Books and other stuff I feel like discussing
By education and experience - Accountant with a specialty in taxation. Formerly a CPA (license has lapsed). Masters degree in law of taxation from University of Denver. Now retired. Part time work during baseball season as receptionist & switchboard operator for the Colorado Rockies. This gig feeds my soul in ways I have trouble articulating. One daughter, and four grandchildren. I share the house with two cats; a big goof of a cat called Grinch (named as a joke for his easy going "whatever" disposition); and Lady, a shelter adoptee with a regal bearing and sweet little soprano voice. I would be very bereft if it ever becomes necessary to keep house without a cat.
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Best reads of 2006
ABIDE WITH ME - Elizabeth Stroud
Stroud's book is about a young pastor, who has had a fairly routine life - easy path through divinity school, very good at preaching, marries the first woman he falls in love with, two lovely little daughters, and so on.
Then the roof falls in on him, and he finds himself adrift - searching for "the feeling" he had when he was certain of his path in life and his creator's love.
For a lot of the book and the eventual resolution, the reader is the only one who truly understands what exactly is going on. The characters in the book remain in the dark, but they find their way out together. And the denouement near the end is a moment filled with profound grace, as one of the other characters in the book, who is truly up shit creek, comes to the pastor's aid and turns things around.
THE LOST, A SEARCH FOR SIX OF SIX MILLION by Daniel Mendelsohn
See my blog entry of November 28 for my comments. I still find myself thinking about this book at least once a day.
CITIZEN VINCE by Jess Walter
A petty hoodlum has finally cleared his last parole obligation, his last debt to society has been paid. So he registers to vote, and in preparation for his first election, studies the issues and candidates. It's no surprise when his former life comes calling. What follows is a semi-comic, highly readable novel, which collected a richly deserved Edgar award for Best Novel.
IMPULSE by Frederick Ramsay
Ramsay is relatively new to the scene, and many readers who would enjoy his books have yet to discover him. Although he has a couple of books in a series with a third coming later this year, IMPULSE is a stand alone.
A midlist author of suspense novels travels to a reunion at his prep school campus. He gets drawn into a continuing query about the fate of some schoolmates who disappeared mysteriously some 25 years earlier. What I like about Ramsay's books, especially this one, is that many small details which at first seem to be present only to set a scene turn up later to be important to the plot. He doesn't waste a word, which has got to be much harder than it looks.
MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD by Debra Dean
This is a lovely little novel. As an elderly woman drifts away from her family into the fog of Alzheimer's disease, she revisits her youth as a museum employee at the famed Hermitage in Leningrad. The point of view shifts between her wartime memories and the present day concerns of her loving extended family.
MY LIFE IN FRANCE by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
A marvelous autobiography by the famous author and chef, centering on years spent in postwar France with her diplomat husband. In addition to describing in detail a long list of mouthwatering dinners and party menus, the book presents a real life love story. For their entire life together, Child was absolutely nuts about her husband, and it shows.
THE GREAT DELUGE by Douglas Brinkley
Brinkley is a college professor, who lives and works in New Orleans. Like thousands of others, he moved his family to safety in Texas as Hurricane Katrina approached. Working from his place of exile with an army of researchers helping, he brought this book to the market just a few months after the disaster. It's a riveting read, and a severe indictment of the widespread failure to protect human life for those who could not help themselves.
THE FOURTH BEAR by Jasper Fforde
Fforde is a master at what a magazine reviewer called "brainy silliness." This offering is the second in the adventures of police who investigate "nursery crimes" His books are hard to describe well, among other things the characters are aware they are in a book, and discuss what plot device to use next! Coping with a plan to destroy the earth using nuclear cold fusion based on a strain of cucumbers(!), Fforde's cops still manage to work their way through a respectable police procedural.
LIFELESS by Mark Billingham
London cop Tom Thorne has endured a personal tragedy, and will never be sure if he bears any responsibility for the way events unfolded. His duties have been curtailed to give him time to recover, and instead of taking a partial leave, he talks his superiors into sending him uncover to investigate a series of attacks on London's homeless. Billingham came into his own with this book.
A SPOT OF BOTHER by Mark Haddon
An almost comically dysfunctional family, led by a newly retired man who has self-diagnosed a recurrent ezcema as terminal skin cancer, attempts to plan a family wedding. The father is not the only quirky family member, other family members have misunderstandings equally as bizarre. Not surprisingly, events spiral out of control, but in the end all comes right.
THE ZERO by Jess Walter
In the days after 9/11, a New York cop drifts through his days in a kind of suspended animation. He is losing his eyesight and is also experiencing a series of fugue states, with gaps in his memory and a disconcerting pattern of coming to full consciousness with no idea where he is or what he should be doing. As events unfold, the reader can see that he is the only person with clear perceptions - all others are caught up in their own distress and reaction to the terrorist attacks.
COLD KILL by David Lawrence
Lawrence's protagonist Stella Mooney is one of the most intriguing characters in suspense fiction to appear in the last few years. Plagued by what contemporary culture would call "baggage" from prior investigations and prior personal events, Stella has a romantic life which in every book is an accident waiting to happen. She also has a keen intuitive sense for the subtle distinctions provided by every set of evidence in every crime she investigates.
The best features of a good police procedural are here in spades. COLD KILL is one of the most intricately plotted mysteries I have read in a long time, and as the story moves forward, each small tidbit fits into the whole.
Well, that's twelve books. 2006 was, obviously, a very good year to be a voracious reader. Trying to rate them isn't easy but - -
Best five
THE LOST by Mendelsohn
ABIDE WITH ME by Stroud
LIFELESS by Billingham
THE GREAT DELUGE by Brinkley
A SPOT OF BOTHER by Haddon
Five best mysteries
LIFELESS by Billingham
COLD KILL by Lawrence
THE ZERO by Walter
IMPULSE by Ramsay
CITIZEN VINCE by Walter
2007 is off to a good start, with SLAY RIDE by Chris Grabenstein and THE BLONDE by Duane Swierczynski waiting on the TBR pile.
Stroud's book is about a young pastor, who has had a fairly routine life - easy path through divinity school, very good at preaching, marries the first woman he falls in love with, two lovely little daughters, and so on.
Then the roof falls in on him, and he finds himself adrift - searching for "the feeling" he had when he was certain of his path in life and his creator's love.
For a lot of the book and the eventual resolution, the reader is the only one who truly understands what exactly is going on. The characters in the book remain in the dark, but they find their way out together. And the denouement near the end is a moment filled with profound grace, as one of the other characters in the book, who is truly up shit creek, comes to the pastor's aid and turns things around.
THE LOST, A SEARCH FOR SIX OF SIX MILLION by Daniel Mendelsohn
See my blog entry of November 28 for my comments. I still find myself thinking about this book at least once a day.
CITIZEN VINCE by Jess Walter
A petty hoodlum has finally cleared his last parole obligation, his last debt to society has been paid. So he registers to vote, and in preparation for his first election, studies the issues and candidates. It's no surprise when his former life comes calling. What follows is a semi-comic, highly readable novel, which collected a richly deserved Edgar award for Best Novel.
IMPULSE by Frederick Ramsay
Ramsay is relatively new to the scene, and many readers who would enjoy his books have yet to discover him. Although he has a couple of books in a series with a third coming later this year, IMPULSE is a stand alone.
A midlist author of suspense novels travels to a reunion at his prep school campus. He gets drawn into a continuing query about the fate of some schoolmates who disappeared mysteriously some 25 years earlier. What I like about Ramsay's books, especially this one, is that many small details which at first seem to be present only to set a scene turn up later to be important to the plot. He doesn't waste a word, which has got to be much harder than it looks.
MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD by Debra Dean
This is a lovely little novel. As an elderly woman drifts away from her family into the fog of Alzheimer's disease, she revisits her youth as a museum employee at the famed Hermitage in Leningrad. The point of view shifts between her wartime memories and the present day concerns of her loving extended family.
MY LIFE IN FRANCE by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
A marvelous autobiography by the famous author and chef, centering on years spent in postwar France with her diplomat husband. In addition to describing in detail a long list of mouthwatering dinners and party menus, the book presents a real life love story. For their entire life together, Child was absolutely nuts about her husband, and it shows.
THE GREAT DELUGE by Douglas Brinkley
Brinkley is a college professor, who lives and works in New Orleans. Like thousands of others, he moved his family to safety in Texas as Hurricane Katrina approached. Working from his place of exile with an army of researchers helping, he brought this book to the market just a few months after the disaster. It's a riveting read, and a severe indictment of the widespread failure to protect human life for those who could not help themselves.
THE FOURTH BEAR by Jasper Fforde
Fforde is a master at what a magazine reviewer called "brainy silliness." This offering is the second in the adventures of police who investigate "nursery crimes" His books are hard to describe well, among other things the characters are aware they are in a book, and discuss what plot device to use next! Coping with a plan to destroy the earth using nuclear cold fusion based on a strain of cucumbers(!), Fforde's cops still manage to work their way through a respectable police procedural.
LIFELESS by Mark Billingham
London cop Tom Thorne has endured a personal tragedy, and will never be sure if he bears any responsibility for the way events unfolded. His duties have been curtailed to give him time to recover, and instead of taking a partial leave, he talks his superiors into sending him uncover to investigate a series of attacks on London's homeless. Billingham came into his own with this book.
A SPOT OF BOTHER by Mark Haddon
An almost comically dysfunctional family, led by a newly retired man who has self-diagnosed a recurrent ezcema as terminal skin cancer, attempts to plan a family wedding. The father is not the only quirky family member, other family members have misunderstandings equally as bizarre. Not surprisingly, events spiral out of control, but in the end all comes right.
THE ZERO by Jess Walter
In the days after 9/11, a New York cop drifts through his days in a kind of suspended animation. He is losing his eyesight and is also experiencing a series of fugue states, with gaps in his memory and a disconcerting pattern of coming to full consciousness with no idea where he is or what he should be doing. As events unfold, the reader can see that he is the only person with clear perceptions - all others are caught up in their own distress and reaction to the terrorist attacks.
COLD KILL by David Lawrence
Lawrence's protagonist Stella Mooney is one of the most intriguing characters in suspense fiction to appear in the last few years. Plagued by what contemporary culture would call "baggage" from prior investigations and prior personal events, Stella has a romantic life which in every book is an accident waiting to happen. She also has a keen intuitive sense for the subtle distinctions provided by every set of evidence in every crime she investigates.
The best features of a good police procedural are here in spades. COLD KILL is one of the most intricately plotted mysteries I have read in a long time, and as the story moves forward, each small tidbit fits into the whole.
Well, that's twelve books. 2006 was, obviously, a very good year to be a voracious reader. Trying to rate them isn't easy but - -
Best five
THE LOST by Mendelsohn
ABIDE WITH ME by Stroud
LIFELESS by Billingham
THE GREAT DELUGE by Brinkley
A SPOT OF BOTHER by Haddon
Five best mysteries
LIFELESS by Billingham
COLD KILL by Lawrence
THE ZERO by Walter
IMPULSE by Ramsay
CITIZEN VINCE by Walter
2007 is off to a good start, with SLAY RIDE by Chris Grabenstein and THE BLONDE by Duane Swierczynski waiting on the TBR pile.
Read/Post Comments (5)
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