This listing has generated considerable "feedback" previously, as people have emailed me and commented on the books. At times, they decide to read something based on my brief review comments. That's cool. Glad you like this. The books include both the selections of my wonderful little book club, as well as some that I picked up based on chit-chat and reviews that sounded interesting to me. So here goes, along with the number of rating stars (1-5 with 5 the highest): My Books of 2015:
(NF) Lingo: A Language Spotter's Guide to Europe (5*)
by Gaston Dorren (Alison Edwards, Translator)
What a joyful romp through at least small pieces (history, grammar, inflection (or not), etc) of sixty of the European languages. I love this stuff. Most is terrific reading, and I know more of what makes a PhD linguist now than ever before. It also makes me realize how little I know about languages. I grooved on this book. It got pretty wonky at several parts, but for the most part, it's fun to read and full of information.
(NF) We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We All Will Be Killed with Our Families (4*)
by Philip Gourevitch
Amazing research by the author. The complex history going back nearly 1,000 years, topped off by the deadly toxic impact that European colonial impact and the Christian religion had on the two primary ethnic groups, is hard to comprehend. The U.N and the Clinton presidency come off as blunderers of the first order, along with France. What a hell-hole of humanity in a virtual Garden of Eden on Earth, is Rwanda. This is a difficult read, dealing with one of the most horrible genocidal epochs in modern history. Perhaps a decent and visionary leader has stepped up. Perhaps that task is insurmountable.
(F) Things Fall Apart (The African Triology, #1) (4*)
by Chinua Achebe
What an amazing little book. We are taken from the "primitive," wondrous society of the Ibo people in Nigeria, with their binding social order and customs founded in traditions and the belief in gods of the earth and sky, to the onset of British colonists, with their "civilized" legal system, commerce, and religious missionaries. It's interesting, no that's not strong enough, to see the Western Society as viewed from the perspective of a culture that was semi-ageless and grounded in generations upon generations of a working society. It should leave one with a strong sense of doubt when we talk of imposing our value systems on others. On the other hand, a civilization with modern means of war usually writes the histories. It is eye-opening to see history from other view points.
(F) The Bone Clocks (2*)
by David Mitchell
I'd give this book a "1" rating if there weren't so many individual pages with brilliant writing. However I was not able to follow the characters, and the story jumped around so much that I spent some time working too hard to figure out what was going on. Add the jumps into ridiculous para-normality, and the whole thing ended up being frustrating for me. So frustrating, in fact, that I stopped reading it in the penultimate chapter. It's only the second book that I have started but gave up on in the past four years, the other one being the book about North Korea (The Orphan Master's Son).
(NF) Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster (5*)
by Jon Krakauer
I'm still breathing hard, just to get a gulp of real air, even though I'm in the hills west of Austin at 1,000 feet above sea level. What drama. This book deals brilliantly with a great tragic adventure story, told extremely well, and with the essence of what life is about. I can't recommend it highly enough.
(F) Agincourt (3*)
by Bernard Cornwell
A gripping story, with more than enough gore and man-to-man body ripping and face bashing to last a lifetime. My criticism is the method Cornwell uses of taking Juliet Barker's history and "simply" (that's a ridiculously over simplistic way of stating it) inserting characters who follow the events in the chronological order of the mother book (see the next title below). Certainly Cornwell is at the top of his formulaic game, but it makes it easier, much easier, to have the proverbial "something to say." He says it well, however.
(NF) Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made Britain (4*)
by Juliet Barker
This is brilliant, exhaustively researched history of the finest level. I would have rated it more highly, but the research is so extensive and the history so detailed that it bogs down the story at times. Clearly this is nearly a perfect recounting of history.
(F) Lush Life (3*)
by Richard Price
I had to reread several parts two or three times to re-center myself on who was who. Gritty street lingo. Lots of NYC addresses. Hard to follow for me at times. Features a main character that is impossible to like, at least for the first 98% of the book. The cops come out as smart and able. Not really my cup of tea overall.
(F) The Voyage (4*)
by Murray Bail
Gads. There are almost no paragraphs or sentence stops or quotation marks. Some sentences start with one person talking in Europe and end with another person speaking on a boat in the Red Sea. But once you get the hand of the free-form technique, it is a sensuous and interesting story, with essentially no sex, and all w/in 200 pages. I was in the minority in my book club who liked it.
(NF) A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety (5*)
by Jimmy Carter
What a gift President Carter has left for us, for all humanity. This is an intimate story of a life, written by a fundamentally good man who took the presidency following the brilliant and morally corrupt "reign-I use that word on purpose" of Richard Nixon. Carter never caught a break, but his major decisions will stand the test of time, and I think history will treat him better and better as the future unfolds into the seams of the past.
Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (5*)
by Mary Norris
What a rollicking read. Actually, the misuse of "you and me" are the things that are like grinding fingernails against sandpaper for me.
"I'm sending best wishes from my wife and I." Ugh.
Ms. Norris is a long-time senior editor and copy-editor for The New Yorker, one of the gold standards in publishing, but this book is nothing but a gas (a gassss, gassss, gassss according to the great seer, Mick Jagger) to read. Norris covers lots of no-nos and yes-yesses in a light style, but one that's helpful. I keep her wonderful little book by my writing area.
(NF) H Is for Hawk (3*)
by Helen Macdonald
It's been a while since I read this one, and the story slips back and forth between a tribute to Ms. Macdonald's father and her obsession with a goshawk, which she trains to fly and to hunt. She is an academic who struggles with finding the meaning of relationships and of life in general, in a fairly unusual manner. It's well written, and includes much information about falconry.
(F) Bad Monkey (2*)
by Carl Hiaasen
I probably should rate Bad Monkey higher. It's a classic Carl Hiaasen tale, but frankly it was so outlandish that it sort of ran out of gas with me. The people are so "out there" and the sequences of events are crazy, but certainly entertaining, that is, if you can keep up with the changes and stomach the weirdness. At least, a dwarf didn't drop out of an airplane and kill someone in this one, as happened in his "Skinny Dip."
(F) Lord of the Flies (4*)
by William Golding
I'd never read this classic until this year. It's fairly short and more than fairly soul searching. The story deals with basic human behavior, when a group of boys suddenly find themselves on an island, and then a struggle for power develops along the the most elementary human strengths and weaknesses. I did think the ending was too neat and tidy, and came at the right time, and in too simple a manner for a great novel, but who am I to judge. That's the reason for one less star on the rating.
(F) On Chesil Beach (3*)
by Ian McEwan
As a huge Ian McEwan fan, this one left me at least a little flat. The sexual disappointment described was honest, and perhaps is more frequent than one would imagine. However the story didn't work all that well for me.
(NF) The Shiniest Jewel (5*)
by Marian Henley
A wonderful little book. Read it (graphical novel) in two hours one evening. Loved it as a nice change of pace with a happy ending.
(F) Out There (4*)
by Sarah Stark
Sarah Stark is the daughter of dear family friends, so I approached this book wanting very much to like it, but with some trepidation that I might not. It's an twisting and turning story of a military vet (Middle East wars) back home on his Native American reservation in New Mexico. The plot is somewhat far-fetched as he embarks on a journey (is this formulaic?) to find the man who wrote a book that saved his life, both from a physical and from an emotional standpoint. Does he get there? Does he succeed? Ms. Stark can write, and her story tugs at the heart but with one or two almost too-incredible adventures along the way. All in all, this fiction meets the mark. It was awarded a "Best New Fiction Book of the Year" by one prestigious organization.
(NF) Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (5*)
by Lawrence Wright
Lawrence Wright's brilliant book is a shocker. It's hard to believe that a "self-improvement" program has morphed into a combination financial tax-avoidance scheme along with a mind-control method based on secrets held against people who are "audited." If anyone can read this well-researched book and still consider Scientology anything other than a cult that holds people hostage to secrets and also avoids taxes on real-estate assets, then it would be hard to believe. If you want to understand how the Constitutional protection of "religion" can be abused, this is the book for you.
(NF) The Boys in the Boat (*)
by Daniel James Brown
A great book about an event that I knew nothing about: the Olympic rowing event at the 1939 Munich games. Of course, the "Hitler Olympics" are drama in themselves, but the story begins well before that, and covers an era when college rowing grew crowds larger than football at many schools. The University of Washington team was a gritty group. Many came from hard-scrabble timber towns. The story based largely on one man, and it follows his life from very, very difficult beginnings all the way to a ... no spoiler ending here. The book perhaps could have cut a bit off the early years, which are covered in unforgiving detail. But the read is a good one.
(F) Stoner (4*)
by John Williams
This book seems to be gaining visibility now, nearly fifty years following its publication. It brings the reader into the field of university liberal arts, specifically the area of literature. I found it to be a very powerful read, even though a little slow at times. The protagonist is a good person, taking his life one step at a time, and having to make some very difficult decisions. A friend of mine, who is a retired professor of literature at a very similar university, said the book "really nailed it," with respect to university culture and politics.
(NF) Beasts: What Animals can Teach Us about the Origins of Good and Evil (2*)
by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
A disappointing book for me. The author must feel like no reason for taking the life of an animal exists, and although he makes some strong points, the story seemed to go on and on, and for me the logic got weaker, not stronger, as the argument went on.
(F) The Children Act (*)
by Ian McEwan
What a powerful short novel. McEwan excels at these, and his study of the legal field is on display with this tale of an attractive character in the person of a female judge in the U.K. He brings her to life in a wonderful way, doubts and flaws and strengths in full display. This book is modern fiction at its strongest if you like "real life" drama, with no magic, mystery, or fantasy. The ethical dilemma of religious beliefs up against medical science and human culture is riveting.
(NF) Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David (5*)
by Lawrence Wright
Another first-class non-fiction from Lawrence Wright. This book is so dramatic that it seems bigger than life. The characters, Carter, Sadat, and Begin are described in unforgettable prose and human detail. I can't recommend this book enough. It should be mandatory reading for all high-school students. President Carter took unbelievable chances bringing the two remarkable leaders together. The down-to-the-wire negotiations nearly ended up in failure numerous times, but the agreement has stood firm up to the present in one of the most difficult and tenuous areas of the world.
(NF) The Fall of the Ottomans (5*)
by Eugene Rogan
This book should be a must-read for anyone. It explains the Middle East as of today in terms of the Great War (World War I), in which the Empires of Britain, France, and Russia fought the Empires of Germany, Austria, and the Ottomans (modern Turkey and the entire areas of the Middle East and northern Africa). A bit too-much battle-by-battle detail at times, but overall completely thrilling and captivating.
(NF) All but my Life: A Memoir (5*)
by Gerda Weissmann Klein
My granddaughter recommended this book and I ordered it and was engrossed with it immediately. Could not put it down. It's a short but painful read, and one wonders if any of the characters actually will survive the brutal Nazi occupation and slave labor system. I shudder just a bit even now thinking about the almost impossible battle to live. Most did not. Miss Weissmann nearly did not. By the end of the story, I was fatigued and despondent. The ending is uplifting, but nearly came too late. But it did happen. The human spirit survives somehow.
(NF) The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and Histories Shape our Identities and our Future (4*)
by Christine Kenneally
I read this book, a selection of my men's book club, back in March of 2015. To be honest, I could not recall enough of it to conjure up a fair summary comment here. So I went back and re-read the comments and the many reviews. Wow. This work has gotten so many high-visibility reviews from nearly every one of the finest publications of the land, that it is hard to imagine anyone not having read it. The modern ability to track one's ancestry through DNA is a miraculous development. Ms. Kenneally is a very highly regarded writer and her treatment of the science, along with her personal search for her own family's story, was technically and journalistically first class. I recall it being pretty technical. For some reason, it did not stir the usual spirited discussion in the book club meeting, however. I must have liked the book as I rated it a 4* at the time.
(F) Tomato Red (3*)
by Daniel Woodrell
Being from a small town, I "got" this book, which is about the people we (from the "nice" side of town) used to call "trailer park trash." Now that's a crappy way to paint a lot of people with a very broad, and unfair brush. But as Woodrell writes, in a small town, you are where you live. In this story, the good guys have the power and the have-nots don't. That's the story, and it seems no one is able to break out of their niche. Is that fair? Is it good? Is it American? But the people pretty well get to make decisions, and pretty well have to live with their results. My comments are not all that uplifting, as is the book (not).
(F) All the Light We Cannot See (5*)
by Anthony Doerr
This is a very clever book, both in terms of the story line and the fundamental plot. I thought the opening of the book was one of the very best, a heart-stopping and dramatic scene. The book could not possibly have maintained that tension, but Doerr did a masterful job with the two main characters, and how they inevitably would meet ... and what would happen with that event. The build up of the young man's life as well as the young girls's was well done. My only issue with the book was with the technical errors in the "radio" portion regarding the transmitter used by the girl's grandfather in the coastal town. That part was not possible, but you don't have to suspend reality much at all to be totally engrossed in the building suspense.
(F) The Man from Beijing (4*)
by Henning Mankell
A very clever and twisting tale from a Swedish crime writer. The story begins in a small town, with a grisly murder, and ends up unwinding into a complex story of misunderstandings and revenge for acts of hundred of years before. A time-line of the plot must have taken up several pieces of poster board on Mankell's wall. Well worth the time to follow the bread crumb trail until the heart-stopping finish.
(NF) One Summer: America 1927 (3*)
by Bill Bryson
Bryson's unique style lands us in the year 1927, as Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Al Capone, and others signify the emergence of the out-sized American century. Bill Bryson is a genius at taking actual things and turning them into historic milestones. His prose is perfect, with the humor and outlandishness that make each page a hoot to read. And it was all true. My three-star rating indicated that to me, it was a bit formulaic, but maybe that's what we envious writers say about the Brysons and the Micheners of the world.
