Tag Archives: reading

****Go Like Hell

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Ford, Le Mans, auto racing

Legendary Ford GT40 (photo: SamH for English language Wikipedia, Creative Commons license)

By A. J. Baime, read by Jones Allen. Perhaps an overcorrection to the glacial pace of the last book I listened to, Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans, as they waged classic duels of machine and driver in the French countryside.

There’s just enough biography of Henry Ford II (the Deuce) and Enzo Ferrari to understand the motivations of these two rivals, willing to stake their fortunes, their companies’ futures, and (all too often) their drivers’ lives on this grueling competition. The Deuce believed—correctly—that supremacy in the racing circuit would lead to sales of Ford cars. The components that had to be developed to survive the 24-hour race at Le Mans were testaments to product reliability as well as power, and many advances originally developed for racing vehicles—such as independent suspensions, high-performance tires, disc brakes, and push-button starters—have found their way into passenger cars.

For Enzo Ferrari, whose interest in consumer cars was always secondary to racing, the point was being the world’s best and proving it in the world’s most prestigious and dangerous sports car race, Le Mans. If you’re at all familiar with auto racing’s “golden age,” the big names are all here: Carroll Shelby, A. J. Foyt, Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, John Surtees, Ken Miles, Bruce McLaren, and an upstart kid from Nazareth, Pennsylvania, who took the pole position in the Indianapolis 500 the year I saw the race, Mario Andretti. To get an idea of the speeds they achieve, Baime noted that at top speed they complete the 100-yard distance of a football field in one second.

This was a fast, fun read that shifts between Dearborn, Shelby’s racing car development team working for Ford in Southern California, and Ferrari’s workshop in Maranello, Italy. For a Detroit girl like me, whose grandfather, father, and many uncles worked for the Ford Motor Company, it was a thrill a minute! But even for people who don’t get goosebumps when they hear those Formula One engines roar, Baime’s cinematic recreation of the classic Le Mans races of 1965, 66, and 67, with all their frustrations, excitement, and tragedy is a spectacular true story.

Times have changed, and these past battles have faded. But, hope is on the horizon. According to a 5/22/15 Jordan Golson story in Wired, new rules under consideration “could make Formula One exciting again.” Yea to that!

A movie of Go Like Hell, starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, has been “in development” for some time. Meanwhile, there are two classics below.

** Boy, Snow, Bird

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mirror, image

(painting: “Image” by Lou Hedge)

By Helen Oyeyemi—It’s hard to know what to say about this much-praised novel. It has many elements: two narrators, a passel of symbols drawn from fairy tales (mirrors, rats, evil stepmothers—and mothers), various themes, an epistolary section. Yet, somehow, the book doesn’t cohere into a whole. It’s as if we had all the ingredients, but didn’t end up with the cake.

Many key characters are pretending to be something they are not, so that all the readers assumptions must periodically be reexamined, as Truths emerge. They defend their choices to build a life on lies, and lies—or thoughts about them—are another theme. Boy (who is a girl) is talking about her boyfriend Charlie here: “For my part I was always a little disturbed by him because I’d never heard him tell a lie. That was horrifying to me, like living in a house with every door and window wide open all day long.”

For my part too few of those doors and windows were open in this novel, which kept me from understanding key aspects of the characters’ relationships. While a novel that explains everything is pretty boring, this one tipped the balance too far in the other direction. New York Times reviewer Porochista Khakpour called the novel “gloriously unsettling” and Oyeyemi “a writer of rather enchanting horror stories.” Certainly, horrifying circumstances led the characters to adopt their various pretenses, and while their assumption of false identities may have made a kind of sense in the 1930s and 1940s when they made that choice, what is the continuing relevance to the 21st century reader? Or is there any?

A friend recently remarked that a novel should not be analyzed to death, that the point of it isn’t to dissect, but to enjoy it on a visceral, emotional level. I can think of novels that aren’t fully clear (any of Flannery O’Connor’s writing, for example) that are emotionally powerful. For me, this one never quite connected.

***Mortal Prey

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St. Louis arch

(photo: wikipedia.org)

By John Sandford – At a big family celebration last year, I queried my tablemates about the thriller writers they most like to read, and one guest enthusiastically endorsed John Sandford. Since I generally steer clear of Big Type book covers, I was happy to have this recommendation.

In Mortal Prey, Sandford did a strong job establishing the main characters (#13 in a loooooong series)—Lucas Davenport, a Minneapolis deputy police chief, and his primary antagonist, Clara Rinker, a hit-woman Davenport has tangled with previously. Now she’s gunning for some of the lowest lifes in St. Louis, and the FBI wants to stop her. There’s a passel of semi-bumbling FBI agents who’ve apparently spent too much time behind desks. Even more entertaining were the street-smart retired local St. Louis cops Davenport hooks up with. Lots of amusing manly banter.

In a flimsy pretext typical of thrillers that the reader can sail on by, the Minneapolis cop is working out of his jurisdiction and with the feds, which both limits his action and frees him from certain other constraints. Much of the plotting is believable (again, in the thriller context), until near the end, when Sandford abandons the point of view of the sniper, and her actions become increasingly risky to herself and others. Until she becomes a top spinning out of control, she’s a step or two ahead the feebs all the way.

I do wish Sandford had paid more attention to his character names. When Davenport met with agents Mallard and Malone and Mexican police colonel Manuel Martin and the Mejia family, I got kinda lost. No need for that. Thank goodness it wasn’t an audiobook.

Fast-paced, good humor, I’d read another one of these!

*** Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran FoerExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

Thomas Horn as Oskar Schell

By Jonathan Safran Foer, read by Jeff Woodman, Barbara Caruso, and Richard Ferrone – Many people are already familiar with this 2005 book, because of its popularity (despite mixed reviews) and the Tom Hanks movie made from it, and  know the basic plot: nine-year-old Oskar Schell, bereft after the death of his father in the World Trade Center, finds a mysterious key among his father’s possessions and embarks on a one-boy quest to find what the key will unlock. His only clue is the word “Black” on the envelope the key was inside.

Oskar is precocious—an inventor, a scientist, a tambourine-player, a Francophile—and knows so much about so much that the holes in his knowledge gape unfathomably. He’s also full of tics and fears and will pinch himself to make a bruise when something upsets him. Overall, he is an engaging and often funny narrator, getting a bit tiresome only from time to time (this review is of the audio version, so I cannot comment on the circled words, photos, fingerprints, and other marginalia featured in the print version).

Any book about a quest is about what the seeker learns along the way, and Oskar’s brief encounters with the multitudinous New Yorkers surnamed “Black” are well-imagined (especially 103-year-old Mr. A. Black who accompanies him on some of his searches). From them, eventually, he comes to terms with his guilt and grief. Yet the most important understanding he acquires, he finds at home, when he comes to understand there are many ways to respond to the loss of someone you love and not one “right” way.

Parts of the book are told from the point of view of Oskar’s grandmother and his grandfather, his father’s parents. For me, these lengthy flashbacks, told in the form of letters about their past, World War II Dresden, and their difficult relationship with each other, were not as interesting as the present-day story.

Foer has obvious affection for this character, his voice, and his quest to find out how his father really died after the “extremely loud and incredibly close”—and just how loud and how close we don’t find out until near the book’s end—tragedy of 9/11. I cannot help but wonder whether this affinity is related to his own experience, which Foer did not write about until 2010. When he was eight, a summer camp sparkler-making project went awry, and the explosion injured him badly and nearly killed his best friend. Part of that traumatized boy may have become Oskar.

****Dead I Well May Be

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Mexico, alley

(photo: Eneas De Troya, Creative Commons license)

By Adrian McKinty, read by Gerard Doyle. You’ll recognize the title of this 2003 crime novel as a line in that quintessential Irish song, “Danny Boy,” but nothing about this book is cliché. Last year I read and enjoyed my first McKinty, In the Cold, Cold Ground, and this one is equally engaging. Both books were the first in a series, and I’ll hope to read the full sets.

Protagonist Michael Forsythe is very much a bad boy who reluctantly leaves Ireland to settle in New York City during the violent, drug-ridden 1980s. There he joins a gang of Irish thugs and makes the unpardonable error of bedding the gang-leader’s girlfriend. But he’s not merely a violent man, he’s an intelligent and erudite charmer, too, with hilarious and spot-on observations about American life and his fellow criminals. To say that things don’t go well for him here in the U.S. of A. is an understatement, but Michael can think rings around his confederates and he skillfully manipulates and dodges the politics of violence between Irish and Dominican gangs. Only once does he let his guard down and travels to a chancy Mexican rendezvous with his pals, and . . .

McKinty establishes a lively pace and an engaging narrator, who kept my sympathies, even when he does one of those things I really wish he hadn’t. Narrator Gerard Doyle is a genius.

Looking for Something Good to Read?

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reading

(photo: Nico Cavallotto, Creative Commons)

The stack of books I’m excited to read in 2015 is already pretty high, and to make room, sorted the books of 2014—keep, donate, donate, keep, keep. Handling them again and in writing last week’s post on the 11 very best, I couldn’t help thinking how many more really good ones there were! All 22 **** books of the past year.

Mysteries & Thrillers

  • Sandrine’s Case by Thomas H. Cook – originally I gave this 3 stars, but when I couldn’t stop thinking about it, slapped on a fourth
  • The Golden Hour by Todd Moss—believable political thriller, awesome first novel
  • Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin—an always-satisfying outing with Edinburgh’s Inspector John Rebus
  • Mystery Girl by David Gordon—a wacky Hollywood tale with oddball characters and LOL dialog
  • The Cottoncrest Curse by Michael H. Rubin—I met Rubin, so bought his book about late-1800s murders on a Louisiana plantation. So glad I did!
  • Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger—won all the big mystery world prizes in 2013
  • Spycraft by Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton, and Henry Robert Schlesinger—non-fiction, describing the technologies of espionage (and avoiding recent scandals entirely)
  • The Reversal by Michael Connelly—Harry Bosch AND Mickey Haller
  • The Cold, Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty—really makes his Belfast-during-the-Troubles setting work for him

Other Fiction

 Biography, History, Politics

Great Places

  • The White Rock by Hugh Thomson—adventurers still discovering lost Inca outposts
  • The Danube by Nick Thorpe—from the Black Sea to the river’s origins in Germany
  • The New York Nobody Knows by William B. Helmreich—this sociologist walked more than 6000 miles of NYC streets and talked to everybody

 Stephen King

book, imagination

(Cinzia A. Rizzo, flickr.com, CC license)

****Strange Gods: A Mystery

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Lion cubs

(photo: wikimedia.org)

By Annamaria Alfieri – Set in British East Africa in the early 20th century, this evocative mystery describes the colonial way of life, with all its pleasures and strains, its hypocrisy and search for cultural understanding, and the land’s lurking dangers and astonishing beauty. The murder of a white physician by a tribesman’s spear must be solved by a young, inexperienced colonial police officer, who argues (perhaps once too often) for a thorough investigation, in order to demonstrate the fairness of British justice. He’s opposed by the area’s District Commissioner who wants to summarily try and execute the first suspect who comes to light, the local medicine man.

While the sexual mores might be more elastic in that time and place than back home in Britain, the romantic interplay between the police officer and the dead man’s niece cannot escape the push and pull of social inhibitions and desire. Throughout the book the two trade the role of protagonist, augmented by insights from an African tribal lieutenant struggling to bridge the cultural gap.

The book was written with an obvious love for the land and its peoples and the complexity of life there. Not for nothing did Alfieri include an epigram from Isak Dinensen: “Africa, amongst the continents, will teach it to you: that God and the Devil are one.”

Are you as fascinated by Africa’s history and secrets as Alfieri is? Check out this African reading list by Swapna Krishna.

****Don’t Get Mad, Get Even

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Christmas lights

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

By Barb Goffman – These “15 Tales of Revenge and More” are an amusing exploration of the way put-upon individuals’ revenge fantasies, carried out, can deliver juicy justice or go amazingly awry. Though some of the stories—many of which have been award-nominated—are told straight, in most, you can picture the diabolical twinkle in the author’s eye.

The collection offers a chance to reflect on the recent the holiday season, too, as a number of the stories feature the special opportunities for mayhem inherent in Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas traditions—all that tricky family togetherness, all that food and gifts-with-a-message, that white carpet—as as well as tyro reporters with unorthodox ways of getting a story, deathbed confessions, and yard sale treasure.

If you enjoy clever short stories, the lively and refreshing reads in this Goffman’s tales will be right up your alley.

Best Reads of 2014

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2015-01-04 10.28.26This is the season when the lists of “Best Books” published in the previous year sprout like mushrooms after a wet week, and the Wall Street Journal has produced a handy consolidated list in different categories. (Scrolling down that web page I encountered the surprising revelation that Lena Dunham is “friend” of the WSJ.) Other lists take into account that people actually read books in years other than the one in which they are published, and this is one of those. I read and listened to 56 books last year, and here are the 11 very best: Links below are to my full reviews.

The Cowboy and the Cossack by Clair Huffaker – I hope I’ve worn you down sufficiently in my praise of this novel to make you give up and read it for yourself. An adventure tale when life was, if not without complexity, less ambiguous. As refreshing for today’s reader as cool morning air after a sleepless night in a smoke-filled room.

Down by the River by Charles Bowden – this nonfiction book describes the failings of the U.S. War on Drugs and the consequent destruction of Mexican society. In the 12 years since the book was written, the situation has worsened. Bowden died last summer, and my review includes links to remarkable reminiscences about his work and fearless character.

Miracle Boy and Other Stories by Pinckney Benedict – a collection of amazing short stories by an author whom I met recently at a celebration for his former teacher, Joyce Carol Oates. (Got his autograph, too.) Benedict’s viewfinder is just one click away from reality as you see it. Unforgettable.

Pictures at an Exhibition by Sara Houghteling – caught up in Monuments Men fever, I found this novel hit just the right note of adventure story, intellectual interest, and writing style. A bit of a sleeper.

His Excellency George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis – historian Ellis set out to write a readable, not over-long biography of Washington and for the first time succeeded in making him interesting—no, fascinating—to me.

The Fragrant Harbor by Vida Chu – I would read more poetry if it were as satisfying as the work in this slim volume. Poems to revisit and savor.

An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris – a novelization of the Dreyfus case, in which anti-Semitism ran amok in late 19th c. France. I never could keep straight what this case was all about. I’ve got it now.

The Civil War of 1812 by Alan Taylor – having spent so much time in Upper Canada (Ontario), I was captivated by historian Taylor’s descriptions of the motivations and tactics of people on both sides of the St. Lawrence. A much more interesting war than you probably think (!).

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy – To preserve my mental health, I allow myself only one Cormac McCarthy novel per year, given his bleak plots and searing (here’s a case when that word legitimately applies) writing style. Wouldn’t have missed it.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson – Some readers found this novel hard to follow. I listened to it, which can make continuity problems even more difficult, but had no trouble. A contemplation on “how things might have been different,” from the perspective of a hall of mirrors. The author must have cornered her local market in post-it notes.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – OK, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has received mixed reactions, and it’s the only Big Book on this list (Big also in terms of its 775 pages). I’ve read and liked her other books, and I liked this one a lot. Especially Boris. See if you don’t end up speaking with a Russian accent . . .

Off to a great reading start in 2015, with four new book reviews to post soon.

Reading Pathways

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path, forest, jungle

(photo: wikimedia)

After listening to Stephen King’s mind-bending 11/22/63: A Novel, and reading his book of advice for writers (reviewed here), I’m willing—eager, actually—to read more. But my tolerance for the horror genre is limited, and he’s written, a gazillion books, so where do I start?

You may feel the same way about Margaret Atwood, Nick Hornby, James Baldwin, China Miéville, or other notables. The folks at Book Riot see our confusion and want to help. They’ve created “Reading Pathways” for 34 notable authors that introduce the works of great authors in a thoughtful, non-random way.

Their three-book selections are geared to encourage affection for the writers’ best and most accessible works, so that new readers will want to keep going. I tested their method with the Reading Pathway for Charles Dickens, since I have read or listened to every one of his novels at least once. And their advice was pretty good.

But Book Riot doesn’t just cover authors you’ve heard of forever and the musty fusty classics. David Foster Wallace is here, as is Zadie Smith. A little sci-fi and fantasy, too.

A New Year is coming up. Maybe it’s time to follow a new Reading Pathway! Me, I’ll be reading King’s Under the Dome. Does that sound  like the right first step to you?