praise you might expect something groundbreaking. Instead, what you get is a wonderful, fun, and boisterous read, a book with an uncanny ability to both fascinate and amuse you. Twists and turns and oddball characters make this a rollicking bullet-train of a novel." --Chris Schluep  656 pages published by Penguin Books

Quesadillas by Juan Pablo Villalobos Both profoundly moving and wildly funny, Juan Pablo Villalobos’s Quesadillas is a satiric masterpiece, chock-full of inseminated cows, Polish immigrants, religious pilgrims, alien spacecraft, psychedelic watermelons, and many, many "your mama" insults. It’s the 1980s in Lagos de Moreno—a town where there are more cows than people, and more priests than cows—and a poor family struggles to overcome the bizarre dangers of living in Mexico.192 pages published by FSG Originals  As a second book, this one is just as good as the first. The characters are wonderful including the pretend twins, the father who is a teacher and preaches against the government and the mother who tries to feed her family with quesadillas each night. A family trying to ignore their poverty by saying they are middle class faces off against the rich and progress. The only complaint I have is about the last three or four pages which made me feel that the author did not know how to end his wonderful story. Juan Pablo Villalobos is a universal social critic; his story could have happened anywhere at anytime and that makes for good literature!

The Prince of Venice Beach by Blake Nelson Robert "'Cali" Callahan is a teen runaway, living on the streets of Venice Beach, California. He's got a pretty sweet life: a treehouse to sleep in, a gang of surf bros, a regular basketball game...even a girl who's maybe-sorta interested in him. What he doesn't have is a plan. This is a book for "young" readers. 240 pages published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

On the Lisbon Disaster by Olen Steinhauer  In a thrilling e-original story, New York Times bestselling espionage master Olen Steinhauer introduces the enigmatic John Calhoun, an international security contractor who plays a prominent role in Steinhauer's upcoming novel The Cairo Affair. 67 pages published by Minotaur Books

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King In a mega-stakes, high-suspense race against time, three of the most unlikely and winning heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up thousands. Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil, from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable. 448 pages published by Scribner

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman Following one of the most critically acclaimed fiction debuts in years, The Imperfectionists,  New York Times bestselling author Tom Rachman returns with a brilliant, intricately woven novel about a young woman who travels the world to make sense of her puzzling past. 400 pages published by The Dial Press As with his first book, Tom Rachman creates beautiful, complex characters. Even though I now have the new J.K. Rowling book, I could not put this one down. Tooly was kidnapped as a child, stolen back by her mother who never admitted to being her mother and then abandoned again. I had to know why Tooly was the way she was and how she came to be that way.

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith "[Rowling's] literary gift is on display in this work. She crafts an entertaining story [and] comes up with an ending that I'll admit I was surprised by. . . . A fun read, with a main character you can care about and one you'll want to see again in other adventures." --The Washington Post  464 pages published by Mulholland Books  What J.K. Rowling did for children and inspiring them to read, she has done again for those of us who enjoy a good detective story. I wasn't just reading before bedtime and losing sleep because I could not put it down, I was reading all afternoon instead of doing the dishes or any other kind of work. Interesting characters and clues left all over the place and a twist at the end make for entertaining reading.

Top Secret Twenty-One by Janet Evanovich Trenton, New Jersey’s favorite used-car dealer, Jimmy Poletti, was caught selling a lot more than used cars out of his dealerships. Now he’s out on bail and has missed his date in court, and bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is looking to bring him in. Leads are quickly turning into dead ends, and all too frequently into dead bodies. Even Joe Morelli, the city’s hottest cop, is struggling to find a clue to the suspected killer’s whereabouts. 352 pages published by Bantam  Some people watch soap operas or telenovelas but my guilty pleasure is reading about Stephanie Plum. I know it is fluff but the dialogue is sharp and the imagery is... I can't help myself.

Forty years after it was finished, the last work by Nobel Prize–winning novelist Pearl S. Buck has been discovered. It was published in 2013. "Rann falls for the beautiful and equally brilliant Stephanie Kung, who lives in Paris with her Chinese father and has no contact with her American mother, who abandoned the family when Stephanie was six years old. Both Rann and Stephanie yearn for a sense of genuine identity. Rann feels plagued by his voracious intellectual curiosity and strives to integrate his life of the mind with his experience in the world. Stephanie feels alienated from society by her mixed heritage and struggles to resolve the culture clash of her existence. Separated for long periods of time, their final reunion leads to a conclusion that even Rann, in all his hard-earned wisdom, could never have imagined." Amazon The Eternal Wonder by Pearl S. Buck 304 pages published by Open Road Media  "A hand-written Pearl S. Buck Manuscript was discovered in January of 2013, forty years after the 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature winner's death. Her son, Edgar Walsh, decided to have the novel edited and published even though his mother died before she was able to revise it. The novel can be enjoyed by young readers as well as adults." This was not her best book but she died before it could be revised and corrected. I remember reading The Good Earth at the age of ten or twelve and crying at the end. This book shows an obsession with people of mixed-race that would be deemed silly today. Even so, her writing had an elegance that is rarely seen in modern writers. I am glad that I read it.

I have a couple more books to add to my nightstand collection. I will get to them soon. 

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes 624 pages published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books I am a sucker for debut novels and this promises to be a good one. "It looks like the perfect murder: an unidentifiable victim—a young woman found in a low-rent Manhattan hotel, face down in a bathtub of acid, teeth removed, fingerprints and face gone, and a murder scene devoid of fingerprints, DNA, or any other identifiers. The homicide detective in charge, Ben Bradley, is a long time friend of Pilgrim, a retired CIA operative who has penned a textbook on criminal investigations that the murderer has apparently read. Pilgrim, retired and reclusive, is drawn into the case by Bradley and is quickly in the middle of an international manhunt moving through the United Kingdom, France, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. This is more than just a murder mystery; there is also a biological threat against the U.S., which ties into the murder. The characters are skillfully brought to life in this action-packed worldwide adventure, and Pilgrim is a quick-witted and thoroughly fascinating protagonist. Growing up as the adopted son in a very wealthy family, he is a brilliant loner recruited by the Division, a top-secret black ops group that is eventually disbanded. His adversary here, another loner, nicknamed Saracen, grew up in Saudi Arabia, where his father was beheaded for criticizing the king; international politics makes for fascinating backstory. The novel is gruesome at times, but none of the violence is gratuitous, and unfortunately, it all feels quite real and believable. Don’t be put off by the length of this book. The story is tightly plotted, and the pages fly by ferociously fast. Simply unputdownable." Stacy Alesi It is a hard book to put down and it goes really fast. It is a debut novel but at the end I read the bio of the author. He was the screenwriter for the Mad Max movies and many other screen plays. And at the end of the book, that was part of the problem. The book was clearly written with the idea of making it into a movie. There were some meandering parts that were not necessary but would make good action sequences in a movie. All of the happy and unhappy endings for the characters are very Hollywood. It is not literature but it is a great thriller to read on the beach in the summer.

The Most Dangerous Animal of All by Gary L. Stewart 384 pages published by Harper "Soon after his birthmother contacted him for the first time at the age of thirty-nine, adoptee Gary L. Stewart decided to search for his biological father. His quest would lead him to a horrifying truth and force him to reconsider everything he thought he knew about himself and his world. Written with award-winning author and journalist Susan Mustafa, The Most Dangerous Animal of All tells the story of Stewart's decade-long hunt. While combing through government records and news reports and tracking down relatives and friends, Stewart turns up a host of clues—including forensic evidence—that conclusively identify his father as the Zodiac Killer, one of the most notorious and elusive serial murderers in history." The publisher spent almost one year checking the evidence before publishing the book. Fascinating!

Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson 336 pages published by Viking Adult "Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire’s eleventh case takes him out of his jurisdiction to Campbell County, near South Dakota. He’s investigating a lawman’s suicide as a favor to his friend, the crusty Lucian Connally, who’s along for the ride. Walt may be away from home, but when undersheriff and love interest Victoria Moretti and old friend Henry Standing Bear show up, he may as well have brought Absaroka County with him. Many of the elements here will seem familiar from previous novels, from the change of location (The Dark Horse), to the key role played by a vintage sidearm (The Cold Dish), to the touch of supernatural and visit from Walt’s spirit guide (Hell Is Empty), to the set piece in a snowstorm (take your pick). But while Johnson might be coasting just a little, all that means is that new readers referred by the popular TV show Longmire (the books have been appropriately rebranded) might be better served by starting at the beginning. Those who have followed the series all along will find no reason to stop now." Keir Graff  I have enjoyed all of the Longmire books. There is something like the Zane Grey westerns in the books. This one may not be one of his best books but it is still good and worth reading.

Remembering the Life and Work of Gabriel García Márquez 

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/remembering-the-life-and-work-of-gabriel-garca-mrquez/?_php=true&_type=blogs&partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

I remember reading Cien Años de Soledad and being so fascinated that I could not put the book down and go to sleep. The books that followed left me feeling let down. Then came the Nobel Prize but the prize is given for a body of work and not a single book. So, it was not until Love in the Time of Cholera came out that I felt he deserved the prize. Those flashes of greatness and insight will be remembered.

The Republic of Wine by Mo Yan 368 pages published by Arcade Publishing available at Amazon.com   "The Republic of Wine is a novel Joseph Heller might have written had he been Chinese. As it is, the honor goes to Mo Yan, one of China's most respected writers. Set in the fictional province of Liquorland, this tall tale begins with a rumor of cannibal feasts featuring children as the delectable main course. In response, Chinese officials send special investigator Ding Gou'er to look into the allegations. He arrives by coal truck at the Mount Lao Coal Mine, where he meets the legendary Diamond Jin, Vice-Minister of the Liquorland Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Bureau, a man known for an epic ability to hold his booze. Almost at once, Ding's worst fears seem to be realized when he is invited to a special dinner, given enough alcohol to stun an ox, and then served what appears to be "a golden, incredibly fragrant little boy." Horrified, he attempts to make an arrest and in the ensuing confusion, accidentally puts a bullet in the main course." Amazon.com Review

This book is even stranger than anything Joseph Heller (Catch 22) could have written. Between the story are letters from the author Mo Yan to an aspiring writer who sends Yan his stories which are even stranger. If you like Stephen King...well, this book is even better.  As strange as this book is, Mo Yan is undeniably one of the greatest writers of our times.

My pile of books to read is still very small. I have The Black-eyed Blonde which is a Raymond Chandler rip-off the author, writing under the name Benjamin Black, is a fine mystery writer on his own but with the permission of the Raymond Chandler family, he has taken one of the original ideas from Chandler's notes and written a good story which recaptures the '50s vibe ; there is a new Olen Steinhauer book called The Cairo Affair if you like spy stories in the LeCarré spirit, this is a very nice story told in flashbacks and pieces, a stand-alone spy novel. Then there is the new Emma Donoghue (Room) book Frog Music which is based on a true event in San Francisco about a high-class prostitute looking for her friend's killer, exciting, fascinating and a true story very carefully researched by Donoghue. The Son by Jo Nesbo is a stand-alone novel in that it is not about his usual hero Harry Hole. A young serial killer escapes from prison but is he really a killer? The Scandinavians are producing first-rate crime novels. Maybe because there is so little crime there, they just write about it but the writing is top notch.  In April, Christopher Moore brings out a new book entitled The Serpent of Venice and any book of his is always a joy to read. Christopher Moore has managed to rip off King Lear and some of his own books to create a hilarious new story about ancient Venice. I am also desperately looking for Quesadillas or Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos. A Mexican author who has sold more books in other languages than in Spanish, his short books about life in Mexico are winning prizes around the world. I found both and have read Down the Rabbit Hole. This is a wonderful book about the young son of a narc-trafficker isolated in a huge house, home-schooled with his every desire fulfilled. The chilling part is the way he looks at his life and the violence that surrounds him as normal and natural. It is a small book - only 100 pages - that paints a terrible picture of the loss of innocence.  Another book I am looking for is The Axe Factor by Colin Cotterill, a new Jimm Juree book about Southeast Asia.In this third book in the series, Jimm finally knows her father, solves several killings, meets a scum-ball of a writer all with the help of her transsexual sister and weight-lifting brother and his girlfriend who is forty years older than he is. In the beginning, I thought it was terribly predictable but the twists at the end were very satisfying.

Cockroaches by Jo Nesbo 384 pages published by Vintage    When the Norwegian ambassador to Thailand is found dead in a Bangkok brothel, Inspector Harry Hole is dispatched from Oslo to help hush up the case. But once he arrives Harry discovers that this case is about much more than one random murder. There is something else, something more pervasive, scrabbling around behind the scenes. Or, put another way, for every cockroach you see in your hotel room, there are hundreds behind the walls.

While this book is actually the second in the series of Harry Hole, it has only recently been translated and published. There is something appealing about an imperfect and flawed hero, an alcoholic Norwegian detective, and Nesbo creates a fast-paced read. 

We are starting the new year with a remarkable lack of new material.

Ripper: A Novel by Isabel Allende 496 pages published by Harper  I have just finished this book but before I give my inexpert opinion, let me show you the blurb:

Isabel Allende—the New York Times bestselling author whose books, including Maya’s Notebook, Island Beneath the Sea, and Zorro, have sold more than 57 million copies around the world—demonstrates her remarkable literary versatility with Ripper, an atmospheric, fast-paced mystery involving a brilliant teenage sleuth who must unmask a serial killer in San Francisco. While her mom looks for the good in people, Amanda is fascinated by the dark side of human nature, like her father, the SFPD’s Deputy Chief of Homicide. Brilliant and introverted, the MIT-bound high school senior is a natural-born sleuth addicted to crime novels and Ripper, the online mystery game she plays with her beloved grandfather and friends around the world.

I enjoyed the story line and concept and I thought they fit in well with a San Francisco backdrop. As for the writing style, over 25% of the book could have been erased without losing any of the story. There was too much developing of the background of each superfluous character  that resulted rather tedious at times. She avoided a "happy Hollywood" ending but there was still a touch of the movie studios at the end. You could see the last scene on a movie theater screen and the credits rolling. The idea of Isabel Allende trying to feel out the waters of the crime genre is interesting but J.K.Rowling has her beat even down to the one-legged hero. The second J.K.Rowling book is coming out in June and I can't wait. The Ripper is available in Spanish under the name El Juego del Ripper.

January 2014 was looking pretty dull with no new books coming out so I finished the last Alice Munro book. She is a master of the short story and that is not an easy form to conquer. She was deserving of the Nobel Prize.I wish I could write just one short story with such mastery. So simple and so pure.

In February, I made some discoveries. A new book was published (well, the translation was published) by Leonardo Padura, a Cuban writer I had never read before. (All of his books are available in the original Spanish) The book is titled The Man Who Loved Dogs and deals with the last years of the man who killed Trotsky here in Mexico. I did not know that he spent his last few years in Cuba where he died. But, I couldn't get the book so I decided to read some of his earlier works to get a feel for his writing. He has written a series about a Havana detective. I started with Havana Gold. I discovered that contrary to the beliefs that I held about Cuba, there are cars in Cuba and upper-middle-class areas and pure-bred dogs. I also discovered that, like most of my Cuban friends, Cubans tend to be rather long-winded and self-torturing. However, the writing is better than good and the man has an excellent translator who manages to keep the Cuban touch while passing the book over to English. I now have my hands on The Man Who Loved Dogs but fate has intervened in the form of Ripper by Isabel Allende who has decided to write her first crime novel. I am tossing a coin to see which one will be read first.

I made it to my seventy book goal for the year, roughly about a book every five days. Some were so forgettable that I didn't even put them on the list for the year. I only have about five books on my nightstand which is a great improvement. Let's see what the New Year brings us in the way of books, goals, challenges and life. Happy New Year!

I am not a Christmas person. I do not like Christmas and I do not enjoy Christmas. I retreat under the bed with my books. This year, I discovered a Christmas book by one of my favorite authors which I thought was very strange because he is a cynical man. The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore 320 pages published by William Morrow   Moore pokes shameless fun at the weird things people do around Christmas, from aggressive Salvation Army bell ringers to Xmas Present Amnesty. Moore's twisted sense of humor shines in the odd pairings he cooks up -- the biologist Gabe and his dog, whose ruminations will have you laughing out loud; the pilot Tucker Case and the talking fruit bat he got as part of his divorce settlement; sheriff and former pot-head Theo Crowe and his wife, Molly Michon, the former scream queen who's gone off her meds and thinks she really is the warrior babe from her movies. I know I have a very twisted sense of humor and, thankfully, so does Mr. Moore so this is the perfect Christmas book.

I promised myself no new books until I finished the pile on my nightstand but fall brings out all the heavy hitters. There are some I just have to read:

Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips 464 pages published by Scribner  In her mesmerizing new novel, Quiet Dell, Phillips returns to the scene of a real crime that occurred in the 1931, in a West Virginia town not far from where Phillips grew up. A crime that Phillips’ mother, herself haunted by memories of watching townspeople flocking to the scene, had told her about when she was a girl. At the time the newspapers were full of sensational stories about Asta Eicher, a lonely young widow, and her three children, imprisoned and murdered by Harry Powers, a charming serial killer who seduced scores of women through lonely hearts columns all around the country with the promise of making them his wife. Many are comparing Quiet Dell to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and they do have much in common. For the second time, I am putting this book aside. They compare the book to In Cold Blood but I couldn't put In Cold Blood down and I just can't seem to get into this one.

* The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith 256 pages published by Pantheon  "The latest title is brilliant in its hopefulness, implying, as it does, that a person may only be a mere tweak away from beauty. This hopeful attitude is exemplified by Mma Ramotswe, the owner and operator of Botswana’s only detective agency, who resolutely tackles the problems people bring to her in her small, out-of-the-way office under an acacia tree. The clients’ problems showcase the usual suspects of greed, envy, sloth—all the vices that cause trouble for others. This time, the owner of the nearest town’s new beauty salon receives a tiny thing, a feather from a ground hornbill bird. But this artifact is a traditional way of conveying hate. This is followed by a highly effective smear campaign. The other case Mma Ramotswe works on here concerns an heir to a great cattle farm who may actually be an imposter. Mma Ramotswe must track the truth alone because her assistant Mma Makutsi is absent (no plot spoiler here). As usual, these novels are only a bit about actual mysteries. They’re leisurely, wonderfully crafted descriptions of life in the agency and at home, the beauties of Botswana, and the joys, big and small, of life. This latest is, especially, a tribute to enduring friendship." --Connie Fletcher The cases are only a vehicle for daily life in Africa, the simplicity and the confusion of changing times and society, morals and values. This is actually a very good book for ESL beginners because the language is simple but the reader has to use the techniques for finding new vocabulary from context. 

* Critical Mass (V.I. Warshawski Novel) by Sara Paretsky 480 pages published by G. P. Putnam's Sons  As in previous V. I. Warshawski mysteries, Paretsky works elements of Chicago history into the story, this time referencing the city as a nexus for atomic research and linking the science to the work conducted in Austria during the Nazi occupation. When Judy, the drug-addicted daughter of Kitty Binder, a Holocaust survivor whom Lotty Herschel knew in wartime Vienna, calls Lotty for help and then disappears, Lotty turns to Vic. The investigation leads to a burned-out crack house and the mutilated body of a dead man but not to Judy. Kitty, a bitter, uncooperative, seemingly paranoid crank, seems uninterested in finding her estranged daughter, but she hires Vic to locate her grandson, giving Vic two missing-persons cases in the same family. This book left me with a number of questions about the fictional aging of fictional characters.

Takedown Twenty: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich 320 pages published by Bantam  New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum knows better than to mess with family. But when powerful mobster Salvatore “Uncle Sunny” Sunucchi goes on the lam in Trenton, it’s up to Stephanie to find him. Uncle Sunny is charged with murder for running over a guy (twice), and nobody wants to turn him in—not his poker buddies, not his bimbo girlfriend, not his two right-hand men, Shorty and Moe. Even Trenton’s hottest cop, Joe Morelli, has skin in the game, because—just Stephanie’s luck—the godfather is his actual godfather. And while Morelli understands that the law is the law, his old-world grandmother, Bella, is doing everything she can to throw Stephanie off the trail. The terrible thing about this is that I don't care what it is about because I will read any Stephanie Plum book that comes out.  I know that these are trashy books but I love them. Why?

Booking Through Thursday is an amazing site. It is updated each week with a new prompt to make you think about reading, what you are reading, how you are reading and why you are reading. There have been a couple of prompts that have made me stop and think. Are “best” and “favorite” the same thing? If someone asked you “What’s the best book you ever read?” would the answer be the same as for “What’s your favorite?” My first thought is that "best" would refer to quality and "favorite" would refer to an emotional attachment but what if a favorite book is a "good" book. Happily, I don't have a favorite book; I have many favorite books and most of them are "good" books. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is one of my favorite authors and his book The First Circle is one of my favorite books. 

Another prompt: We all know the beauty of reading a really wonderful book for the first time—when everything about the story and the writing and the timing click to make a reader’s perfect storm … but it’s fleeting, because you can never read that book for the first time again. So … if you could magically reset things so that you had the chance to read a favorite book/series again for the first time … which would you choose? And why?And then, since tastes change … Do you think it would have the same affect on you, reading it now, as it did when you read it the first time? Would you love it just as much? Would you risk it? When I first read Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, I was totally in love with the book but a few months ago I went back and reread it. I was amazed at how misogynistic the book is and is a complete reflection of the man and the times it was written. And yet, The Old Man and the Sea is a very beautiful book. A good book should be timeless. I do go back and reread books but with a more critical eye.

And while we’re thinking about books converted to tv/movies. Do you ever sit and wonder who could be cast as your favorite characters? (Please feel free to give examples!) What actors do you think have done particularly excellent jobs with some of your favorite characters?  One more to think about.

The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded today to Alice Munro from Canada. She is a master of the short story and her latest book is sitting among the pile on my nightstand. Dear Life: Stories by Alice Munro 336 pages published by Vintage Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2012: You half expect a new collection of stories by the beloved Alice Munro to arrive already devoured: pages dog-eared (“I feel exactly the same way! How did she know?”), spine cracked, cover bent from the dozens of times each story deserves to be read. The best thing to say about Alice Munro is said so often, it doesn’t mean much anymore. But here it is for the record: She is a master of her craft. In Dear Life, her 13th collection, Munro again breathes life--real, blemished, nuanced life--into her characters and settings (usually her hometown in Huron County, Ontario). Her empathy is the greatest weapon in her arsenal, and it is on full display here. But the most satisfying part of the new collection is the last four stories, bundled together in what the author calls “Finale,” the closest she’ll ever come to writing about her own dear life. --Alexandra Foster

I have finished my trashy books so now I am on to the heavier reading. I still have a couple of months to reach the LibraryThing challenge of 75 books this year. 

Fall is when the editors bring out their heavy-hitting books, the ones they hope will be on the bestseller list for the year to come. On the list of books being released, there are three books which attracted my attention:

The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore 336 pages published by William Morrow In Venice, a long time ago, three prominent Venetians await their most loathsome and foul dinner guest, the erstwhile envoy of Britain and France, and widower of the murdered Queen Cordelia: the rascal Fool Pocket.This trio of cunning plotters—the merchant, Antonio; the senator, Montressor Brabantio; and the naval officer, Iago—have lured Pocket to a dark dungeon, promising an evening of spirits and debauchery with a rare Amontillado sherry and Brabantio’s beautiful daughter, Portia. But their invitation is, of course, bogus. The wine is drugged. The girl isn’t even in the city limits. 

* The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane 256 pages published by  Faber & Faber The Night Guest, Fiona McFarlane’s hypnotic first novel, is no simple tale of a crime committed and a mystery solved. This is a tale that soars above its own suspense to tell us, with exceptional grace and beauty, about ageing, love, trust, dependence, and fear; about processes of colonization; and about things (and people) in places they shouldn’t be. Ruth is widowed, her sons are grown, and she lives in an isolated beach house outside of town. Her routines are few and small. One day a stranger arrives at her door, looking as if she has been blown in from the sea. This woman—Frida—claims to be a care worker sent by the government. Ruth lets her in. A very interesting book especially for a first-time novelist. See the 2012-2013 book list for more.

* The Circle by Dave Eggers 504 pages published by Knopf  “A stunning work of terrifying plausibility, a cautionary tale of subversive power in the digital age suavely packaged as a Silicon Valley social satire. Set in the near future, it examines the inner workings of the Circle, an internet company that is both spiritual and literal successor to Facebook, Google, Twitter and more, as seen through the eyes of Mae Holland, a new hire who starts in customer service . . . Eggers presents a Swiftian scenario so absurd in its logic and compelling in its motives . . . sneaking up on the reader before delivering its warnings of the future, a worthy and entertaining read.” —Publishers Weekly Brave and important and will draw comparisons to Brave New World and 1984. If you are interested in human rights and privacy issues, this is the book for you. I have read the first half and this is indeed very scary stuff. The reasoning behind it sounds perfectly logical and we are willingly giving up our individuality and privacy through social media even as we speak. See the 2012-2013 book list for more.

So, I have my list of the Man Booker Awards and my list of trashy books and now three more. The Circle is being promoted as a future classic - I must read it to make a decision. The Night Guest sounds promising for a new writer but I will have to see for myself and I always read anything Christopher Moore puts out for the simple reason that he is very entertaining and writes the only vampire books I will read. His last book, Sacre Bleu, put Van Gogh in a whole different light. 

I  PROMISE  not to look at another book until I have finished my list! Oh dear, I forgot the new Nobel Prize for Literature is coming out next week. I hope it is someone I have already read like Murakami-I am rooting for you!

Now, I really don't know what to do - which book to read next. I have my list of books from the Man Booker committee but three new trashy books have come out from trashy authors that I really enjoy:

* The Woman Who Wouldn't Die by Colin Cotterill 307 pages published by Soho Crime In a small Lao village, a very strange thing has happened. A woman was shot and killed in her bed during a burglary; she was given a funeral and everyone in the village saw her body burned. Then, three days later, she was back in her house as if she'd never been dead at all. Lao national coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun, a man in his late 70's, and his wife, Madame Daeng, are sent along to supervise the excavation. The road to those remains is circuitous, as is everything in communist-ruled Laos. As usual, Dr. Siri doesn't disappoint. The curious combination of taking place in 1970's Laos and a doctor who never wanted to be a coroner is a delight.

* Dexter's Final Cut by Jeff Lindsay 368 pages published by Doubleday   Hollywood gets more than it bargained for when television's hottest star arrives at the Miami Police Department and develops an intense, professional interest in a camera-shy blood spatter analyst named Dexter Morgan. Mega-star Robert Chase is famous for losing himself in his characters. When he and a group of actors descend on the Miami Police Department for "research," Chase becomes fixated on Dexter Morgan, the blood spatter analyst with a sweet tooth for doughnuts and a seemingly average life. To perfect his role, Chase is obsessed with shadowing Dexter's every move and learning what really makes him tick. There is just one tiny problem . . . Dexter's favorite hobby involves hunting down the worst killers to escape legal justice, and introducing them to his special brand of playtime. I LOVE Dexter, my favorite serial killer. AHHHHH! The end left me in the air!

* W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton 496 pages published by  Marian Wood Book/Putnam  Wasted lives, wasted time, and wasted opportunities are at the heart of this twenty-third entry in the long-running Kinsey Millhone series (and I have read all of them). Two dead men changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I’d never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue. The first was a local PI of suspect reputation. He’d been gunned down near the beach at Santa Teresa. It looked like a robbery gone bad. The other was on the beach six weeks later. He’d been sleeping rough. Probably homeless. No identification. A slip of paper with Millhone’s name and number was in his pants pocket. The coroner asked her to come to the morgue to see if she could ID him. Two seemingly unrelated deaths, one a murder, the other apparently of natural causes. This is a very good whodunnit!

My only option is to read one good book from the Man Booker list and then a trashy book from the list above. That will give my brain a chance to recover from all the heavy reading and brain-freeze. Do other people go through this?

The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the most prestigious literary award in Britain, was announced on Tuesday morning. The six finalists are: 

* “We Need New Names,” by NoViolet Bulawayo  In Bulawayo’s engaging and often disturbing semiautobiographical first novel, 10-year-old Darling describes, with childlike candor and a penetrating grasp of language, first, her life in Zimbabwe during its so-called Lost Decade and then her life as a teenager in present-day America. The childlike innocence with which she describes children playing the simplest of games and at the same time observing the slaughter of whites and blacks alike in Zimbabwe is chilling. But Darling's account of the wonderful life she expected in America is equally sad, how the outside thinks that America is this rich place but her aunt has to work two jobs to pay for a house for her sister left in Africa. We also see the frivolousness of her new life and yearning for her past and her friends. It is a story of many contradictions and contrasts. 

“The Luminaries,” by Eleanor Catton (Little, Brown/Granta) This astonishing historical novel opens in Hokitika, New Zealand in 1866, a gold mining town along the West Coast of the South Island. Founded two years previously, Hokitika is in the midst of a population boom, as prospectors, hoteliers and other businessmen have flocked there after news of its vast riches and promise of easy wealth has reached people living within and outside of New Zealand. One of those men is Walter Moody, a young Englishman who is trained in law but seeks gold to provide him with material comfort and the start of a new life. This book is fascinating on many levels. The story is told through the eyes of twelve men each corresponding to an astrological sign; there are twelve books and each is one half the size of the previous book; the story goes through different times moving back and forth; it is written in the style of books from the 1800's. It is also over 800 pages long and I am only a quarter of the way through but the reading goes fast.

“Harvest,” by Jim Crace (Nan A. Talese/Picador)  The order and calm of a preindustrial village in England is upset by a mysterious fire and the simultaneous appearance of three strangers. The insular community strikes out against the newcomers but turns on itself in a fit, literally, of witch hunting.

“The Lowland,” by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf/Bloomsbury) From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of The Namesake comes an extraordinary new novel, set in both India and America, that expands the scope and range of one of our most dazzling storytellers: a tale of two brothers bound by tragedy, a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past, a country torn by revolution, and a love that lasts long past death. The style of the author is curious, almost detached. The first part is almost a newspaper report following the brothers with little emotion involved.The narration is taken over by the woman who becomes the wife of both brothers.

* “A Tale for the Time Being,” by Ruth Ozeki (Viking/Canongate) In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Starting to read this one; so far so good. See the 2013 list for the complete review.

* “The Testament of Mary,” by Colm Toibin (Scribner/Penguin) A powerful imagining of how the death of Jesus might have been experienced by his mother -- if in fact his mother was a Judean peasant woman in the first century of the Roman Empire, and not the Queen of Heaven. This Mary is old, she is bitter, and she is very human.

The winner of the prize — which is open to writers from Britain, Ireland or one of the Commonwealth nations — will be named at a ceremony in London on Oct. 15. The winner will be awarded a cash prize of £50,000, or about $80,000.  Read more at: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/shortlist-for-man-booker-prize-for-fiction-announced/?partner=rss&emc=rss

I have read The Testament of Mary - which my Christian friends think is an abomination - and I thought it was beautiful (see my review on the 2013 Book List page or the guided reading exercise) and I have The Luminaries among my stack of books. I will have to see if I can get the rest and add them to my pile of unread books. It is growing even higher. And, in October the Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced. That is how I started reading Mario Vargas Llosa and Mo Yan. For some strange reason, The Harvest just doesn't appeal to me. My days of "lite" reading are over.

"Joseph Wambaugh, the former LAPD detective, multiple New York Times best-seller, and MWA Grand Master, is known as “the father of the modern police novel” and now, in Harbor Nocturne, he has produced one of the outstanding books of the year. Some LAPD characters from the acclaimed Hollywood Station series are here: the surfer cops known as “Flotsam and Jetsam”, aspiring actor “Hollywood Nate” Weiss, and young Britney Small, along with new members of the midwatch, all gamely coping with the wackiness of Hollywood. The story begins in the southernmost Los Angeles district of San Pedro, one of the world’s busiest harbors, where an unlikely pair of lovers is caught up in terror and peril through no fault of their own." The quote is taken from Amazon. Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh 560 pages published by Mysterious Press.

It took me over a year to get this book. Finally! This is the fourth book in the Hollywood series with some of the same characters. Why do I love Wambaugh books? Because they are written by an ex-cop about cops and like in real life, there are times when the books are laugh-out-loud funny and times when they are too sad to bear. Because Wambaugh never loses sight of the fact that 80% of crimes are solved by accident and coincidence and his cops are not super-sleuth heroes, just normal everyday cops. Because his best books are nonfiction true-life dramas like The Onion Field, Fire Lover and The Blooding which tells how the British police used DNA for the first time to trap a serial killer. Because The Choirboys made me laugh out loud while reading the book until the last few pages which made me cry. Because I could not stop thinking about The Onion Field for days because the terror was so real. Because the Hollywood series demonstrates that just plain weird people become cops. They are lazy, afraid, too dumb to be afraid, ambitious, trying to stay alive and sometimes dedicated...just like the rest of us.

I looked through all the books I have stacked up and nothing appealed to me. Therefore, I have gone back to the last Dibdin Aurelio Zen book I have left. I love the Zen series and I was saving the only one I have not read. "In Blood Rain, Zen has been exiled to Sicily under the guise of acting as a sort of watchdog, observing a recently reestablished anti-Mafia taskforce. By the nature of the locale--Sicily makes its own rules--the fact that the work of this commission will inevitably be compromised seems clear. What these books deliver is a uniquely hard-edged, no-holds-barred cynicism--light years from the squishy idealism lurking beneath the hard-boiled exteriors of most American detectives." Blood Rain by Michael Dibdin 300 pages published by Vintage. Unfortunately, Michael Dibdin, a British writer, died in 2007 and there will be no more books.

I am reading Infatuations by Javier Marias 400 pages published by Penguin Exports.  Maria Dolz, a well-educated professional woman who works as an acquisitions editor for a publishing house, is single, and becomes involved involuntarily in the lives of the family whose father is brutally murdered on the street. Javier Marias is highly esteemed as a major world writer, a candidate for the Nobel Prize. His prose is intricate and his narrative style is complex; at times during the first one hundred pages, I almost put the book down. The long passages (sentences with many relative clauses spreading across nearly a whole page or more, allusions to literary works (Shakespeare's Macbeth, Balzac's Colonel Chabert, Dumas's Three Musketeers is dedicated over over twenty pages) that become intertwined with Maria's own narrative, but also force the reader to recognize that there is more to this story than might seem on the surface and frequent interruptions. The meandering has driven me to skip pages but then I settle down again because the story itself is fascinating. The sentences are perfectly structured and it is a fascinating study of a human mind but I am left with the feeling that Mo Yan tells a better story or at the very least, I feel the story is better.

I have just finished reading Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw 400 pages published by Spiegel & Grau $18.00 at Amazon. It is the story of four new, disparate arrivals to Shanghai: a venerable business woman, a pop star, a factory girl turned socialite, and an inheritor of his family real-estate, all of whose fates are tied to an elusive billionaire Walter. But Five Star Billionaire is as much about people as it is about a place: Shanghai represents the booming economic growth of China. 

But, this book has left me with so many questions. All of the characters that arrive in Shanghai are from Malaysia. The poor are illegals looking for money and a better life and the rich are looking to become richer in China. Is illegal immigration such a big problem in China? Is China the place where people from South-East Asia dream of becoming rich? The Chinese Dream? There seems to be a tendency to change the Chinese names to English names. Why? The city comes alive and seems to be on par with Mexico City: loud, polluted, contaminated and over-populated.  The story is well-told and all of the characters are finally connected and revolve around a very sick sense of capitalism gone awry.

One more note about books. Someone once showed me his collection of books; each one was wrapped in plastic inside a glass-fronted bookcase he had built. The books were untouched, unsullied and unread. I was appalled. The value of a book is not in the binding or the paper; the worth of a book is in the words, concepts and ideas it contains. The dispute between e-book readers and paper advocates is null and void.

I have a tip: www.anynewbooks.com is a great service that sends a weekly mail telling you what new books have been released every week. You sign up and select the genres that you are interested in. Another great place is www.librarything.com People talk about and write reviews of the books they have read. If you don't know if a book will be interesting, this is the place. You can also sign up to review books before they have been released and they send you a free copy in exchange for your review. I wish I had known about this site before downloading a Falletti book. It SUCKED! One more comment: Booking Through Thursday http://btt2.wordpress.com/ is a very interesting blog about reading. They have activities like trying to find a song that would go with a book.