The Books List, Part Nine

20 Books I Would Recommend Reading, 5 Books I Wouldn't, and 50 from my Reading List

As we start to come out of winter, days are getting longer and warmer. Your results may vary, but whether you're reading curled up under a blanket or sitting in the park, it's always time for another Books List post!

My likes/loves: These are books that entertained me, moved me, taught me things, made me think, inspired me, and that I would heartily recommend. They are not ranked – they are merely in the order in which I read them.

I have written reviews for several of these, for which I will include links within the list, if you are interested in getting more of an in-depth (but spoiler-free) look at the books and my impression of them.

1. The Last Days of Dogtown – Anita Diamant

2. 3^rd Degree – James Patterson and Andrew Gross

3. Step on a Crack – James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

4. Rape: A Love Story – Joyce Carol Oates

5. Uncollected Stories – Kate Chopin

6. You've Been Warned – James Patterson and Howard Roughan

7. Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather

8. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Green Living – Trish Riley

9. The Worst Thing I've Done – Ursula Hegi

10. The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene

11. A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson

12. Duma Key – Stephen King

    Here's my review of Duma Key: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-duma-key-by-stephen-king.html

13. The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova

    Here's my review of The Historian: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-historian-by-elizabeth-kostova.html

14. Dali – Paul Moorhouse

15. Prodigal Summer – Barbara Kingsolver

    Here's my review of Prodigal Summer: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-prodigal-summer-by-barbara.html

16. Dexter in the Dark – Jeff Lindsay

    Here's my review of Dexter in the Dark: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/01/review-of-dexter-in-dark-by-jeff-lindsay.html

17. Almost Green: How I Saved 1/6^th of a Biliionth of the Planet – James Glave

    Here's my review of Almost Green: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2016/04/review-of-almost-green-how-i-saved-16th.html

18. Unless – Carol Shields

    Here's my review of Unless: https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-unless-novel-by-carol-shields.html

19. Seven Wild Sisters – Charles de Lint

20. Promises to Keep – Charles de Lint

My meh/yuck list: Did not find these appealing for any number of reasons – some were boring; some had an interesting subject but did not do it justice; some were flat-out terrible. All simply left me cold in some way. Although I am likely to read multiple books by authors I like (you will see a lot of Dean Koontz, Jonathan Kellerman, Margaret Atwood, Charles de Lint and Toni Morrison), I do not excuse those authors when they write a book I didn't like, so they might just show up here, as well.

1. A Night in Acadie – Kate Chopin

2. A Lost Lady – Willa Cather

3. The Awakening – Kate Chopin

4. The Professor's House – Willa Cather

5. Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad

My Reading List: these are books I haven't read yet, so I don't have a reaction for you. However, I could semi-recommend them, based on the reasons they made it onto my list:

1. They were on one of those “100 Greatest Books” lists;

2. They are other books written by authors I really enjoy; or

3. I read a review, and it sounded like something I'd like.

#1 can be a bit hit-or-miss; #2 is almost (but not always) foolproof for me (but maybe not for you), and #3 usually works out pretty well, as it's a combination of the first two. As always, your results may vary, but consider them suggestions. These may tend to come in chunks of stuff by author (apologies).

1. Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes

2. Ada – Vladimir Nabokov

3. Adam Bede – George Eliot

4. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson

5. Aesop's Fables – Aesopus

6. After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvia T. Warner

7. After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC - Steven Mithen

8. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami

9. Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans

10. Agnes Grey – Anne Bronte

11. Aithiopika – Heliodorus

12. Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson

13. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood

14. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

15. All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani

16. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Remarque

17. All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom

18. Amateurs – Donald Barthelme

19. Amelia – Henry Fielding

20. American Gods – Neil Gaiman

21. Amerika – Franz Kafka

22. Amok – Stefan Zweig

23. Amongst Women – John McGahern

24. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan

25. An Anthropologist on Mars – Oliver Sacks

26. An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro

27. An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma

28. Anagrams – Lorrie Moore

29. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

30. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City – Nick Flynn

31. Another World – Pat Barker

32. Anthem – Ayn Rand

33. Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley

34. Arcadia – Jim Crace

35. Arcanum 17 – Andre Breton

36. Ariel – Lawrence Block

37. Around the World in 80 Days – Jules Verne

38. Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe

39. As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakulic

40. Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

41. At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O'Neill

42. August is a Wicked Month – Edna O'Brien

43. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald

44. Auto-Da-Fe – Elias Canett

45. Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

46. Back – Henry Green

47. Battlefield Earth – L. Ron Hubbard

48. Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant

49. Belle de Seigneur – Albert Cohen

50. Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace

That's all for now; hope you find these lists useful as you think about things you might like to read. 

In case you missed any, here are the other books lists:

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-books-list-part-one.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-books-list-part-two.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-three.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-books-list-part-four.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-books-list-part-five.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-books-list-part-six.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-books-list-part-seven.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-books-list-part-eight.html

Image from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/green-plant-on-white-ceramic-pot-4153146/

Review of Duma Key by Stephen King

 

Stephen King is one of the most prolific and successful writers in history. He has penned classics like The Stand and has had some not-so-great moments, as well (more on that later), but Duma Key is a great standalone book. This scary tale of suspense is narrated by its protagonist, Edgar Freemantle, a man who became successful and wealthy in the building trade, but whose career was cut short by a terrible jobsite accident that took one of his arms, severely damaged a leg and his vision, and, perhaps worst of all, rattled his brain enough to cause lapses in his memory and language skills and left him dealing with sudden bursts of rage.

Steeped in an agonizing stew of anger, frustration and despair, suffering constant torment from his physical wounds, and dealing with the impending divorce from his wife of 25 years, Edgar embraces a plan of suicide. Fortunately, this idea is headed off by Kamen, his therapist, who suggests a change of scenery. This results in Edgar's trading the impending winter cold of Minnesota for the tropical sunsets of Duma Key, Florida, where he ends up in a large pink house that hangs out over the water and seems to extend a special welcome to him.

From the very first day in "Big Pink", Edgar starts to make noticeable progress toward recovery. He finds his pain and stiffness diminishing, and he begins to practice walking on the beach without his cane, going farther every day. His also previously-undeveloped artistic talent emerges in a big way, so much so that in a few months, he has a studio full of drawings and paintings that leave people awestruck, as well as a little spooked. He develops close friendships with his young assistant, Jack Cantori, and with the only year-round residents of the Key, a man named Wireman and his employer, the gracious yet mysterious Elizabeth Eastlake, who also know a thing or two about trauma, both physical and mental. Buoyed by these relationships and by supportive emails from his adoring daughter, Ilse, and riding a powerful creative high as his artistic talent "unbottles", Edgar is happier on Duma than he thought he ever could be, but then things start to get creepy...

Don't they always? What's the point of a Stephen King book if they don't, right?

King had had several missteps, in my opinion, in the period of time prior to this work -- the abysmal Lisey's Story and the last two books in the Gunslinger series come immediately to mind -- but Duma Key is a good return to form; it kept me turning pages (and there are 609 of them) with a minimum of exasperated snorts--and even some actual eek! moments.

He still sticks somewhat to his formula: Domestic animals, for example, are not safe around Stephen King; he murders yet another beloved pet in this story. It happens early on and is dispensed with fairly quickly, but it is not really necessary to drive the plot forward, and I'm thinking Mr. King could do us all a favor and keep his animal issues to himself. It was understandable in Pet Sematary, but not since. (Eh-hem. Sorry, soapboxing a bit, there.) The other thing the author does with consistency is kill off main characters of whom you've grown fond, and, as if to add insult to injury, usually tells you about it in advance. Unlike the animal cruelty, however, I can live with this as a trademark of his style that I might miss, even though it has made me swear aloud more than once.

Also true to King's style, though, are fully-developed characters, with individual personalities and interesting histories, who do completely understandable things and make completely plausible observations. It is this firm grounding in reality that allows you to hang on when the creepy winds start a-blowin', and to suspend your disbelief when they get to gale-force. I'm especially impressed by King's ability to pace the reader through a very long book by keeping it interesting the whole time. As with any particularly engaging yarn, the length of the book is a treat, not a burden, because the journey's as much fun as the destination -- maybe more so.

I don't know if "fun" is the right word for the delicious terror of a well-written Stephen King book, but Duma Key is "shivery good"!

Another scary page-turner you might like: 
https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-historian-by-elizabeth-kostova.html

Review of The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

 

I just finished reading Elizabeth Kostova's supernatural thriller, The Historian, and I'm like, whoa. Okay, that is possibly the most un-erudite thing you've ever read in a book review, but it's my immediate and visceral reaction. I will try to be more precise forthwith:

The Historian is the tale of our narrator, who when she is sixteen years old finds a curious book and a packet of letters in her father's study. When she questions him about it, he is extremely reluctant to discuss it. However, as she accompanies him on his travels around Europe as a cold-war-era diplomat, she slowly begins to draw a tale from him that seems unbelievable, at first, yet it is supported by the letters, written by his former doctoral advisor, Professor Bartholomew Rossi. Professor Rossi disappeared under mysterious and terrifying circumstances immediately after passing the letters to his advisee, the narrator's father.

As she gets more pieces of the puzzle over the course of a couple of years, our intrepid narrator begins to do her own research into the supernatural historical mystery that caused her father the loss of his cherished friend, Rossi, and possibly the loss as well of her own mother, who died when the narrator was an infant--also under mysterious circumstances that her father will not discuss. She continues to chase clues until her father also disappears abruptly, leaving her in a race against time to find him and to find out what happened to her mother before all is lost to a predator who seems to be stalking them as readily as they stalk him.

This book succeeds in the unlikely task of making historical research, cold war politics and European history fascinating by interweaving it with a scary, thrilling chase that is paced so well, the reader is lead almost breathlessly through the entire six hundred-plus pages to the amazing denouement and skin-crawling epilogue. We follow three successive generations of historians (Professor Rossi, the narrator's parents, and the narrator herself) as they each contribute piece after piece of the mysterious puzzle, following a trail that leads from Amsterdam and France to Romania and Istanbul and through Soviet-controlled Hungary and Bulgaria. In every new location, we learn more about the history of the area, from medieval times through the '30s, '50s and '70s of the 20th century. Everything from the Ottoman Empire to the library systems of various universities and monasteries is explored in the most fascinating way.

One of the minor mysteries of the book is the question of to whom the title refers. Is the Historian Rossi, a highly celebrated and much-published professor in the History department at Oxford, and the originator of the supernatural investigation? Or is it Paul, the narrator's father, who was a doctoral student in that same department until ending up as a diplomat, after the loss of his wife cut short his own search? Is the Historian the narrator, who joins the search, and is, after all, the main character? Or could it be one of the many professors, archivists and librarians who help our investigators along the way, sometimes to their own fatal outcomes? Near the end of the book, the identity of the Historian is revealed, and I guarantee it will make you shiver to your very bones. I highly recommend Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian , an excellent, scary read that will take you along for the white-knuckle ride!

Here are reviews for some more creepy/mysterious books you might enjoy:

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-unless-novel-by-carol-shields.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-duma-key-by-stephen-king.html

Review of Unless: A Novel by Carol Shields

Unless: A Novel (HarperCollins, 2002) is the story of Reta Winters, a 44-year-old writer living in Orangetown, Canada, a suburb of Toronto. Reta has all the trappings of an idyllic life: a respectable career; Tom, her partner of 26 years; their three smart, kind teenaged daughters; and a rambling old farmhouse that Reta loves.

However, Reta is struggling with the unexpected loss of her eldest daughter, Norah, not to death, but to an existence completely separate from her family and from the life she so happily lived before: Norah has suddenly and inexplicably dropped out of school and seemingly from life in general, choosing to sit on a street corner in Toronto with a handmade sign hanging around her neck that says one word: goodness. She subsists on handouts from passersby, and any attempts by Reta or her family and friends to talk to Norah or to persuade her to come home are met with silence. They can only leave things for her, knowing that she will give away most of what is given her to other street people.

We are shown a slice of Reta's life as she copes with this heartbreaking situation, surprisingly with a lot of humor. We are introduced to Reta's family and friends, her fellow female writers, her relationships with them and to the world of writing, from passive-aggressive interviewers to sycophantic-yet-overbearing editors, and there is an ongoing theme of a woman's place in the world of writing, as well as the world in general. Reta writes scathingly funny, yet poignant, letters to assorted individuals as a kind of exercise to try to figure out why her daughter "dropped out" of life. Did she withdraw out of a sense of powerlessness, putting herself in such a position of vulnerability and passivity as a way to "claim" that absence of power? Everyone seems to have a theory, but nobody can get Norah to explain her decisions.

Reta spends her days working on a novel of light-hearted, romantic fluff, which serves to distract her, although she begins to see her characters more deeply than, perhaps, she should, as she views them through the focusing lens of the balance of power in male-female relationships. She is drawn sympathetically to the female lead, while the male character becomes ever more bothersome to her. This coincides rather hilariously with her brand new editor's desire to make an artistic statement out of the book, which is intended to be a sequel to a prior light comedy, and to make the annoying, selfish male character practically the sole focus. Those of us who have had editors say they absolutely adore our manuscript before requesting that we change, oh, everything, can sympathize.

I found this book a very absorbing read. Shields has a great way with language, especially dialogue, and she knows when to lighten things up in a realistic way when the subject matter threatens to get ponderous. Reta's letters are interspersed throughout as a kind of food-for-thought snack break, and they are highly entertaining. Shields offers Norah's situation as a storyline to fascinate us with its abnormality, yet folds it into the larger text of relationships and anxiety about one's place in society, to which we can all relate. I would recommend this novel, and I am looking forward to reading other work by Shields, as well.

Here are some reviews for other books you might like: 

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-prodigal-summer-by-barbara.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-james-pattersons-quickie.html

Review of Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Prodigal Summer is the second book I have read by much-lauded author Barbara Kingsolver. The first was The Poisonwood Bible, a novel about the tribulations of an American missionary family in the Belgian Congo, which was a runaway best-seller, and which I would highly recommend. I would also recommend Prodigal Summer (2000, Harper Collins) for many of the same reasons, the main one being authenticity. Kingsolver must have had to do copious research to write The Poisonwood Bible, which not only captures the mood of a remote African village, its daily operations and its attitude towards the white family (as well as the family's attitudes, which varied wildly from member to member), but also the historical data surrounding Patrice Lumumba's failed bid to throw off the yoke of colonial oppression. Even though the storyline predates me and I am no Central African scholar, everything rings true.

In Prodigal Summer , the authenticity is closer to home: The story is set in the Appalachian mountain region of Virginia, where Barbara Kingsolver and her husband have a farm in real life. Although only one of her characters is an actual biologist (the author has a graduate degree in biology and co-writes natural history articles with her husband, Steven Hopp), all of the main characters have some connection to the land and its creatures: Deanna, the forest ranger who enjoys her solitary life maintaining trails and recording wildlife activity on Zebulon Mountain until some unexpected visitors (one of whom is human) throw her into a torrent of doubt and longing; Garnett, an elderly widower obsessed with propagating a blight-resistant chestnut tree and also a tad obsessed with his next-door-neighbor, a sweet but straight-talking apple grower who has vastly differing ideas from Garnett's on many things, from evolution to pesticide use; and Lusa, a city-girl biologist who finds herself plunked down on her new husband's farm, communing with the moths that are much easier to deal with than her gossiping, scornful in-laws.

At first, each one of these stories is told in apparent isolation, despite their common geography. And yet, like a spreading honeysuckle vine, tendrils of each plotline begin to creep together, eventually encircling and intertwining the narratives of the characters and their relationships to one another. I find this tying-together process delightful: each instance of reference to one story from within another is like a cool inside joke that the reader becomes privy to: "Oho, so that's who she was talking about!" It's like a reward for paying attention, which is no problem with this well-paced book.

Another thing that Barbara Kingsolver can do profoundly well is get inside her characters' heads. In The Poisonwood Bible, each chapter was related by alternating characters--the four daughters and the wife of the missionary preacher--and it was quite clear that each character had her own very specific personality and point of view. In Prodigal Summer, the three tales are told not in first person but nonetheless squarely from the point of view of each main character, whose storylines even have their own titles (a device that makes it easy to sort out which story you are reading, but also sets a theme for each one): Deanna's is called "Predators", Garnett's is "Old Chestnuts", and Lusa's is "Moth Love". As you read, these titles take on different shades of meaning: Are old folks Garnett and his neighbor the "Old Chestnuts", or does that refer to the once-mighty tree, now felled by blight, that used to be Garnett's family's fortune? Or is it a reference to things you've heard over and over, that may or may not be true? This adds even more depth to your experience of the novel.

One point to make: even though Kingsolver writes convincingly from the point of view of an older man in Garnett's story, this novel may be perceived as a "chick book" because it is primarily about relationships. However, it's not just about male/female and family relationships, but also about our relationship with the land-its natural checks and balances, predators and prey, and how humans can interact well or poorly with it-and with nature in general, including human nature. There is much to be learned in this book, from why you should add a dash of vinegar when canning cherries to why moths fly in spirals, and how to care for one another in the face of grief and loss.

Valuable life lessons, all.

Here are some reviews for other books you might like: 

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-unless-novel-by-carol-shields.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-james-pattersons-quickie.html

Review of James Patterson's The Quickie

 

In James Patterson's book The Quickie , written with Michael Ledwidge, we meet Lauren Stilwell, whose marriage is quietly disintegrating. Her husband works long hours, travels, and seems permanently welded to his cell phone. Her demanding job only widens the gulf developing between them.

After Lauren spots her husband entering a hotel on his lunch hour with an attractive woman, which he later lies about, she becomes miserable enough to have a one-night fling with a charming coworker, with disastrous results.

The murder of a police officer sets off a desperate race between those investigating the crime and those scrambling to cover it up, and Lauren is caught in a frantic web of lies and intrigue. Shock piles upon shock as she discovers neither of the men in her life was what he appeared to be.

This book is an excellent thrill ride from start to finish. An amazing assortment of twists and turns will keep you breathlessly turning pages into the wee hours. Patterson, who is well-known for his series of books featuring Alex Cross, a tough D.C. homicide detective, handles his female protagonist's point of view very realistically, and the collaboration with Ledwidge is quite seamless; there's never a jumbled-together feeling, as with some partner-written stories.

I was happy to find that there two other collaborative books by Patterson and Ledwidge, Step on a Crack and The Dangerous Days of Daniel X, which I am happily looking forward to reading.

Thanks for reading! Here are some more book reviews to check out: 

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/01/review-of-dexter-in-dark-by-jeff-lindsay.html

https://bucketofuseful.blogspot.com/2022/02/review-of-prodigal-summer-by-barbara.html