Archive for May, 2011

IN THE GARDEN OF THE BEASTS by Erik Larson

Before you even think of reading Erik Larson’s latest masterwork, clear your calendar, call in sick, send the kids to grandma’s, and place all your evening plans on hold. You will not want to come up for air until you’ve reached the last pages. It’s that good.

In his preface, Larson writes, “Once, at the dawn of a very dark time, an American father and daughter found themselves suddenly transported from their snug home in Chicago to the heart of Hitler’s Berlin. They remained there for four and a half years, but it is their first year that is the subject of the story to follow, for it coincided with Hitler’s ascent from chancellor to absolute tyrant, when everything hung in the balance and nothing was certain.”

May 19, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Facing History, Germany, Non-fiction

LONG DRIVE HOME by Will Allison

It’s rare that I start a book that is such a page-turner that I almost have a panic attack if I have to put it down. LONG DRIVE HOME by Will Allison is just such a book. It starts with a bang and the explosives just continue. It’s not that the book is a thriller, per se, though there is that element to the novel. It is just that Will Allison is a born story-teller and he gets the reader in his grips from the first paragraph. And he does not let go.

May 18, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Contemporary, Psychological Suspense, Reading Guide, US Mid-Atlantic

EMBASSYTOWN by China Mieville

The core of EMBASSYTOWN by China Mieville is an exploration of the nature of language in the context of the future on a far-distant solar system where humans interact with an alien species that speak a profoundly different language. This is a new book by the brilliantly inventive author of THE CITY AND THE CITY, PERDIDO STREET STATION, KRAKEN and others. I have read four of his books now and one common thread is that they have a philosophical emphasis, and plunge us without much explanation into a radically different world than our own. Due to the strangeness of these worlds, the first part of each book is like visiting some foreign place without knowing much at all about the place, the people, and the customs. Initially clueless, we are rewarded with an unfolding appreciation of the environment. Complex philosophical and conceptual issues are the point of this body of work. EMBASSYTOWN is no exception to this rule.

May 17, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Speculative (Beyond Reality), y Award Winning Author

OIL ON WATER by Helon Habila

Rufus, a young journalist on his first major assignment, travels into the troubled oil-rich Nigerian Delta, hoping to land his breakthrough news story: interviewing the kidnappers of a British oil engineer’s wife and meeting the captive. The dangers lurking among the oilfields and the pipelines that meander snake-like across the Delta’s waters cannot deter him, especially as he is in the company of his much-admired former mentor, the erstwhile prominent reporter, Zaq. Helon Habila’s new novel, OIL ON WATER is a confidently crafted and absorbing, in parts totally gripping, chronicle of human ambitions, tragedies and failures, but also of love, friendship and perseverance of the human spirit. Evoking the rich and beautiful yet fragile environment of the Delta, that is slowly being devastated by the greed for oil and money, Habila gently guides his different narrative strands into a poignant story that is profoundly personal even where these raise broader political and societal concerns.

May 16, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Africa, World Lit, y Award Winning Author

BULLFIGHTING by Roddy Doyle

The thirteen stories in the collection BULLFIGHTING from Irish author Roddy Doyle examine various aspects of male middle age. Eight of these stories first appeared in New Yorker, and in this volume the post-boom stories collectively offer a wry, bittersweet look at the years past and the years yet to come. We see middle-aged men whose wives have left them, middle-aged men whose children have grown and gone, stale marriages, marriages which have converted lovers into friends, the acceptance of disease and aging, and the ever-looming aspect of mortality. Lest I give the wrong impression, these stories are not depressing–instead through these marvellous stories Doyle argues that middle age brings new experiences and new emotions–just when we thought we’d experienced all that life had to offer.

May 15, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Drift-of-Life, End-of-Life, Ireland, Short Stories, y Award Winning Author

A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF by Lawrence Block

A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF is the 17th and very likely final installment of Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder series of crime fiction novels. In fact, Block had not even envisioned writing another Scudder book. He figured that as Scudder was already in his mid-sixties, semi-retired and collecting social security in ALL THE FLOWERS ARE DYING, the immediately previous book six years ago, by now Scudder is in his 70’s and settled into a “comfortable retirement” and no longer up to the rigors of private investigating. In HARD STUFF Block finesses this by having Scudder relate events from the past.

May 14, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, New York City, Sleuths Series, y Award Winning Author