2012 - 2013 My Book List

I have never kept a list of the books that I have read and now the so-called "experts" say that we should keep a list. I can't even remember what I read last year but I will give it a try. What I didn't get to in 2012 will have to go to the 2013 list. Nothing is in order.

Why do I pick a book? I have asked myself a good question that I don't know how to answer. I have some favorites among the bestseller "trashy book" categories like Janet Evanovich, Lisa Lutz and others. Usually, I check the New York Times Book Review to see what they have to say about new books, something that sparks my interest. I always read something from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. That is how I became crazy about Mo Yan. And yet, I am totally addicted to John LeCarré and he will never win the Nobel but he is the finest writer of spy novels that has ever lived. I guess I like spy novels - and I have read all of LeCarré's books. What I really like is a tight story, a theme that interests me, something not too predictable, something that does not have to be a Russian classic but should have good character development, an author who knows how to use a period, comma and where a semi colon goes, an author that knows how to use an adjective and not be trite or "cursi" with similes or metaphors (the main reason I am unable to read any of those trashy romance books), an author who knows how to structure a paragraph (which is why I never read James Patterson) and I could go on and on. Sometimes I make a mistake in picking a book. I usually know that a few pages into it. Sometimes, I just skip to the end and other times - like with Dan Brown - I just throw it into the trash. I want a book that leaves me with something, a feeling I have learned something and not wasted my time.  

A review should contain the title, the author and the publisher, a short summary of the story without giving away the ending and an opinion - my opinion about the book. The opinion will be in red italics after I read the book. 

2014 The List
 
* Havana Gold by Leonardo Padura 278 pages published by Bitter Lemon Press     The fourth title of the prize-winning Havana Quartet. Twenty-four-year-old Lissette Delgado was beaten, raped, and then strangled with a towel. Marijuana is found in her apartment and her wardrobe is suspiciously beyond the means of a high school teacher. Lieutenant Conde is pressured by the highest authority to conclude this investigation quickly when chance leads him into the arms of a beautiful redhead, a saxophone player who shares his love for jazz and fighting fish. This is a Havana of crumbling, grand buildings, secrets hidden behind faded doors, and corruption. For an author living in Cuba, Leonardo Padura is remarkably outspoken about the failings of Fidel Castro's regime. Yet this is a eulogy of Cuba, its life of music, sex, and the great friendships of those who elected to stay and fight for survival. The translation manages to keep the Cuban feeling carrying it over to English. It is critical of Cuba but at the same time it is a celebration of Cuba.

2013 The List

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 and so this is the perfect Christmas book. It made my Christmas so much better!

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 with those introductions to each chapter. It is also over 800 pages long but the reading goes fast. I think that the reading goes so fast because we care about the characters and they are constantly changing from people we like to people we hate. In other words, they are human.

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? Hmmm. They are funny and very easy to visualize. That is to say that I can see in my mind how a giraffe could be running down the street in New Jersey while old women are being thrown in trash dumpsters. Can you see it?

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. I was left with many questions about the fictional aging of fictional characters. The author has stated that her character ages in real time, so clues from earlier books put her birth at around 1950 making her 60 something. And, her friend Lotty was a Holocaust survivor which puts her in her 90's - a doctor who still has a license to practice and operate? Really? This latest book is up-to-date in technology but the ages just don't jibe. Other than that, the story is well-researched, tight, well-written and interesting but still bogged down in World War II events. And yet, there is a lot to be said for the Chicago Polish immigrant atmosphere that comes out through all her books; my family was a small Chicago Czech immigrant group.

* 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. I love these books. I can't say it any better than the blurb above.

* “A Tale for the Time Being,” by Ruth Ozeki 400 pages published by 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.  This book started out strong and whimpered out. Nao writes a diary describing the life of her great grandmother and her own life and wraps it up and sets it out to sea only to be found by Ruth and a parallel relationship develops. About halfway through the book, the story starts to bog down and become tedious and even the ending with a "if a tree is cut down in the forest and no one is there to hear the sound, is there a sound?" quantum physics kind of parallel universe didn't rescue me. But, I did learn to meditate.

* 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. Before anything else, I liked this book. There have been a lot of critics saying that the author is preaching but then so was Huxley and Orwell - preaching about the dangers of the future as they envisioned it. In this case, is privacy a right? Have we been giving up our rights blackmailed by threats of terrorism? Can the use of technology lead to a totalitarian state? WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden have proven that this is not all farfetched. As for the claims that the central figure Mae is just too innocent or naive, I have had students exactly like her - all ready to change the world without realizing that they are being used. Hell, I was like exactly like her many many years ago. 

* 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. Why do I read the Sue Grafton books? She runs-I don't. She doesn't like things-I do. She is always in her 30's and living in the 80's-I'm not and I didn't think the 80's were that great. She started her series of books with the letter A and now she is up to W. What happens when she finishes the alphabet? I guess they are good page-turners because I finished the 400+ pages in two days. I learned what Marfan Syndrome is...not very useful because I have never met anyone with Marfan Syndrome. I guess she tells a good tight story that for some reason I just can't put down.

* 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. An old woman faces her declining physical and mental health; she cannot distinguish between friend and enemy, what is real and what is not real and losing her independence. A very nice first novel.

* 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!  Contrary to the TV show, Rita is still alive, Dexter's home life is somewhat normal and he has a little girl instead of a boy and Deborah has a little boy. He has discovered that his step children also have his gift. In a review, one is not supposed to give away the end but here the end left me in the air! So here is what we know at the end: Astor takes out the pedophile actor, Rita may be dead this time and this time Dexter may be going to jail for crimes he really did not commit. There were just too many "may"s for my incomplete happiness.

 “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. Then the voice of the woman takes over and later the child. In spite of the analytical tone of the writing, the author paints beautiful pictures and inserts the right amount of historical information without becoming tedious. It is a beautiful book.

* 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 but there was no one else, is a delight. A Communist rebel fighting in the jungles before, now that the Communists are in power, he has lost all faith in the new system. They are inept enough to have named him coroner. 

* “We Need New Names,” by NoViolet Bulawayo 304 pages published by Reagan Arthur Books.  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. Darling is only 10 years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad. But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. 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. Families waiting for the return of their fathers only to have them come back dying of AIDs; the imagined riches of America only to discover the poverty of Detroit. "The language of NoViolet Bulawayo's emotionally articulate novel turns a familiar tale of immigrant displacement into a heroic ballad."

* Harbor Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh 560 pages published by Mysterious Press. Some LAPD characters from the acclaimed Hollywood Station series are here (although it is not necessary to have read the previous books) : 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. Enter all the Eastern European mafias that you can think of and some Korean mafiosos to boot, human smugglers and even more unsavory characters.  As usual, I greatly enjoy any Wambaugh book, especially this one because it was so hard to get my hands on it.

I have a very large stack of books on my nightstand. I don't know how I will ever read all of them and every week there is something new out that catches my eye: The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard about a seventeen-year-old girl pieces together the mystery of her mother’s life and death among the bars and bedrooms of Los Angeles in this dazzling debut novel and I am a sucker for debut novels; The Blind Man's Garden by Nadeem Aslam about two brothers living in Pakistan after 9/11, each one taking a different path;* King of Cuba by Cristina Garcia about a Miami man obsessed with Fidel Castro and their interaction each one is waiting for the other to die and I enjoyed this book; * No Regrets, Coyote by John Dufresne which has been called "...one of the most explosive, corrosive and downright audacious finales of any crime novel this year.."and God knows I love a good crime novel but I didn't love this one probably because the author had to tell you what happened instead of you learning what happened through the action or the characters; * Five Star Billonaire by Tash Aw is the story of modern China and five very different people trying to find a better life (I was left feeling very uncomfortable about the state of affairs of the world) and finally three more Mo Yan books ready to be read. Another one to add to the pile: * Javier Marias (a perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize) The Infatuations is mysterious and seductive; it’s got deception, it’s got love affairs, it’s got murder. I felt let down by this one. Maybe I am too dumb to appreciate the writing but I found it to be tedious. The story was good and had some very nice twists and turns but you have to read twenty pages of quotes from Dickens and more pages from other authors explaining the mindset of the narrator. The sentences are beautifully constructed but half of them are superfluous. I don't know where to start.

* The Last Word  by Lisa Lutz 352 pages published by Simon & Schuster  The sly trick of Lisa Lutz’s Spellman novels is that they’re so funny and so smart that you’re taken by surprise by all the insights they offer---about loneliness, about the tumult of love and most of all about the tender chaos of families. Like Raymond Chandler-meets-Salinger’s Glass family, with The Last Word, Lutz offers her richest, funniest and most bittersweet Spellman tale to date. As usual, Izzy does not disappoint. A very funny and entertaining book. Just what I needed to clear out the cobwebs and relax.

* The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith 464 pages published by Mulholland Books  A brilliant debut mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel's suicide. After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The kicker here is that Robert Galbraith is really J.K. Rowling. I enjoyed The Casual Vacancy and I am curious to see if she can write a crime novel. After Harry Potter, she has sure kept writing. And here I just got the new Lisa Lutz Spellmans book. It will have to wait. I LOVED IT!

* Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen 336 pages published by Knopf   Andrew Yancy—late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff’s office—has a human arm in his freezer. There’s a logical (Hiaasenian) explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, the sheriff might rescue him from his grisly Health Inspector gig (it’s not called the roach patrol for nothing). Hiaasen books are usually entertaining so this one is out at the right time but I felt let down...not recommending this one.

* A Serpent's Tooth by Craig Johnson  352 pages published by Viking Adult  The success of Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire series that began with The Cold Dish continues to grow after A&E’s hit show Longmire introduced new fans to the Wyoming sheriff. As the Crow Flies marked the series’ highest debut on the New York Times bestseller list. It’s homecoming in Absaroka County, but the football and festivities are interrupted when a homeless boy wanders into  town. A Mormon “lost boy,” Cord Lynear is searching for his missing mother but clues are scarce. A nice modern Western is exactly what I need to relax. I like the TV show and I LOVE the books. They make me want to move north...if it were not for the fact that it is cold and barren.

* Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan  416 pages published by Doubleday  When Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home, long drives to explore the island, and quality time with the man she might one day marry. What she doesn't know is that Nick's family home happens to look like a palace, that she'll ride in more private planes than cars, and that with one of Asia's most eligible bachelors on her arm, Rachel might as well have a target on her back. Crazy Rich Asians is the outrageously funny debut novel about three super-rich, pedigreed Chinese families and the gossip, backbiting, and scheming that occurs when the heir to one of the most massive fortunes in Asia brings home his ABC (American-born Chinese) girlfriend to the wedding of the season. I greatly enjoyed this book right up until the end. The name dropping of high design (Mont Blanc is a pen only to be used by a maid) and the displays of wealth are fascinating. Unfortunately, the author didn't know how to end it and dipped into the soap opera genre but 90% of the book was highly entertaining. A good read!

* Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz 320 pages published by Putnam Adult  Meet Paul and Lacey Hansen: orphaned, pot-growing twentysomething siblings eking out a living in rural Northern California. When a headless corpse appears on their property, they can't exactly dial 911, so they move the body and wait for the police to find it. Instead, the corpse reappears, a few days riper . . . and an amateur sleuth is born.  Exactly what I needed-a good trashy book! I do not usually read author collaborations, people like James Patterson who claims that other people have the stories but he knows how to tell them (he doesn't and just churns out trash) but this collaboration is interesting in that she writes one chapter and then he writes another without knowing where the story is going. In the end, it was pretty trashy but it came at the right time.

Inferno by Dan Brown I don't even want to waste my time with the details of this book; I couldn't even finish it. I threw it into the trash after 100 pages and that is why they are trashy books.

* The Humanity Project by Jean Thompson 352 pages published by Blue Rider Press  The novel is a powerful reflection on middle American life – on the changes wrought by the passing years and values that endure.  Set against the backdrop of current events and cultural calamity, it is at once a multifaceted ensemble drama and a deftly observant story of our twenty-first-century society. A girl who survived a school shooting, a man losing his house and dignity, an old woman who wants to end poverty and pay people to be good are some of the characters that are easy to follow and care about.

I really need a good trashy mystery book to clear my mind!   

* A Delicate Truth by John LeCarré 320 pages published by Viking Adult   A Delicate Truth opens in 2008. A counter-terrorist operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar.  Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. As usual, LeCarré does not disappoint. The best spy author ever!

* The Dinner by Herman Koch 304 pages published by Hogarth  An internationally bestselling phenomenon: the darkly suspenseful, highly controversial tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives -- all over the course of one meal. There have been so many good books coming out of northern Europe lately. Two brothers and their wives meet for dinner in Amsterdam. The book is divided like the courses of their dinner and like the dinner, the information comes in bits and pieces. The brother who is narrating comes slowly across as unlikeable but so does his brother-in fact none of the characters are very likeable. But things change as fast as the plates on the table and little by little, this dinner turns into a shocker. A very well written and structured book. I highly recommend this book!

* Insane City by Dave Barry 352 pages published by Putnam Adult  Underachieving nice guy Seth Weinstein is marrying Tina, a gorgeous high-powered lawyer in just a couple of days in a lavish wedding with all the trappings necessary to "storm the beachhead of holy matrimony." I really started to read this book to clear my mind after Yo Man. The promos said it was very funny and light but I felt like I was reading a first draft of a script for The Hangover. Too repetitive for me. Not recommended.

 * The Garlic Ballads by Yo Man  304 pages published by Arcane Publishing  The farmers of Paradise County have been leading a hardscrabble life unchanged for generations. The Communist government has encouraged them to plant garlic, but selling the crop is not as simple as they believed. Warehouses fill up, taxes skyrocket, and government officials maltreat even those who have traveled for days to sell their harvest. A surplus on the garlic market ensues, and the farmers must watch in horror as their crops wither and rot in the fields. Families are destroyed by the random imprisonment of young and old for supposed crimes against the state. I decided to finally tackle a book by the winner of the Nobel Literature Prize. I had put it off expecting it to be another dry and pretentious book. I was very wrong. It is crude, brutal, sad but at the same time it is beautiful and poetic. It is critical without intending to be critical; it is a simple narration of things that happened. Yo Man deserved the prize and I deserve to read another book.

*  The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared  by Jonas Jonasson  400 pages published by Hyperion "Allan Karlsson climbed out of the window without any particular destination in mind. He just wanted to escape the party celebrating his 100th birthday.  He made his way to the bus station and got on a bus with a stolen suitcase. Then the fun really begins. Not only do we learn about what happened after he climbed out of the window, but also about many of the adventures in his very long life - all of them highly improbable, zany, and hilarious. Especially ingenious is the way the author connects Allan with some of the famous historical people of the 20th century, among them Harry Truman, Mao Tse Dong, Josef Stalin, and Lawrenti Beria. This is a wonderful, crazy, fun-filled book."  I LOVE this book! It is similar to Forrest Gump with several history lessons. I enjoyed this book the same way I loved Catch 22!

 * The 10th of December:Stories  by George Saunders  272 pages published by Random House  "George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story. In the taut opener, “Victory Lap,” a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act?" This is a collection of very dark short stories and the author is indeed the master of the short story. In two pages, he gives us the complete story of a man's life. His stories are extremely well structured and we are drawn into the inner dialogues of the characters. The only warning is that most of the stories are pretty dark.

* By Blood by Ellen Ullman  384 pages published by Picador  "It's a compelling thriller about an intelligent, young woman, a lesbian in a time when lesbians were defining the meaning of lesbianism, a successful economic analyst, disconnected from her adoptive family, especially from her mother, in therapy for a while at the opening, who sets out on a journey to find her birth mother, and through her, discover herself."  The author says that she writes on a "Gothic" style but I found the writing style to be stilted and forced. The idea of overhearing therapy sessions is a nice one and the listener intervening in the therapy is creepy but I did not really like this book. It could have been so much more...in my opinion.

* Ghostman  by Roger Hobbs 336 pages published by Knopf “A stunningly accomplished debut [with] narrative speed and structure, as well as [an] encyclopedic knowledge of subjects ranging from the Federal Reserve's security measures to gunrunning in Malaysia. . . ." This book is all of that and more. I don't know how he researched all of the information but it is spot on. The pace is very fast and it is a book you can't put down. I started last night and only put it down when my eyes got so tired I couldn't see the pages anymore. For a first book from someone just out of college, it is an exciting book.  I will be waiting for the next book.

 * Big Breasts and Wide Hips by Mo Yan I am curious to start reading something by this Nobel Prize winner but at the same time I am put off because all of his books are over 500 pages. What if I don't like it? Some critics say his writing is magical and mystical while others compare him to Quentin Tarantino and the violence in his movies.

* The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin published by Deckle Edge 96 pages. Colm Tóibín’s portrait of Mary presents her as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity. Blasphemy! This book made me question my knowledge about the crucifixion and the Bible. I had to go back and read the Book of John to see if the author was factually correct. He was. The book is based on the author filling in the blanks with modern-day psychological speculations about what happened between what was reported in the Bible. It is very probable but it is also a work of fiction. The language is spare but beautiful. Recommended!

Joseph Anton By Salman Rushdie published by Random House  656 pages $30  For nearly a decade, Rushdie lived under the threat of death after Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa because of his novel, The Satanic Verses. Now for the first time, Rushdie reveals the story of his years in hiding—what he experienced, his code name (hence the book's title)—and a chance for Rushdie to reclaim those stolen years.

* Dear Life: Stories’ By Alice Munro published by Knopf 336 pages $27 Munro is the North American Chekhov, perhaps the greatest short-story writer of our age. Like Chekhov, she has best slow and steady rhythm in the business. Then the story ends and you stop yourself. Dear Life is just that. Munro's stories about twists of fate and moments of clarity help us think about love, family, trauma, and ourselves. The short story is such a difficult form to dominate and Alice Munro deservedly received the Nobel Prize for her mastery of the form. This collection of short-stories is simple, straight-forward and sublime.

Gone to the Forest: A Novel by Katie Kitamura A gripping saga about the destruction of a family, a home, and a way of life that is set on a struggling farm in a colonial country teetering on the brink of civil war, Gone to the Forest is a tale of family drama and political turmoil in which fiery storytelling melds with daring, original prose. Since his mother’s death, Tom and his father have fashioned a strained domestic peace, where everything is frozen under the old man’s vicious control. But when a young woman named Carine arrives at the farm, the tension between the two men escalates to the breaking point.

 * Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore’ by Robin Sloan published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux 304 pages $25 In 2008, Sloan saw this tweet: “just misread ‘24hr bookdrop’ as ‘24hr bookshop’. the disappointment is beyond words.” It became the inspiration for a long story that he posted on his website, and which became a huge hit thanks to its blend of late-night chills and magical bibliophilism. (“I am alone in the store. And then, tap-tap, suddenly I’m not.”) It is now an irresistible page-turning novel. I greatly enjoyed this book but there is something that is bothering me about it. About halfway through the book, the intriguing characters turned into superheroes with Google connections and I began to visualize the book as a movie and the characters began to fall apart. On the other hand, there is something very logical about using computers to crack codes, the code itself and an ending tied up very neatly with a big bow. 

The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver published by Penguin Press HC  352 pages  $28 Not only did the young genius who brought us the indispensable political forecast and data analysis blog FiveThirtyEight.com discover the secret math behind baseball and predict the 2008 election dead on, but that stuff is kid’s play to him at this point. His first book contends with a much larger scope—how to tell good predictions from bad ones, and pinpointing the general principle of what makes a successful analysis. Silver is the crystal-clear signal among the noise.

* Breakdown by Sara Paretsky published by Signet Select 496 pages $10 at Amazon  I greatly enjoy her series of books about detective V.I. Warshawski from Chicago-all of the elements necessary for a good book and this was a very good story. There is no deep thinking involved here but it is fun to put the clues together bit by bit as she gives them.

* Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn published by Crown 432 pages $14 at Amazon   Marriage can be a real killer. One of the most critically acclaimed suspense writers of our time, New York Times bestseller Gillian Flynn takes that statement to its darkest place in this unputdownable masterpiece about a marriage gone terribly, terribly wrong. The Chicago Tribune proclaimed that her work “draws you in and keeps you reading with the force of a pure but nasty addiction.” Gone Girl’s toxic mix of sharp-edged wit and deliciously chilling prose creates a nerve-fraying thriller that confounds you at every turn.The book starts out normally but the ending to this book is so sick! It is certainly not what you expect and is really terrifying.

* Layover in Dubai by Dan Fesperman published by Knopf 304 pages $11 at Amazon  Sam Keller has been enlisted by his V.P. for Corporate Security and Investigation to spy on another employee while they’re traveling for the company. Ordinarily careful to a fault, Sam decides to live it up. What better spot for business-class hedonism than boom-town Dubai, where resort islands materialize from open ocean, fortunes are made overnight, and skiers crisscross the snowy slope of a shopping mall. Don't waste your money or your time with this one.

* The Expats by Chris Pavone published by Broadway 352 pages $15 at Amazon  In the cobble-stoned streets of Luxembourg, Kate Moore's days are filled with play dates and coffee mornings, her weekends spent in Paris and skiing in the Alps. But Kate is also guarding a tremendous, life-defining secret—one that's become so unbearable that it begins to unravel her newly established expat life. She suspects that another American couple are not who they claim to be; her husband is acting suspiciously; and as she travels around Europe, she finds herself looking over her shoulder, increasingly terrified that her own past is catching up with her. I enjoyed this book. Maybe it was because I am an ex-pat. It shifts around time-wise allowing the reader to slowly discover the personalities of each character. Kate is not who you think she is.

* The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel  by Adam Johnson published by Random House 480 pages $15 Adam Johnson's remarkable novel The Orphan Master’s Son is set in North Korea, an entire nation that has conformed to the fictions spun by a dictator and his inner circle…Mr. Johnson is a wonderfully flexible writer who can pivot in a matter of lines from absurdity to atrocity…We don't know what's really going on in that strange place, but a disquieting glimpse suggesting what it must be like can be found in this brilliant and timely novel. This book is uncomfortable. It won many prizes and was voted one of the best books of 2012. But at the same time, I have been reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed which questions our "freedom". I am in the middle of a terrible clash of ideas. This book has just won the Pulitzer Prize for 2013-well deserved! Highly recommended!


 2012 The List as I Remember It

Sweet Tooth By Ian McEwan published by Nan A. Talese 320 pages $27 After the wicked satire of his last novel Solar, McEwan turns to another very British genre, the spy novel. It's perhaps his most stylish and personal book to date: a literary young woman at Cambridge University in the 1970s is recruited by British intelligence to shadow an up-and-coming writer, whom she can't help but fall for. The year's most intensely enjoyable novel...and I just love spies! It was almost the story of my life except for the part about being a spy.

Back to Blood By Tom Wolfe  published by Little, Brown and Company 720 pages $30 out at the end of October. He’s back. Eight years ago he gave us college life in all of its pornographic glory. Now our Balzac, our Zola, our Dickens heads to Miami, the city of America’s future. Expect the Wolfian alchemy of race, class, pop culture, wealth, real estate, and the mores of our times—all packaged in a mean, gripping read.  I am bogged down! It is 500 pages but I just can't seem to finish it. So much is taken up with onomatopoeia. The author wants you to see and hear what is happening and gives us pages of descriptions and sounds. Don't get me wrong-I like the book but sometimes it is tedious. I finally finished it and somehow and someway, the ending was kind of a let-down with many unfinished threads in the story.

Telegraph Avenue By Michael Chabon published by Harper  480 pages $28 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was a bromance about two cousins who built a comic-book empire. Telegraph Avenue begins with two longtime friends holding on to what’s left of their past glory—a used vinyl store called Brokeland Records, in 2004 Oakland, heavy with nostalgia. Kavalier & Clay symbolized the rise; Telegraph Avenue is the fall. It is certainly a San Francisco kind of story.

The Casual Vacancy By J.K. Rowling published by Little, Brown and Company 512 pages $35 
The poet W.H. Auden said “a child’s reading is guided by pleasure, but his pleasure is undifferentiated.” Harry Potter bewitched millions of young readers—but was that an easy spell? Can Rowling repeat her magic on grown-ups? She sets her sights on dramatizing the political and social conflicts in an idyllic English town called Pagford. This is easily the most awaited book of the year but will it be any good? I can see why the BBC is going to make it into a TV show. The author takes a lot of care in creating her characters and making you instantly like or dislike them much like in the Harry Potter books. I enjoyed this book. 

The Double Game by Dan Fesperman published by Knopf 368 pages $25 A few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, spook-turned-novelist Edwin Lemaster revealed to up-and-coming journalist Bill Cage that he’d once considered spying for the enemy. For Cage, a Foreign Service brat who grew up in the very cities where Lemaster’s books were set, the news story created a brief but embarrassing sensation and heralded the beginning of the end of his career in journalism. More than two decades later, Cage, now a lonely, disillusioned PR man, receives an anonymous note hinting that he should have dug deeper into Lemaster’s pronouncement. What can I tell you-I love books about spies. As much as I love spies, I thought this book was greatly over-rated.

Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach: A Jimm Juree Mystery by Colin Cotterill published by Minotaur Books 336 pages $25 In rural Thailand, former crime reporter Jimm Juree must grapple with her quirky family, a mysterious mother and daughter on the lam and the small matter of a head on the beach. When Jimm Juree’s mother sold the family house and invested in a rundown 'holiday camp' at the southern end of Thailand on the Gulf of Siam, the family had little choice but to follow. A quirky family in a foreign setting and a man writing as a girl but it works for me.

Behind the Beautiful Forever by Katherine Boo This is a non-fiction book that reads as though it were fiction. You care about the characters of this Mumbai slum behind a large billboard which coexists next to luxury apartment complexes and just as they speculate about who is going to die, so does the reader. What a wonderful book. One of the best books I have read in years.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka This is such a small beautiful book that I wrote exercises for it. It is the perfect way to learn new vocabulary, learn about war wives and learn about the atrocities committed against the Japanese during WWII.A beautiful little book with a large message.

Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich Another Stephanie Plum, inept jail bond agent installment with nothing literary, thought provoking or much of anything except for entertainment.

Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga The plot revolves around an old and venerated apartment complex, the Vishram Society. Inaugurated in the late 1950s, it houses an affable mix of Catholics, Hindus and Muslims, the Vishram is a monument to idealism. It is really about the masses vs the individual, right vs wrong, modern vs old, and so much more.A really good book about human nature.

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall-Smith  Lovely, simple books about simple people in a changing society in Africa. You can feel the love of the author for the country and its people.

Room by Emma Donoghue A chilling account of a kidnapped woman told from the point of view of her son who she hides in a closet. Even the aftermath is terrifying. It certainly gives a greater understanding as to what kidnap victims go through.A terrifying look at what kidnapped people go through.

Super Freakonomics by Steven Levitt  Fun facts and numbers in modern times.

Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore  A very funny book about the color blue in paintings and maybe painters and did Vincent Van Gogh really commit suicide? Christopher Moore writes the only vampire books that I will read. This one is not about vampires...or is it?

1Q84 by Murakami  Still my favorite for the Nobel Literature Prize and robbed every year. This book about a parallel world is one of his finest. It is 900 pages long and I still didn't want it to end.

Prague Cemetery by Humberto Eco You have to know something about the Protocols of Zion to understand this one but it is an excellent book.

Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden This book about the concentration camps in North Korea is shocking and eye-opening. It is the real-life account of the only person to have escaped from a North Korean prison camp. He sent his mother and brother to the firing squad in order to survive. Much like the book Room, the aftermath is even worse. Unlike Room, this one is not fiction.

An American Spy by Olen Steinhauer Good spy book, very readable but he is still not John LeCarre.

El Sueño del Celta by Mario Vargas Llosa Read it - in Spanish or in English or even Chinese! He does such a beautiful job of making this character human. In spite of being a complete pervert, he is still a human being who does good along with the evil. This book shows us why Vargas Llosa is still one of the greatest Latin American writers.

Giorgio Faletti  Never read anything by this author!

God, No! by Penn Julliette Most people who live outside of the United States have never heard of Penn unless you were one of my students who were forced to watch Bullshit. This book is much like the TV show and all of the BS that goes on around us, that an atheist can be a good person and sex - a lot of sex! Very entertaining!