Louise Reads: The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

February 15, 2015January 29, 2015 / Louise / Leave a comment

The Rosie Effect is the sequel to 2013’s runaway hit The Rosie Project, author Graeme Simsion’s debut novel (reviewed here). That romantic comedy followed the efforts of Don Tillman, a genetics professor and extremely socially inept, to procure a life partner for himself. The Wife Project ends successfully with Don finding true love with the free-spirited and quirky-in-her-own-way Rosie.

The sequel opens with Don and Rosie starting their married life in New York City. Don is feeling very satisfied with his adjustment to marriage, until he notices orange juice on his breakfast table one morning. “Orange juice was not scheduled for Fridays.” , he muses in the book’s opening sentence, and it’s the beginning of even more changes for Don. Rosie, you see, is pregnant.

A comedy of errors ensues as Don tries to adjust to this unplanned event. His best friend from Australia moves in with Don and Rosie after his wife kicks him out, Don’s endeavors to observe fathers in action end up getting him arrested, and his attempts to take control over the pregnancy have, of course, the opposite effect. As troubles start mounting, Rosie begins to doubt that Don is meant for fatherhood.

This blurb from Simon & Schuster sums it up nicely: “As Don tries to schedule time for pregnancy research, getting Gene and Claudia to reconcile, servicing the industrial refrigeration unit that occupies half his apartment, helping Dave the Baseball Fan save his business, and staying on the right side of Lydia the social worker, he almost misses the biggest problem of all: he might lose Rosie when she needs him the most. ”

I enjoyed The Rosie Effect, though I must admit, not as much as The Rosie Project. Half of the fun in the first story was getting to know Don and his myriad of quirks. The sequel also seemed a bit rushed to me, with almost too many crazy misunderstandings thrown into the plot to keep it lively. I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Dan O’Grady, who was fantastic. A very enjoyable read, even if I didn’t love it as much as the original. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Susan’s Picks from 2014

January 27, 2015January 16, 2015 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

I feel terrible for only squeezing in 27 books this year, a new low for me, but considering I wrote or edited three books in between, I don’t feel so bad. I am an unforgivable nerd, wallowing in science, history, psychology, and biography to the point I read almost no fiction at all anymore. I feel bad when people ask me to recommend something and I have no clue what to offer because the last really good book I read was on the histology of Ebola, or they’re looking for romance recommendations and my idea of a great romance is the novelization of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Here are the best and worst I read this year, not counting a reread of Chris Wooding’s Retribution Falls, which I love so much I gave out ten copies at Christmas:

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The Riddle of the Labyrinth: the Quest to Crack an Ancient Code, by Margalit Fox. Fox covers the work by Michael Ventris, who eventually untangled the mystery of the early Greek/Mycenean Linear B glyphs, but spends much of the book discussing Alice Kober’s work, so much of it uncredited yet without which Ventris would not have succeeded. When Kober – who spent the majority of her life working on the syllabary – dies just a year before the pieces fall into place, you want to cry for her. If you love a good detective novel – this is a true story that shook the history world. (I warned you about the nerdism).

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Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff. An incredible book about the decay of Detroit, a city so far gone America has forgotten it exists, while the people still try to survive in a place without – well, anything. No jobs, no police, no grocery stores, and most recently, no water. Made me incredibly angry to see America left to rot like this.

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W ho Discovered America? by Gavin Menzies. Ever read a book that makes you feel like you woke up on an alien world, that everything you were ever told about history was wrong? This book takes Thor Heyerdahl to a whole new level, pointing out overwhelming scientific evidence that Asian, African, and European peoples were routinely coming to America long before Columbus was born. Utterly fascinating. Even if Menzies is only 10% right, it still changes everything we know about history. Easy to read, and you won’t be able to put it down.

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Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in Northern Korea, by Barbara Demick. This book is so touching and so sad, you cannot help but be moved by people who have so little control over their lives that even their food and clothing is doled out by the government, and if they say you will starve, then you starve, because they will not give you more. People risking death to swim to China, or pay for an underground railroad to South Korea, where they have extreme culture shock that defies the propaganda they have been fed for generations. Hate the leader, but love the people. I love Gavin Menzies, but I think this gets my vote for Best Book of the Year.

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I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey Through the Science of Sound and Language, by Lydia Denworth. Denworth’s youngest son is born profoundly deaf; this is her story not only of trying to decide how to educate him (as a lip-reader, a signer, or hearing w/ a cochlear implant). Interspersed with her journey is the science behind hearing and language, and the history of deafness, and it is utterly fascinating how much hearing and learning are interconnected, and why many deaf people never read beyond a fourth-grade level.

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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John LeCarré. I needed to read a couple of spy novels as research for a book I was writing. Every list I looked at said this was the best. I have no doubt they are right. A spy novel that will keep you guessing until the very end, it makes James Bond look like a pampered fool. Very British, but very, very good.

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Worst book I read this year? There were a couple of stinkers, but I think the worst I read was The Boy Detective: A New York Childhood, by Roger Rosenblatt. I don’t care how many awards he’s gotten. I almost never abandon a book half-way through, but I just couldn’t finish this. It has a boy, and he’s in New York, but the rest is just a single run-on sentence of chapterless rambling. You know how your brain wanders foggy from topic to topic when you’re lying in bed half asleep? That’s this book. I read some clunkers, but I made it to the end of them. This one I couldn’t get past 50 pages. No, thank you.

What did you like/dislike this year?

Linda Reads: The Beekeeper’s Ball by Susan Wiggs

August 19, 2014July 25, 2014 / Linda / Leave a comment

The Beekeeper’s Ball by Susan Wiggs is book two of the Bella Vista Chronicles. Book One, The Apple Orchard was previously reviewed here. It is best to read book one first.

Thirty year old Isabel Johansen is a talented chef who had to suddenly leave culinary school under traumatic circumstances. She returned to her beloved home in Archangel to transform the family estate of a beautiful hacienda, apple orchards, gardens, and beehives to a destination cooking school. It’s a huge undertaking, especially since she is also planning her half-sister Tess’s wedding. But a stranger shows up, and Isabel’s carefully ordered plans are put into jeopardy.

Cormac O’Neill is an award winning, world famous journalist. Unbeknown by Isabel, he’s on his way to Bella Vista to meet Isabel’s grandfather, Magnus, to help write Magnus’ life story – a powerful, moving story of the Danish Resistance during World War II, the two women who shared his life, and the friend who helped him go to America and build his apple orchards.

Ms. Wiggs beautifully weaves the two plot lines – Magnus’s prior life, and the present day struggles of Isabel trying to build her cooking school, plan her sister’s wedding and overcome a painful episode that forced her to quit culinary school. A sweet and understated romance blooms between Isabel and Cormac as they both learn to overcome their painful pasts.

Once again, Ms. Wiggs has written a visually appealing, moving story about love, lost, forgiveness and family. Her incredible descriptions bring you right into the middle of World War II and smoothly transition to the lush, fragrant hills of present day California. This book ends with the promise of an exciting story regarding Isabel and Tess’ father’s untimely death in the next installment of Bella Vista.

Susan Reads: Nothing to Envy

June 14, 2014June 21, 2014 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

Rarely have I come across a book so haunting.

If you Google Earth for North Korea at night, you will see South Korea as brightly lit as a coast of the US. Above it is a great C0044096-Korea_at_night,_satellite_image-SPL big blackness. This is North Korea. It is not black because they block out satellites, or by treaty.

It’s because there is no electricity.

In an entire country.

Author Barbara Dimick’s book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea won the 2010 Samuel Booker prize, with good reason. Dimick has seen the “official” places of North Korea, but moreso spent years tracking down people who managed to escape the deadly iron fist of North Korea and interviewing them extensively. She follows several families, some of them die-hard party loyalists, through their unwavering patriotism, their questioning, their suffering, to their desperate do or die escape.

Dimick traces some of the history, from World War II, when things started to go flaky, through the Korean conflict, when things got really wacky, to the insane tyranny of Kim Jong Il, and now Kim Jong Un. North Korea, until the 1960’s, actually had a better standard of living than South Korea, but began to fall apart in the 70’s. But, unlike Russian Communism, instead of saving itself, North Korea became even more hard-nosed, more dictatorial, more insane. By the 90’s, there were no jobs, no wages, no food, no manufacturing. People began starving to death in great masses, with children so stunted by malnutrition they barely topped 4’7” as adults. Trees died, because people stripped the bark to eat. As many as three million people died, and there were many reports of cannibalism.

Imagine a place where radios and televisions are set by the government to one single official channel. Where the government doles out the very food you are allowed to eat, and the quantity, and the clothes you wear. Where everything is in black and white except the propaganda posters, which are in red, the only color people can look to with cheer. Where every home must display a photo of the dictator, and clean it daily with a special cloth, where the picture can be inspected at any time and you can be sent to the Gulag for disrespect. North Koreans are so isolated, so indoctrinated, so starved, so cowed, that they are not only utterly brainwashed against the outside world, but cannot imagine what the outside world is like. After three generations of this, they’ve never known anything else.

Perhaps the saddest, most poignant moment is when the once-loyal mother makes a desperate swim across the river into China, crawls to the first house she sees, starved, frozen, exhausted, desperate, pushes open the garden gate, and discovers a bowl of meat and rice and vegetables set outside waiting for her, and she is utterly amazed, not having seen meat or even rice in months. Then the family’s dog comes around the corner of the house, and the woman realizes that in China, even dogs eat better than North Koreans.

Read this. Really, read this book. It’s short. It will painlessly explain so much of the insanity, the politics, the danger that is North Korea, and will help you separate the Korean government from the Korean people, who have as much control over their situation as an ant has over an elephant. You will not forget it.

Linda Reads: Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead

May 31, 2014June 5, 2014 / Linda / Leave a comment

After reading a review, I decided to give Astonish Me a try. I was not disappointed! This book takes you into the fascinating world of ballet and into the complicated life of a second string dancer. The chronological way of telling this story was, at first, awkward. But as the book progressed, it made a complex story more interesting. There are several ‘main’ characters, each with their own story to tell. Ms. Shipstead deftly weaves their stories together. While the world of dance is foremost, you don’t have to be a lover of ballet to like this book. This is a story of love, family, marriage, careers and the struggles of life that many can relate to.

Astonish Me is the irresistible story of Joan, a young American dancer who helps a Soviet ballet star, the great Arslan Rusakov, defect in 1975. A flash of fame and a passionate love affair follow, but Joan knows that, onstage and off, she is destined to remain in the background. She will never possess Arslan, and she will never be a prima ballerina. She will rise no higher than the corps, one dancer among many.
After her relationship with Arslan sours, Joan plots to make a new life for herself. She quits ballet, marries a good man, and settles in California with him and their son, Harry. But as the years pass, Joan comes to understand that ballet isn’t finished with her yet, for there is no mistaking that Harry is a prodigy. Through Harry, Joan is pulled back into a world she thought she’d left behind—back into dangerous secrets, and back, inevitably, to Arslan.

Maggie Shipstead

Maggie Shipstead is a novelist and short story writer. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Maggie’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Tin House, The Paris Review Daily, VQR, American Short Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. Her story “La Moretta” was a 2012 National Magazine Award finalist. Her debut novel, “Seating Arrangements,” was a national bestseller and the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the L.A. Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.