Becky's Books –

The Fishermen
by Chigozie Obioma – Nigeria
2015/ 296 pages
rating 8 – contemp lit

Euphoria
by Lily King
2014/ 258 pages
Rating: 9 / general fiction

Ceremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko
1977 /  262  pages
rating: 8 / cont. fict. Native American (classic)

The Buried Giant
by Kazuo Ishiguro – English
2015/ 317 pages
rating:  6 /   fantasy/allegory

Go Set a Watchman
by Harper Lee
2015 (written in the 1950s) / 288 pages
rating 7.5 – 20th century lit

Newly found manuscript gets hot sales because prior work is iconic and was made into a soul-touching movie. Is this sequel/prequel any good?  Go Set a Watchman takes place maybe 20  years after To Kill a Mockingbird,  but it was written first – I tried to understand it that way, but it gets a bit complicated.

Anyway I sure wasn’t expecting much,  but as often happens when my expectations are low, I’m  pleasantly surprised. This time however,  I was somewhat disappointed. I guess I already knew the “bad” stuff – rejected, unpublished, lost 1st novel in which Lee presents our beloved Atticus Finch as a die-hard racist of the 1950s.

The Gambler
by Fydor Dostoevsky
1867/ 120 pages
rating 9

Along the Rhine in the mid-19th century were a number of casinos, attractive to many people including French and Russian nobility as well as a few English, German, Polish and other people with money – and a few hangers-on without.

“J”
by Howard Jacobson
2014/ 342 pages
rating:8.5

WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED happened quite a long time ago, probably a couple generations, and now folks are “sorry.” They’re “sorry” all the time. But in a ver small town in the southwestern corner of England a young man, Kevern (Coco)  Cohen, and a young woman, Ailinn Solomons (which may or may not be their genealogical names) meet and wonder.

Folks who are “different” are suspected of something, knowing something, having something – they are watched closely. And after we’re more thoroughly introduced to some of the other characters and the nature of the thing that didn’t happen, it gets dark and really quite hard to read for awhile. >>>>MORE>>>>

The Wright Brothers
by David McCullough
2015 / pages
rating: 8

This is a really enjoyable book, well researched and nicely written. The subject matter is of relatively narrow scope so McCullough’s focus is primarily on the characters, personalities and relationships of his major subjects. Wilber the elder and Orville the younger, are totally fascinating in their dedication to honesty, integrity, their dream and their family. But the story is also that of their younger sister Katharine and their widowed father, Bishop Milton Wright.  >>>>MORE>>>>

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
by Maggie O’Farrell
2007 / 277 pages
rating – 7.5 / contemp fiction

I’m not fond of books without chapter divisions – what is it the reader is supposed to do, read it in one sitting? Are we supposed to think the author just sat down and wrote this out in one sitting? I understand the work is meant to be seen as “seamless,” or of a piece – well, okay, but I don’t eat dinner that way and it’s certainly “of a piece.”

Whatever – I enjoyed but wasn’t really impressed with the story of Iris Lockhart, a present-day Scottish woman, who finds she has a great aunt being released from a mental hospital. It seems that Esme Lennox has been stashed away for deuces there and it’s now closing. The main plot thread follows >>>>MORE>>>>

Housekeeping
by Marilynne Robinson
1980 /219 pages
rating: 9 / 20th century fiction

I’ve read all of Marilynne Robinson’s novels but this one, Gilead (2004), Home (2008), and Lila (2014) – all terrific. So I was interested in reading this book even prior to a reading group.

Housekeeping is about a lot of things, including housekeeping. Mostly it’s about “transience” as so many reviewers say, the impermanence of things, people, families. And although it’s written in beautiful, lyrical, Biblical, transcendent prose it’s an all-American novel.  >>>>MORE>>>>

Far From the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy
1874/ 500 or so pages
rating: 10 / classic – 19th century England

I’ve read several of Hardy’s novels and enjoy them quite a lot. This is his best according to many I only finally got  to it.  The first e-book edition I got was pathetic, no paragraph breaks except at the chapters and many typos. I got it because it was supposed to be annotated but it’s not. I returned it,  got a better (still cheap) version and was quite happy.  I tell you this only as a precaution – all formats are not created equal.

Anyway, a young but promising sheep farmer named Gabriel Oak – I suppose he’s an earthly angel – falls in love with Bathsheba Everdene, a beautiful young neighbor who is the niece of a very large farmer >>>>MORE>>>>

The Beginning of Spring
by Penelope Fitzgerald
1998/ 272 pages
Rating: 9 / historical fiction

I love the works of Penelope Fitzgerald and have read a good many them.  This one came as a surprise to me though, when it was selected as a Booker nominee – I don’t know why I hadn’t read it before.

I suspect this historical fiction set in March, 1913 Moscow and environs was painstakingly researched, but Fitzgerald always keeps it natural focusing on the plot and character development first snd foremost. That said, the setting, both time and place, is an integral part of the story, affecting the characters profoundly. I think it could happen nowhere else.

Moscow at this time was a place of serious unrest, student protests and labor strikes abounded, but things had quieted down some from the rebellion of 1905 and World War I had not yet started. It was hoped that a revolution could be avoided.  >>>>MORE>>>> 

On the Move: A Life
by Oliver Sacks
2015/ 416 pages
Rating 8.5 – memoir

Fun book, for the most part, quirky and slightly irreverent but mostly . Oliver Sacks is now 80 years old and had had a truly amazing life, making the most of amazing times as a neurosurgeon, amateur chemist and author. He is best known for his books detailing the case studies of his patients in books like “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and “Awakenings.”

Born into a well-to-do family of doctors, mother, father, brothers, Oliver tried to avoid the field, but that’s where his talents and interests lie anyway. Still, literature and writing beckoned and it shows. This is an example of excellent creative-style, or literary (used loosely) memoir. The facts and information are likely as accurate as any memoir, but the structure and style are less formal with maintaining interest being a primary goal.  >>>>MORE>>>>

The Feast of the Goat
by Mario Vargas Llosa
2000/405 pages
rating: 9- contemp fiction

I read this back in 2004 or so, I think, and enjoyed it, certainly remembered it, but one reading left me rather confused as to the structure and characters. Anther reading group chose it for June of this year and I decided to revisit. ai’m quite pleased I did. Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2010 and although he has quite an oeuvre, The Feast of the Goat is probably the work he’s best known for.
Because this was first published in 2000 about events which occurred less than forty years prior, it’s not quite historical fiction, but rather very well researched and carefully considered fiction about a time the author lived through, followed, took note of, and surely considered carefully at the time.  >>>>MORE>>>>

The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy 1889/  184 pages (novella) rating:  9 –  classic Russian This one is a reread – I recently rejoined the 19th Century reading  group to keep reading classics – Most of their choices are books I’ve not read. The Kreutzer Sonata is a darned good story with historical value (which is mostly why I enjoy classic literature).   Also,  it’s interesting biographically because of Tolstoy’s post-Anna Karenina trauma and spiritual transformation.   Although Anna was not a “good” girl,  during the course of writing her story Tolstoy had fallen a wee bit in love her.  This raised some serious questions in his mind because Tolstoy was, at heart,  a Christian!  How could he write so beautifully about a “fallen woman?”    He struggled with both depression and his core beliefs the result being that he denounced Anna Karenina – his “perfect” novel  – as vanity along with his prior works.   >>>>MORE>>>> 

The Crime Writer
by Greg Hurwitz
read by Scott Brick  10h 58m
2007/ 324 pages
rating: C+  / crime

Just for a kick – getting back to my good old suspense novels. I enjoyed You’re Next by Hurwitz well enough,  and this sounded good.  Based on self-select (not a strong suit) I went for it.   Another positive thing is that Scott Brick narrates and this is suspense – perfect for him.

Drew Danner,  a writer of mystery novels,  wakes up in the hospital with no memory of how he got there.  He finds out he’s been arrested for the murder of his ex- fiancé, but remembers nothing about it.   After being found guilty by reason of insanity – it was a blood clot found in his brain which rendered him with no memory – Danner wants to find out what happened.  >>>MORE>>>> 

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
by Gabrielle Zevin
2014 / 273 pages
read by Scott Brick 7h 2m
rating: 6 / contemp fiction
(read and listened)

A.J. Fikry is a bookstore owner, a widower and a budding alcoholic.  One night one of his very most valuable books goes missing – is stolen.  That’s very disturbing on top of everything else,  but when he finds a 2-year old left on the floor of his shop well …

Except for a bit of bogging down about half or two-thirds,  the story travels along nicely with a few twists and the characters are intersting, but this is a book with a “message” rather than an exploration of ideas. Not only that, the literary references are over the top. The end result is a cute story with a rather pretentious  gloss.  Scott Brick is an excellent narrator,  but in my opinion,  this is not a good book for him.