Enough Said by Nicole Holofcener

This is a romantic comedy (kind of) starring James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.

It's a very novelistic kind of film, in that it seems to me to be less a genre film (romantic comedy), than a consideration of "how we live now."

James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss meet at a party and start dating.  At the same party, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss meets a very elegant woman (Catherine Keener) who, it turns out, is a published poet.  Dreyfuss is a massage therapist and Keener soons becomes her client; after a while, they also become friends.

Louis-Dreyfuss is excited about dating Gandolfini, and optimistic about where their relationship might lead.

One day, Dreyfuss makes the startling realization that Keener is Gandolfini's ex-wife, and that her new boyfriend is the same person that Keener has been roundly and bitterly criticizing (sometimes about petty things) every time that she and Keener have met.

Holofcener is a filmmaker who makes films that are not entirely conventional (nor are they entirely unconventional).  She does not seem to feel the need to divert us at every moment and make each step of the plot conform to our expectations.  As beautiful as both Louis-Dreyfuss and Keener are, she allows both actresses to do ugly things.

I enjoyed this film and would highly recommend it with the understanding that it is not The Proposal, that is, not a highly conventional romantic comedy.  There are two things I like very much about it.  One is that its portrait of women is a little more well-rounded than that in many films.  The other is that this in film, she allows all of her actors, Gandolfini, Louis-Dreyfuss and Keener, to play roles that are not exactly their type.  It's especially refreshing to see Gandolfini in a gentler role, one a little more like my favorite performance of his in the Christian Slater-Rosanna Arquette romantic comedy, True Romance.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

I read this for my book group, as a companion to Orphan Train. After I'd read about 100 pages, I found that I felt really good.  I'm not sure why.  Perhaps it was the book's emphasis on cultivating flowers and cooking as nurturing activities that enrich both the performer and the recipient.  Perhaps it was the "magic" element:  in this novel, the protagonist has a special gift and is able to choose the flowers for her customers that solve their problems.  First, it's a man who misses the sunny disposition his wife used to have; then it's a young woman who has been disappointed in love many times.

Victoria is a ward of the state, having been given up by her mother shortly after her birth.  The novel opens on her 18th birthday, her last birthday "in care," when her social worker comes to take her to special housing where she can live rent-free for three months.

Victoria is an angry person, and she's unmotivated to find the job she needs and a real place to live. But she is passionate about working with plants.  She spends the three months she is supposed to use to find a job stealing plants from gardens and using them to create her own garden in a city park.

When she's kicked out, she goes to sleep in her garden.  When her slumber is disturbed by amorous lovers one night, she realizes she needs a real home, perhaps a room somewhere.  So she looks, for the first time, for a job and approaches a local florist.  The florist won't hire her, but offers her $5 to load her truck.

The florist, Renata, tells her that it's a busy season for her, creating bouquets and centerpieces for weddings. Renata offers to hire Victoria part-time, and her brilliant career as a floral designer/magic maker begins.

Soon she meets a young man in the flower market who intrigues her.  As they begin, very slowly, to court using the "language of flowers" we follow her in flashback to her childhood placement with a foster parent, Elizabeth, who owned a vineyard and taught her about the language of flowers.

I was a little surprised that not everyone in my book group liked this book.  One person said that she found that it dragged a little in the middle (authors, trust your editors!).  I wouldn't have noticed because when I read it I was: struggling to get it read on time; just grateful that it was an easy read; and I was reading it on an electronic device and having techinical problems which kept interrupting the flow of the narrative.  Curse you, imperfect technology!  This was Diffenbaugh's debut novel, and since it's become a book club favorite, I think it has to be termed a success.

I was under the impression that she has written a second novel, but I must be mistaken because I can't find any reference to it on the Internet.  I did learn that Diffenbaugh and her husband foster children, adopted a child, and that she has formed a not-for-profit called The Camellia Network to help foster care children who age out of the system.

Now having read the end of the novel, I think this book emphasizes celebrating our strengths and part of its feel-good quality is its embrace of  self-acceptance. Victoria keenly feels that lack of nurture (sometimes also the lack of food) in her childhood, but almost from the beginning of the novel she is nurturing others by selecting flowers for them.

One other thing:  When I was in Mod Brit Lit long ago, I enjoyed reading Sons and Lovers.  When I got to class, I was pretty shocked.  "Did I read the wrong novel?", I asked myself, because I could not understand the professor's remarks or my fellow student's responses.  During our book group discussion, I was surprised by some participants' comments about not being able to understand the motivation of the characters at critical points in both novels.  In fact, the author explains why the characters make the decisions that they do.

I conclude (not originally) that we read what we want; we ignore that which doesn't interest us or of which we disapprove.  There are probably a whole bunch of things that we ignore, all the time.  I can't help wondering, however, if we would enjoy literature more if we made a greater attempt to be open to it.

The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Kabani

I love this book.  It has a lot of virtues:  it offers pithy rules for social media marketing; it's brief and concise; well-written, so easy to read; and while it is aimed at beginners, I think some of its points are useful for everyone to remember.

First of all, it answers the most basic question:  why Social Media Marketing?  Because a) that is where the people are, b) trust in advertising continues to erode and c), people are already talking about you (don't you want to be part of that conversation?).

This book focuses on using blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to market your business.  There's also a chapter on Google+, which I suspect is not on the radar of many libraries.  Part of its appeal to businesses is that your Google+ p age will appear with search results.  There are also 30 pages of case studies, mostly smaller businesses, and how they used these principles to grow their businesses.

One of the themes of the book is that, while you utilize an effective publicity strategy on social media, you need to also stick to the knitting:  make sure that your product is top-notch.  It's high quality and high value that is, in some cases, the key to success.

For instance, in Kabani's discussion of Groupon, Living Social, and other group buying sites, she points out that if you create a coupon to attract new customers, be sure to have a plan in place that includes high-quality service performance and customer service.  Encourage your coupon customers to follow up on social media with comments about your product or service.  BUT - be sure that the experience that your prospective customer has when they use a coupon is likely to merit a good review.  If you think that staff are not ready for the highest levels of scrutiny, it might be wise to review some important customer service principles.  To make the most of the opportunity afforded by the group buying coupon, a business leader must prepare to staff to cross-sell or upsell, without being too aggressive.

This book focuses on using blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to market your business.  There's also a chapter on Google+, which I suspect is not on the radar of many libraries.  Part of its appeal to businesses is that your Google+ page will appear with search results.

I think that blogs, especially when they're part of your website (as she recommends), have the potential to be very useful to libraries.  That's because, as this book points out, providing information that is useful to your patrons (in the case of a library), your consumers (people who read your content on social media and hopefully, are positively influenced by it), and finally your customers (people who actually consume your products and services), is key to social media success.

One way I would love to take advantage of social media is to use it to help answer the reader's question, "What do I read next?" whether that's a question about which book is next in a series, what's hot right now, or what's a strong recommendation for a good book to read.

She recommends blogs in particular because a) they are a better forum for conveying expertise than Twitter; b) you can ask your followers to subscribe to your blog, something that you cannot do with a website.  However, you can use a blog to drive traffic to your website by inserting links to your website in your blogs (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Google+).

She is very specific about how often a blog author needs to post to create a new audience for a blog:  twice a week.  I guess "Content is king," but fresh content is even kinglier.  Establishing a relationship with a consumer of your content is easier if you communicate more frequently.

However, as a online marketing textbook I recently read asserted, the nature of Google's algorithms determining ranking are such that, ultimately, high quality content may be more important that the strategic insertion of keywords in metatags.

Another theme is the "engagement" aspect of social media marketing.  The old fashioned model for mass communication was broadcasting:  one message sent to many people.  Kabani points out that many ineffective social media marketers "abuse" social media by continuing to push out a message
that that may or may not be tailored to sub-audiences and which does not engage the visitor.  Further, she repeated points out that while you cannot talk back to a TV, you can talk back on social media and that is its great strength.  A social media marketer should be starting, and continuing, a conversation rather a one-sided communication.

In Chapter 4, she offers some "social media marketing tenets."  They are:

1.  Respect other people online.

2.  Efforts to control and manipulate will backfire.

3.  Don't chase everything new under the sun.

4.  Traffic is nice but should not be the only goal of social media marketing.

5.  It's a good idea to use your real name.

6.  You have to be proactive (reach out to others; start a conversation).

She quotes marketing expert Nancy Marmolejo's advice to social media marketers:  "to position yourself as an expert in your field .. you must market yourself as a highly visible, ideally matched source of for your audience. .. Always focus on providing valuable content, boosting your credibility, building trust, .. Value, credibility and trust.  Add those three things to a high level of visibility and you have the social media recipe for success."  (Implied in her remarks are the value of credibility, which should be part of any public relations effort.  The way to build credibility is to be open, honest, and deliver what you promise.)

Social Media Policy

There was a time when a lot of libraries were concerned with this issue.  I assume that most libraries that want to have a social media policy now have one.

Shama Kabani makes several interesting points about crafting a social media policy.  One is that one size does not fit all, and it would be ideal for a social media policy fit your organization.  Another is that it is not necessary to make social media rules punitive or draconian.  She emphasizes commen sense, and points out that at Zappos, employees are encouraged to participate in social media and are trusted to present the company in a positive light.  She points out that as of the writing of her book, Zappos has not had any problems with social media comments posted by colleagues.  This reminds me that again, having a healthy company culture can do wonders in preventing these kinds of problems.

I think something that's implied is that when and if you adopt a social media policy, you spend some time talking with staff about their role in social media.

Some More Pithy Rules

"If content is king, video is the king of the bigger country."

"Many executives between the ages of 45 and 65 are digital aliens.  They were not brought up in the digital age and feel overwhelmed and sometimes fearful of the new technologies."

"You might have heard the saying around SEO blogs and discussion boards that "Content is King," which is true.  But optimizing that content is how to ensure your site performs better than your competitors'."  (Chapter 3, "Search Engine Optimization," p. 30.)

(Her definition of social media:)  "Online platforms where people connect and communicate." (Chapter 4, p.48.)

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

I've been meaning to read this book for a long time; I've read 150 pages and I've decided to throw in the towel.  I just compared notes with a friend about how many books on a list of banned books we'd read:  she'd read 30, and I'd read only 9 and two halves.

And too busy.  After I'd gotten to the 150 page mark, I was actually very interested in finishing.  But life intervened, and I was very busy for the next week.

This is a book about a married woman with children, and the protagonist of the novel is both a happy person and a person who inner consciousness we're allowed to share.  Cecilia is constantly making observations about her husband and her children that I think will be very familiar to other mothers. She, too, is nearly run off her feet and doesn't have much opportunity, I don't think, to think very deeply about what it is that she's doing and how she feels about things and herself.

I recently chatted with a co-worker who had just finished the book and learned that by the end of the book, a lot has happened, a lot has changed, and Cecilia has had opportunity enough to have a lot to think about.

The book is well-plotted, suspenseful, and very importantly, relatable.  It is an entertaining book.

This book has proved to be SO popular.  People are still taking about it.

I see that new editions of her earlier books have been published.  Those are The Hypnotist's Love Story, What Alice Forgot, Three Wishes, and Last Anniversary.  Her latest book is Big Little Lies, which has also been a bestseller.

Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles by Katherine Pancol

Josephine is a harried Parisian housewife.  She has a job working as a researcher at a French agency, and while it doesn't pay well it's a lifesaver because her husband, Antoine, has lost his job as a hunting guide. Antoine is demoralized his job search.  After he's been unemployed for a year, she discovers he's having an affair and kicks him out.

Shortly after, her sister comes to her with a proposition:  write a novel about the 12th century and she, the sister, will do the promotional tour and pass off the work as her own.  The book becomes a big success, in part because Iris, the sister, is so good at promoting herself.  Her promotional tour is a bit of a spoof of celebrity culture.

I can see why this book has been a bestseller in Europe; it's very entertaining.  I don't think that there's any way in which it's less accessible to American readers than European except that the place names and character names are unfamiliar.  Lots of familiar celebrities make an appearance:  some children have an "Imagine" game that involves singing John Lennon's song "Imagine"; Diana, Princess of Wales, is referred to several times.  I think I recall that French celebrities are mentioned once or twice but not more than English-language ones - I think Meryl Streep, playing Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa is also mentioned.

The story is a wish fulfillment story; middle-aged woman is left by her man (although she invites him to leave when she discovers that he is having an affair) and, gradually, starts to find ways to cope with his absence and to rebuild her life.  She starts going to the hairdresser, losing some weight and getting herself a new man.

She also has a teenage daughter that speaks to her in a really cruel way; her mother is also rather critical.

Globalization is explicitly touched on just a few times:  one character bemoans the seeming inability of some companies to "change with the times"; another company survives by purchasing a Chinese company; and of course, the whole plot is set in motion by the protagonist's husband leaving her and that really happens because he loses his job.  He spends a year looking for a job and he begins an affair with a local hairdresser.
Frankly, although this novel is supposed to be a novel about female empowerment, it's possible to make an argument that if the lead character not kicked out her husband in a fit of fury she wouldn't have had such great success but she'd still be married and her children would be happier.

I think this novel was published in France in 2006, so it's not new.

Ratlines by Stuart Neville

I feel very enthusiastic about this book.  I think I chose to read it because I wondered if it was the sort of things that would appeal to Alistair MacLean fans.

I think it would appeal to Alistair MacLean fans.  There's less emphasis here on military operations but plenty of action and adventure and most of the men in the story are ex-military.

I enjoyed it more because there was more of a backstory, not just for the protagonist (an agent with military intelligence), but for the villains.

The first chapter definitely reminded me of The Eye of the Needle, especially the way that you're just plunged into the story.  Although it's a dark story, it's interesting.  I certainly felt inspired to go on.

I wasn't familiar with the term "ratlines" which means the escape routes Nazis took to places like Ireland and Argentina.  Of course, ex-Nazis also came to the U.S.  Interesting, a new novel has just been published, called Warburg in Rome, which is about the Catholic Church's involvement in "ratlines."  There was also a film about an ex-Nazi in flight, The Statement, from 2003, which starred Michael Caine.

There's a bit of Irish history here, especially about Ireland's complicated neutrality during the Second World War.  Ireland's then government viewed neutrality as necessary, but the personal history of the protagonist demonstrates how complicated Ireland's position was.

My Irish history is spotty but at the start of the Second World War, the Irish Republic was less than two decades old.  Ireland had struggled for centuries to achieve independence, and could easily have been invaded by Britain.  How Britain felt about Ireland in 1939, I don't know.  But I do know that in the 16th and 17th centuries, Britain feared attack through Ireland.

Yet many Irish men fought for the British, as did Albert Ryan, this novel's protagonist, an ex-military man bored by civilian life and now working for the Directorate of Irish intelligence.  Shosrtly before John F. Kennedy, the Irish-American president, is to visit Ireland in August, 1963.  His boss farms him out to Charles Haughey; Haughey's goal is to hush up the problem as much as possible.  He knows that publicity about the sanctuary Ireland has given ex-Nazis will sour the good feelings produced by the president's visit.

Ryan is troubled by his mission, which is to get down to the bottom of a series of murders of ex-Nazis who've found refuge in Ireland.  He feels that finding the killers is nearly the same thing as protecting Otto Skorzeny and the other ex-Nazis in the novel.

The second half of the book is full of double-cross and even triple-cross, with plenty of action and suspense. I was surprised by the book's ending.  There are at least two scenes of torture.  I tend to ignore these kinds of things when I come across them in books, and I imagine that others do, too, but I felt my recommendation had to include that notice.

Neville provides a bibliography of some of the sources he used in researching his novel:

Fugitive Ireland:  European Minority Nationalists and Irish Political Asylum, 1937-2008, by Daniel Leach.  Four Courts Press.

Commando Extraordinary:  Otto Skorzeny, by Charles Foley, Cassell Military Classics.

Rescuing Mussolini:  Gran Sasso 1943, by Robert Forcyzyk, Osprey Publishing.

Haughey's Millions:  Charlie's Money Trail, by Colm Keena, Gill & Macmillan.

JFK in Ireland:  Four Days that Changed a President, by Ryan Tubridy, Collins.

News from a New Republic:  Ireland in the 1950s, by Tom Garvin, Gill & Macmillan.

Neville states that Cathal O'Shannon's documentary Ireland's Nazis "first planted the seeds of this story" in his mind.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I've just finished this novel, and I have so many contradictory and perhaps "sharp" or critical (as in finding fault) things to say about this book - which I basically enjoyed and would recommend.

The first thing I have to say is that I am sad.  I probably didn't cry as much as some readers, but I imagine that was because I was in a public place about 75% of the time I was reading the book.  I would guess that not crying did not help me to be less sad.  There were certain sentences in the book that immediately made me want to cry.

I found myself feeling uncomfortable with the unbearable pain of losing a young person to cancer being transformed into an entertainment.  Eventually, I realized that I had my own experience with this phenomenon, and perhaps my critical attitude had to do in part with how much I minded having my faded pain unearthed and freshened.

There is something weird about how we respond to the death of young people.  I noticed it when I was in high school and the president of the senior class killed himself.  Someone said, breathlessly, "I sat at his lunch table," as if physical proximity to someone who died not that long after was in some way significant.  I think I thought at the time that there was something callous and insincere about this reaction and perhaps it was only that it was wonder and stupefaction rather than real grief.  Death is so other; so strange and unlike our other experiences.

The book begins with an odd disclaimer.  Green reminds the reader that the book is a work of fiction and that too much and nothing literal/real/thinly veiled should be read into it.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago:  This book is a work of fiction.  I made it up.  

  Neither novels nor their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story.  Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.  

  I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

After the book concludes, there is a acknowledgemwnt of many people that includes the family of Esther Earl, the young woman to whom the book is dedicated, and who has presumably died of cancer.

As you can see from the very fact I mentioned this, I really did not "get it."  To me, it's patently obvious that readers may be passionately interested in the facts that lie inside a story and that academic criticism holds that those increase our understanding and appreciation of the story.  This is the first book I've read by John Green and I find myself wondering if all of his books are written in this style, which I see as a highly entertaining mashup of low colloquialisms and high diction.  I usually love that kind of stuff, and it's a very big part of why I enjoyed this book and why I recommend it.  But the whole thing about the author's note makes me nervous.

The flavor of the novel first appears in the second paragraph:

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer.  But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.

The book goes in for a lot of criticism of the empty comfort that is offered to cancer patients (the support group leader who soberly intones, "We are literally in the heart of Jesus," while that cannot be true).  And there is a great deal of discussion of the search for meaning for dying people who do not believe in heaven or are not sure that they believe in heaven.

Hazel is a sixteen year-old cancer patient; at her mother's insistence, she very reluctantly attends a cancer support group meeting.  While there, she meets someone new, a young man who has had "a touch" of osteocarcinoma.
She is intrigued by him, and he is also very impressed by her.  They grow close in painful and sometimes absurd circumstances.

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

I like Fannie Flagg.  She's fun.  I enjoyed her book Redbird Christmas, although I think that this book has much more to offer.  Flagg is also the author of Fried Green Tomatoes and the Whistlestop Cafe (if I've got the title right), which, like this novel, affirms women's strength and relationships.

I really enjoyed The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion.  The things I liked about it were the fact that some complex issues were presented intelligently, although it was overall an optimistic, upbeat, life-affirming novel.  I also think that most readers will find it a light read, and one that is not too challenging.

It was also very much a book about women.  The protagonist, Sookie, has to find herself after her identity is shattered, as she sees it, when she learns that she is adopted.  It's also a book about women's achievement, which is shown as being very important.  (It is important, but I secretly wish that someone would say that making the meals and doing the laundry is very important, too.)

When the novel opens, Sookie has just married off her last daughter.  She's mentally breathing a sign of relief as she considers what she'll be able to do with her free time - including reading!  Her time isn't entirely her own, however, as she spends a good bit of time looking after her octogenarian mother.  Her mother is a bit of a handful.  That's putting it tactfully.  Her mother is demanding, interfering, embarrassing, and arguably a bit batty.

In the wake of a lawsuit against her mother for something like libel, Sookie has taken over paying her bills and handling her correspondence. That leads to the event that drives the plot.  ( I feel guilty about telling you too much.

In the second paragraph above, I said that I wished that someone would say that making the meals and doing the laundry is important, too.  I think that's part of what is so lovely about this novel.  I didn't realized until I'd thought about it some more, but Flagg is saying that making the meals and doing the laundry is important, and that all women's work is important and should not be devalued because it includes laundry!

Defending Jacob by William Landay

I'd been hearing that this was a good book and a kind of genre-crosser (a mix of family concerns and courtroom drama/legal thriller), and I finally got around to reading it last month.

I thought the praise was well-deserved.  This book reminded me very much of Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent, and it emphasized the family aspect more.  I've heard that it's a popular book club book, and I think the combination of real suspense and family concerns makes for a book that is likely to be enjoyed by many and will offer plenty to talk about.

Andy Barber is a prosecutor, a twenty-year veteran.  He and his wife are happily married and they have a teenage son named Jacob.

A classmate of his son's is killed in the park next to Jacob's school.  At first, Andy views the murder as routine and his first thought is to consider local pedophiles.  Things start to get a little strange when, after Jacob's classmates are interviewed by police and prosecutors, Andy's boss decides to take him off the case.

It shortly becomes clear why Andy has been removed from the case when Jacob is charged with the murder.

Andy enters a world of bifurcated perception as he sees every event through two lenses:  as a lawyer and prosecutor with a profound knowledge of the legal system's limitations and how to work them, and as a father who longs to protect his son.

Janet Maslin in the New York Times described Defending Jacob this way: "Mr. Landay turns out to be creating a clever blend of legal thriller and issue-oriented family implosion." Andy Barber's conflicted feelings about his predicament lead him to reevaluated his entire life. I enjoyed the "parry and thrust" of courtroom tactics, and I found the insider's view very interesting. I'd recommend it both as a suspenseful, entertaining read and as a good selection for a book group.

Sycamore Row by John Grisham

This book came out last year and I'm only getting around to reading it now.  One of my reasons for pushing it to the top of my TBR (to-be-read) list is my interest in finding out if it would be a good selection for a book group.

I'm now past the two-thirds mark.  I have to say I am really enjoying this book.

One of the qualities Grisham possesses, one which has turned me off in the past, is his intense interest on who stands where in the pecking order.  His interest in how manners, money, dress and comportment dictate your social standing has made me feel painfully self-conscious, and I have not enjoyed it.  It is the business of the novel, in my opinion, to talk about how we live now and certainly, this novel and his other novels do that. I think that one of the things that I particularly like about this novel is that there is so much to say about everything in this long novel that his socioeconomic rankings are less obtrusive than I have found them to be in the past.

Jake Brigance is a small town "street lawyer," in Mississippi in 1984.  He's well-known in his town because he represented Carl Lee Hailey in his trial for murdering the white men who raped his daughter, three years earlier.  Carl Lee was African-American, so Jake is highly regarded in the African-American community.

Jake is struggling financially, however.  He didn't make much money defending Carl Lee and his house was firebombed by racists during the trial.  He's been unable to settle with the insurance company and he, his wife, and his daughter are living in a rental house.

Enter Seth Hubbard, albeit by letter.  Seth is a cantankerous soul, who has made millions in timber and furniture in the previous ten years.  Then Seth learned that he had terminal cancer.

Seth has hung himself, and before doing so, made a new will and writtern Jake a letter in which he asks Jake to defend the new will vigorously.  (Seth chooses Jake because of his local reputation as the defender of Carl Lee Hailey)  Seth knows it will be challenged, because in his new will he cuts out his children.  The new beneficiary is his housekeeper, who is to receive 90% of Hubbard's estate.

Jake is stunned, but he instantly understands that the new will will be contested by the deceased's children and that he, as the estate's lawyer defending the new will, will have an opportunity to have a good, steady income for the first time in years.  When he begins discussing the will with his closest attorney friends, and the local sheriff, they all immediately understand that the fact that Seth Hubbard's housekeeper was black means that there will be a very big fight and that some jurors will feel reluctance to award 90% of a multimillion dollar estate to a black woman.

Grisham mentions Faulkner more than once in this book, and it's clear to me that he shared Faulkner's view that "the past isn't dead, it isn't even passed."  Nevertheless, the book ends on a hopeful note.

Appropos of nothing, I found this reference to dining and shopping in East London in an ad from Phaidon, the publishers.

http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/food/articles/2014/may/19/the-insiders-guide-to-london/

10/24/2017

I read Sycamore Row for  a second time this past spring, for another book group, and I have to say that I enjoyed it even more the second time. I found myself dwelling on details I hadn't noticed the first time around, and I loved the local color - the restaurant and Jake and one of his cronies goes to discuss the trial during a lunch break. It's in the country, and Jake's lunch partner is another lawyer, a really startling intellect. It's so rich in detail and feeling. If only every Grisham outing were this resonant. And this book is resonant.

Parade's End

Back in May, I watched all five episodes of the BBC miniseries, "Parade's End."  This is based on the series of novels by Ford Madox Ford, based in part on his experiences in the First World War.  It seems so odd to me that this year is the 100-year anniversary of the beginning of the war, because we seem to continue to read books and watch movies about the war.

Well, I loved it. The cinematography was wonderful, as was the music.  I thought Adeline Clements was sublime, as were the supporting actors, including Rufus Sewell as the mad vicar.  I recommend it to you for that alone.  It had a wonderful cast:  Janet McTeer, Miranda Richardson, Rupert Everett, Roger Allam, Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall.

I know that the screenplay was by Tom Stoppard and having enjoyed his plays very much, I found myself wondering if that was part of why I loved it.  The villain of the piece (Sylvia) was given some absolutely wonderful lines and I found myself thinking it was hard to dislike her entirely when she had such interesting things to say!

I thought Janet McTeer's performance as Sylvia's mother was note-perfect and I enjoyed watching her.  I loved everybody else, too.  Loved it!

I have not read the novels, but I learned something about them by going to the Wikipedia entry.  There's a scene in which Sylvia throws a plate at Christopher, complaining that he is correcting the Encyclopedia Britannica. She further complains that no jury would convict her if she killed her husband; I can't remember what her specific complaint is, but it seems to be that it is horrible to be married to such a pedantic person. In the novel, I learned from Wikipedia, Christopher reads the Encyclopedia Britannica to restore his lost memory as he recovers from shell shock.

I would say that it reminded me of the Makioka Sisters, the novel by Tanizaki Junichiro, but lately I've been thinking that everything reminds me of the Makioka Sisters, so I'll skip that.  (In the Makioka Sisters, different daughters react differently to the decline in their family's fortunes in the context of Westernization and militarization - here Christopher Tietjens and his elder brother have slightly different takes on responding to the ending of a way of life on landed estates after the First World War.  It seemed to me that the heart of the piece was the tension between Christopher's values and those of the world around him which were rapidly undergoing a huge shift.)

A friend gave me a copy of Parade's End and I've just finished watching it a second time. In my second viewing, Benedict Cumberbatch's performance seemed wonderful.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I thought the book started off surprisingly slowly.  I thought it did quickly get rolling and was very suspenseful.

In this classic women's fiction tale of a white woman and two African-American maids, set in 1960s era Jackson, Mississippi, the suspense comes not just from not knowing the outcome of the story but from understanding the very real danger in which these characters are placed by their actions.  I think that's definitely part of the appeal:  it's a social satire, an adventure story, a family story, and a town saga (many characters), all wrapped into one.

The book opens with Aibileen, a black maid, getting ready to start work at a new job.  For three months, she's been grieving the loss of her adult son, and she hasn't been working.

Her son was a physically slight and bookish man, who worked at manual labor.  Aibileen feels that his fatal accident at work occurred because her son was not physically strong enough for the job he had.

She feels bitter, and she feels conflicted about going to work for another white family.

Before he died, he started work on a book about what it was like to work for white people.

Aibileen mentions this to Skeeter, a young woman who has just returned from college (without that "Mrs. Degree").  Coincidentally, Skeeter's applied for a job at a New York publishing house and while she didn't get the job, an editor there advised her that she should write something.  It occurs to Skeeter that she should write about the black maids in her world and their experiences working for white people.

Minny is a friend of Aibileen and she also works as a maid for a white lady.  The daughter of her employer decides that her mother should be moved to a rest home, ending Minny's employment.  Hilarious hijinks ensue.  Actually, this occasions a crisis in Minny's life as she really needs that job.  Minny is a plain-spoken person who has a reputation for speaking her mind regardless of the consequences.

She eventually gets a job with a young white woman who is struggling with several aspects of married life. This aspect of Minny's story has many comic and heart-warming elements.

  

Invisible Woman

I loved this film.  It's based on a book by Clare Tomalin on Charles Dickens (which I haven't read) of the same title.

It's about Dickens' love affair with an actress named Ellen Ternan.  In many ways, it's a quite interesting story.  I was surprised to learn about Dickens' affair because he seemed to me to be such an connoiseur of fine family feeling in his fiction that I imagined that sensibility would be a central part of his own family life.

As shown in the film, he was close friends with Wilkie Collins, who was also living with a woman outside of marriage.  What the film doesn't show is that Collins had two mistresses.

The reason I loved the film, however, was not the interesting biographical facts it contained.  It was the acting, which I thought was sublime.

Ralph Fiennes played Dickens; Felicity Jones played Ellen Ternan; Kirstin Scott Thomas played Ellen Ternan's mother, an actress of some distinction, and Tom Hollander played Collins.

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

I'm torn about this book.  I know it's a crowd pleaser, not because I know that it was a bestseller and book club favorite (which I do), but as I read the book I felt as though I could glimpse the Great Wizard behind the curtain, pulling the levers.

Is it wrong to please people?  Surely not!  Yet the fantasy aspect of this book made me feel uneasy.  I remember that line from Murder in the Cathedral, "Humankind cannot bear too much reality."  I don't know if I ever knew what that has to do with the death of Becket but I can see how it would make this book very appealing.

The book has more than one theme and I may not have picked up on them all:  the most important, I think, is about forgiving our parents for the foolish things they do, forgiving ourselves for the foolish things we do, and beginning the process of healing.  It's also about love in all its many forms.  I'm sure this is part of why this book was so popular (as well as its being a coming-of-age novel, which everyone seems to love - why is that?  Adolescence is often a horrible time, for one reason or another).  Race is also a theme.  The novel is set in South Carolina in the 1960's.

This author has a new book out, The Invention of Wings, about the Grimke sisters (famous abolitionists), which deals with the issue of slavery as well as the yin/yang of dependence on those we love and our desire for independence from them.

Since I wrote this post I've learned that the author knew of a house where bees came swimming out of the wall.  I realize that's not necessarily fantastic.  It's almost as if the time that has passed has allowed the novel to settle in my mind and I realize that the themes of forgiveness are very powerful, as is the idea of creating your own religion that permits you to affirm not only your own values but to affirm your value as a human being.

Saving Mr. Banks/Philomena/The Invention of Lying/About Time

I saw all four of these movies this weekend; of course, none of them were new.

I was so interested in Saving Mr. Banks because I loved the Travers books when I was a child and saw them as really wonderfully weird.  Learning that Walt Disney and Travers had a rocky relationship was no surprise then, really.  This film was so beautifully made.  The acting was fantastic (it was a wonderful cast, down to Melanie Paxson and Kathy Banks as secretaries).  I love Emma Thompson and I thought her ability to imitate Travers' speech patterns and accent was sublime.  I thought that there was a real anarchic streak in the Travers books, so I suspect that their relationship was even more rocky than depicted.  And the depiction of Travers' childhood was the experience of many; that could have been my grandmother.

Philomena was another wonderfully crafted movie - great music, good writing, another wonderful cast, wonderful acting from Judi Dench .. although it was a wonderful script, one that permitted Philomena to be a complex person with many feelings, some of them unexpected, I just think the movie would not have worked without Judi Dench's performance.  I read some criticism that argued that the jokes in the movie are made at Philomena's expense.  That's true, and a fair criticism.  Criticizing her perspective was part of the characterization of the character Martin Sixmith, and it added a needed comic element.  I can see how it would make some viewers uncomfortable and seem exploitative and like a cheap shot.

I loved the Invention of Lying, which is more a social satire than a romance.  Jennifer Garner's performance is both charming and deeply disturbing.  The film was shot in Lowell, Massachusetts, and in the film, Lowell is filled with many handsome buildings.

The notion of the film is that there was a time when no one lied, not even to spare each others' feelings.  In the film, we see that all that honesty makes people really scary; there's a wonderful scene in which Rob Lowe's character says of Ricky Gervais's character, "I don't like him because there's something different about him and that challenges me."  Have to love it; that's so much conflict in a nutshell.

Ricky Gervais is set upfor a date with Jennifer Garner and crushed when she tells him that she won't go out with him again because she wants someone more attractive to father her children.  (Actually, he takes it fairly calmly because he's accustomed to being disappointed.)  Then he's fired and faces homelessness - until, in desperation, he discovers lying can at least solve his income problem.

About Time is a Richard Curtis film that stars Rachel McAdams and Domhnall Gleeson; the fact that she starred in another time travel movie, The Time Traveler's Wife, caused me to be surprised to see her here.  Still, the time travel is not really an important part of this film:  it's more of a scaffold on which to lay some sentiment about family love.  I know I read a review of this film that was lukewarm, but I enjoyed it.  I think that I enjoyed having these issues explored again, although they've all been explored many times before.  I also was happy to see Lindsay Duncan, whom I like very much, and who played a part a little different than the others I've seen her in - most recently, Lady Blackwood in "The Last Vow" episode of Sherlock.

And, of course, Bill Nighy.  I love Bill Nighy.  His persona of self-deprecation is so charming:  it seems to make him a natural joke-tossing-off vehicle.  Yes, I never tire of Bill Nighy.

What Would Jane Austen Do? by Laurie Brown

I'm reading this romance novel that was nominated for an award.

The author displays quite an impressive amount of knowledge of Regency Era customs, from marriage mores to dress design to cuisine.  I was quite impressed.

The story has a few paranormal elements:  there are a couple of charming ghosts, some time travel, and a good-looking rake! who turns out to be a spymaster in the Napoleonic wars.  There's some steamy sex.

As is pointed out in the novel, in 1814 Britain was at war with both France and America.

And, to the delight, I am sure, of Jane Austen fans everywhere, Jane Austen makes an appearance in the novel (accompanied by her sister, Cassandra).

And, perhaps more important than any of these things, if you're a big Jane Austen fan, the climax of the novel does turn on the advice (what Jane Austen would do) Jane Austen gives our heroine regarding her perplexing love life.

Well Read and Dead by Catherine O'Connell

What a cute book, set in Chicago and published in 2009.  This book is a cozy mystery, and just barely a mystery in the classic sense:  the body doesn't appear until the last quarter of the book and I'd say the sleuthing doesn't begin until the last third of the book.

Before that, we get a very tongue-in-cheek portrait of the rich on Chicago's North Side.

I read this with a book group (they all loved it) and while my overall impression of the book was that it was an entertaining romp, the others disagreed about whether the heroine, Pauline, was overly materialistic. Some thought she was; others thought that a girl should get, and have, her own.  Some defended her by saying that she came from money:  they seemed to believe that it was natural to think that money was important if you'd grown up with it.

The others enjoyed the settings:  Chicago, Cambodia, Thailand and Aspen.  They approved of Pauline's loyalty to her missing cat, Fleur; Pauline's quest to find Fleur drives much of the plot.

O'Connell's first book was Well Bred and Dead, and apparently, Well Wed and Dead, is planned.

The most important part of the book, to me, was that the two main characters actually recited poetry to each other.  I don't believe anyone has fallen in love over poetry, in fiction, since Captain Benwick and Louisa Musgrove (in Jane Austen's Persuasion). Marvell was quoted, Milton too (!) and Sonnet 73, "Thou Mayst in Me Behold," also made an appearance.  Further, O'Connell gave all of her chapters the titles of famous novels, such as Pride and Prejudice.  I loved this, and I wonder if some other book-loving readers would alos enjoy this.

This author has a website (www.catherineoconnell.net), and if you take a look you can see that she is really part of the world that she depicts in her book, and, that she is not Catherine O'Connell, the Irish-American singer and Chicagoan.

There's quite a bit of romance, and quite a bit of comedy.  I objected to the denouement of the plot; the others expressed surprise.  If you like to be surprised by the ending, I recommend Well Read and Dead to you.  

In the Land of the Young by Lisa Carey

I checked this book out accidentally, or perhaps, saw it and couldn't resist it when I was looking for a children's book on St. Patrick.  I thought I remembered that the Land of the Young is the translation for Tir Na Nog.

I read the first chapter, and it broke my heart.  I assure you, if you read the first page you will be compelled to read the entire first chapter.  It's about a shipwreck of Irish immigrants off the coast of Maine in 1848, and how the fishermen ran to their boats when they saw a ship in distress, and how they tried to save everyone, and how a man lost his life saving a child, and how she passed, anyway.   After I read the first chapter, I said to myself, "I can't read this book; it's just so sad."

But later on, I found myself feeling curious about the book I wouldn't read, and I picked it up and started reading it in the middle or perhaps farther on, and I found that it seemed to be a domestic drama about a man caring for a girl .. but was caused me to read on, and on, was the prose.  I don't know if it was sparkling, but it was good.  It was plain and poetic and it made you want to know more.

I don't know if I will ever find time to read this book; I hope I do.  The jacket flap tipped me off to the fact that it's a ghost story, and I bet it has more sorrow to dish out than that I've already encountered.  I'm sure it's all about loss and how it haunts us and how the past gives us rich gifts and cripples us at the same time. And there are a lot of books about that subject.  But I think, based on what little I've read, that Lisa Carey is a wonderful prose stylist and her book is one well worth reading.

One Plus One by JoJo Moyes

I got an "advance review copy (ARC)" of this novel, which is not due to be published until July.

I have to say that I just loved it.  It's partly that it's a very well-structed romantic comedy.

But very much more than that, it's the authorial voice which is thoughtful, not glib, not too highfalutin and to me, terribly witty.  To me, there's something so satisfying about that witty voice.

JoJo Moyes is also the author of Me Before You and the Girl You Left Behind, which were very popular in 2013.  I haven't read either of them - there are so many things I want to read.  But having this ARC copy made it convenient and it's almost true that once I started I couldn't put it down.  I didn't really care about the characters until chapter three.  But then, I felt, as one does - that I just HAD TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM IN THE END.

Jess is a cleaner.  Actually she has two jobs.  One is being a bartender in a pub, and the other is cleaning houses.

She married her high school boyfriend when she got pregnant at 17.  A few years later, she learned that he had already fathered another child with another woman at the time of their marriage.  She learned this because her husband, fearful of the child's mother's addiction, asked to take this child into their home.

They struggled greatly to make ends meet.  Her husband's get rich quick - or get rich slowly - schemes not only did not succeed, but backfired so that they were never able to secure any financial security and he became depressed.  He stopped working, took to his bed, and eventually moved back in with his mother.

Jess works a lot of hours at her two jobs.  Her elder child, Nicky, is regularly beat up because he's different; her younger child, Tanzie (short for Costanza) is a gifted child who loves mathematics.  She wants to protect her son and doesn't know how and she wants to provide academic opporunities for her daughter and she has no idea how to do that, either.

She's desperate, it's true, but she's also someone with an almost unbeatable case of optimism who's so fond of reassuring her children that they think it's funny that she always says that everything will be all right although it never has been to date.

How Paris Became Paris by Joan DeJean

I wasn't able to finish this book because I simply didn't have time; it had to go back to the library because, not surprisingly, someone else wanted to read it.

Therefore, I can only talk about the author's main contention and the first three chapters.  The book begins with a 20-page introduction in which the author explains that the Paris we know today, and the idea of Paris as the ultimate tourist destination, the city of light, the city of romance, all start with Henri IV's desire to use a building program to restore Paris after it was greatly damaged by decades of religious war in the 16th century.

I should note that when I first had a desire to read this book I assumed it was about Baron Hausmann's work in the 19th century.  In her introduction, DeJean explains that it is an erroneous view held by many that Baron Hausmann's transformed Paris from its medieval version but it is the work of the 17th century kings, financiers, and engineering boy wonders that transformed Paris and gave us the Pont Neuf, the Place des Vosges (then the Place Royale), and the Ile Saint Louis (then the Ile Notre Dame, named for its proximity to the Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cite).

Henri IV's work began with his decision, around the turn of the 17th century, to build the Pont Neuf.  He was, among other things, concerned about creating infrastructure capable of holding the weight of carriages, the coming fashion in transportation.  The new bridge was completed in 1609, and it was different from the other bridges then being used for many reasons.  It was not lined with buildings as London Bridge and many other bridges were.  Henri IV financed it not with rents from these buildings but from a tax on wine coming into the city.  This bridge had broad, raised sidewalks for pedestrians, making crossing the bridge safer for them as carriages became more popular.  The bridge was unusually wide, 75 feet, which made it possible for merchants, performers, and gossipers to congregate on the bridge which made quickly made it most important gathering place to pick up news.

The Place des Vosges began as a silk workshop.  I loved learning about this.  Henri IV inherited an economically depressed city in which aristocrats were buying Italian silk for their dress, an expensive practice which did nothing for France's economy.  He resolved to create a silk industry in France and set up a workshop, with houses for the workers, on the old site of the Palace des Tournelles (which had been pulled down by Catherine de Medici after Henri III had been fatally injured in a joust there).  He decreed that the houses should have regular fronts, and the square was originally built with housing on three sides and a silk workshop on the fourth.  After Henri IV's death, his son did not pursue the project, which ended.  The silk workshop became (I don't know if it was converted or pulled down) the fourth wall of housing facing the square.  After some decades, the tradesmen who had lived there were replaced by aristocrats.  Eventually, the Place des Vosges became the centerpiece of an affluent, desirable neighborhood called The Marais ("the marshes").  As its name suggests, much of this area, and much of the area on the right bank, was not developed at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

I can't remember why the Ile St. Louis was undertaken, but it was created from two other islands that already stood in the Seine:  the Isle de Juifs and Isle de Vaches.  Both islands were uninhabited and primarily used for grazing.  An engineer named Marie, for whom one of the adjoining bridges is named, transformed the two islands into one.  The island was buttressed with embankments.  Innovatively, the street pattern was laid out in a grid.  DeJean writes that the architecture of the houses built on the Ile Saint Louis influenced French architecture in and outside of Paris.  Two great mansions were built on one end of the island; Baron Hausmann pulled the largest, the Hotel de Bretonvilliers, down to build the Pont Sully.  There is an arch left which I think gives an indication of the beauty of the the building, which I suppose was really more like a complex.  This is the style, smooth cut stone construction, which became our very idea of what is French architecture.

Let me go back to the Pont Neuf for a moment.  The bridge was built with observation platforms; DeJean said that this was a new innovation (and it has continued since I saw a couple of observation platforms on Blackfriars Bridge the other day).  De Jean says that this was the beginning of the mystique of Paris; people enjoyed stopping to view the Seine from the unique vantage point provided by the bridge and thus began an interest in urban views.  She points out that the Pont Neuf was the first piece of urban infrastructure that was neither a palace, fortress or monument that attracted tourists.   She sees it as the beginning of modern urban design, in which infrastructure itself may become a tourist attraction.

I know that later chapters of the book deal with other 17th century residential squares, the the design of the Tuileries and the Champs d'Elysee, and the civil unrest that took place in the middle of the 17th century.

It is especially interesting to me to read a consideration of the "beginning" of the romanticization of Paris as, coincidentally, just before I started this book I learned of "Paris Syndrome" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome) which is thought to be similar to Stendhal, or Florence, Syndrome.  Fortunately, Joan deJean's elucidation of the history of Paris is not going to cause anyone to experience Paris Syndrome.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Loved this book.

It reads like the novelization of your favorite romantic comedy.

It's a cross between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and The Accidental Tourist.

I understand that it has already been optioned as a film, and that it began its life as a screenplay.

I just read the New York Times review today and the NYT reviewer compared it unfavorably to The Curious Incident; there, the reviewer opined, one was not dependent on observations made by the protagonist but could infer social cues and other information not provided by the protagonist by reading the dialogue.  It's a been a few years since I read Mark Haddon's book; my recollection was that as the book wore on, especially as it came to its conclusion, it became more and more contrived.  Nevertheless, that "shapeliness" is probably part of why it was so popular.

It's probably also a little slighter than The Accidental Tourist, if only because the latter book deals with grief and loss, and there, the love object lady was more problematic, and so, probably more interesting:  not the same class as Mason, the writer of the Accidental Tourist series, not educated, with the unfortunate name "Miriam," and an equally unfortunate dress sense, and a child who was struggling.  Anne Tyler is a resolutely hopeful writer and she manages to talk about dreadful disappointments in a poetic way and makes you believe that a happy ending is possible.

My to be read list

I currently own or have checked out the following books on my "to be read list":



The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

I see the similarity with the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.  Not just that the protagonists exist on the autism spectrum, but that the constant interpretation of behavior lends everything an air of mystery and uncertainty.  It engages you early on and has good pacing - the exposition is brief.  I can see why it's been a popular book.

While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell

How Paris Became Paris by Joan De Jean


I've begun "How Paris" and I like it .. easy to read, good flow, interesting, not too many details.  It's primarily a book about the 17th century, not the 19th century as I expected.

4/22/14

I've started One Plus One by JoJo Moyes.  I'm only a few pages in but I can also imagine this as a movie .. it reminds me of that movie, Sunshine Cleaning, with Amy Adams and Emily Blount .. I just saw American Hustle the weekend before last, in which Adams was reunited with Alessandro di Novala from June Bug and whose performance in Mansfield Park I remember with fondness.

4/27/2014

Have begun an ARC copy of Natchez Burning by Greg Iles.. I've really only just begun, but I think I'm going to like this book very much.  I must also say I really like the cover.  It has a legal theme, and it reminds me of John Grisham and Scott Turow.  Like Grisham's Sycamore Row, it's set in Mississippi.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Read this for my book group; I didn't expect to like it, but I did like it and I found it very easy to read.

For me, the narrative did start to lag about two-thirds of the way through; I can't quite put my finger on why but I definitely thought so.  Perhaps it was, in part, that the protagonist had gone through so many changes that by that point, she was really a different person, one I wasn't so interested in.

It's also the case that there was a discussion of retailing at that point that just bothered me.  It bored me; it interrupted the narrative flow.  And, it reminded me of the Nora Roberts books I have read where having your own business is the ultimate dream and the business dreamed of is always a retail establishment.

Molly is in foster care and she's just about to age out of the system. She's bounced from foster home to foster home, and she's emotionally closed off as a result.  She gets into trouble and is given a sentence of 50 community service hours.  Her boyfriend, anxious to help her, arranges for her to help a 91-year-old retire clean out her attic.  What happens to her in that attic changes everything.

(Molly's employer reminisces about her life, which proves to have been both fascinating and heartbreaking.)

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

I've just finished this novel and I feel lukewarmly about it.

In 1942, Henry is a scholarship student at an all-white school in Seattle, the only student of Chinese descent; the only other non-white student, also on scholarship, is Keiko Okabe, of Japanese descent.  To help offset the cost of their tuition, they both help serve lunch in the cafeteria every day.  Henry's only other friend is a black street musician named Sheldon.  Through Sheldon, they become acquainted with Seattle's jazz scene.

More than 40 years later, Henry has taken early retirement from Boeing to nurse his dying wife; with a lot of time on his hands, he walks past the long-shuttered Japantown landmark, the Panama Hotel, and learns that Japanese "evacuees" left family treasures in the basement when they left Seattle for internment camps and and the new owner of the Panama Hotel would like to reunite these items with the families of their original owners.

It's a very popular book club book which was why I was eager to read it.  It's also a first novel, and I think it shows.  There are some errors in continuity which surprise me; I find myself wondering why an editor didn't catch and correct those errors.  Those errors don't really ruin the book.  They're distracting, and I find myself feeling confused as a reader.  I stop, and reread the paragraph, and the proceeding paragraph, and this happened several times during the book.  I feel that there should be some kind of rule about the revealing of information; it needs to be linear, and told "in order."

I was bothered by some other things, too.  One was that one of the characters called his Dad "Pops."  I didn't know anyone called their father "Pops" except in Charlie Chan movies.

But, sometimes, the very things that are not very literary or very elegant, seem to appeal to other readers, perhaps because they have grown up on the kinds of cliches we find in films.

The story's structure, moving back and forth across forty years, is the kind of structure I find I enjoy.  I know some readers find that challenging.  The story consists of memories, told in the present tense, of 1942, and the "present day," which in this case is 1985.  In 1942, Japanese-Americans were "evacuated" from their homes on the West Coast and interned in camps inland. The characters in this novel was interned in Montana, I believe.

I think the element that makes this story so popular with readers is that of young love.  I think that is a perennially popular subject and the story could be set in any historical period and appeal to readers.

My sense is that the author is a writer who has to work very hard at avoiding cliches in storytelling and style. Nevertheless, he is obviously a writer who knows how to tell a story that is very appealing to readers.

Inferno by Dan Brown

I always knew I would end up reading this book, although I had not read any of the other books he'd written, because I took a class on The Divine Comedy when I was in college.

My teacher was an expert on symbols in medieval art and the images and allusions that appear in Dante's poem.  He spent each class unpacking allusions. He illustrated his lectures with slides of art he'd photographed all over Italy.  Good times. No really, I loved that class.

So I'd probably like this book, I thought.

Ironically, at the point where I'd just completed the first seven chapters or so, I read a column in the Guardian or the Telegraph about the gratuitous stupidities in Brown's writing.  For instance, there is a line in the description of a young doctor, in one of the first chapters, that is redundant, clumsy, and cliched.  Of course, using cliched descriptions, hackneyed phrases, and stereotypes as a substitute for characterization seems to be a hallmark of the suspense writer.  This writer acknowledged that while Brown's style stinks, his style has actually improved greatly.  I bet that's true.

What I found was that I found the book engrossing and delightful despite Brown's frequent insertions of facts that had no place in the narrative, and chase scenes that read like travelogues.

I think I felt secretly pleased that Brown recited facts that some readers would never otherwise have any exposure to, or interest.  But, I don't think Brown unpacked very many images, and I imagine that treating Dante's work in greater depth would have hampered the narrative.

Some of the suspense was well done, I thought, and some of it seemed a little tricky to me.

I also found the ending a little contrived, and I didn't quite believe the twist.  I read the book in two days, which I certainly regard as a strong recommendation.  Really loved it.

This is another apocalyptic novel; in this case, the suspense revolves around a one-man bioterrorism plot.  I don't want to spoil the ending, but Brown raises serious issues that I suspect most readers will just ignore.

Who says art history doesn't pay?  They certainly haven't met Dan Brown.

This is quite funny, and a "spot on" parody of Brown's style:

http://bit.ly/1fvWZxy

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

If you want to know if you should read this book, I think the answer is yes.

It came out in 1943, and it's set at the turn of the century .. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at a time when Williamsburg is very different from how it is now.  In fact, it's set in Williamsburg a few years after the Williamsburg Bridge was built and the neighborhood experienced great change as it went from being an isolated, wealthy suburban area to being the overflow neighborhood for the immigrants of the Lower East Side.

In tone and feeling, it reminds me of a book about a Jewish family of girls on the Lower East Side that I read many years ago that was called something like "All of a Kind." It's a view of an urban immigrant experience that depicts a family that's poor but enjoys a lot of social connection, remembered fondly.

"A Tree" is a strange mixture of long narrative, brief scenes, unsentimental gaze, and something that is nostalgic or can easily be viewed that way.

Frannie Nolan, the daughter of a German mother and an Irish father, is the protagonist of the novel.  She's somewhat isolated by her father's behavior and her mother's pride, but she's a great reader, a writer, and someone who likes to cast a very observant eye over everything, and everyone, around her.

She's very close to her father, who's a dreamy and charming man.  He works intermittently as a singing waiter.  He's an alcoholic and his health collapses before the end of the novel.  Frannie's mother is a super, responsible for cleaning the building in which they receive free rent.

After Frannie's dad passes away, the loss of his income forces Frannie's mom to make some hard choices.  She decides that she will send Frannie out to work instead of sending her to high school.  Frannie is crushed; she's a very good student and she longs to go to high school.  Katie, Frannie's mother, reasons that Frannie will succeed in finding a way to get education on her own.  She sends her son to high school knowing that his interest is very low and that if she doesn't make it easy for him, he won't start high school, and he won't acquire the education later in life.

In real life, the author, Betty Smith, did not attend high school but was permitted, as a courtesy, to attend some classes at the college where her husband was a faculty member.

I asked a friend if she thought that my book group would like this book and she said "yes - it's a very romantic book."  One definition of romantic, to me, is a world in which human beings are at the center of the world and their thoughts, actions and decisions matter very much.  Frannie decides to read all the books in the library, and when she gets done she starts all over again.  This probably has something to do with her success at the clipping agency where she reads faster than anyone else and is paid the most even though she lied about her age to get the job.  Frannie has a teacher who encourages her to write.  She has a grandmother who believes that education is important.

In a flashback to Frannie's birth, we learn that Frannie's mother, Katie, despaired of being able to care for her child.  She asked her mother, Mary, how she could she care for her child, and how their condition was improved from living in Germany where they'd been very poor but no poorer than they were now.  Mary replied that the chance to get an education made life in America better and that saving was the key to financial security.  Saving and education are themes in the story.

Finally, Frannie's alcoholic father is presented as a dreamer, a romantic and a loving father - more a victim of his own weakness and their circumstances than as a guilty party.

This book was quite popular in my book group, although there was one person from New York who felt that the depiction of Brooklyn was not accurate because there was no mention of the many social services available to the poor at that time.  I find myself wondering if accepting charity - and the judgment that may go with it - is especially un-romantic, and if that is why there's no mention of it in the book.