The Best of 2017

Looking over my reading for the past year, I am struck by how much of what I've read is utterly forgettable. Even books that, by title, I recognize as having liked are now, months later, reduced to a hazy memory.

There are, of course, exceptions. Shogun is far and way the best book I read this year - and as I said when I reviewed it initially, possibly ever. The details of James Clavell's masterpiece, the central part of which is the Anjin-san's adaption to and ascent within sixteenth century samurai culture, are still fresh.

Two other works of fiction also number among the best books I've read this year: A Man Called Ove and The Housekeeper and the Professor. A Man Called Ove made me laugh out loud more times than I can count, and reminded me of Owen Meany in all the best ways. The Housekeeper and the Professor is a totally different animal, and so very Japanese (yes, I acknowledge possible bias), but the contours of the sweet story of an amnesiac professor and the housekeeper who befriends him are still fresh.

As always, I read a great deal of non-fiction and here I had a harder time separating the very best from the merely very good. In the end, The Mushroom Hunters, Hidden Figures, and The Radium Girls take the prize. I loved the latter two for shedding light on historical episodes that were previously only shadows in my mind - and for acknowledging the contributions of the women who were central to the events. And Mushroom Hunters...well, who knew that one of my favorite foods could have such a complex and colorful supply chain?

I also want to acknowledge the excellent biographies and memoirs I discovered this year. Chicken Every Sunday, which warms my soul to remember, and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind are memoirs of the first order. They could not be more different - the former offers nostalgic reminisces on life in small town America in the early twentieth century, and specifically of the author's childhood growing up in the boarding house her parents ran, while the latter is the hard scrabble story of survival amidst the famines and deprivation of modern-day, rural Malawi. Both, however, are simply wonderful. I would be remiss not to include Eve of a Hundred Midnights among my "best of" picks, as well. Written in the style of a non-fiction novel, Eve is essentially a biography of Melville Jacoby and, more to the point, the story of his flight across Asia and the South Pacific when the Philippines fell.

Lastly, I have to award and honorable mention to Celia Garth, if for no other reason that her pluck and spirit made her my favorite character that I encountered this year.

 And so, while much of what I read may have been (and may continue to be) rather forgettable, so much isn't, and that what keeps me turning the pages. Here's to another year of reading - may your New Year also include many happy hours of reading pleasure.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a weird book. It's not a bad book, per se, but it does require that the reader suspend rational thought a bit and simply embrace the story.

So: Jacob de Zoet signs on with the Dutch East India Company to earn his fortune and, he hopes, the hand of his beloved Anna back in the Netherlands. He arrives in the strange world that is Dejima in 1799 for what he anticipates will be a relatively short stint; through the corrupt dealings of the highest ranking officers, Jacob ends up more or less marooned on the tiny island that is the foreign trading post adjacent to Nagasaki (they are in fact connected by a closely-guarded and tightly-controlled land bridge).

On Dejima, Jacob's path will intersect with any number of characters, both Dutch and Japanese, from the wily cook and gruff doctor, to interpreters who may also be spies and the mysterious, badly disfigured midwife who captures Jacob's imagination almost immediately. Ultimately, he uncovers a dangerous secret implicating one of the most powerful - and dangerous - men in Nagasaki.

As I said, not bad, just improbable. Like, really, really improbable. (But perhaps no more improbable than the ship-wrecked Blackthorne/Anjin-san becoming a daimyo. Nevertheless, there was just too much here that was too improbable for me to really love this book. From the scene that allows Jacob (who is a sympathetic character, by the way, and one who's easy to like) to earn the trust of the magistrate to the secret shrine to the final resolution...well, bizarre might just be the best word for it.

Three-and-a-half stars.

The Mistresses of Cliveden: Three Centuries of Scandal, Power, and Intrigue in an English Stately Home

In The Mistresses of Cliveden, author Natalie Livingstone has re-assembled the history of Cliveden and the story of its châtelaines. The finished product alternates between the high born behaving badly and an architectural primer. This is neither wonderful nor terrible. The chapters on Augusta (mother of 13-colonies'-tyrant George III) and Harriet (BFF to none other than Queen Victoria herself) were the most interesting on a personal level.

As for the house, I wish Livingstone had devoted more ink to its use as a Canadian hospital during World War I, particularly as the hospital at Cliveden was not located within the house, as it was at Highclere Castle, but was actually a brand-new, specially-constructed facility located on the grounds. Unfortunately, the treatment of house-as-hospital is consistent with much of the book. Livingstone spends minimal time describing the routines of the hospital, the ways in which various family members interacted with it, or what the men themselves thought. In other words, surface deep.

This is frustrating because there are stories here, no question, but in focusing so squarely (narrowly?) on the house's mistresses, Livingstone's approach to many of them feels too oblique. Beyond the hospital example, above, I'd over the treatment of Nancy Astor's string of butlers and maids. Surely there's more to tell than what is written here, and I'd bet dollars to donuts it would add a little more color to tell it, but instead the reader gets only a handful of lines and the merest outlines of the story.

Final verdict: An ambivalent two-and-three-quarters stars. I've already said the book is not terrible, so fewer seems mean spirited, but there is too much could-have-been for it to merit more.

Circling the Sun

I likely would have read this sooner, had I not just finished West with the Night - Beryl Markham's memoirs - when Circling the Sun - Paula McLain's fictional account of Markham - appeared on my radar.

A bit of background first. McLain's The Paris Wife was one of the best books I read in 2011. I loved McLain's writing in general and her treatment of Hadley Richardson in particular. I may have had a similar reaction to McLain's treatment of Markham, too, had I not already read the latter's own memoir.

The writing is certainly there. McLain writes beautiful prose and, as with The Paris Wife, I found myself often stopping to admire her way with words. "I have fought for independence here, and freedom, too. More and more I find they're not at all the same thing," McLain has Markham say at one juncture. Simultaneously obvious and subtle, this sentiment stopped me in my reading tracks to ruminate how concisely McLain captured this thought.

Likewise, when I read in the narrative, "The beautiful rich who hoisted themselves up on vast parcels of land...They had their own rules, or none at all - which could happen when you had too much money and too much time." I again felt compelled to read and re-read and re-read again McLain's lovely prose. (And also to recall the multiple books featuring the well born behaving behaving badly. See White Mischief or My Life as a Mountbatten or Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey should you need any convincing.)

Ultimately, though, I felt that McLain gave Markham short shrift. Markham's life was one of firsts for women, from horse trainer to bush pilot, yet McLain chose to focus on Markham's personal life - failed marriages and extramarital scandals not least of all - which left me with a diminished sense of who Markham was and what she accomplished. And so, even though I don't find particular faults with the book itself, and enjoy and admire McLain's writing, I came away disappointed, feeling that I had read but a very partial account of Markham's life and times.

Two-and-a-half stars. (Caveat: see above. Anyone who hasn't read West with the Night will most likely - and fairly - find this rating overly harsh.)

Dimestore: A Writer's Life

I encountered Lee Smith's Dimestore on Bookbub and from the description understood it was a memoir of growing up in the hills of Appalachia. As such, I was expecting something of a cross between The Truth According to Us (fiction set in Appalachia) and A Girl Named Zippy (memoir of growing up in small town America mid-twentieth century). Initially, my expectations seemed in line with what I was reading: the early chapters of Dimestore are, in fact, devoted to Smith's formative years in Grundy, Virginia.

By degrees, though, Smith turns away from these early years - perhaps she felt she had already mined them extensively for her other works, primarily fiction - and the chapters become essays and the story becomes disparate episodes in Smith's adult life. I was far less drawn to these later essays, particularly the ones dealing with Smith's divorce, her subsequent remarriage, and the mental health battles of her grown son, than I was the chapters devoted to her girlhood.

I use the words "chapters" and "essays" purposefully here, for the first half of Dimestore reads like a story, and a very good one, while the latter half is disjointed and less engaging. For that reason, I came away with only a lukewarm liking of the book. I wasn't familiar with Smith's work prior to reading Dimestore, and having finished it, I'm not likely to seek out her other works intentionally, though I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd avoid her, either.

Devotees of Americana and Appalachian would likely delight in the early chapters in which the reader meets the spirited Lee with her "kindly nervous" parents and unique perspective on life in the mountains. The images of small town gossip, the general store, and the mountain stream running black with coal are acutely done, and early on wrote a check that the rest of the book just couldn't cash.

Two stars.

Murder for Christmas

Mordecai Tremaine accepts the invitation to spend Christmas in Sherbroome out of curiosity more than anything else. Almost immediately, he discovers that nothing is as it seems, and that more than a few of his fellow guests are cagey - if not openly hostile. There's no surfeit of Christmas spirit, that's for sure; what little there might have been disappears promptly upon the discovery of a body, clad as Father Christmas no less, at the foot of the Christmas tree.

I haven't curled up with an Agatha Christie-style mystery in some time and when Francis Duncan's Murder for Christmas showed up on BookBub, I couldn't resist. What better to read in the run-up to that most festive of days? And if Duncan's conclusion wasn't quite as surprising as Dame Christie's, there's no mistaking the genre. Similarly, the setting: not for a minute can the reader forget that this is England, in the years of sleepy villages, great houses, and roaring fires.

Readers who love a classic murder, and especially a classic English murder, will spend happy hours with Murder for Christmas.

The Married Girls

It's difficult to remember a more disappointing read. For most of The Married Girls, I debated whether to keep reading or call it quits. The story itself was rather meh for much of the book, plodding along, not so terrible or offensive that I felt compelled to give up, but barely holding my interest. Finally, some three-quarters of the way through, I was rewarded for my persistence: we had a truly interesting story! Only for Diney Costeloe to deliver one of the most frustrating, irritating endings I can think of. I nearly threw my Nook.

The set-up is this: Britain is finally emerging from the long shadows of World War II, with the war over, the blackouts done, rationing on its way out. Against this backdrop we meet Charlotte and Daphne, married respectively to Billy and Felix, and building new lives post-war.

Charlotte is a German Jew who arrived as a refugee on the Kindertransport and whose past threatens to overtake her in the form of Harry, who - somewhat confusingly - has an outsize presence in the first half of the book as the mouthpiece of an ailing mob boss, before Costeloe seemingly tires of him and sends him packing, quite literally. Although the set-up is that this is all hush-hush, none of this seems to be a secret from Charlotte's husband. Her story takes a turn for the dramatic, which improves the entire book...until the end. More on that in a minute.

Daphne, on the other hand, is a piece of work, with more secrets than I can count, but one big one that, if revealed, will clearly cause he neatly constructed life as the Squire's wife to unravel. For in Felix Bellinger, she has found a man with a title who can take her away from her beginnings in the East End, both literally and figuratively. Very early it's clear that Daphne has no affection, let alone love, for her husband, and it's this, as much as her secrets that threatens to overwhelm her at every turn.

Once events really begin to unfold, the story improves and does so until the final chapter which, instead of allowing the story to progress winds it up quickly, unsatisfactorily, and perhaps with an eye to a sequel. And although I liked Charlotte and don't mind the idea of knowing how her story concludes, it's not a sequel I'll be reading.

Two-and-a-half stars.

Celia Garth

Twenty-year-old Celia Garth is in a rut. Tired of being the poor relation, tired of being assigned the most menial tasks by the senior dressmakers in the Charleston shop where she's apprenticing, Celia makes a bold move in seeking an introduction to Vivian Lacy, one of the most demanding ladies in Charleston. Quickly, Vivian's fortunes change: she becomes Vivian's trusted friend and confidante, in addition to her dressmaker, and has a front row seat to the battles of Revolutionary War that is creeping ever-closer to the stately rowhouses and outlying plantations that comprise Celia's world. Still, nothing could prepare Celia for the tragedies the war will bring - nor for being asked to undertake some of the most dangerous work in Charleston, as a spy for Francis Marion.

I thoroughly enjoyed every page of Celia Garth. Admittedly, there were times I felt a *tiny* bit too sure of what was coming next, but Gwen Bristow's writing, and her gift for capturing both her characters and their surroundings is never in doubt. As in her Plantation Road trilogy, the characters aren't particularly subtle or complex, but the overall effect is a pleasant book to cozy up with. As an aside, it was amusing to me that much of the action took place on Tradd Street, the same street that occupies a central place in the life of John Jakes's Main Family.

Three-and-a-half stars.

Heaven and Hell

Heaven and Hell is the third and final volume in John Jakes's Civil War trilogy. Like the first and second books (North and South and Love and War, respectively), Heaven and Hell follows the Main and Hazard families, each member now navigating the turbulent , post-war years.

Unfortunately, Heaven and Hell doesn't hold a candle to the first two books. For starters, some of the most interesting and colorful characters met their end during the war. Others are essentially and, in my mind, rather inexplicably written out early in this book, reappearing briefly, and with little effect, in the closing chapters. I have a particular beef with Jakes's reintroduction of one character 11 years and seven children after last appearing in the book! )

The greatest crime, though, is that Heaven and Hell, for lack of a better term, has simply jumped the shark. There's just too much here that is too improbable. Rather than racing to the end to learn what happened, I found myself racing through it just to finish. I wasn't giving up after 2500 pages, with the finish line only a few hundred more pages away! Although many of the events seemed possible in and of themselves (many, but not all), it strained credulity too far to think that a small handful of individuals could be party to them all. Furthermore, after 2800 pages, I was disappointed that a few of the characters more or less disappeared.

In the end, Heaven and Hell was a disappointing finish to an otherwise excellent trilogy. To that end, I give the entire trilogy three-and-a-half stars, but the final installment receives but two.

Earthquake Storms: The Fascinating History and Volatile Future of the San Andreas Fault

Earthquake Storms: The Fascinating History and Volatile Future of the San Andreas Fault covers the known history of the San Andreas fault and, perhaps to a lesser extent, of California earthquakes write large. John Dvorak also analyzes the evolution of earthquake science, from plate tectonics to the Richter scale. This part of the book is interesting, but not as strong as the historical background, which is well-constructed and, if not quite riveting, highly readable.

Other than the chapter on Richter and the eponymously-named scale, the theoretical and scientific aspects of the book suffer from being a bit too technical and devoid of color. The result is that I often felt I was on the literary equivalent of a see saw, alternating between the highs of historical quakes and scientists and the lows of overly-cumbersome scientific writing. And I like science! It's just that, as occurs too frequently in scientific writing that purports to be popular press (see Paper: Paging Through History, for example), Dvorak's knowledge, interest, and related vocabulary is broader than that of most readers. Additionally, and perhaps unfairly, I was hoping Earthquake Storms, which does touch on earthquakes in China, Turkey, Italy, and points near and far between, would be part-science, part-travelogue, in the style of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind or Spillover.

Ultimately, I did enjoy Earthquake Storms for the portrayal of San Francisco's 1906 quake, and for deepening my knowledge concerning the challenges around earthquake forecasting. Final verdict: On the dry side, but informative. Science-minded readers will likely enjoy it, but the casual reader will likely find it a bit too deep in the weeds.

Love and War

Love and War is the second volume of John Jakes's Civil War trilogy. It picks up where the first, North and South, left off, in the early days of the Civil War. Despite the outbreak of hostilities that has left them on opposing sides, the Pennsylvania Hazards and the South Carolina Mains are determined to maintain their friendship, which now spans two generations.

The book begins rather slowly, with significant rehashing of events from North and South. (This made more sense to me after I learned that the two books were originally published three years apart.) Quickly, though, two things became apparent to me.

1) Jakes is not interested in writing another "traditional" Civil War book. There are actually very few battles in the entire 1100+ pages. Jakes explains his approach and rationale beautifully in an afterward where he outlines the lengths he went to to place his characters in some of the lesser covered but equally important venues, from bureaucratic offices in Richmond and Washington, to Liverpool and the Hunley.

2) Jakes has mastered the perspective switch. Over the course of 147 chapters, rarely do consecutive chapters tell the same character's story. The effect is to keep the story moving quickly but also, perhaps oddly, to prevent the reader from becoming too emotionally invested in any particular individual. And what individuals they are, the heroes and the villains (of whom there are plenty) alike.

Instead of focusing on individual angst and suffering, the impact of Jakes's approach is to make the reader feel the extent of the national angst and suffering, the collective injuries borne by both north and south, along with the uncertainty that so dominated the mood on both sides. It's this generalized uncertainly that lends the dimension so often missing from other Civil War fiction from I Shall Be Near You to Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker.

Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back

Janice Nimura's Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back is the non-fiction account of three girls who were chosen by the Japanese government to travel to the United States in 1871 to study for 10 years. They were then to return to Japan, bringing their new cultural knowledge back to a rapidly-westernizing Japan.The girls, Ume, Shige, and Sutematsu, ranged in age from 6-11 when they were plucked from the bosom of their (recently defeated) samurai families, placed aboard a ship, and sent to America for 10 (and in the cases of Ume and Sutematsu, extended to 11) years.

The women's families, generally suffering the privations of having been on the losing side of the conflict between the shogun and the emperor, were only too glad of a tangible way to demonstrate their support for the new, government, and also to have one less mouth to feed. So it is that the girls (originally five in number but reduced to three by the premature, health-related return of two girls after less than a year) travel across the sea and then, perhaps even more remarkably to them, by train across the U.S., passing through the still-wild West, en route to the East Coast.

Shige and Sutematsu are placed in host families in Connecticut, while Ume becomes the beloved only daughter of an older, wealthy Georgetown couple. There they stay, Ume for 11 years until she graduate from high school, and Shige and Sutematsu until they enroll at Vassar and become the first Japanese women to earn a college degree, ever. And then they return to a home they hardly remember and where, until recently, it was a literal crime to leave - for whatever reason, including storm-induced shipwreck - and attempt to return.

In their absence, the feudal land of their youth had disappeared, replaced by a rapidly modernizing society still uncertain of how it felt about the changes - and the west. Into this environment, the three women must re-assimilate; none of them can read or write Japanese any longer, and Ume can no longer speak it. The oldest of them, Sutematsu, is twenty-two. Choosing wildly differing paths, the young women set out to do their duty and fulfill their debt to the government, slowly, quietly changing the Japanese view of education, and perhaps even women's place in society, definitively.

Nimura's work spans the Meiji era, from its bloody dawn, depicted in the early chapters (where life appears exactly as depicted in the hundreds-of-years-earlier Shogun), to its end on the eve of World War I. Briefly, Nimura reaches into the 1920s and the end of the women's lives. In covering the birth of modern Japan, Nimura focuses on many of the events that set the stage for World War II (I could not help but feel a bit of relief that all died before the build up to the war) - events which are central to the opening of James Bradley's Flyboys, which follows naturally for anyone interested in Japan's progression from pro-West to ambivalent-about-the-West to anti-West. It's certainly no stretch to see Ume, Shige, and Sutematsu as the forbears to Harry Fukuhara and his family.

Four stars.

Company K

William March's Company K is one of the original World War I accounts; published in 1933, it tells the story of the war from the viewpoint of all 113 men in Company K. And while Company K is fictional, the author March (a pen name for William Edward Campbell), served heroically in the war, earning such such distinctions as the Croix de Guerre, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Navy Cross. From the writing, there can be no doubt that March has been on intimate terms with the war, as well as how it feels to return from the fighting.

Unlike such classics as All Quiet on the Western Front or Over the Top where a single perspective dominates, the story here is entirely balanced; some men recount their piece in a few pages, others in only two or three paragraphs, all woven together in a single narrative. The result is that the reader doesn't have an opportunity to know any man individually, to feel any great attachment to him, to think of him as anything other than one more cog in the great wheel of war. The war, then, dominates, becoming the main actor - the mud, the blood, the misery. The effect is altogether powerful - and powerfully disconcerting.

Because of the style and organization of Company K, I found it interesting. Somehow, even though the subject matter is dark and heavy, the style was so refreshing that it felt like a "break" from so many of the incredibly long (and also war focused) books I've completed recently, from Shogun to North and South.

World War I buffs would have the greatest interest in this book, along with those who are looking for something different, or something from another era.

American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, and the Birth of Hollywood

In 1910, 21 people died when The Los Angeles Times was bombed. Other bombs planted around the city failed to explode. Eager, desperate even, to solve the "crime of the century," the city of Los Angeles hired private detective Billy Burns - himself the Sherlock Holmes of his day - to investigate. Billy finds his man, or men as the case may be, and then finds himself entangled in the shenanigans of Clarence Darrow, who has been hired to defend the bombers. All the while, both Burns and Darrow find their tactics being increasingly influenced by the nascent movie industry, particularly the work of D.W. Griffith who is in the process of creating Hollywood as we know it today.

All of this Howard Blum ties together brilliantly, in a face-paced, action-packed 300 pages that I could not read fast enough. Very quickly, Blum brings to life the people and events of 100 years ago, from Mary Pickford's pique at Griffith to LA Mayor George Alexander's underhanded deal to bring water to the city - and a profit to himself. In a day and age when the new cycle seldom lasts an afternoon, it's difficult to appreciate the way in which the bombing and subsequent trial dominated headlines. (In this way, I was reminded of the SS Eastland and other similar headline-dominating horrors, now long forgotten.)

Ultimately, Blum's work is the simultaneous telling of the creation of Hollywood and the early twentieth century battle between capitalism and labor. The way in which he connects these is fascinating; there's something here for everyone, from mystery and suspense to social commentary to film buffs, and I have no qualms about recommending it widely.

Four stars.

North and South

North and South is the first in John Jakes's Civil War trilogy by the same name. The book chronicles the forging of the bond between the Yankee Hazards and the Southern Mains, two family of long lineage and impressive wealth who are brought together by the sons' enrollment at West Point in the late (18)30's. Orry Main and George Hazard become best friends at West Point and then comrades-in-arms in Mexico before returning to civilian life, George to run his family's ironworks, and Orry to manage the family's low country rice plantation. As the country heads toward civil war, the men work to maintain an ever-deepening and evermore complicated friendship.

Over some 800 pages, Jakes tells the story not only of the Main and Hazard families, but of a country slowly heading to war with itself. From the Republic of Texas to the California Goldrush, the political fights in Washington, and the John Brown's failure at Harper's Ferry, North and South is full of the zeitgeist of the antebellum period. The characters he creates are rich, and varied. There are plenty of villains, but also quiet heroes, and all of them fit seamlessly into place with the real people who lived and breathed at the time.

My only complaint is a general one: trilogies, and certainly the good ones, (whether the Shaara father and son Civil War trilogy Gods and Generals, The Killer Angels, and The Last Full Measure, or Gwen Bristow's Plantation trilogy) require such a commitment. I've already begun the middle book, Love and War, which weighs in at a whopping 1100 pages. When will I ever read anything else again??

The Widow's War

The Widow's War has been on my reading list since a librarian recommended it to me last fall. Given the title, it shouldn't spoil the story to say the main character, Lyddie, is a widow, made that way by whaling. Knowing that, I expected something along the lines of Ahab's Wife or even Hetty Green. But while whaling is certainly central to the story, The Widow's War is more more focused on women's rights in Colonial America than on the principal way by which the male population of Cape Cod makes its living. In that sense, its heroine has much in common with those of They Fought Like Demons (real heroines) and One Thousand White Women (imagined), for Lyddie yearns only to know freedom in all of its forms.

Edward Berry was a whaler, his wife long accustomed to managing in his absence. It comes as a shock, then, that his will renders her a ward of her son-in-law. Edward's death sets the stage for Lyddie's war. It is a war that will pit her against family, friends, and church, for her desire to direct her own life is so counter to the times as to estrange her from everything and everyone she once held dear.

Sally Cabot Gunning has endowed Lyddie with an endearing, determined nature, couple with a stubborn streak a mile wide. I couldn't help but alternately cheer for Lyddie and be utterly exasperated by her choices. Like a real flesh and blood human, Lyddie is complex, equal parts sympathetic and obnoxious. This, too, rings true.

In the end, if I did not love The Widow's War, I liked it very much and have no qualms about recommending it to avid readers of historical fiction. Those with a penchant for colonial-era literature should particularly enjoy it.

Luncheon of the Boating Party

I blame Shogun. 

Luncheon of the Boating Party isn't bad, it just pales in comparison to Shogun, which leaves Susan Vreeland's work seeming a bit washed out. I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Luncheon of the Boating Party is the story of Renoir's painting by the same name, created in 1881, just as France was recovering its composure from the Franco-Prussian war, which would of course set the stage for World War I, but that's another story. Vreeland has taken pains to recreate the circumstances under which Renoir's masterpiece was painted, carefully considering the zeitgeist, as well as the individual models. The models ranged from upper-crust Charles Ephussi to Angele, a sometimes-streetwalker in Montmartre, to say nothing of Aline, who will many years hence become Madame Renoir, and Alphonsine, for whom Renoir's affection is apparent, until she is upstaged by Aline. As the French might say: ouf!

Vreeland has chosen to narrate her work in the voices of Renoir and seven of the models. Although this style can work well, in this case the story felt choppy, leaving gaps here and there. The effect was heightened by the fact that, while the perspective changed, the narrative voice seldom did, such that all of the characters seemed to act and feel alike. Both the characters and the era seemed to me to receive short shrift, although here I am especially cognizant of the fact that, consciously or otherwise, I am comparing them to Shogun, which is more than a little unjust. A more legitimate complaint, I'm certain, is the occasional usage of French, which frequently feels clumsy, interspersed as it is with English in a single phrase, for example the word "two" appearing in English, but the rest in French. I found this both confusing and distracting.

In the sense that Vreeland has imagined the thoughts and feelings of the models as well as Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party reminds me of A Piece of the World. In writing the latter, Christina Baker Kline has the advantage or imaging only one model, not the dozen-plus Vreeland faced; perhaps for this reason, Kline was able to create a depth of character that is lacking in Luncheon of the Boating Party.

So what's the final verdict? Those who love Renoir, or perhaps even Impressionism more generally, will enjoy learning more about the backstory of one his iconic works. It is certainly many measure above The Painted Girls, which belongs to the same genre of creating the backstory for a painting (in this case, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen). I preferred Luncheon of the Boating Party so much that I couldn't help but be that much more cognizant of my own present shortcomings here, in comparing Luncheon with the completed dissimilar Shogun. Alas.

Shogun

Incomparable.

Somewhere around page 600 or 700, “incomparable” popped into my mind and I spent the remaining 500 pages debating whether James Clavell’s Shogun was, in fact, incomparable.

Blackthorne is a English-born pilot, a first rate navigator and commander, hired by the Dutch to command a fleet that, one-by-one has dwindled to a single ship, until that, too, is wrecked on the shores of Japan. Disoriented, dispirited, and not a little disgusted, Blackthorne is quickly re-christened Anjin-san, or Mr. Pilot, and must learn how to be more Japanese and less Barbarian if he is to survive his ordeal and return home where riches must surely await him.

Slowly, slowly, Anjin-san not only adapts to the ways of the Japanese, but comes to believe that many of their ways are superior to those of the Europeans. With his vast knowledge, mental and physical strength, and ability to keep his wits even in the most desperate of situations, Anjin-san quickly becomes a valued counselor to the daimyo in whose territory he was wrecked, Toranaga. One of the five ruling Regents of Japan, Toranaga is one of the great daimyos, and also on the brink of war with his greatest rival, Ishido. Gradually he weaves his web, drawing the Anjin-san closer to the center, making the European a full samurai and hatamoto – and calling into question whether the foreigner will ever depart the shores of Japan again.

Clavell’s plot and characters are beautifully constructed, but what struck me the most is his portrayal of sixteenth century Japan and the events that led to the closing of the country and the years of the Shogunate. “The Japanese’re unbeatable…we know the whole point of life. … Duty, discipline, and death,” Clavell writes. Could anything speak to the culture of the kamikaze and karōshi more clearly? Indeed, throughout this entire opus, Clavell captured the essence of Japan, and most especially what it is to be Japanese, so perfectly that I wanted to cry.

Yes, in the end, incomparable is the right word. Shogun is quite possibly the best book I’ve ever read.

The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America

Langdon Cook's The Mushroom Hunters is a quirky little book, no doubt about it. And yet, I loved it. Cook is, as the title implies, on the trail of those who hunt for, as well as buy, sell, and cook with, the wild mushrooms that proliferate across America, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. The book is populated with true characters...as one whose livelihood as an itinerant fungi hunter, often on federal lands, and often illegally, must be.

The aptly named Cook not only discusses the vagaries of the mushroom trade, but also cooks his way through the myriad mushrooms, leaving any mushroom-loving reader with a hankering to sample more broadly from the species. (Cauliflower and lobster mushrooms are at the top of my new list, though I'm not sure I'll ever have the occasion to try either one.) Neither does Cook omit the travelogue element, with forays into how the landscape is changing, and musings on rural America writ large. Hint: these are mostly depressing, as he traces the growth of meth and opioids, as well as the deterioration of conditions in tiny towns and the industries that used to employ their denizens. Less depressingly, Cook delves into mushrooms' popularity in different cuisines and cultures, from East Asia to Western Europe, as well as its growth in haute cuisine here.

In terms of style, I was regularly reminded of Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, and in fact, the two books seemed frequently to be telling a similar story about the role of foods in both the author's life, as well as a region's cuisine and palate. (Of the two, I had a strong preference for The Mushroom Hunters.) Too, I could not help but recall the lessons of Salt, Sugar, Fat, and the benefits of turning to nature for a greater share of what we consume.

When people (my mom, my son's OT, colleagues) asked what I was reading and I told them a book about hunting for mushrooms, I got more knowing looks than with any other book I've read. I get that it sounds weird and, in many ways, can appeal only to a narrow audience. This is a shame, because The Mushroom Hunters is actually one of the most interesting and thought-provoking books I've read this year.

Four stars.

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women

I cannot say enough good things about Kate Moore's The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. Before I get ahead of myself, though, I should say that I had some vague knowledge, an inkling, if you will, about women who became very radioactive - and subsequently very sick - painting watches one hundred or so years ago. That is about all I could have told you before reading The Radium Girls.

In Radium Girls, Moore not only provides a thorough recounting of the history of the radium industry, but also of the personal stories and prolonged court battle the women fought in fits and starts before finally and ultimately prevailing. (OSHA is just one of the many workplace safety advances that owes its existence to the radium girls' fight.)

It is impossible to read this book without feeling angry at the abuse of power exercised by the company, as well as the utter lack of rights had by the women, not only as workers, but as women. I tore through this book, equal parts fascinated and enraged as the story unfolded. Moore splits her narration between the plant in Orange, New Jersey, and that in Ottawa, Illinois, where hundreds of mostly young, mostly poor girls, often from immigrant families, painstakingly painted the numbers onto watch faces with a paint whose active ingredient was none other than pure radium. Unsurprisingly, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, the women soon began falling seriously ill with a variety of ailments from necrosis of the jaw to bone sarcomas to legs that suddenly shortened, leaving them with pronounced limps - and pain.

 As I said before, I cannot offer enough praise for this work, which - in the same vein as such works as Ashes Under Water and Dead Wake - chronicles an important yet largely forgotten episode in this country's history.

Virtue, Valor, and Vanity: The Founding Fathers and the Pursuit of Fame

Eric Burns's Virtue, Valor, and Vanity had been on my reading list for sometime before I finally got around to reading it over Labor Day weekend. It's a quick read, actually, and best thought of as a 40,000 foot view of Revolutionary America and the most famous of the Founding Fathers. Washington is there, of course, and Franklin, as is Adams (John, although also a few glimpses of Sam), as well as Jefferson, Hamilton, and Patrick Henry.

There's little here that history buffs will likely find new, although its presented succinctly and in a readable (rather than dry) style. The most interesting snapshots are of the Fathers I hadn't heard of: James Wilson and Button Gwinnett. And, yes, that was really his name. Wilson signed the Declaration of Independence and was also one of the original six justices appointed to the Supreme Court. It was during his tenure as justice that he also became a fugitive from the law; all these years later, he remains - unsurprisingly - the only person to have simultaneously been appointed to uphold justice in the highest court in the land while also fleeing those same scales of justice. You can't make this stuff up.

Gwinnett, too, signed the Declaration of Independence, before earning the distinction of becoming the first of the signers to die a violent death. Like Hamilton, he was killed in a duel. If his name rings a bell, however faintly, that may be because one of Georgia's largest counties is named for this knucklehead.

Did I like Virtue, Valor, and Vanity: The Founding Fathers and the Pursuit of Fame? Yes, absolutely. That said, by its very nature it offers a smaller window into Revolutionary America than Jeanne Abrams's Revolutionary Medicine, which is still probably my favorite book covering this time period.

Three and a half stars. (A little more Abigail Adams and a little less Alexander Hamilton and I probably would have given it four!)

All the Stars in the Heavens

Adriana Trigiani's All the Stars in the Heavens is the fictitious account of Loretta Young's career and - in particular - romance with Clark Gable, which led to the highly hushed up birth of a daughter, Judy. The first half of the book especially is engaging and page-turning; the late chapters feel slightly more forced, but the book in its entirety certainly evokes Old Hollywood in all of its glory.

If the above paragraph feels slightly ambivalent to you - it is. I actually finished this book well over one week ago, and I've been really struggling with my feelings about it in the interim. The book is very well written. Certainly much of it is well-researched - enough so that I wanted to learn a bit more about Loretta Young. But, and this is an awfully big but, as I was reading more about Young, I learned that in her later years she spoke openly about her relationship with Gable - and characterized their supposed "romance" as date rape. Surely Trigiani came across these same claims in her research, yet it appears she chose to wholly and entirely disregard them in favor of creating a narrative about a failed romance and inventing circumstances that kept Gable and Young perpetually apart, Young pining for Gable until her last days.

This feels wrong to me on so many levels, not least the fact that it diminishes Young's experience, that I'm unable to take an unbiased view toward the work itself. Thus, rather than recommend All the Stars in the Heavens for its sweeping portrayal of glittering Old Hollywood, I would prefer to recommend two other titles in which the golden days of the movie industry are equally well-imagined: The Chaperone and West of Sunset, if you're interested in further reading of the same genre.

Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love

I had already pretty much decided that I simply could not stomach the author, but when, in the last chapter, I read the words, “…remembering who I am and what I deserve,” my antipathy nearly boiled over.

It’s a shame, really, when authors insert so much of themselves directly into their work, because it becomes challenging to separate the author (whom, as you likely gathered from my opening sentence, I did not like) from the work, which is certainly not bad. Bread, Wine, Chocolate is a bit of The Food of a Younger Land meets Sugar, Salt, Fat, with a bit of Let Them Eat Shrimp thrown in for good measure.

Sethi has traveled the globe uncovering the origins of chocolate, wine, bread, beer, and coffee, and more importantly understanding why the varieties of these products is diminishing. The work is informative and well-informed; in the same way that Let Them Eat Shrimp caused me to think twice about the seafood I eat, Bread, Wine, Chocolate has me ruminating over the origins of my flour, in particular, to say nothing of my chocolate. I enjoyed, too, the aspect of travelogue that Sethi has created: from Ecuador to Ethiopia and England to India, she has captured glimpses of what makes places and flavors unique.

In the end, though, I just couldn’t get past too much of the author too much of the time. I didn’t choose Bread, Wine, Chocolate for its memoir aspect, and while the tone generally veered away from the preachy, I almost choked on the last line, “This is a book about food, but it’s really a book about life.” Bolded, no less. And that’s ultimately the issue for me – I wanted a book about food, but too often Sethi stopped to write about her life.

Two stars.

The Shore

Generations of deadbeats, derelicts, and druggies. As best I can tell that sums up Sara Taylor's The Shore. Of course, I only made it two-thirds of the way through before deciding I could not devote any more of my life to this book. I picked it up because of its setting on the outer islands of Virginia.

Several years ago, I spent a glorious week in Chincoteague watching the dolphins and wild ponies, and indulging in some of the best fried chicken and biscuits I’ve ever tasted. I hoped The Shore would capture some of Chincoteague’s beauty, and its charm. It didn’t; more’s the shame.

I couldn't even finish it, let allow give it any stars.

Japan: The Precarious Future

I won't keep you in suspense: this is a dry, academic text, rendered somewhat stale, no less, by events of the past few years. Obviously, I was hoping for more when I came across an essay highlighting some of the demographic findings in The Atlantic earlier this summer. In fact, I had high hopes of being able to assign many of the essays, if not the entire book, to my Business and Culture in Japan students next spring. Given the readability of such trade-centric volumes as Borderless Economies, this didn't seem unreasonable.

Unfortunately, most of the essays in Japan: The Precarious Future - particularly those that do not deal directly with demographics - were too dry to hold my attention, let alone that of my students. What's more, given the evolution of the geopolitical situation in the past year, from the Philippines and the South China Sea, to North Korea, to our own contributions to world instability, many of the essays read as woefully out-of-date. Although the topics remain timely - Japan will face future natural disasters; a visionary PM is still needed to shift the economy; questions of a Japanese military have perhaps never been more relevant - too much that has happened is not included for me to feel that there is real, ongoing value in the essays Frank Baldwin and Annie Allison have edited here.

Unless you are a scholar of all things Japanese, with an insatiable appetite for anything to do with Nihon, it's probably best to skip this one.

No stars. (But who gives stars to academic essays, anyway?)

Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China

I have such mixed feelings about Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper... that it's hard to know where to begin. I'll start with this: I most enjoyed the pages that read as travelogue, that recounted China on the verge of its rapid transformation from Old World to New World, that helped me to see places that no longer exist as they once did. 

I least enjoyed much of the writing about food, for reasons that I've been trying to put my finger on for the better part of a week. I think, ultimately, Dunlop's expose, if you will, on Chinese cuisine feels too voyeuristic, and there is too much braggadocio in her reminisces about what she ate and when. I have traveled extensively, in China and elsewhere in Asia. I have eaten chicken's feet. I have eaten duck's heart (better than it sounds). I have eaten duck webs. I have drawn the line at whale and also carpaccio of horse. Other cultures eat "weird" things. Trust me, my local Oriental Mart carries pork blood and beef stomach, along with the ubiquitous chicken feet and duck webs. But then, all cultures eat "weird" things (Cheez Whiz, anyone?), and while I don't doubt that Dunlop has the utmost respect for the Chinese culture, I can't help but feel that this book is simply an open invitation for readers to activate the gag reflex and shudder a collective, "ewww."  

With that said, the book itself is well-written, engaging, and informative about Chinese culture, particularly for those with little knowledge of its history, geography, or demographics. For that, I give it four stars. It's all the rest, what I might term the "gut check," that causes me to lower my overall appreciation of the book and hesitate before recommending it too widely.  

The News of the World

Paulette Jiles’s The News of the World is a delightful, compact novel, of the Old West, without being about the Old West. It’s 1870, and itinerant Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd – valiant soldier of the wars of 1812 and Mexico – has been left penniless by the War Between the States, his small printing business gone, his wife dead, his grown daughters far away in Georgia. And so Captain Kidd does what any man of robust health and a passion for the printed word and road would do: he takes to the road, reading the news to crowds large and small in the dusty towns and backwaters of North Texas.

It’s in one of these towns that he is charged with the return of a young girl, a former Kiowa captive, to her extended family in San Antonio. Reluctant at first, Captain Kidd grows increasingly fond of 10-year-old Johanna as their journey progresses. In her, he sees echoes of his own daughters, now grown, and hope for the future of his beloved state. Other than a few passages about the behavior of former Indian captives that reminded me intensely of Philipp Meyers’s The Son, what I liked most about The News of the World was the utter originality – and then learning from the author’s note that Captain Kidd was, in fact, based on just such a gentleman.

All told, The News of the World is a wonderful read, and one that I can heartily recommend to all comers, particularly, of course, those for a penchant for historical fiction. Four stars.

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family

I can’t recall when I first read about the Mitfords. (Evelyn Waugh? In the Garden of Beasts?) And although their name was highly familiar, and some aspects of their story somewhat familiar (one of them was a Hitler groupie, if not quite his girlfriend), I couldn’t have accurately stated so much as their names or that there were, in fact, six of them. I did have a sense that the sisters were famous for being famous, and when I laid eyes on the lengthy tome at the library for the first time, I had second thoughts. I can only say that I am very happy that I shushed them and read The Sisters.

As the title suggests, The Sisters is a biography of the six Mitford sisters (Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah) whose politics, antics, and scandalous behavior rendered them household names in 1930s Britain. There was Diana, who married one of the richest men in Britain, the heir to the Guinness fortune, only to run off with Sir Oswald Mosley (yes, the fascist) when her children were toddlers. Unity was the Hitler groupie who had so convinced herself of the impossibility of war that she simply shot herself at the outbreak, while Jessica ran off to Spain with a black-sheep cousin in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. Nancy and Jessica would late become bestselling authors; Deborah became a Duchess who, together with her husband, restored one of England’s most important country houses. (It's no wonder that The Washington Post wrote in Deborah’s obituary – she died in 2014 at 94 – that the Mitfords’ real life squabbles and drama made Downton Abbey look “uneventful.”)

Although in some ways, this is just another romp through the bad behavior of the English Upper Class (see Daughter of Empire or White Mischief for other examples of this genre), Mary Lovell has crafted this biography so that the British Empire, first strong and then rather crumbling, shines through. In that way, this is a book about Old England and England-in-Transition as much as about the Mitford family. The trauma of the King’s abdication is there, as well as the pain and confusion of the years immediately after World War I and then again during the Blitz. For these reasons alone, The Sisters is worth reading, and anyone with an interest in British history will surely enjoy it.

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

So much potential. So disappointing.

The premise of Jim Fergus’s One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd is fascinating: President Grant has acquiesced to a Cheyenne chief’s request for 1000 white women brides to come West, marry Cheyenne braves, and teach the Indians how to assimilate into white culture. The request was actually made; Grant, of course, did not acquiesce, but Fergus envisions how it might have gone down, if he had.
 

So, Grant agrees to send the volunteers – a hodge podge of fallen women, war orphans (this being 1875), former mental patients, and the like – to the Cheyennes. Among them is our protagonist, May Dodd, daughter of a wealthy Chicago family who incarcerated her for promiscuity.  May is only too eager for any means out of the institution and remarkably seems to be friend all of the other women, from the former Southern belle to the escaped slave and the identical twin Irish prostitutes. Together they must create a life for themselves with a nomadic people in a harsh land – and with the U.S. Army in pursuit.

Again, the premise is fascinating. The execution, however, was marred by Fergus’s over-reliance on stereotypes – caricatures, really – to depict virtually every single character. It was as though he made a game of fitting as many circa-1875 stereotypes into a single book. The former slave escaped via the Underground Railroad, but not before she had been branded by a cruel master. The Southern belle saw her plantation burned as is reduced to a racist, drawling, laudanum-sipping stupor. The Irish twins run ever scam known to man and invent a few along the way. Ugh.

Perhaps my disgust with One Thousand White Women is a bit overblown, coming fast on the heels of Astoria, which describes both real Indians, and real frontier hardship. (Look up Marie Dorian and then dare to complain about pretty much anything.) I won’t go so far as to call it completely awful, but I can’t recommend it, either.

Astoria: Astor and Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Tale of Ambition and Survival on the Early American Frontier

I’ve actually been to Astoria, Oregon. Years ago, I was slated to cruise Mexico, when an outbreak of swine flu sent the ship north instead of south (Hello, Seattle; Good bye, Cabo). I remember it was a pretty town, highly picturesque, but don’t believe we learned much of its history in the roughly six hours we were there. In reading Peter Stark’s Astoria, I set out to rectify that, and what I learned was fascinating. 

Astoria was John Jacob Astor’s dream: a man ahead of his time, Astor recognized the importance of the Pacific and especially of international trade, particularly of the transpacific variety. Astoria was to be his base, the geographic location by which the world’s richest man would become even richer. From the start, though, the venture was beset by trouble, and no small amount of tragedy. The Overland Party, which intended to cross the continent Lewis and Clark style, met with countless delays before being forced to split up and make their way as best they could.

Those who went by boat, and in the pre-Panama Canal days, the Tonquin had to round the tip of South America to sail from New York to the Pacific Northwest, fared little better. (Except for the stop in Hawaii in its royal heyday. That I wanted to read more of, no question.) And once they made it, those who did, found themselves face-to-face with the tribes who had hunted, fished, trapped, and for all intents and purposes, owned this land for time immemorial. To say their encounters did not often go well is to understate things.  

Once the U.S.declared war on the British, things got really interesting, for not only did the British trading companies have their eye on this same piece of land, but many of Astor’s partners and agents were, themselves, British subjects. For those wondering how it all ends, here's a hint: the title of the book refers to a "lost Pacific empire."

All of this Stark recounts succinctly and with an engaging style that kept me turning the pages and plowing through the text. Compared to the “Wild West,” which was peopled with the likes of Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday, the opening and history of the Northwest was tame. Likely for the same reason, its history is often overlooked, an omission Stark works to correct with Astoria. Anyone with an interest in American history should enjoy reading his work very much.

Four stars.

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

I don't believe I've ever previously uttered the words, "Gee, I think that book would actually be better as a movie." In the case of Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures, though, that really is my sentiment. It's not - and I want to say this unequivocally - that this is in any way a bad book. Far from it. It is true, though, that Shetterly devotes nearly as much time to the differential equations, physics, and aerodynamics research as she does to her main characters. That's a shame only in that Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson, in particular, are fascinating individuals about whom I hungered to learn even more.

Let me back up for a minute. Hidden Figures is the story of the female mathematicians, and especially and more specifically the black female mathematicians, whose contributions and calculations were pivotal in the early days of NASA (and its predecessor, NACA), but were largely unrecorded. In this way, it is not unlike The Girls of Atomic City, which records the history of the "girls" whose work on the a-bomb was so crucial, and yet generally unknown. What makes Hidden Figures is more fascinating, and its protagonists that much more amazing, is that these were black women working on some of the country's most pressing issues - and doing it from an office in the Jim Crow South.

To a woman, they are outrageously smart, strong willed, gender-busting, race-busting, pioneers and - dare I say - heroines. They certainly would not use those descriptors themselves, but reading of what they overcame, endured, and accomplished, the adjectives seem apt. Shetterly brings these women to life. Although her writing can alternate between mighty dry (here's looking at you, differential equations) and wonderfully vivid ("sounding shockingly calm for a man who just minutes before was preparing himself to die in a flying funeral pyre"), this is a highly readable and utterly fascinating story. Going back to my initial comment that I'm sure this story is even better as a movie is an assumption (I haven't seen the movie) that on screen the focus is more on the "girls" and less on formulas.

Three-and-a-half stars.

Easter Island

Admittedly, I read this book for one reason and one reason only: I was on my way to Easter Island. I say this by way of acknowledging that from the beginning I was less interested in the story than I was in the setting. That said, I have an open mind and I was willing to be swayed.

Jennifer Vanderbes's Easter Island is the story of Elsa Beazley and Greer Farraday. In 1913, Elsa sails from England with her new, much older, and generally unloved husband and mentally diminished younger sister. They are headed to Easter Island to make a study of the flora and fauna, Charles Darwin-style. Elsa is not my favorite character - or so I thought, until I met Greer. Greer is a palynologist, or one who studies pollen. Sixty years after Elsa, Greer, too, sails to Easter Island to conduct research, and as an escape from grief over her recently-deceased husband. Naturally, Vanderbes creates an intersecting narrative such that women's histories become intertwined on this speck of an island, which still in Greer's day is largely unchanged from the era of Elsa. (Side note: Most of the roads on Easter Island were not paved until the late 90s. The 1990s. This part of the story is no stretch.)

I have complained about the intertwined narratives schtick in the past (Sandcastle Girls springs to mind, for example), so it would be unfair of me to lament that here, knowing my reading preferences and having selected Easter Island anyway. What I will complain about, though, is the characters. It's been a long, long time since I've encountered two more unsympathetic characters. What I can't say is exactly why I felt that way. Elsa, being from another era, is harder to judge, but I still couldn't help but feel that she was, for lack of a better term, a total sour sop. And Greer, well she just struck me as naive, weak, and, for lack of a better term, pathetic.

So what did I like? I am a nerd, and I enjoyed learned about the field of palynology. Also, the setting did not disappoint. Vanderbes does a fine job of weaving the essence of Easter Island - language, culture, geography, history, weather patterns, and people - into her novel. In that sense, it more than delivered for my purposes. And that, I suppose, is the crux of it: read this if you're interested in reading about Easter Island, and particularly the natural geography of Easter Island, in novel form. (In the acknowledgements, Vanderbes references David Quammen's The Song of the Dodo, which automatically earned her bonus points in my world.) You will learn a bit of history, more of the culture, and plenty of the spirit of the place.

The bottom line: ignore the stories and read it as travel writing. Easier said than done, perhaps, but that is my advice.

The Dreaming Suburb

What R. F. Delderfield does well is to evoke a sense of England goneby. Writing from the distance of 40 or so years, he captures the zeitgeist of England between wars: the daily routines, the language, the small moments that add up to a life well lived - or not.

As in Delderfield's other works, the protagonist is a veteran of the Great War. Unlike either David/P.J./Pow-Wow or Paul Craddock, Jim Carver is neither scarred by the war (physically or mentally), nor single. He returns home to his seven children and the still-warm body of a wife who has just succumbed to the Spanish flu, determined to make a better life for his family.Although there are several characters to whom Delderfield has given starring roles, if you will, Jim is ultimately the soul of the book; Delderfield deftly portrays both his striving for a better world, as well as his aloofness from his family, particularly oldest son Archie with whom his relations are tenuous at best.

Also not unlike either To Serve Them All My Days or Long Summer Day, Delderfield is at times extremely long-winded. I plead guilty to occasionally needing to skim his work, rather than read closely. That said, Delderfield succeeds marvelously at the goal which he has laid out himself in the introduction: his "attempt to photograph the mood of the suburbs in the period between the break up of the old world and the preambulator days of an entirely new civilization."

Perhaps in another year, I'll feel up to the sequel, The Avenue at War.

A Man Called Ove

Ove really just wants to die. He's not picky about how; really, he'll try anything: hanging, carbon monoxide poisoning, being hit by a train, pulling the trigger...and yet, every time he gets close to carrying out his plans, something goes wrong. Or rather, someone needs something, and Ove, in his cantankerous, hilarious way, is the only one who can do it right.

There is, for example, the new neighbor who is so incompetent as to be unable to back up a moving truck without crashing it into Ove's mailbox. To say nothing of the community recycling room that must be monitored constantly for the least transgression. Who but Ove can ensure that the metal caps are unfailingly separated from the glass bottles? (Oh, those Scandinavians!)

Ove is charmingly, lovingly curmudgeonly. He is also desperately sad since the death of his wife, and longs for nothing but to join her in the hereafter, although this must certainly be done properly: subscriptions canceled, affairs in order, the lights shut off. Ove is nothing if not firm in his principles, a staunch believer in routines, in the world being a black and white place, in order, and the belief that right must always prevail. Have I mentioned that I loved Ove?

Yes, I loved Ove, and I loved A Man Called Ove. I especially love Fredrik Backman's voice, the inappropriate hilarity that crops up regularly, yet unexpectedly, the layers and layers of Ove that Backman reveals almost begrudgingly. In both the hilarity of non-hilarious situations and the depth of emotion, all emotions, that Backman strikes so well, I was reminded of one of my old favorites, A Prayer for Owen Meany. 

If I have read a better book anytime recently I cannot recall it.

Five stars.

The Cruise of the Rolling Junk

Oh, but Fitzgerald could write. The Cruise of the Rolling Junk must be one of his lesser known works, unattainable but from a university library, discovered as a passing mention in Deep South, barely the length of a respectable short story, but fine writing on every page.

Young Zelda hankers for peaches and biscuits; F. Scott, in one of those fantastically spontaneous and crazy episodes that will mark their collective lives and demise, proposes driving from Connecticut south to Montgomery to obtain just that. And so they do. While some of the story has been dramatized for effect, much is true, particularly the myriad automotive disasters. In fact, it's rather amazing to think that driving cross-country was possible almost 100 years ago, particularly through the rural South that was still so marked by the Civil War.

The story, in and of itself, is fine. The writing, and particularly the writing of the south, is what makes it lovely. Many of the characters who people the pages can recount specific battles to the Fitzgeralds; when he writes that "we had added one more rattle to the ancient bridge over which the fugitives from Bull Run had streamed on an afternoon of panic and terror," one doesn't doubt that it was, in fact, the same ancient bridge. Likewise, Fitzgerald writes of "the Wilderness where slain boys from Illinois and Tennessee and the cities of the gulf still slept in the marshes and the wooded swamps," one understand this to be the literal truth - and that did they not, they might still number among the living. Even the imagery of the present (1922, mind you), harkens back to the war they are still fighting: "The for an hour we passed group after group of negroes bound singing for the cotton fields and the work of the hot hours." The war may have ended, and slavery officially, but the condition of "the negroes" is ever worse.

As both Julian Evans in the Introduction and Paul Theroux in the Foreward note, there's something, too, of a premonition about this book, of the way it all will end for Scott and Zelda, the bight shining future turned to frenzied rot. Still in his 20s when he wrote this, some two years after the adventure itself, it is as if Scott already understood that the best was behind him. For early in the story, he writes the story of his life: "To be young, to be bound for the far hills, to be going where happiness hung from a tree, a ring to be tilted for, a bright garland to be won - It still a realizable thing, we thought, still a harbor from the dullness and the tears and disillusion of all the stationary world."

May we all be young and bound for the hills and tilting at rings of happiness. And may we do it in so many beautiful words.

A Piece of the World

Christina Olson was the muse, if you will for Andrew Wyeth's painting Christina's World, which depicts a female of indeterminate age situated in tall grass, half-reaching, half-crawling toward an unremarkable farmhouse on a hill spreading before her. The farmhouse, one can learn, was located in Cushing, Maine, as was Christina Olson. In A Piece of the World, author Christina Baker Kline has imagined the backstory for Christina, complete with decades of physical and emotional hardship, creating a complex, and frankly fascinating character.

Although there are similarites between Kline's work here and such fictionalized biographies as The Paris Wife or The Aviator's Wife, Olson was a relatively unknown woman, and Kline was therefore freer to invent a backstory for her that fits hand-in-glove with the harsh-but-lovely Maine landscapes she paints so clearly. (No pun intended.) In fact, in making a quick search for Olson in my own efforts to learn more about her and separate fact from fiction, I learned only that she likely suffered from a degenerative neurological disorder, one formerly thought to be a form of muscular dystrophy. Kline obviously had lots of room to imagine.

Kline's prose, like that of her previous novel, Orphan Train, is rich, crisp, and highly readable. She has again created a multi-dimensional character who is alternately maddening and worthy of deep sympathy, and has written a book set at a quiet time in history, if you will, no wars, no depressions, just regular folks doing their best to get on with their lives. This is a wonderful work of fiction, beautifully crafted and highly enjoyable.

Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait

Karen Holliday Tanner's Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait has been on my reading list for years now (literally almost six years!), ever since I read the fantastic fictionalized account of his life and times, Doc, much of the background for which the author, Mary Doria Russell, credits Tanner's book.

For better or for worse, Russell has made excellent use of the most interesting bits, such that even six years after reading Doc, Tanner's work felt extraneous. (Which, yes, I recognize is completely backwards, given that hers is the original source material, but there you have it.) The most interesting parts of A Family Portrait are, perhaps not surprisingly, the early bits that really focus on the family portrait. Once Tanner places Doc out west, there's little new; far more in-depth writing exists on Doc's years out west, from his relationship to the Earp brothers to, most notably, the shootout at the O.K. Corral.

As noted in the forward, Tanner "brings fresh insight into the history and culture of the antebellum South, the cataclysm of the War Between the States, and the catastrophe of the Reconstruction period." That is, in writing about Holliday, and particularly the Holliday family, and especially the pre-"War Between the States" Holliday family, Tanner's language is certainly that of an apologist or, as the forward also notes, "Tanner's empathy for her biological subject tends to extend to Doc Holliday's friends and close associates." Certainly, as a Yankee with twenty-first century sensibilities, Tanner's portrayal of Reconstruction goes a bit far, and the extent to which she portrays the family's slaves as happy as loving their masters has a whiff of I-think-thou-doth-protest-too-much, but on the whole, this is still an interesting and highly readable book - particularly the early chapters that deal with Doc's childhood and adolescence.

The American Heiress

Perhaps I might have liked The American Heiress better if the protagonist - the American heiress who weds an English duke and with her considerable fortune revives his estate - were not named Cora. To say nothing of one of Cora's few friends and kindhearted characters being named Sybil. Downton Abbey much?

Cora Cash is the richest girl in America, with the most overbearing mother. Her mother has decided that Cora needs a title, and takes her husband-shopping in England. Cora is particularly distressed, as she would have preferred to marry her dear friend Teddy, who deems her fortune too great a burden and sends her packing. Cora falls into the lap, almost literally, of an impoverished duke, with his own sorry history. They marry, and naturally misunderstand one another utterly.

I've said this about other books in the past, and it sounds a little tired, but this isn't a bad book. It's not badly written, the characters aren't overly tedious or annoying. It's just not the book for me. Interestingly, author Daisy Goodwin's name was seemed familiar to me, and I searched my blog where I discovered that a few years ago, I read another of her books, The Fortune Hunter. Re-reading my post, it seems as if I felt the same way about that one.

Final verdict: utterly forgettable, but also completely harmless.

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

The Chilbury Ladies' Choir is not by any means a bad book. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but feel I'd read it all before: small town scandals, war refugees, uncertainty and sacrifice in a small English town. A little too much The Summer Before the War, perhaps, or even The House at Tyneford. I also found it a challenge, especially for the first 100 pages or so, to keep straight the myriad characters and sub-plots. One of them, which appears early and often and is perplexingly central to the novel, involves the switching of babies so that Colonel Winthrop, whose only son and heir was killed in the opening days of the war, can again have an heir. Frankly, I'm still mystified.

Also, I'm tired - and I've complained about this before - of authors using multiple viewpoints expressed through journals, letters, and such to love the story forward. Such writing was used to great effect in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, but now it feels gimmicky. (And, in the case of Chilbury, there are so many characters doing this that, as I said above, just keeping track of everyone and her sister- sometimes quite literally - is a task unto itself.)

On the whole, my complaints are relatively minor and I imagine most readers, at least those who haven't already read a litany of war-in-small-town-England book, would enjoy reading this one.

Three stars.

The Joys of Travel: And Stories That Illuminate Them

If you know me, you know that if there's anything I love more than reading, it's traveling, and if there's anything I love more than traveling, it's reading. (A cruel and unusual punishment for me, would be having to choose between the two on a permanent basis. But I digress.) Reading about travel, then, is as good as it gets - usually.

Sadly, that was not the case this time. I was not a fan of Thomas Swick's The Joys of Travel. In fact, I did not finish it. See, Swick's Joys felt more like a laundry list of places he'd been and random experiences he'd had than real, in-depth travel writing. He was a travel editor. I get it. Other people paid for his travel. Nice. He traveled hither and yon. Uh-huh. Also, he likes to read about the places he is traveling, particularly before he travels there. Fine. But at the end of the day, there has to be more than that. I neither laughed (Bill Bryson, Mark Adams), nor learned (David Quammen, Kennedy Warne). Rather, Swick's book has a haphazard quality to it, a first-I-went-here, then-I-went-there that left me scratching my head and wondering if a collection of Swick's articles, columns, and reviews mightn't have been more interesting.

I grant it is possible I'm selling Swick short. According to the Amazon page for this book, The New York Times, says Swick is "a perceptive, old-school travel writer whose prose brings celebrated and obscure destinations to life." Maybe. But I didn't get the feel from the first half of the book and if I'm going to read about obscure destinations (Zimbabwe, say, or even the Caucasus), I'd rather do so from true insiders than from someone who - like me - flies in and then out again, no matter how much pre-departure reading they've done.

The Housekeeper and the Professor

The Housekeeper and the Professor caught my eye in an airport bookstore recently for one reason and one reason only: it is a Japanese novel, and I was soon to be on my way to Japan. (Greetings from Kyoto, by the way.)

Unlike other Japanese fiction I have read (for example, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage or A Tale for the Time Being), it is infused with a sense of the Japanese, but not of Japan itself. What do I mean? "The truly correct proof is one that strikes a harmonious balance between strength and flexibility." That single sentence contains the essence of Japanese culture. Yet, there is no sushi in this book, no Ueno Park, no pulsing Tokyo just beyond, no temples or shrines, nothing more than the Hanshin Tigers and the occasional cicadas.

The Housekeeper and the Professor, it must be said, is a slightly odd book, at least to my American sensibilities. The pages are often filled with theorems and formulas, and the constant chatter of prime numbers, but this is a also a book that I can unironically describe as calm and peaceful - not my typical vocabulary when thinking about a book.

Yoko Ogawa's style - and here I must state the obvious - at least as it has been translated into English, is simple and understated. The plot is simple: the housekeeper, whose name we never learn, works for an agency, and is assigned to the home of an eccentric professor. He, too, is nameless, and also a brilliant mathematician, but without any memory past 1975, the result of a near-fatal car accident. As a result, he regularly writes himself reminders which he pins to his suit, giving his outward appearance a rumpled and confused look.

Examined apart, the story's elements make no sense. Together, though, the story is sweet and highly readable, although I will admit to only skimming the densest of the mathematical explanations. Ogawa's work is one of both mathematical fact and light fiction, an achievement which it its own right surely deserves several stars. Or, as the Japanese would say, this is a highly harmonious book.

Chicken Every Sunday: My Life with Mother's Boarders

Chicken Every Sunday is a marvelous little book. I first heard of it in the pages of When Books Went to War; it was described as being one of the absolute favorite Armed Services Editions, one that simply could not be published fast enough to meet the demand of the troops wanting to read Rosemary Taylor's memoir. As Books author Molly Guptill Manning explained, the troops craved not only Taylor's descriptions of the home front, but also and especially her descriptions of mealtimes. And no wonder.

Taylor's family, the Drachmans, were a family unlike most others. Her mother was a Claiborne from Virginia (an FFV, or First Family of Virginia, as Taylor explains) who had been weaned on a former plantation in the immediate post-Civil War South. Taylor's father grew up in one of Arizona's original pioneer families. The pair of them, and their three children - of whom Rosemary is the oldest - are wonderfully entertaining. More than the Drachman's though, are the boarders: since before Rosemary's birth, Mr. and Mrs. Drachman had boarders, both as a service, if you will to early visitors to the territory (for there were no good hotels in those early days before statehood), as well as to earn additional income (primarily on the part of Mrs. Drachman, who saw her husband's get-rich-quick-schemes for what they were).

Yes, the boarders. As Taylor wrote, "One of the boarders who ate Mother's chicken every Sunday summed it up when he said, "I was told that in your house I'd have good food and some fun." They all had fun, and they all became part of the family -- Jeffrey, who lost his front teeth and won his independence, Rita Vlasak, who loved anything in pants, including Father, Miss Sally, who loved Miss Sally and cold cream, the Lathams, who bought a mine, and even the hell-bent-for-heaven Woolleys, who were sure God had sent the skunk to hide under the house because the family didn't go to church on Sunday." Taylor's gift is for bringing them all to life, making the reader today as much a part of the family as the boarder's were 100 years ago.

All of which is to say, they don't make books like this anymore. Cheaper By the Dozen, The Situation in Flushing, All Creatures Great and Small, they are memoirs in the same vein as this one. If you read and loved any of them, Chicken Every Sunday will be soup for your soul; if you read this one and want more of the same, any of the others will provide the same sustenance.

Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany

Axis Sally pops up continuously in my World War II readings, most recently in the last book I read, When Books Went to War, where her repeated appearances were enough to convince me to check out the Axis Sally biography at my local library. What I learned surprised me. Specifically, I was surprised to learn that while Mildred Gillars was officially Axis Sally, several women actually broadcast under the moniker. And Gillars was essentially made to take the fall for all of them: she was tried for treason and sentenced to a decade in prison for her broadcasts - in fact several women used the moniker, most notably Rita Zucca, who broadcast from Rome.

Gillars herself is both a fascinating and pathetic character. A failed showgirl, she appears to have got into the broadcasting business both to curry favor with her (already married) lover and to gain a level of fame that eluded her in Vaudeville and on Broadway. A college dropout, she earned her degree as an elderly woman, and spent much of her post-imprisonment life teaching in a convent. Reading the transcripts of her broadcasts from the distance of 70-plus years, and (as author Richard Lucas correctly points out), after the Vietnam protests and general coarsening of society, it is difficult to see how her deeds rise to the level of treason.

The book itself is fairly dry. Lucas wrote it, as he explains in the preface, upon discovering that no biography existed, and, while this will sound more uncharitable than I intend, it's not difficult to see why. Gillars is just not that terribly interesting. I was most interested in the hypocrisy and double dealing of the U.S. government that Lucas details throughout Gillars' trial, as well as the existence of Zucca. I mean no slight to Lucas, whose writing is clear and concise and research painstaking, but Axis Sally is a book that even the most devout history buffs can likely skip without missing too much.

Three stars for writing; one star for interest.