Over the weekend, I read "The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America" by Steven Johnson.

Basically, it's a book about  Joseph Priestley, the 18th century scientist/pastor/political writer who is credited with discovering oxygen. Priestley was born and lived most of his life in England, moving to the United States in 1794 after a mob angry about his writings burned down his home.

I liked it partly because it reads quickly--I've been working on a suitable descriptor for a book that moves along at a fast pace--and is relatively short, at 215 pages. As a reader, I prefer a fast pace. I know plenty of readers who love a slow-moving long book. They might have felt cheated by this one. I mention that pace because one might expect that a book about a historical figure who was a scientist/pastor/political writer might move along slowly.

That said, Johnson diverges fairly often from Priestley's story to take a broader look at his times, and often also the filter of certain themes from which to consider the 21st century. For instance, Priestley was part of a group of London men who often had coffee together, a group called "The Club of Honest Whigs." They talked into the evening on all sorts of subjects, and with them, Priestley was able to articulate and develop his own points of view. This ability to share ideas, to stay in close communication, to build on each others' work, was new to the times. The broadmindedness of the group certainly played into its role in developing ideas, but that ability to communicate was key. Johnson compares that to what the Internet offers to scientists and thinkers to day--unparalleled access to each others' thoughts.

There's something about this era of "amateur" scientists such as Priestley that so clearly is a thing of the past. Johnson reflects on the impact that leisure time had. Priestley was well-educated, curious, and had time. Others, for example, Thomas Jefferson in the United States, showed similar lifelong avocations of science combined with political pursuits. Johnson laments the way that politicians now leave science to others...and perhaps are proud of their lack of scientific understanding.

Johnson places much more emphasis on Priestley's scientific work than on his religious thinking (he's prominent in the history of the Unitarian church) and political writing, but Johnson certainly sees the breadth of his interests as key to Priestley's success.

From time to time, I wondered if Johnson might be standing on some fairly thin ice when pulling the big ideas from this one life and applying them to our time. And yet there is a compelling sense in which it would be easy to imagine Johnson himself around the coffee table with the Club of Honest Whigs, building one idea on top of another, sometimes getting a little beyond himself.

For that reason, I may not recommend this to serious and well-read students of the science of history. But I will recommend it to my reading friends who enjoy history, who want to ponder the big ideas that connect one time with another, and who may not know enough about this intriguing man.

I'm continuing my reading of "best of the year" titles, this time from Library Journal.

"Silver Sparrow" by Tayari Jones begins with a fabulous first sentence, "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist."

The novel is told by Witherspoon's two daughters, both growing up in Atlanta in the 1980s.

The first section is told by Dana Lynn Yarboro. She is the "outside daughter." Her mother knew from the start that Witherspoon was married to someone else. As she approached Dana's birth, she and Witherspoon went across the state line and married. Dana grows up feeling herself second best, watching her mother work hard to ensure that Witherspoon provide well for Dana, sometimes "surveiling" the other wife and daughter. Dana begins to engineer ways to interact with her half-sister.

The second section is told by Chaurisse Witherspoon, that half-sister who is just four months younger than Dana. Chaurisse grows up not knowing about the other family. In contrast to Dana and her mother, Chaurisse and her mother consider themselves plain. Chaurisse's story begins to include Dana, who Chaurisse describes as a "silver girl," someone who is pretty and presents herself stylishly, someone different from Chaurisse. Inevitably, trouble happens with the two, and the secret family comes into the light.

The third and final short section returns to Dana, as an adult with a baby girl of her own. Chaurisse has "surveiled" her, and they have a brief conversation that reveals that the two are no longer connected. And yet it is clear, they will always be connected.

I enjoyed this as an old-fashioned story, told in a straightforward way. I liked how Jones included much about the working lives of the adults in the story, and her picture of African American middle class culture of the 1980's. She develops these characters well, makes them distinct from each other, even as they all revolve around the one man, James Witherspoon. She explores themes of friendship, family, secrets, and love.

I've noted previously that often I'm impatient in "braided story" novels because I end up finding one person much more compelling than another. In this case, I found both girls equally interesting.

I'll recommend this to people who enjoy novels about regular people reacting to crazy events. It's a perfect book group choice, with so many secrets to explore and people to analyze.

I came across "The Call" by Yannick Murphy in a "best of the year" sort of list. It's a novel about a New England veterinarian whose son is shot while hunting.

It's format was a tad off-putting to me at first. It's told as if in notes regarding the calls that the veterinarians receives. For instance, from page one:

Call: A cow with her dead calf halfborn.
Action: Put on boots and pulled dead calf out while standing in a field full of mud.
Result: Hind legs tore off from dead calf while I pulled. Head, forelegs, and torso are still inside the mother.
Thoughts on Drive Home While Passing Red and Gold Leaves on Maple Trees: Is there a nicer place to live?

Once I got used to the rhythm of the format, I enjoyed the story, and even began to like the distance that this structure provided. The entries are a mix of mundane, emotional, wry, and intense. When the veterinarian's son is shot, the format keeps the action from being overwhelming, somehow. The obsession he develops for learning who shot his son is entirely believable, even as it mixes in to his wry observations about the households and animals he visits. Events turn once again when a young man shows up who is his son, via a sperm donation he made in his college days.

The one quibble I have is that when the son must be in the hospital following the shooting, I felt an inadequate connection to everything medical--all of the decisions, the instruments, the machinery, the weirdness of time in the hospital. His thoughts didn't leave his son often, but I didn't sense the way that a hospital often becomes a family's hearth when a child is in a coma.

Looking back on this story, it strikes me as "old fashioned" in these ways--the veterinarian is someone who wants to be a good man. He loves his family. He works hard. He's a regular guy. The things that happen could happen to anyone. They shake him up. He does a few silly things, but all in all, he behaves in ways that make perfect sense, and that underscore a basic decency about him. His ability always to see something a little differently and often without judgment, to find humor and happy irony, create a distinctive tone. And make a clear contrast with his focus on the shooter.

I'll recommend this to people as a quirky but satisfying read. It probably requires a slightly quirky reader, too, but I predict that once people get accustomed to the rhythm of the language, they will take to the people and the place.

One of my favorite customer service people at the Mail Plus store on South Street called my attention to "Death Comes to Pemberley" by P.D. James a couple of months before it came out in December.

The book is a P.D. James mystery in a Jane Austen setting, a kind of sequel to "Pride and Prejudice." While skeptical that anyone, even the fabulous P.D. James, could do justice to Jane Austen, I was intrigued. Over the holidays I began "Death Comes to Pemberley."

James creates the setting just a few years after Elizabeth Bennett marries Mr. Darcy. As the story opens, Elizabeth's sister Lydia arrives at Pemberley on a dark and stormy night, to announce hysterically that her husband, the notorious Wickham, has been killed in the Pemberley woods.

From there, a classic mystery evolves. P.D. James writes well, and she crafts a mystery just as well. I enjoyed reading this story. I liked the references to "Pride and Prejudice" and even to other Austen novels. But I missed two critical pieces--Austen's light touch, and her focus on the women.

Alas, I'm married to someone who doesn't appreciate Jane Austen's sense of humor. I'll often read aloud from what I consider a hilarious excerpt, and he just doesn't laugh. But really, that humor is all over Austen. It's in her clever conversation and observed gestures. The central act of this book, a death, squelches any chance of the light touch. The sense of appropriate solemnity at Pemberley hangs heavy throughout the story.

Much of the action revolves around Mr. Darcy, a stand-in for Adam Dalgliesh perhaps. I found myself wishing that P.D. James had instead woven the story around Elizabeth.

I don't like what I've written because I wanted to love this book, and hoped to have only good things to say about something written by P.D. James.

I'll still recommend this book to mystery readers, and even to fans of Jane Austen as an interesting accessory. I just won't go overboard in my enthusiasm, and I'll be clear that this is definitely a P.D. James book. And as I should have known from the start, if I want Jane Austen...then I need to read Jane Austen.

I came across this title on a "best of the year" list recently. I loved "House of Sand and Fog" written by Dubus years ago, and I'm always on the lookout for a memoir. "Townie" sounded interesting because of the relationship that Dubus III had with his father, Andre Dubus, the late short story writer.

Dubus III, his two brothers and sisters grew up primarily with their mother, living in blue collar neighborhoods in worn out Massachusetts cities of the 70s and 80s. Early on,  he sensed that he was basically a chicken who allowed others to push him (and his family) around. He hated that about himself. Their neighborhoods saw plenty of violence and crime. His mother worked hard and was away from the house a lot. He and his dad, by then a faculty member at a small college nearby, saw each other on weekends, and sometimes for dinners together during the week.

Eventually, Dubus III became someone who threw punches at others. Much of this book chronicles the various fights in which he engaged. Because of the extensive focus on fighting, I found this to be a book about another world. I've never thrown a punch, and never been punched. I've never been friends with people who did so. The fighting began to seem tiresome. I kept waiting for him to find another way to live. Eventually, he did.

At a certain point, things stabilize. Dubus III decides to be an educated person. He gets to know his father, spends time with him. His mother and her long-term boyfriend remain in his life. Dubus III has an epiphany, an experience where he writes, and it is rewarding in ways he hadn't predicted.

But a certain anger remains about how alone and afraid he was as a child, and how much he missed. A couple of images that I'll keep from this book include one where Dubus III, maybe 12 or so, plays catch with his dad, and his dad is baffled that he doesn't know how to throw a baseball. He never taught his son, and apparently it hadn't occurred to him that he might not know how. Nor did he recognize that his son lived in a place where children weren't engaged in sports. Similarly, when the elder Dubus referred to the Red Sox, his son honestly didn't know what he was talking about.

As an adult, once he established a strong bond with his father, Dubus III tries to find a time and a way to tell his father how awful it was for him, his brothers and sister. A couple of opportunities slip through his fingers, and maybe it isn't as critical as he thought.

What stays is that sense of loss and fear, expressed most often as explosive physical anger.

Dubus III writes well--he conveys what was bad about his upbringing, but he's also a fine observer of the time and place where he grew up. There was room for fun, room for friendship. That he was such a sensitive observer probably explains both the fighting and his talent for writing.

Many readers of literary fiction enjoy the story behind the stories of their favorite authors, and certainly I'll recommend this to people who loved "House of Sand and Fog." I'm having a hard time putting my finger on the other audiences for this book and its themes of anger, transformation, physical violence, courage, and art--somehow that list reminds me of Hemingway. There is a whole sense of adventure here underpinned by intelligence--and that suggests that a wide audience indeed.

"The Tiger's Wife" by Tea Obreht has received plenty of acclaim and applause already.

I finished it between the holidays, and while I enjoyed reading it, I didn't ever feel "book lust" for it. I've been reflecting on that.

The novel has three basic strands. One is of a contemporary doctor, Natalia, living in an unnamed Balkan country. She and a friend travel to another country to treat orphans of the recent war. Natalia's grandfather recently died, and during her trip she explores the somewhat mysterious circumstances of his death. The other two strands are based on stories her grandfather told her, of a deathless man, and of woman who befriended a tiger that escaped the zoo during World War Two.

I know that I tend to become frustrated with stories told in strands. I usually find one strand compelling, while the others seem like distractions. This is how I felt with "The Tiger's Wife." I wanted to stay with Natalia. The other strands began to seem too big, too distracting. I didn't sense the kind of completion that I craved. I kept waiting for the three strands to come together in a compelling way.

I didn't dislike the book, in fact, I liked it. I just didn't find it as wonderful as others have.

What I enjoyed particularly were Obreht's way with words, and many of the images she creates. For instance, when she was a child, Natalia often walked with her grandfather to the zoo, where they spent time watching the tigers. The story opens with a scene where they witness the tiger turning on a zookeeper who has been careless. The contrast between the warm grandfather with Natalia, and the attacking tiger with the zookeeper, stayed with me through the novel. Who IS the tiger?

I'll recommend this to my friends who enjoy literary novels, who enjoy elements of magical realism, or who have an interest in the Balkan countries. I'll also recommend this as a title with immense book club potential.

Over the holiday break, I read "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck. How had I lived so long without reading it?

I enjoyed it immensely, this story of a Chinese farmer in pre-revolutionary China.

The novel opens with the wedding day of Wang Lung. His bride is a slave in a rich household. She is all that a man of his small means can afford. O-Lan turns out to be a faithful and hardworking wife. Her dreams parallel those of Wang Lung, to have sons, to farm successfully, to acquire land and wealth.

The story is told from Wang Lung's view. Although his fortunes rise and fall, he ends up on top, owning vast amounts of land. He has three sons. He takes on a beautiful second wife, a former prostitute.

When his life goes wrong or awry, he realizes that to return to an even keel, he must return to the land.

The novel closes with Wang Lung telling his sons that the land must remain with them...and their conspiratorial glance indicates their other intentions.

Hillary Spurling, in her biography of Pearl Buck, "Pearl Buck in China," points to Buck's profound respect for Chinese people, especially the rural peasants, as the foundation of this book's success. Buck's familiarity with Chinese speech is clear in the rhythm of the words. At the time of the writing, Buck's willingness to talk about sexuality was startling--I barely noticed it.

I was struck by Wang Lung's seeming disregard for O-Lan. Buck does so well with presenting his point of view about her, and about women and girls generally. I wanted to hate him for his point of view, but Buck places him in the context of his time and place. She led me to take a less judgmental view. I see that I got a clearer view through her telling than I would have from my own 21st century viewfinder.

Why does this book remain popular? I have talked to so many people who love this book, who have re-read it many times. I see its appeal in the simplicity of the telling, mixed with the rhythm of the language.

"So many books, so little time." How DO we decide when to go back and pick up a book that we "should" have read long ago? I confess--there are remarkable holes in my reading history. I'd hate to even start a list of what I should have read, but haven't. In this case, I feel a rewarding sense of having filled a gap. I enjoyed the story and I have a better sense of everyday Chinese people before the Revolution. And I appreciate my new familiarity with a book that in so many ways made literary history.

I came across "Pearl Buck in China" by Hilary Spurling listed in the New York Times "100 Notable" of the year for 2010. I confess--I haven't read "The Good Earth." Yet. After reading this biography, I intend to.

Spurling describes the evolution of Buck as a writer, spending ample time during Buck's childhood as the daughter of missionaries in China at the turn of the 20th century, detailing the development of her thinking through her time in college and early return to China, describing the impact of Buck's remarkable success with "The Good Earth" and landing at her final home just before she died in 1973. She tells the story in a readable way, keeping it moving, weaving in important information.

A theme that Spurlling develops here is that because Buck grew up in China, speaking the Chinese of common people and being surrounded by Chinese people, she was able (almost) to think like a Chinese person. That is, even though she was clearly an outsider, she had a sense for how Chinese people thought and reacted. Where other American writers couldn't quite get past their shock over certain behaviors, Buck wasn't shocked herself, and could portray the behaviors in ways that made sense to her audience. She fundamentally respected the people about whom she wrote.

Buck came to disagree vehemently with the approach of the missionary community in China.

Spurling addresses some issues that were very similar to some that arose in the library's recent One Book One Lincoln panel discussion of medical missionary work in Africa and elsewhere. How DO outsiders learn to help? How do they learn to listen? How do they learn to respond in ways that make sense for the culture and situation?

When I reflect on what I will remember about this book, it is really WHO I will remember--Buck's father, Absalom Sydenstricker, an American Presbyterian missionary to China. Spurling's portrait of this man, his isolating persistence and righteous conviction, his seeming disregard for his family, and his ultimate separation from his work, show how Buck's vision was shaped.

I will also remember that Buck chose her own way. She divorced her first husband to marry the second. She found a good place for her disable daughter when often disabled children were simply hidden. She lived fairly lavishly toward the end of her life.

I nearly returned this to the library without finishing it, because it was due. I'm glad that I took the time to finish it out--the final fourth of the book is especially interesting.

I'll recommend this to people who read a lot, who have probably read "The Good Earth." I'll also recommend it to people who are generally interested in China, and in the issues that arise when people of very different cultures come together.

I was looking for a book that was entertaining and fast--"Bossypants" by Tina Fey was perfect on both counts. And really, I just like saying (and writing) "Bossypants."

I haven't watched "Saturday Night LIve" for years, and I don't watch "30 Rock" so I wasn't familiar with many of the people and events that Fey describes here. I know her because of her spot-on portrayals of Sarah Palin. Even so, I found this book interesting and amusing.

Fey tells her story fairly chronologically, including mostly the bits that are funny on their own or funny when she gets her hands on them. She plays fair, in that she laughs at herself plenty. This isn't the place to go for who-what-when-where-why information. This is more a series of stories that might be shared over coffee or wine with a group of friends, stories that create connections whether they happened in Nebraska or New Jersey.

When she does turn a more serious eye on her life story, it's often in situations where sexism arises, or where power is exploited, or when pressure about attractiveness becomes overpowering (or just silly). These observations keep her book from being more than just a romp.

Her rise in Chicago's The Second City improvisation theater led her to submit material to "Saturday Night Live." There she became a writer and appeared on the "Weekend Update" news parody. Her observations about those work environments are interesting partly for their celebrity tidbits. What comes before actually is also plenty of fun--her descriptions of working at the YMCA checkin window when she was just out of college.

Fey doesn't take much of the celebrity life for granted, and so her observations of photo shoots, of being recognized, and of receiving both hate mail, stay fresh. It seems like she just can't keep herself from being funny.

I'll recommend this to plenty of people. In fact, it's taking me a moment to think of which people wouldn't like it. It's clear going in that this is a funny book by a woman who's made it big acting and writing in TV comedy. She hits her stride, and even while inspiring plenty of laughing out loud, reveals enough to show that success didn't come all at once and that she recognizes that it could have gone much differently. But what's funny (and not funny ha-ha) about humor is that some people can't see the humor when someone else is doubling over in laughter. It's not a sure thing. So this could be an adventure in reading for some, and in the interests of tasting from many pots, I'm recommending "Bossypants."

Due to unforeseen events, I ended up on my own for lunch on Tuesday, so I did what many downtown workers do. I found a book on the Bennett Martin Public Library new books display. I chose "American Boy" by Larry Watson because I'd so enjoyed his "Montana 1948" several years ago.

I started it over an Oso Burrito lunch, and was amazed when I'd reached page 40 with burrito remaining. I ditched many evening tasks to keep reading at home. I got up at 4:30 Wednesday morning and finished it off, all the way to the final paragraph on page 246. Thank you, Larry Watson, for writing a fairly short novel.

Matthew Garth narrates this story, which happens in Willow Falls, Minnesota, in 1963. Anyone who grew up in a small town will recognize Watson's sense for the rhythms of small town life.

Matthew's an only child, his father died when he was eight, and his mother waitresses in town. She takes a pretty hands-off approach to parenting. Matthew realizes that as long as he stays out of big trouble, she's okay with it.

He has attached himself to his best friend's family, and been taken in by the Dunbars. Dr. Dunbar has cachet--he's a doctor, he's from out of town, and he's handsome. Matthew looks up to him, and pictures his own future in medicine because of him.

The equilibrium of the Dunbar home gets upset when Louisa Lindahl, a young woman who comes into Dr. Dunbar's care when her boyfriend shoots her on Thanksgiving, moves into the Dunbar home. Matthew becomes obsessed with Louisa, and when he realizes that she doesn't have her eyes on him, his own eyes are opened.

There are several aspects of "American Boy" that remind me of "Montana 1948." They include a narrator looking back on his experience as a rough-edged young man, an experience that includes a degree of isolation, remarkable observational skills of how men behave, and how others, especially women, respond to them. In particular, there's a sense of how men in power use or abuse their situation. There's engagement with physical violence.

Watson tells the story in a chronological straightforward manner. I attribute some of the speed in my reading to his excellent writing--he gets out of the way. And yet he develops characters. He lets the story roll out at a pace that makes sense. He reveals depth in what could have been simply a tawdry story.

I'll recommend this to readers who love fiction, who appreciate stories about America's heartland, and to people who especially enjoy a coming-of-age story. This is a great book group choice--there's plenty to discuss. I look forward to talking this over with others, and so am eager to get the word out about it.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend I finished "In the Garden of Beasts" by Erik Larson, who Lincoln readers may recall as the author of the 2006 One Book One Lincoln selection, "The Devil in the White City."

"In the Garden of Beasts" describes the tenure of William E. Dodd, the United States ambassador to Germany from 1933 through late 1937. These were horribly interesting times, standing so closely by as  the Nazis rose to power.

Dodd wasn't a member of the upper-crust diplomatic corps. He was an academic, a historian with emotional ties to Germany dating to his student days in Leipzig. This made him an outsider among the diplomatic set from the start. He planned to live within his (relatively small) means, and to avoid the excesses in spending that he detested in other diplomats. He wanted to represent the best of the United States.

The truth of the Nazis became more and more clear to Dodd. And here is where Larson has a difficult task--how can he place us as readers in that time, before the horrors of the Nazis were obvious? One of Dodd's tasks was to lean on the German government to pay their debts to the United States. This seems absurdly minor in light of what eventually came of the Nazi government. Larson seems to convey that the expectation was that Dodd would maintain friendly relations with that government, and yet as Dodd became more aware of Nazi intentions, friendly relations seemed impossible.

Larson must stir into this mix the remarkable behavior of Dodd's daughter, Martha. An attractive young woman who was separated from her husband, she carried on many liaisons, including many with members of the Nazi party. The amount of sexual behavior in which she engaged, often within the ambassador's home, was known in many quarters. I don't think I'm the only person who wrongly believes that until the 1960's, Americans were entirely straitlaced sexually. Her behavior seems so out of step with the time. It reminded me of the affairs carried on in wartime London, especially among the Churchill family, described in Lynne Olson's "Citizens of London." The story of Dodd's tenure as ambassador would have been incomplete without including this aspect.

In one sentence, I would describe this book by saying that it's a quick-reading and fascinating view of an incredible time in our history, the rise of the Nazis in Germany.

A one-sentence evaluation would be that Larson focuses his efforts on the energy of the Dodd family's story, and from time to time the story needed to establish broader historical foundation. I sense that he too often left it to me to place pieces of the plot in context. I needed to know more about how other countries were responding to HItler, for instance, to understand Dodd's behavior better. I needed to know more about how an ambassador typically operated. Larson comes awfully close to exploiting the scintillating aspects of Martha Dodd's sexual behavior and the well-known horror of the Nazis--I would have preferred him to teach me a little more. What I found he did well was to draw the characters as fully as possible.

In the end, I learned a lot, and I'll likely seek out additional reading. I agree with many of my reading friends who found this an excellent book, it's just that I'm reserving a little space for wishing that Larson had been a little more scholarly. I will recommend this to people who enjoy history (but maybe not to more serious students of history), to those who like nonfiction, and to the many people with a general interest in the World War Two era.

I finished "Lit" by Mary Karr just over a week ago. I'm nervous when writing about a book more than a few days after finishing it. I'm the kind of reader who tends to forget whole portions of even the books that I enjoy the most. In my defense, I do retain strong mental files of particularly riveting scenes.

This is the third of Mary Karr's memoirs. I was introduced to (and loved) her "The Liar's Club" when it made the ALA Notable Books list in the mid 1990's. I confess that I didn't finish the second, "Cherry."

Karr is a well-regarded poet and professor. But it didn't come easy. "The Liar's Club" tells about her crazy childhood in Texas, with a mother suffering from mental illness and an alcoholic father. But one-sentence summary doesn't begin to convey the richness of language, story and affection that her parents provided. Her storytelling seems always to reflect that intense Southern background, well-chosen words rollicking with energy.

In "Lit" she turns to her own demons of alcoholism and depression. Karr married a fellow writer, the son of a wealthy East Coast family, and when they had a son together, things seemed destined for happiness. Karr finds herself drinking steadily as she cares for her colicky baby, and eventually she sees that she can't just give that up. Quite a bit of the book happens amid the tension of her knowledge of her problem and her unwillingness to give up extreme self-medication. When she does give in, she bolsters her resolve with a turn to religion, to Roman Catholicism.

The scene I'll remember from "Lit" is Karr up in the middle of the night carrying her crying baby, her unfinished drink from earlier in the evening pulling her into the kitchen, where she craves what she'll feel when she swallows what remains. That's not the "madonna and child" that we expect.

Karr addresses the skepticism that she expects many of her writing friends will heap on the 12-step process, and on religion. Early on, she seems almost apologetic that she's finding the language of recovery helpful, even effective. As she continues, she conveys greater comfort there.

I'll certainly recommend this to friends who enjoy memoirs--and Karr continues to be one of the best memoirists around. I'll be interested to hear what friends who've struggled themselves with addiction and mental illness will say about "Lit." But I don't want to convey that this is limited just to narrow segments of readers. Karr excels in memoir. She crafts her story in such a way that it is much more than just her own.

I hit the Readers' Jackpot over the Veterans Day weekend--started and finished a whole book, "The Snowman" by Jo Nesbo, a mystery set in Norway. I enjoyed it immensely.

I picked it up off of our "Books to Go" shelf because I'd heard its title come up in conversation about mysteries to read that might be similar to Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who..." series. Not that I'd ever judge a book by its cover, but this one is eye-catching, a snowman made of torn white paper on a black background.

Its star and detective is Harry Hole, a nonconformist detective in Oslo, an expert on serial killers (of which there have been almost none in Norway). Typical of any mystery, its plot confounds a brief synopsis. As the story progresses, Harry contends with the murders and all of the red herrings and clues therein, the love of his life who is moving on to another man, and a new detective in his department who he's supposed to take under his wing. Throughout, he has a sense that he is being watched, followed, and maybe fooled.

Initially, each murder happens with the first snowfall of the year. The book opens with one such scene. Nesbo carefully introduces each character and places each within the mystery. He weaves in a sexual/medical mystery. Deftly, Nesbo explores social views of sexual behavior within a plot-driven novel. At various points, Hole believes that he knows who "The Snowman" is. Nesbo carefully crafts this plot to hit a few dead ends, and then pick up again. As I've noted previously, I tend not to read mysteries with the intention of solving the crime. In this case, the killer became clear to me.

I will recommend this to mystery readers who are accepting of some pretty forceful violence, sometimes combined with sex--the plot relies on sexual infidelity. The Norwegian setting adds a particular atmosphere, so readers who crave a "dark" setting may find themselves happy with "The Snowman."

Sunday evening I finished "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel, winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize.

My college roommate suggested I read it, well, actually, she sneered me into it, suggesting that a public librarian who hadn't heard of "Wolf Hall" needed to get out more often.

I enjoyed this novel of the life of Thomas Cromwell, the man who arranged so much behind-the-scenes for Henry VIII to marry Anne Boleyn.

The book opens with a harrowing scene of a teenage Thomas, eyes even with the pavement, being beaten nearly senseless by his own father. His flight from his father leads him to France and elsewhere as a soldier and wool merchant. Mantel essentially skips those years, and when Thomas returns, he knows several languages, has developed an uncanny ability to make money, and works closely with the eminent Cardinal Wolsey. After Wolsey's fall, Cromwell attaches to the royal household. His persuasiveness combines with wiliness in the services that he provides to the royal court and to those who surround it. People learn to be afraid of Cromwell.

Cromwell develops a vibrant domestic life, even after the death of his wife and beloved daughters. His taking in of young people and caring for outcasts shows his softer side.

The book ends with the death of Thomas More, several years before Cromwell himself falls out of favor.

I wasn't so sure that I would enjoy a book set in sixteenth century England.I found that it worked best if I could devote a few hours of reading to the early parts of the book while I acquainted myself with the characters. Mantel's ability to tell a story, and especially to reveal the details of speech and manner, set my attachment. She drew the characters into lively people. What seemed unusual in the telling was the lack of a central conflict or threat. There was a natural trajectory in Cromwell's rise from a nobody to a somebody (even without noble blood), but then he seemed to plateau. I wished for some suspense. And this may be the challenge of well-researched historical fiction that is true to its time--the chronology may not result in dramatic effect.

At 500 pages, this book requires some commitment. I see it as a good winter book...one that may require the investment of hours-at-a-time reading sessions. I'll recommend it to Anglophiles, to those who appreciate clever language, and to fans of serious historical fiction.

I can't remember who first recommended "Little Heathens" by Mildred Armstrong Kalish to me. But to that mystery person--thanks!

Right up my alley--a memoir, in this case about growing up in Iowa during the Great Depression.

Kalish begins by recording the big mystery of her childhood--her father was banished from the family when she was five. She never hears from him again. She never learns why he went away.

Yet what I recall of her story isn't a sense of sadness, or of dismay at the conspicuousness of having a divorce in the family. What I recall is that despite their lack of money and the absence of a father, Mildred considered her childhood to be full of interest and energy.

She details food, animals, school, swear words, bathroom behavior, and other aspects of life that were most interesting to children. She conveys the sense that I hear in my own parents' recollections of that time, a sense of one's own efforts being important to the family's economy, and further, a sense that there was no shame in being poor at a time when just about everyone was poor.

I wouldn't say that Kalish romanticizes that time, but she conveys how much she values that she grew up on a farm where day after day something interesting happened and where she learned to work hard. That background served her well when she set out on her own.

Kalish notes that it could be hard to be a child in a home such as her grandparents', where fun took a far back seat to work. She doesn't often seem to feel sorry for herself, but I was deeply struck by this passage that concludes the chapter on town school, "At home I couldn't do anything right; at school I seemed to do everything right. So, school is where I wanted to be."

I've recommended this book to many friends as a quick read that connected with me because Kalish's young life in Iowa was so similar to that of my parents' childhood in Nebraska. I think it would make for a good book group selection because plenty of serious themes arise even in stories of a happy childhood--fairness, whether we are loved, and how we find our place in the world.

The reading world is now my oyster--I've finished up my reading for this year's Notable Books List! And a great list it was.

But now I can read whatever I want--and I chose "The Good Daughter" simply by searching on "memoir" as a keyword in our catalog, and sorting by date for a recent one.

This is Jasmin Darznik's story of her mother's life, and a whole part of that life that was unknown to Jasmin until she came upon a photograph in her mother's belongings, clearly a wedding picture of her  mother (then very young) and a man who was not Jasmin's father.

Jasmin knew that she had come to America from Iran when she was three, with her mother and German father. She grew up an American girl.

Although her mother at first refused to respond to Jasmin's questions, eventually she sent Jasmin a series of cassette tapes telling about her childhood and young womanhood.

This period of time in Iran, the 1950's and 1960's, saw great change and transition. Some families remained very conservative in their expectations of women, insisting on veils and staying mostly at home, while other women wore Western dress and held career jobs. What Darznik does very well is use her mother's story to describe that period of uneasy "progress."

But in the end, it is her mother's story, and I enjoyed it immensely despite her sometimes bleak circumstances. Darznik tells the story well, filling in information where necessary, letting her mother often speak for herself. I came to both love and hate the characters she drew.

I came away with a better sense of the social history of Iran, and with much admiration for her mother, who endured so much, and who continued persevering in America.

I'll recommend this to many of my reading friends--the rewarding story, the interesting setting, and the issues of families generally and families reacting to social upheaval in particular, will gratify many different readers. This would be an excellent choice for a book group, too.

Last week I finished "Matterhorn: a Novel of the Vietnam War" by Karl Marlantes. It was my final fiction title from this year's Notable Books List.

I wasn't looking forward to "Matterhorn." This was party due to its length at just under 600 pages, and partly due to the setting of Marines' combat during the Vietnam War.

I'd checked it out and taken it home once before, and found myself without the time to dig in. This time I gave it my best shot, and eventually I found myself connecting with it.

Lieutenant Waino Mellas arrives in Vietnam with no experience of commanding others, and with plenty of fear for what lies ahead. At first he seems mostly confusion and diffidence, unwilling to ask questions because he's afraid to look stupid, and unsure of his likely courage under fire. Eventually, though, he becomes accustomed to the sights and sounds of war, and begins to see where his own talents can make a difference for the men with whom he eventually bonds.

I was struck over and over by the physical discomfort of the war--jungle rot, hunger and thirst, damp feet, leeches, and that short list doesn't even touch the injuries and death that follow combat engagements.

The parallel story to that of the Marines in action is the politics behind the action--officers far behind the lines making decisions, politics that enter in to placement of troops, and the ability of the field officers to make their case. Another aspect to the politics is the politics of race, with overt hostilities between some white and black Marines.

Eventually, Marlantes led me to care about Mellas and his troops, and to find his situation compelling. Mellas clearly improves as an officer, does better in accepting responsibility, works the system effectively and finds himself no longer isolated from those around him.

The title is a code name referring to a mountain that becomes a base of operation.

Merlantes served in the Marines in Vietnam, and he took years to write this novel. I'll recommend his book to people interested in the social history of war, especially Vietnam. I know that not everyone is willing to devote the time and difficult attention that this novel requires, but I will recommend it to those who recognize good fiction--sound pacing, strong character development, and literary construction of another place and time.

"Matterhorn" teams well with another Notable fiction, "The Lotus Eaters" by Tatjana Soli, which while also set in Vietnam during the war, takes a much different approach. Reading those two within the last month leads me to add the modern classic "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien to my reading list. Each year's Notables List brings some of these lucky combinations of titles related by setting or theme, adding value to my reading of the List.

I'd heard quite a bit about "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" and so was pleased to see it in the nonfiction portion of this year's Notable Books list.

Rebecca Skloot tell the story of Mrs. Lacks, who became immortal when shortly before her death in 1951, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took tissue samples from a tumor on her cervix. Researchers were able to get the cells from that tissue to reproduce phenomenally. The cells, known as HeLa Cells (the first two letters of her first and last names) became a kind of medical commodity, since researchers needed human cells on which to perform all kinds of research. The family didn't know, and were never compensated for them.

Skloot's book is as much about the Lacks family as about the cells. At the time the cells were taken, doctors wouldn't have thought twice about taking cells without permission, and especially wouldn't have given consideration to taking cells from an African American. Lacks entered the hospital through a separate door, drank from a separate fountain, and probably got less care, than white people did.

The Lacks family didn't know about the cells until much later. They received a lot of misinformation, that coupled with their own lack of scientific understanding to interpret what they were told. Much of Skloot's story centers on their attempts to understand what happened. In particular, Lacks's daughter Deborah takes center stage, in middle age when Skloots began the book.

This book meshes well with another Notable nonfiction, "The Warmth of Other Suns" about the Great Migration. Henrietta Lacks ended up in Baltimore because the men of the family found work there, moving north from Clover, Virginia.

Skloot successfully weaves together the scientific information with the story of this family. She creates a strong narrative thread.

I'm recommending this to many readers, those who enjoy a good story, nonfiction readers who especially appreciate a good story that actually happened, and to students of our American culture.

I have a feeling that Lincoln City Libraries will soon own The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli, one of the fiction entries on this year's American Library Association Notable Books list. For now, a person might try Interlibrary Loan to obtain a copy.

In short, "The Lotus Eaters" is the story of Helen Adams, who becomes a war photographer in Vietnam in the 1960's and 1970's. She becomes addicted to the rush of taking pictures in dangerous situations. She falls in love with two men, a grizzled photographer who takes her under his wing, and a Vietnamese man who is his photographic assistant and guardian angel.

It's told in chapters with various locations and years; the location and sometimes the year given at the start of each. The story opens with Helen in Saigon as the country is falling in April of 1975. She encounters a little girl who seems to have become lost from her family. The story gets picked up in various places and times, filling in the story of Helen, her career, her loves, and the war.

This isn't an easy read. As with any book about war, there are difficult scenes. Sometimes Soli's way of moving from place to place and year to year is disconcerting, but I had a sense that that's what she intended.

My complaint about this story is that Soli tends to tell instead of show. The most egregious example of this is her description of a lovely Christmas dinner that is interrupted when Helen's lover arrives just from a battlefield, dirty and bloody, to say that one of their colleagues died that day. He says, "Jack was killed tonight. We were ambushed in a jeep patrol in Gia Dinh." Soli then writes, "The holiday mood destroyed, the host clapped a hand on his back then poured him a drink." Did she need to tell us that the holiday mood was destroyed? I realize that a lot of context must be provided to explain cultural and historical details, but too often I sensed her writing an informational sentence instead of creating a way within the story to convey the information.

This book just won the James Tait Black Prize for fiction, so I have to believe that others found the writing excellent. I did enjoy the characters as Soli developed them. What I came to love about the story was how the country itself became almost a character. I felt myself far away.

I'll recommend this general literary fiction readers and certainly to book groups--its historical context, ambitious female character, and interesting relationships will provide plenty of discussion fodder.

Back in June when I was in New Orleans for the American Library Association Convention, I stopped by Maple Street Book Shop, one of my all-time favorite independent bookstores.

There I picked up "How to Read Literature Like  Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines" by Thomas C. Foster. I was drawn to this because although I read a lot, I recognize that I read on largely a surface level. I wanted reminding of how to pay better attention to symbol and metaphor.

This book was exactly what I wanted. It's a quick walk through how certain things, like spring (the season) or travel, nearly always point to an abstract idea, one that the author might employ straightforwardly, or possibly engage ironically. This book reads quickly, and Foster takes pains to be light and humorous. The book's chapters include, "When in Doubt, It's from Shakespeare...." and "It's More Than Just rain or Snow" and "If It's Square, It's a Sonnet."

I'm quite sure that I learned these things in high school or college English courses, but I badly needed the reminders. Indeed, I have been spending time reflecting on recent fiction I've read, in light of what Professor Foster (of the University of Michigan at Flint) shares. This book enriched my reading.

While our library doesn't own this book, I certainly recommend that if it sounds interesting to you, you may want to explore our Interlibrary Loan service.