Setting the Bar

I have never read a book that was about a person or people I know.  I have read books about places that I’ve gone to and am going to many times in the past. This book intimately combined a place where I lived for 18 months and people that I lived in the community with and worked with, knew all about and occasionally socialized with.  In some ways, it was really bizarre because I think that I had more intense feelings than I would have normally had.

This book is a true crime book in which Casey Sherman (a veteran journalist who has published a few other books on similar topics) about the deaths of Franconia Police Corporal Bruce Mckay and the person that shot him - Liko Kenney.  The homicides happened in May of 2007 in the North Country of New Hampshire, a very rural area that isn’t always hospitable to outsiders.  He looks at the incident from many different perspectives. In them, Floyd isn’t as much a clear cut hero as originally thought. Liko isn’t as much a bad, rebellious kid and Corporal Mckay isn’t as clear cut a noble cop. Floyd had a history of violence and mental health issues and on May 11, 2007, he was on at least 20 different medications. McKay was still a good, decent cop who didn’t know when to compromise and let himself get caught up in a pissing match, for lack of a better phrase, with a young man that was very much a product of his unique family and their perspectives on things. The Kenneys were hippies, who moved to Franconia because of their anti-establishment and pot smoking/growing tendencies. Sherman also describes the history that existed between Liko and Corporal McKay - a stop that quickly escalated into three officers being there and Liko assaulting McKay by grabbing his testicles.

I really thought that Sherman did an excellent job in portraying the story of McKay/Kenney feuds and altercations.  It would have been so easy to be swayed one way or the other after conducting the interviews that he did, but he managed to tell the story in a neutral light. There were a couple of things that did bug me, mostly related to proofreading issues and things that I knew about the area that an insider may have better understood. For instance - place names. It’s Grafton COUNTY Superior Court, not Grafton Superior Court.  Also, Mr. Sherman was inaccurate in his use of legal terminology in describing what happened with Mr. Floyd’s outstanding sentences. Mr. Floyd wasn’t on parole at any point during his interactions. He was on a term of good behavior - which is completely different than parole and everything that parole entails. Also, if Mr. Sherman had bothered to check the Littleton District Court files for Mr. Kenney, he would have seen that Mr. Kenney’s public defender wasn’t Robin Warren (I know Robin, I worked with her, she’s not a lawyer and I think would be rather offended at being called that) but another lawyer. Also, at some points, the years were off — these things would have been fixed had a lawyer consulted on it or Sherman had done some more research or had a proofreader.

All in all though, I enjoyed the book and it renewed my obsession with this case.

So this was a re-read for me but hey, what the heck. Right now, my life won’t let me focus on anything BUT re-reads like Harry Potter! The story is simple enough and starts simply enough. Harry Potter is orphaned as an infant by Voldemort - He Who Shall Not be Named to most of the wizarding folk - and is brought to live with his aunt’s family. The Dursleys are a non-wizarding, Muggle family who live on Privet Drive. Harry is offered a spot at Hogwarts, the school that his parents attended, because he apparently will follow in their footsteps into the wizarding world. On his first night in Hogwarts, he is sorted into Gryffindor and within his first month, he has two best friends (Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger), becomes the seekr of the House’s  Quidditch team, and realizes that there is a mystery surrounding one of the wings of the castle, which stands protected by a three headed dog named Fluffy.

The last few days of reading this novel were really entertaining. Ms. Rowling provided me with an escape - that involved simple reading and some predictability but a wonderful, escapist world. The character development was very, very subtle; however you could tell that the characters had changed immensely if you compared the people that they had become at the end to the people that they were at the beginning. The book moved very quickly and had a pretty decent, if somewhat predictable plot (but maybe that’s because I know all of the Harry Potter books and movies so well by now). The shortness and quickness of the chapters make this a good book to read to young children (OK maybe not your toddlers) at bedtime.

I generally thought that this book was a good first time or re-read.

Book 70/100

I think I’ve read just about all of Jennifer Weiner’s books and while it’s chicklit, it’s not exactly like the other books that she has written - it’s about a few girls that are the main characters that deal with issues, but only superficially. Addie Downs is the first of the main female characters. She’s lived in Pleasant Ridge for her entire life. As a young, pre-adolescent girl, her life growing up in the middle class suburb of Chicago was somewhat normal.  Then, Valerie Adler moved in next door and her life became, somehow, more glamorous. The two were quick and fast friends. Addie envied Val her life, her mother and her life. In high school things drastically changed.  Valerie became a cheerleader and everything that entails - popularity, beauty, being sought after - while Addie became an overweight, socially uncomfortable and anxious teenager. Fifteen years later, Addie is still in Pleasant Ridge, living in the house that she grew up in and has continued, in a way, her mother’s career of decorating/writing greeting cards. Val and Addie had lost touch, as a result of an incident involving a popular football player that occurred during their senior year of high school.  So, when Val knocks on Addie’s door on the night of their fifteenth high school reunion, Addie’s mind is blown away when Val tells Addie that she may have killed that popular football player.

This was typical chick-lit in my opinion. It was shallow, easy to read and generally superficial. However, I did appreciate Addie and her struggles. Her loyalty led directly to her loneliness and her misery during her senior year.  I did, however, find her loyal to a fault and it got on my nerves - I mean, you have to have SOME little bit of self-preservation, selfishness or something in you right? And because of this, I had a tremendously hard time  relating to Addie OR to Val.  However, at the same time, I particularly liked Weiner’s chattiness. Her writing style puts you at ease and it feels comfortable, as if you’ve known each other for years.

This is one that I could have lived without and was pure fluff.

Everyone has told me about Outlander (published as Cross-Stitch in the UK) and how if I loved anything Scottish, I had to read this historical romance/science fiction book by Diana Gabaldon.  And being that I’ve been on a Scottish kick as of late, I was willing to give it a try.

When the book starts, we meet Claire Randall (maiden name Beauchamp) in the town of Inverness in post World War II Scotland. She is traveling there in 1945 with her husband, historian Frank Randall, on a second honeymoon and so that he can do some research on his ancestor - Black Jack Randall, a captain in the British army in the 18th century. Claire finds a grouping of stones (think Stonehenge), where she mysteriously hears a buzzing after seeing a group of pagans performing their mysterious rituals around it. She touches the stones, blacks out and awakens to the sound of battle around her. Thinking it a re-enactment, which apparently is common in the area, she doesn’t feel disoriented at all until she tries to find her way back to the hotel. She notes that her ride is gone and the man that she meets, although he looks astoundingly like her husband, is in actuality Black Jack Randall. Claire is saved from Black Jack by Murtagh, a Highlander, who introduces her to the cast of MacKenzies and Frasers that she eventually marries into. Claire marries Jamie and they begin their adventures together, including a daring escape from a castle and an escape from a hanging. This first novel in the currently eight book series, is an integral step in the series because it introduces you to all of the main characters.

I couldn’t believe that this novel was over 600 pages because I quite honestly devoured it.  It feels as if you are transported to the Scottish Highlands during both time periods.  Ms. Gabaldon’s descriptions were phenomenal - she engages all of the reader’s senses in telling her story.  There is a lot of discussion about sex and rape in this novel, so if you don’t have the stomach for it, this may not be the novel for you. What I also really appreciated is that Ms. Gabaldon didn’t spend a whole lot of time with Claire’s disorientation in the time travelling part of the novel. What time she did spend could have been cut a little shorter - any more would have been over the top and tedious. Claire and Jamie were both well-drawn. Claire is a well rounded and resourceful heroine who grows and deepens throughout the novel, with each step that she takes. Jamie, too, learns a lot about himself during the course of his interactions in the novel and I can appreciate that very, very much.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.