March by Geraldine Brooks

I really enjoyed another of Geraldine Brooks' books (People of the Book), and I liked the premise of March, so I had high expectations for this book and wasn't disappointed. This book is about Mr. March, the absent father from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, who enlisted in the Union army, where his idealism runs into the reality of war. The book was engaging and well-written.

The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham

About a young American WWI veteran, who leaves his fiance and a comfortable life / opportunities, etc. and goes to Europe in search of meaning / personal fulfillment. Over the years, he comes in and out of contact with the other characters, whose conventional lives look caricatured. I’ve heard people rave about this book – but I just thought it was ok.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

An entertaining, very well-written fictionalized history of the Sarajevo Haggadah, a 14th century illuminated manuscript, which is on permanent display at the National Museum in Sarajevo. A rare manuscript, interesting characters, mystery, intrigue, history, romance, multiple time lines… what’s not to like? (See also New Yorker article about Dervis Korkut, the museum’s chief librarian, who saved the book from the Nazis.)

The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner

This is the only novel by Stegner that I’d never read. It’s a somewhat autobiographical account of his brutal childhood. His abusive, itinerant father is constantly chasing his latest get-rich-quick scheme, dragging his family behind him and getting more bitter at each failure. His ever-loyal mother always has an excuse for his father’s behavior. And the two sons who hate their father, love their mother, and are just trying to get through their childhood. The writing is very good (though not Stegner’s best), and it’s a book worth reading – but it’s not one of my favorites of Stegner’s.

The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer

One of the better airplane books I’ve read in a while. A young aide is injured during an assassination attempt on the President, and a close friend of the President’s is killed. Eight years later, the aide sees the supposedly dead friend of the President – and then (of course), he has to figure out what’s going on. It’s engaging and entertaining.

Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers

After living in Holland for several years, publishing 4 books, and breaking up with his long-time girlfriend, Powers (the character) returns to the US to be a visiting writer at the midwestern college he’d attended. He gets involved in a project that culminates in an advanced Turing Test. Working with a cognitive neurologist who’s developing a computer neural network, Powers trains this system (named Helen) on the Great Books curriculum that he’d had to study as a grad student. This primary story line is classic Powers – it’s engaging and thought-provoking and very smart.

He simultaneously tells the story of his relationship with the girlfriend he left in Holland, and about a grad student he has a bizarre crush on. These parts of the book were less engaging - though I enjoyed the autobiographical aspects about the writing of his previous books.

As usual, Powers' writing is great. A few of my favorite lines/paragraphs:

What was I supposed to do for the rest of my life? The rest of the afternoon alone seemed unfillable. I went shopping. As always, retail left me with an ice-cream headache. (p32)

Though Taylor, I discovered how a book both mirrored and elicited the mind’s unreal ability to turn inward upon itself. (p141)

It occurred to me: awareness no more permitted its own description than life allowed you a seat at your own funeral. Awareness trapped itself inside itself. The function of consciousness must be in part to dummy up and shape a coherence from all competing, conflicting subsystems that processed experience. By nature, it lied. Any rendition we might make of consciousness would arise from it, and was thus about as reliable as the accused serving as sole witness for the prosecution. (p 218)

I picked up an old microscope at a flea market in Verona…. I showed him where to put his eye. I watched him, thinking, this is how we attach to existence. We look through awareness’s tube and see the swarm at the end of the scope, taking what we come upon there for the full field of sight itself. (p226)

The Hanged Man's Song by John Sandford

I’ve read and enjoyed most of Sandford’s ‘Prey” series, so I bought this to read on the beach in Mexico. This is one of his series with a main character named Kidd, who’s a programmer/hacker. Kidd finds a friend brutally murdered, and his laptop (containing a lot of potentially harmful information about a lot of people) is missing, so (of course) Kidd and his wise-cracking hacker friends have to go after the murderer, find the laptop and revenge their friend’s murder. It contains some fun MacGuyver-like creativity related to hacking and breaking and entering. Overall, it’s entertaining and light… Just right for the beach.

Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov

This book starts: “Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.” The story includes some twists; the characters are great; the writing is very good – though not the amazing writing of later works. You know exactly where the story’s going, but it’s a great read to get there.

Prior Bad Acts by Tami Hoag

After giving up on PG Wodehouse (see reject pile for that story), I was looking for some “good” trash to read, and this paperback was right at the door when I walked into Barnes & Noble. It’s a decent airplane book – gory murder, liberal judge who’s in danger, wise-cracking cops, and even the (completely expected) twist toward the end. It’s a quick, entertaining and completely undemanding read.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

What a wonderful little book! I've read this book twice before - years ago in French and more recently in Spanish. In both cases, it took me forever to read the book and I was so focused on figuring out what each word/sentence meant that I didn't even remember the story. This time I read an English translation (2000, by Richard Howard,) with "restored original art", and I loved it! I'll definitely be re-reading this one periodically. And I immediately pulled a couple of other Saint-Exupery books off my bookshelf to re-read.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I’ve started this book several times over several years, but never actually finished it until now. It’s silly, amusing, funny and sometimes very witty. I enjoyed it. (And now I know where Alta Vista’s Babel Fish got its name. Cool!)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

I finally got around to reading this book that everyone raved about when it was published - and it turned out to be a great start for 2007. Written from the perspective of an autistic 15-yr old, it’s interesting, clever and funny in a very gentle way. Definitely worth reading.

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

Ella Minnow Pea lives on the island of Nollop, named for Nevin Nollop, who came up with the pangram (a sentence containing all letters of the alphabet), “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” As the letters from this sentence fall off a building in the town, the town council decrees that those letters may no longer be used – and they disappear from the book. To regain the use of the full alphabet, the town has to come up with a pangram that’s no longer than 32 letters. It’s a creative, fun read - particularly toward the end, when you’re deciphering letters written without using most of the alphabet.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

I was looking for something quick to read when I saw a copy of Siddhartha on one of my bookshelves. Well, this is one of those books that I quickly realized should be read slowly, so it wasn’t particularly quick - but it was great. Siddhartha goes through several very different phases of seeking in his life, and eventually reaches serenity and enlightenment. Definitely adding Hesse to my list to read more of his.

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg

When, much to everyone’s amazement, Eliza Naumann, the under-achiever in her odd family, wins her school’s spelling bee and then the subsequent state spelling bee, the dynamics of her family change, and the family begins to unravel. There were some parts of the book (particularly in the first half ) where the author spends too much time describing Eliza’s study of words - and the book drags. Not one of my favorite books, but I’m glad I stuck with it.

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers

Powers’ new book (which just won the National Book Award) is about identity and what makes us who we are. A young guy, Mark Schluter, totals his truck on a straight stretch of highway and suffers brain damage resulting in Capgras Syndrome (a real neurological syndrome usually found in schizophrenics), which makes him believe that his sister isn’t really his sister, but is an imposter. His sister contacts an Oliver Sacks-type famous neurologist who gets involved in this unusual case while handling his own identity crisis. And there’s the nurse who seems over-qualified and overly-involved in Mark’s case. And there’s a cryptic note that was mysteriously left at Mark’s bedside while he was in the coma. Many questions, much complexity – but all very well-written and eventually resolved… It’s Powers doing what he does so well. (also see The Gold Bug Variations or on 2004-5 or All Fiction lists.) Check out this interview with Powers in The Believer.

Second Growth by Wallace Stegner

About a rural town in New England - the people who live there, the urbanites who spend their summers there, and the encroaching outside world. Not one of my favorites of Stegner’s, but I enjoyed it and it’s – as always – well-written.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

I bought this book because of the absurd title and the creative layout – each chapter is a class on a syllabus for a Great Works literature course, with the conclusion as the final exam. It’s about a high school senior and her father, a professor – but it gets more complicated than the standard coming-of-age fare. I was immediately impressed with the writing, described by one reviewer as demonstrating a “talent for verbal acrobatics”. This is the author’s first book – published to mostly rave reviews - so I’ll bet there are more to come from her.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Set in the 1950's, the narrator is a 77-year-old small-town pastor, whose health is failing, so he writes an extended letter to his 6-year-old son - about life, faith, and relationships between fathers and sons. The writing is quiet, insightful and often lyrical. After all the hype about this book, I was skeptical, but I really enjoyed it.

Old School by Tobias Wolff

A wonderful coming-of-age novel about a scholarship kid in a New England prep school with a very strong literary tradition. In the writing contest in which the students compete to win a meeting with visiting authors (eg Frost, Ayn Rand), the protagonist is obsessed with winning the opportunity to meet Hemingway – and finds his voice in a way that has long-term repercussions.