Setting the Bar

I received this book as a review copy. It’s a young adult book and a mystery.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it because I don’t read a whole lot of young adult books and I don’t read a whole lot of mystery books –I find them to be too formulaic. But Susan Runholt’s novel was fantastic, if you can suspend your disbelief for the few hours that it takes you to read this novel.

This novel is about two 14 year old girls that are best friends - Lucas and Kari. While visiting the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, they notice a mysterious man copying a Rembrandt painting. Their suspicions are aroused when the man yells at them for disturbing him. Thanks to Lucas’ photographic memory, they recognize the same man copying another Rembrandt painting in London (at the National Gallery), even though he is wearing a pretty decent disguise. This confirms that something absolutely wierd and fishy is going on when a third Lucretia painting (the Lucretia paintings were done by Rembrandt) surfaces in Amsterdam and so sets out their plan to solve the mystery of the third Lucretia: is the real thing or a forgery?. Kari’s mother is a journalist who travels all over the world, so this is a perfect set-up for the girls to solve this mystery and break it to the press.

This book was fun and did a great job intertwining international locales, culture and art history. She also includes topics such as women’s rights, the Quarter in Amsterdam (where drugs and prostitution are legalized and sold in the open), and other topics. Surprisingly, she handles them tactfully and explains them in a way that a young adult, teen or tween would understand, but without being too salacious or explicit about what goes on in the “bad” part of Amsterdam. Ms. Runholt tells the story through Kari - it’s told in the first person from Kari’s perspective - and Ms. Runholt doesn’t drop the ball at any point in using this voice. Kari sounds as any American fourteen year old should and Ms. Runholt doesn’t ever trip over the words or the voice.  It’s wonderful and refreshing and was done magnificently! I loved the story too - it moved at the right pace. It wasn’t too long or too short and was just plain a joy to read.

I would highly recommend this to anyone with children!

Book 42/100

The Will to Win by Patrick Davy is an adult novel, but one would never even think that when reading it because it was just not that great and actually read more like a children’s parable about how bad things can be in life.

The novel is about Bonita Stickle. When we initially meet her, she is a college senior who decides to start searching for a man to marry and begin a family with. She lives with her father, a preacher at the local church and her mother, a missionary. As such, there are many, strict moral rules that she must abide by and religious principles that she must uphold, and certainly any man that she brings home must abide by them as well.  She is challenged in upholding her beliefs and behavior in attracting a man as they are often in conflict with how she feels that her religious beliefs dictate that she act.  As such, Bonita forces herself to disregard her  beliefgs and dresses to attract the man that she hopes will become her child’s father and her life partner.

Soon, her problems start and range from an unplanned pregnancy to feeling the effects of the war in Iraq.

This book was terribly written. The writing was jerky and the chapters didn’t smoothly transition at all.  The characters were two dimensional stereotypes whose every actions were predictable.  Mr. Davy apparently had a very difficult time trying to write a novel for adults, and this novel was stuck in the child/young adult realm (and wasn’t even good as that!).  It was a shame because the issues that Bonita faced could have been powerfully done if Mr. Davy had spent more time on word choice and sentence structure and perhaps made the book longer than it’s 130 pages.  The plotlines were also very predictable and I didn’t feel like the characters learned much. They were very two dimensional and, as noted above, predictable in their actions and reactions.

Mr. Davy should stick to writing children’s books.

Book 41/100

I picked up this book because I have lately become obsessed with learning more about Islam and women in the Islamic religion. Dr. Ahmed is a British born Muslim woman who trained as a doctor in both the United States and in the United Kingdom. She is actually quadruple board certified (in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, critical care medicine and sleep disorder medicine). After being denied a visa renewal in the pre-9/11 days in the United States, Dr. Ahmed seizes an opportunity to practice medicine in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  While there, she experiences a culture that seems to suffer from schizophrenia with multiple personalities - it seems to combine the medieval sharia law of Islam with the struggle to modernize (in the sense that women are taking a much more public role by having careers outside of the home etc.). Everyday life seems to be full of situations where women and men are confronted with bizarre, sometimes non-sensical, rules (for instance, women are not permitted to wear seatbelts in vehicles because that would lead to the bearing of cleavage and the improper outlining of their breasts).

This book was very readable. It is remarkable that a doctor actually wrote this book - I guess that a (wrong) assumption that I have about doctors is that most of them are very dry in their prose and this book was anything but. It was colorful and beautiful and I felt that all of my senses were engaged. It was as if I were there with Dr. Ahmed, sensing everythign that she did. As a Western, Christian woman, I can’t say if it’s true or realistic, but I can say that the writing was a joy to read and her experiences were remarkable! She details everything about her time in Riyadh and does so very exactly and very carefully.  Even the most mundane aspects of everyday life are covered by Dr. Ahmed’s beautiful prose, as is her trip to Mecca to complete her Hajj. In fact, the portion of the book where she describes her trip to Mecca was my most favorie part of the book because it provided me with an insight into the practice of a religion that I think is widely misunderstood in the Western world, and specifically in the United States.

I also really enjoyed her descriptions of her relationships to the men and women that she befriended while there.  This provided me with tremendous insight into the struggles of good people who are trying to combine religious life with modern life in ways that aren’t always compatible.

The interactions with colleagues, friends and the culture lead Dr. Ahmed to an epiphany of sorts. She learns that her resentments and prejudices about Saudi people aren’t correct. For instance, while there were many rules restricting women, those same women weren’t stopped from trying to modernize.  Many of them became educated, with the support of the men in their lives, and entered into professions such as medicine and law and some even opened their own businesses and stores. Both Saudi men and Saudi women were raising their daughters to become confident, outspoken women who consider themselves to be the equals of their brothers in every way and were raising them to expect to be educated and to participate fully in society.

Dr. Ahmed, I think, was also disappointed in many ways.  I think that she believed that the Saudi Kingdom was the shining beacon of what a progressive Muslim nation should be. And while they have come a long way, I think that she was very disappointed as  to how far the country still has to go, not only in its gender relations but in its Anti-Semitism, racism and Anti-Americanism.  She seemed very frustrated at the hypocrisy of the Anti-Americanism that was so pervasive in the Saudi Kingdom, especially considering how supportive the American government had been with money (many of the state of the art medical facilities, including the one that Dr. Ahmed worked at while in Riyadh, were built with American dollars) and because the majority of the doctors on staff at those facilities received their training in the States.

Generally, this book was amazing and insightful and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a brief glimpse into Saudi society.

Book 40/100

I first read To Kill a Mockingbird in ninth grade and it has influenced me for my entire life, especially the character of Atticus Finch. And, not surprisingly, To Kill a Mockingbird is still one of the most widely read books of all time (I continue to read it at least once every six months or so!). But I never knew a whole lot about Harper Lee, the author, because she never wrote any other novels and was a complete recluse. So I was totally excited to see this book when I was browsing through the library.

Surprisingly, this book was in the young adult section and was, perhaps, one of the most serious, most well-written of the young adult biographies that I have ever read. Now, that doesn’t mean that it’s written for adults or that teens and young adults won’t get it or that they’ll be bored by it. Absolutely not! While there isn’t any fluff or sensationalistic reporting about Nelle Harper Lee’s life, it’s still a magnificent and well written, entertaining book about a wonderful, brilliant woman! He also doesn’t sugar coat things - like how Ms. Lee’s mother was so mentally ill, that she tried to kill Harper when Harper was 2 or Truman Capote’s sexuality. I learned new things in this book too - I didn’t know that Truman Capote and Harper Lee were so close or that Harper Lee had helped Truman Capote with his book - In Cold Blood.

I loved how the author was able to fully sketch Harper Lee’s life in ten short chapters, chapters that show us the striking parallels between the author’s life and To Kill a Mockingbird. This is totally worth the read!

Book 38/100

I have always enjoyed Terry Brooks’s work. I fell in love with the original Shannara trilogy and then made my way through The Heritage of Shannara series in pretty short order.  When the Genesis of Shannara series came out (this book was released in 2006), I was so busy and I had lost track of Mr. Brooks’ writing, sadly enough. But now I’m going back through and reading all of his novels.

Armageddon’s Children is the First of the Genesis of Shannara series and was released in 2006.  The setting is the United States, specifically the Pacific Northwest, in a post-apocalyptic world that had been ravaged by nuclear war and plague. Demons and their once-men underlings roam the earth enslaving any and all healthy humans, in order to run tests on them and eventually convert them into their once men slaves. The nuclear fall out has also created mutants that aren’t demons but aren’t really humans either - Moles (who live underground), Spiders (who have long limbs), Lizards and Croaks (which are zombies that roam the earth). The majority of humans have walled themselves into compounds, usually stadiums, but also apartment complexes, isolating themselves from the demons. A few, mostly tribes of children, live on the streets.

The Ghosts are one such a tribe and is lead by Hawk, who has talents that range from visions to magic (albeit uncontrolled). The book also focuses on two knights of the word - which are akin to the druids that we all hear so much about in Shannara books.  Logan Tom is one of them. Initially, his charge is to go around helping compounds but then he is charged with finding a gypsy morph - which is a powerful magic born in the form of a child that doesn’t age. Angel is the other Kinght of the Word. She is pursued by demons, who target her. After narrowly escaping death, she is told of the existence of the elves and she is charged with searching with an Elfstone that will guarantee the continued existence of the Elves.

The Elves of course, and the Ellcrys tree, also make an appearance in this book - although it’s a brief one.   The Ellcrys, a sentient tree that ensures that all evil beings remain behind a forcefield so to speak, is afraid of impending demon domination and telepathically communciates with two of her Chosen — Kirisin and his cousin Erish — and charges them with finding three seeking Elfstones to use them to find a Loden Elfstone. Once all of these Elfstones are found, the Ellcrys tree can be sealed within and can remain safe.

I was honestly disappointed by this novel.  I felt like the action was repetitive and boring, even though the premise was really cool and had lots of potential.  There were a few pointless flashbacks.  Perhaps I would like it more if I had read the Word and the Void Series first because then, I would at least know what he was bridging FROM.  That being said, I still love Terry Brooks’ writing style. I would kill to be able to write like him one day (and, did you know that he was a lawyer before he started writing?!).

This is a book that I will probably re-read later on, after I have done the Word and Void Trilogy and would only recommend this to die hard Shannara/Brooks fans.

Book 37/100

Meredith Hall got money from the A Room of Her Own Foundation, which enabled her to write Without a Map and it’s fortunate that she did. People say that things happen for a reason, and the reason was so that Hall could tell her touching and evocative tale and because she had the talent to do it easily, seemingly. She’s got an undeniable talent that shouldn’t be wasted - which is yet another reason why I’m sure that this award was necessary for her. I picked up the book because the story was so compelling, the writing seemed to draw me in and because Ms. Hall is relatively local - she’s a professor at UNH in Durham and I live near Nashua, NH.

At 16, Ms. Hall met and slept with a young college student and found herself pregnant as a result of that tryst.  Ms. Hall was 16 in 1965, and found herself pregnant at a time when unwed pregnancy was generally frowned upon but perhaps was even more so in the rural, conservative, New Hampshire town that she grew up in and was for sure in the Church community that she had been so supported by.  She spent the first few months of her pregnancy able to conceal it, but when she couldn’t anymore, she was betrayed by her school (by being expelled), her mother (who told Meredith when Meredith told her of her pregnancy - “you can’t stay here.”) and her father (who chose Ms. Hall’s stepmother over her and exiled her to a room in his home, barring her from leaving the home, and never acknowledging how downright mean he and his new wife could be to her). The story starts with the loss of everything in 16 year old Meredith’s world - school, friends, family, church, future and eventually, her first born child, which was essentially ripped from her arms.  The memoir reflects her life long struggle to come to terms with the betrayals - mostly those of her own parent’s to her and her own betrayal of her son, who was put up for adoption, and sent to live in a very abusive household.

She is very honest in this novel, often brutally so, about her perceptions, the words that are used and the feelings that she has but she does it in a very eloquent, classy way.  The words that she uses are absolutely perfect.  I was hooked. I wanted to know more about this woman and her experiences, how she overcame her great challenges and how she deals with the struggles today. Somehow, she is able to tell her story in such a way that you can tell that she struggle mightily but that she doesn’t expect any sympathy from the reader (it’s more of a take me as I am and here I am!) and I completely appreciate that. She is conveying her own experiences, but it doesn’t appear that she has a political purpose, although one could say that she’s trying to exorcise her demons (I wonder what Paul, the son that she gave birth to at 16 and her other younger sons think about this memoir!). Her memoir doesn’t carry any contradictions apart from the ones that are common to everyday living, which I admired and loved. Her writing and conveyance of her experiences were so beautiful and poignant, that they were often painful and some moved me to tears.

Loved this book and I hope to one day meet Ms. Hall and express my utter gratitude and admiration to her for this work.

Book 36/100

Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea is painfully funny, but not painfully funny as in it makes your belly hurt because you’re laughing so hard. It’s funny and it’s painful because there are moments where you have to laugh but the astounding sadness of the characters and their circumstances make it painful. Some if it is downright difficult to read but the book is so beautiful and so important, that it should be mandatory reading for all people, and particularly Americans.

The story focuses on Nayeli, a beautiful and strong young Mexican woman that is the star soccer player in her small, poverty stricken, rural town. She spends her days serving tacos in her friend Tacho’s taqueria and helping her Tia Irma get elected to the town’s mayoral seat. Nayeli was abandoned by her father many years prior - he went to El Norte and never returned or sent money back for her - and she realizes quite suddenly that Tres Camarones, her town, is devoid of men. As such, it is at the mercy of local drug dealers and gangsters and there is no potential for improvement of the gene pool so to speak. So she, her girlfriends and Tacho create a motely crew and hatch a plan to cross the border into El Norte in order to draft seven men to bring back to Tres Camarones to protect the town.

Urrea has a talent. He has many of them actually. But the one that was best showcased in this novel was his masterful creation of three-dimensional, colorful and memorable characters. All of them stuck out in my head and I thought about them for days afterward - from Nayeli to Matt (the American missionary) to Vampi (the goth girlfriend in Nayeli’s crew) to Atomico - the group’s self-appointed defender.  Each character was wonderfully drawn and made discovery after discovery about themselves throughout the novel, which was impressive because there were a lot of them and the book isn’t particularly long (it’s not 1000 pages long!). I also particularly liked how Urrea dealt with issues such as illegal immigration and the American lifestyle. His point was made eloquently and simply and powerfully, but he didn’t dwell on it. He made the point and he moved on. It was absolutely perfectly and absolutely tastefully done.

This book was special and was unique.  I enjoyed every last word of it and was upset that I had to put it down. Urrea deserves the reputation that he has of being a talented and wonderful writer.

Book 35/100

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan should be considered an instant classic by anyone that reads it.  Don’t be deceived by its thinness - there is a lot crammed into this novella. When 40 something Molly dies, her friends and, mostly, her lovers begin to think about not only their own mortality but their own morality. The novella’s main characters are Vernon Halliday - the cutthroat editor of the Judge (a daily newspaper) who will do anything to make sure that he doesn’t lose his job and the circulation numbers stay up; Clive Linley - a self indulgent, filthy rich composer; and Julian Garmony - the cross dressing foreign minister whose photos have been leaked. Clive and Vernon enter into a euthanasia pact in the first quarter of the book and the remainder of the book is their struggle against this pact and with their own morality - Vernon is whether to publish the papers, Clive’s is whether to go to the police about the attempted rape that he saw.

Even though Vernon and Clive’s actions are really, really familiar to us, McEwan makes them sparkle like stars with his simple prose (which is so different from Atonement, in that it’s simple whereas Atonement is very wordy). The characters seemed very hollow initially but seemed to genuinely struggle with the questions placed in front of them. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this novella and would highly recommend it to anyone.

I was really, really impressed by Sling Blade, mostly because I’m not really generally all that impressed with Billy Bob Thornton. Sling Blade is a drama, written and directed and starring Thornton, that was released in 1996. It takes place in rural Arkansas (aside from the accents, it was very similar to where I used to practice law) and is about a young-ish man named Karl that is released from a state psychiatric institute, where he has been living since he was 12. Karl Childers, played by Thornton, was committed to the institute at 12 for murdering his mother and her lover with a sling blade (also known as a kaiser blade). He is released because his commitment time has been completed and the State Hospital cannot keep him anymore. Prior to his release, he is interviewed by a young college student, where he details the deaths - he killed the young man because he thought the young man was raping his mother, but saw red when he realized that his mother was willingly having sex with him. Upon his release, he lands a job at a small engine repair shop because, during his commitment, he had shown astounding skill in repairing engines (which leads me to think that Karl is autistic in addition to being mentally retarded). He quickly befriends Frankie and his mother, Linda and Linda’s gay friend, Vaughan.  Unfortunately, he also meets Doyle, Linda’s abusive boyfriend. Karl quickly becomes a father figure for Frankie, and they show genuine affection for each other during the movie. Frank develops bonds with Linda and Vaughan as well, because he realizes that they also love Frankie.  Doyle eventually becomes incredibly abusive towards Frankie and Karl, which comes to a head when he has a drunken physical confrontation with Linda and Frankie in front of Vaughan and Karl. Linda kicks Doyle out of the house, but quickly reconciles with him. Doyle, sensing that he has won Linda back, announces his intentions of moving into her home permanently and kicks Karl out.  This leads to the climax of the film, which I don’t want to give away here.

This movie was very well received and rightly so. It won two awards for best adapted screenplay and was nominated for a few other awards. In some ways, I felt like I was watching a modern day Bible story brought to life.  Surprisingly, Thornton does a brilliant job at playing Karl. He really creates and encapsulates the character and becomes him. I forgot that Karl was being played by Thornton!  The supporting cast is also brilliant.  John Ritter is also almost unrecognizable as Vaughan - partly because of the physical costume he wears (glasses and a pseudo-mohawk) and partly because he is playing a character that isn’t one of his sitcome/Jack Roper type of characters.  Dwight Yoakam, the country singer, plays Doyle and shows himself to be mult-faceted and mult-talented. He is able to do dcently in both music and movies. It’s a simple movie, really, but its simplicity in its storytelling is what makes it so devastating.

Jessica Darling reprises her role as the quirky, outspoken heroine of this book, the sequel to Sloppy Firsts (which I reviewed here), both written by Megan McCafferty. The novel starts during the summer before her senior year of high school. Her best friend Hope had moved away the year before and she has no one to really confide in, besides the budding movie star Bridget (who can be a bit flighty at times, but really means very well!). As the summer starts, she is also trying very very hard to forget hearthrob Marcus Flutie, who she almost had sex with the prior year. Jess goes to such lengths to forget him that she doesn’t mention him by name, but actually calls him He Without a Name (a la Harry Potter). Jessica has resolved to apply to Columbia after a trip to NYC during her summer writer’s conference, but then 9/11 happens and she must overcome her own fear of the city and her parent’s fear of danger. Jessica struggles with her love life, her self realization and her future, all within the dramatic confines of her suburban New Jersey high school.

As I plowed through this book, I realized something. Jessica may be dry and witty. She definitely has a sense of humor that had me snickering at times and I admired parts of her interactions with people - she wasn’t afraid to call people out on their own hypocritical behavior. However, in a way she herself is a hypocrite. She hates the Clueless Crew, but in some ways she is exactly like them - she plays games with boys, she is driven by her hormones (even though she criticizes Manda, the class skank, for doing the same exact thing). I had hoped to hear more of Hope’s voice in this novel after hearing so much about her in the first novel, but to no avail. Hope’s life is practically non-existent aside from a few lines about conversations on the phone and the letters. 

All in all though, I enjoyed the writing. If you don’t want to remember high school, then I wouldn’t read this novel because it brings you right back to high school days, rife with drama, cliques, gossip about who was dating who or screwing who or whatever.  Some of us didn’t have all that bright of a high school life, so reading a book that so powerfully brings that life to the forefront (McCafferty does a tremendous job doing this), can be traumatizing to some.

All in all, it was a decent book, if you don’t set your expectations as high as I did.

Book 33/100