Book Review: I Don't Want to Kill You by Dan Wells (Whitney Finalist)

Title: I Don't Want to Kill You
Author: Dan Wells
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Personal copy, purchased with the intent to read it last year
Books I've read this year: 57

I'm coming into the home stretch with the Whitney books. I'd planned to read I Don't Want to Kill You as my last book, sort of a reward for finishing the whole thing, and while a library hold that took more than two months thwarted that plan, it was incredibly satisfying to (almost) finish out the Whitneys by finishing out the story of John Cleaver. The first year I read the Whitney finalists was the year I am Not a Serial Killer was a finalist, and that book made a huge impression on me. For the most part, it was a fantastic book-- albeit a little more gory than I was expecting and a lot more supernatural than I was anticipating until the end. Mr. Monster was also a rewarding read, although it was definitely the middle book of a trilogy, and those poor middle books always have issues just by nature of their place in things. But I Don't Want to Kill You is Dan Wells at his finest-- he hit his stride with this one. We know John Wayne Cleaver, and love him despite his sociopathic tendencies, we understand the world he inhabits, and we know that no matter what else we see in the novel, Cleaver's small North Dakota town will see lots and lots of deaths.

For a guy who doesn't understand girls and has the unfortunate habit of fantasizing about seeing them dead on his embalming table (he and his mom run the town mortuary), John certainly gets a lot of action in I Don't Want to Kill You, where he tries to track a serial killer, beckons the demon he spoke with to come find him, and has to cope with the fact that a rash of suicides has erupted among his high school peers. He's also juggling a new, hot girlfriend while holding out a torch for Brooke, who got tortured alongside him in Mr. Monster and is now keeping her distance. One of the most consistent parts of the John Cleaver stories thus far has been the way his family (his aunt, his sister, and particularly his mother) work together to prevent John from giving into his tendencies (he doesn't want to become Dexter, if he can help it), and the aunt and sister are largely absent from I Don't Want to Kill You. However, John's mother's role is as supportive as ever, and she plays a large part in the surprising (but if you look at the arc of the three stories it seems inevitable) conclusion. A thoroughly rewarding finish to the Awards readings.

Book Review: Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs #9)

Title: Elegy for Eddie
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: I've read all of them!
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 55

Over the nine books in the Maisie Dobbs series, there are times when I want to cheer Maisie on (she can make such big breakthroughs!) and times when I want to shake her and tell her to get over herself (she can be so dense sometimes!). In most of this book, I felt like shaking Maisie, but towards the end, I think I may have started to cheer for her a little bit.


In Elegy for Eddie, Maisie has to figure out if a suspicious death (which turns into a series of suspicious deaths) in a printing establishment in her old stomping grounds on the east end is a murder or just an accident. Along the way, Maisie gains some insight into the large conflicts on the horizon (the novel takes place in 1933, and instead of hearkening back to WWI, like most of her the previous novels in the series, this one is definitely setting up for the conflicts of WWII).

The story of Eddie is almost incidental to Maisie's navel gazing in this novel. The mysteries often mirror the psychological drama Maisie endures, and I guess that's true in this story, since Maisie discovers that both she and Eddie (the dead guy, who had developmental delays) "walked a narrow path" in life, meaning that they are uncomfortable with change. Maisie also comes to realize that she can't fix everything that goes wrong in other people's lives just because she has the money to do it, which I think is an important lesson for her, because she spent so much of the last book micromanaging everyone with her newfound wealth. 

I'm always curious about the degree that the author's worldview influences characters. For example, I married young and have had a very fulfilling family life, so my life experience has taught me that marriage and family are desirable objectives. It seemed in previous novels that Winspear might be steering Maisie toward marriage and family before her biological clock (which never ticks audibly) would run out. But in this novel, James is such a ninny-- he was so sweet in the previous books, and while I'm all for real, complicated love with real, complicated people, it seems apparent that Winspear doesn't seem to be steering Maisie and James down the path of marriage and kids sliding down the banisters at the Dower House. I wonder how much of this is Winspear's own life experience-- does she think that it would be inconceivable for a woman to balance a fulfilling career and a family in the 1930s? If anyone could do it, Maisie could, it just seems that she might not want to.

Book Review: Not my Type by Melanie Jacobson (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Not My Type
Author: Melanie Jacobson
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Electronic copy
Books I've read this year: 49

When I finished reading Borrowed Light, the first book I picked up in the Whitney Romance category, I was convinced it had the category sewn up. I thought it might be a contender for my favorite novel of the year, not just my favorite romance. So I'll admit that I approached the other books in the category with the bar set high-- I needed them to wow me in order to even put them in the running.

And with Not My Type Melanie Jacobson did wow me. With great, rounded characters, tight writing, humor, an interesting storyline, and just the right amount of social commentary about life on the Wasatch Front, Jacobson delivers so much more than just a romance novel. In fact, this is a book that I might have overlooked as a casual reader because of its category-- it feels less like a romance novel than just a strong contemporary novel about a girl trying to find her way in life.

After graduating from BYU and breaking things off with her rising pop-star fiance (it sounds cheesy, but it works), Pepper finds herself frustrated by her job making sandwiches (to pay off her credit card bill for the wedding) and the fact that she's sharing a room with her little sister. Her dad, a family therapist, intervenes after Pepper showers her sister with birthday cake, and encourages her to set some goals and find gratitude for the things she has. These goals help her to get her life back on track socially and professionally, and eventually she finds love (and a lot of bad dates along the way).

Book Review: With a Name Like Love by Tess Hilmo (Whitney Finalist)

Title: With a Name Like Love
Author: Tess Hilmo
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 46

I really liked With a Name Like Love, the story of the daughter of an itinerant preacher, whose family lands in a small Southern town, and who soon finds herself trying to save a young boy and his mother from a murder rap. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot to say about it in this review. I read it in China, in truth, I read most of it sitting on the bathroom floor in China while praying that my girls would stay asleep in the other room, so it's understandably a little bit of a blur in my mind. But I do remember great writing. This story is quite different from the others in the Youth Fiction General category because the rest of the stories are contemporary tales, and all of the other four have some element of romance in them (yes, it's a stretch to call Miles from Ordinary a romance, but I'm doing it anyway). This story, on the other hand, almost feels like it's for a younger audience (despite the fact that Ollie is fourteen). In fact, the place it occupies in the YFG category feels a lot like the Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George occupies in the Youth Fiction Speculative category. It's a quiet book, it doesn't try to hit you over the head with snappy dialogue or funny events. It meanders; it's earnest. It's also the book I'd most want my daughter to read.

Book Review: The Lightning Tree by Sarah Dunster

Title: The Lightning Tree
Author: Sarah Dunster
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: I read the first chapter of The Lightning Tree when we were judging Segullah's short story contest last year (it won!) and Dunster contacted me when the book was finished to see if I'd read it.
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 41

I'm writing this review as part of the blog tour kickoff for The Lightning Tree. Around this time last year, those of us at Segullah were deep in reading mode, working our way through entries for our short story contest. There were lots of interesting entries, but one story really stood out-- it was the story of a girl living in Provo in the mid-1800s whose only friend, a stepdaughter of Brigham Young, was suddenly leaving town. This girl, Maggie, wanted to say goodbye to her friend and didn't understand why she was leaving. The story put the reader very clearly into the world of the late 1850s and I finished the story wanting more. It was very clear that this author had serious writing chops, and equally clear that Maggie's story wasn't finished when we came to the end of what we'd been given. So I was delighted to learn that Sarah Dunster was working on a novel, and even happier when I found out that the book had been selected for publication.

The Lightning Tree tells the story of Magdalena, a convert from the mountains of Northern Italy whose parents died on the trail west. The Aldens, a family traveling west in the same wagon train, take in Maggie and her younger sister, and settle in Provo. Several years pass, and Maggie, a teenager, has a hard time remembering the journey to Provo and the details surrounding her parents' death. But as the tension in the city rises and people begin whispering about which men were involved in what happened down in Southern Utah (that "what" being the Mountain Meadows Massacre), Maggie begins to dream about and remember some of the parts of the past she has forgotten or suppressed.

Dunster's book is an interesting look into trauma, repression, fitting in, and what it means to belong to a family. While the book is set against the background of Mountain Meadows, and many of the issues Maggie is dealing with are echoed in the way our church has or hasn't acknowledged their role in Mountain Meadows, Dunster does a great job telling a story without editorializing. I felt that I was getting Maggie's story, not the story of how evil those Mormons were or how the poor Mormons were maligned and misunderstood. In fact, the only "message" that I get from the book as a whole is that everything, even our memories and the people who love us, are more complicated than we given them credit for, for good or for bad.

All in all, I think The Lightning Tree is a well-written, important, unsentimental work of historical fiction. Its Mormon setting is important, but I think that the book would have lots of crossover appeal to those interested in western history, and not just to a Mormon audience who wants a faith-affirming story.

Book Review: Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff

Title: Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II
Author: Mitchell Zuckoff
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: I saw this one frequently on "Recommended for You" at Amazon
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 36

On a Sunday afternoon in May 1945, a plane took off from an American base in New Guinea, headed inland to the famed valley of Shangri-La, a valley that was vast and beautiful and filled with hundreds of thousands of natives that had no contact with the outside world and were thought to be cannibals. The plane crashed, and 21 of the 24 passengers died. John McCollom, Kenneth Decker, and Margaret Hastings survived the crash (although Decker and Hastings were badly injured) and had to be rescued from a place that was essentially inaccessible from the coast, and keep them safe from the natives.

My favorite book of 2010 was probably Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, and Lost in Shangri-La is a book in the same vein-- survival in the face of enormous odds. It's nonfiction that's as engrossing and entertaining as fiction. And Zuckoff's stroke of genius as an author was to focus on Margaret Hastings, making her the central character of the book. If this were a book about planes and soldiers and paratroopers and military politics, I doubt it's one I would have picked up, or if I had picked it up, I might not have wanted to finish it, but Zuckoff's book had a lot more appeal to me as a reader by making Margaret the central character. I wanted to see that WAC get out of the jungle. It's far more an adventure book than an exploration of character and psychology (like Unbroken), but it's still a fine read.

Book Review: Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Tuesdays at the Castle
Author: Jessica Day George
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Library Copy
Books I've read this year: 32

Ranking my favorites in the Youth Speculative category is going to be hard. Really hard. I've read four of the five books in the category already, and I like ALL of them. I know that choosing between good books is much better than the alternative, and I'm really pleased to see such a strong, competitive category, but man, this is going to be hard.

When I brought home Tuesdays at the Castle, two of my kids immediately commented on it. Annie, my ten-year-old, looked excited and said, "Mom, that's the book that we donated to the library for my birthday" (our elementary schools have a program where you can pay to have a book donated in your child's name for their birthday, and the school chooses something they think the child would like). She said that there was a waiting list for the book, and I told her that I'd read it quickly so she could read it before I returned it to the library. Then Isaac, my seven-year-old, grabbed the book off the counter and said, "There are a bunch of second-graders at school who are reading this." That, of course, made Annie (a fifth-grader) want to have nothing to do with it anymore.

But I'm going to make her read it anyway, because it's just so cute.

Tuesdays at the Castle is the story of Celie, an eleven-year-old princess living in an enchanted castle. At times, the castle will grow rooms or do other kinds of magical things to improve the lives of the royal family, and it seems to have a soft spot for Celie. When her parents go on a journey to a neighboring kingdom and end up missing and her fourteen-year-old brother takes the throne, a whole slew of lords and princes from the surrounding lands descend on the castle to form a council, or a puppet monarchy, at least until he's old enough to run the kingdom by himself (not that they plan to let him live that long). So Celie, Bram, and their older sister, Lilah, along with lots of help from the castle, come up with a plan to oust them and find their parents.

The book is well-written and fun, and reads really fast. George did a great job of making Celie's world feel believable, without spending too much time on the world-building aspects of the story. But I also think that Annie had a point-- this is the one book in the bunch that is for a middle-grade (or even younger) audience, while the other finalists are all firmly YA. As a middle grade novel, I think it's a success, but the fact that it is middle grade also means that it's shorter, with bigger type and a simpler storyline. I think it's does a great job doing what it sets out to do, but I'm not sure how well it will stack up against its more complicated competitors.

Book Review: My Unfair Godmother by Jannette Rallison (Whitney Finalist)

Title: My Unfair Godmother
Author: Jannette Rallison
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Library copy
Books I've read this year: 28

A couple of years ago, Jannette Rallison's My Fair Godmother was a Whitney Finalist. I thought it was a decent book, but I wasn't in love with it. So I went into reading My Unfair Godmother, its sequel, with a certain guardedness. But I'm pleased to say that the book surprised me in lots of good ways. Just like in My Fair Godmother, Chrysanthemum Everstar, a fairy in training, picks an unsuspecting teenage girl to give three wishes and set her life on course. Chrissy is a pretty horrible excuse for a fairy godmother-- she gets things wrong, she doesn't show up when she should, and she has an attitude. In this book she tries to turn the life of Tansy Miller around, and she does this first by bringing Robin Hood and his Merry Men to the 21st century, and then by sending Tansy and her family back to the 12th century in order to meet up with Rumplestiltskin. There's a lot of humor and hijinks and just the right amount of romance.

I'm not sure why I liked this book significantly better than the first, but I think it might have to do with two things-- sequel fatigue, and having a daughter. First of all, I'm a fair bit of the way into the Whitney reading (13 down, 22 to go-- doesn't sound so great when I put it that way) and I've read a lot of books so far that are sequels or set up sequels. And in order to get the most out of those books, it's essential to start at the beginning and commit yourself to the whole series. What I really like about My Unfair Godmother is that it's more like Quantum Leap than it is like LOST. I did read the first book, but everything I needed to know about Chrissy and Tansy is included in this volume. Chrissy helped someone else (completely unrelated to Tansy) in book one, and if there's a book three, I'm sure it will be with a whole different cast of characters. I'm sure a publisher would give you a million reasons why you want to suck readers into as many books as possible, but as a reader, I appreciate being given the opportunity to decide whether I want to commit to the next volume.

In the time that's elapsed since I read My Fair Godmother, my own daughter has gone from age seven to age ten. Back then she was reading Junie B. Jones, and now she's right on the cusp of reading books like this. And I know that she would adore this book, if not now, then in a few years. There's enough depth and gravitas from Tansy's situation and the way she looks at life to counterbalance Chrissy's fluff, enough romance without it being icky (okay, maybe a little icky in the last few chapters, but icky in a way I think my daughter might like). I always like coming into books like My Unfair Godmother because it's one that I'll file away on my mental shelf for when Annie comes to me complaining about how deathly bored she is.

Book Review: Borrowed Light by Carla Kelly (Whitney Finalist)

Title: Borrowed Light
Author: Carla Kelly
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Whitney Finalist
Source: Library Copy
Books I've read this year: 18

Carla Kelly is a veteran Romance novelist whose who has published about 40 novels (mostly Regency Romances) with major publishing houses. Kelly, who has a master's degree in history and has worked as a professional historian, really knows her stuff, and the details and setting are part of what make Borrowed Light such a fun read. Borrowed Light is the story of Julia Darling, an almost 28-year-old Mormon living in Salt Lake City in 1909 who decides to breakup with her stuffed shirt of a fiance even though she recognizes that it might be her last chance for marriage. A graduate of the Fanny Farmer cooking school, she signs a contract to cook on a ranch in Wyoming for a year. The proprietor of the ranch turns out to  It sounds like a pretty stereotypical romance novel so far, doesn't it?

But that's the thing. Kelly uses the conventions of a romance novel. It looks like a romance and sounds like a romance, but it's missing some of the elements I've come to expect in a romance. For example, there's no rival to Otto, the handsome rancher. Julia doesn't waver in her growing love for him once she meets him. The conflict comes not in the relationships, but in Julia's relationship with her faith. As the title suggests, Julia has been "living on borrowed light," and this year living in Wyoming helps her determine how important her faith is to her. Instead of a romance, this feels more like a bildungsroman. Of course, there are the essential plot twists and misunderstandings, but I'm not surprised at all that Kelly chose to publish Borrowed Light with an LDS publisher instead of with Signet or Harlequin, since the story is essentially a Mormon "coming of faith" novel. Whatever the category, it's interesting and engrossing and very well done.

Book Review: The Book of Mormon Girl by Joanna Brooks

Title: The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories from an American Faith
Author: Joanna Brooks
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Joanna is a friend of mine and an fMh sister
Source: Kindle for iPad
Books I've read this year: 17

While Mitt Romney is undoubtedly the most high-profile Mormon in America right now, many might argue that Joanna Brooks is the most high-profile Mormon woman in America today. In addition to her job as chair of the English Department at San Diego State University, she writes for Religion Dispatches and Washington Post, hosts the Ask Mormon Girl website, and blogs at Feminist Mormon Housewives. Last week, the front page of CNN's website included an in-depth story of Brooks and her family. So it's really the perfect time for her memoir, The Book of Mormon Girl, to be released.

Brooks divides her life into three basic sections-- growing up, early adulthood/disillusionment, and maturation/resolution. In the growing up years, which comprise the bulk of the memoir, she gives us detailed and delightful stories of her Young Women's leaders and her grandmothers, interesting, devoted, hardworking women who taught her the gospel while hiking mountain passes and doing service. She writes about the cultural dissonance that comes from being "in the world but not of it." She writes about her adoration for Marie Osmond. All of these chapters are rich with description and detail.

Joanna's story is one that I'm familiar with because I've both heard her tell it and because I recognize parts of it in my friends and myself. Maybe not the growing up in the tract house on the edge of Southern California's orange groves, but certainly the feeling of being the only LDS girl in my high school, of being a "root beer among cokes" as she puts it. Like Joanna, I was a girl who set my sights on attending BYU and only BYU, and went through a little bit of disillusionment when I arrived there and realized that it wasn't as perfect as I thought it would be. I see her story in the story of friends who have felt pain too acute to bear, pain they associate with the church, and have left as a result. And I see her story in friends who have come back from that pain, who want to find a way to live a life of integrity within the religion and culture in which they were raised.

Brooks's adult chapters, as well as the way she has chosen to live her life publicly, do a lot to dispel the myth that Mormon women are all cut out of the same cloth, with the same thoughts and beliefs. She shows that it's okay to grieve for the things we wish were different, that we can find our voice, even if we're most comfortable speaking quietly and politely, and that we can love the church and want to be part of it without embracing every aspect of it. Furthermore, she shows that it's possible, even fulfilling, to come back and to see raising children in a home where parents come from different faith traditions as a boon and a blessing.

Brooks chose to self-publish her memoir, and while I understand why she did it, and I really do think that she has both an important story to tell and the writing chops to carry it off with remarkable sensitivity and finesse, self-publishing is always a tricky business. The Book of Mormon Girl, is an engrossing and important memoir, but it's not a perfect book. The child and teen chapters repeat many of the same details, and while the repetition seems to be intentional, the cumulative effect was to give sort of a storybook quality to the setting. Also, as a reader, I am interested in Brooks's childhood, especially since her teen years seem to be such a reflection of mine, but I'm even more interested in how she went from belief to disillusionment and back again. She does give several chapters to the adult struggles in her life, but I want more. I think it's a testament to the success of her writing both in The Book of Mormon Girl and in other venues, that we want more of Joanna's wit and wisdom. And I'm confident that she'll give it to us.

Book Review: The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

Title: The Snowman
Author: Jo Nesbo
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: This is the book that started my Jo Nesbo kick. I saw it on the books table at Costco and had to read half a dozen books of backstory before I got to this
Source: I may have bought it that night at Costco, but there's no sticker on it.
Books I've read this year: 11

Well, I'm pleased to say that all that reading was worth it. The first time I heard about Norwegian author Jo Nesbo was when I picked up this book. It looked great, and the reviews I could see were fantastic. I wanted to read it, and then I did a little bit of research (because that's the kind of reader I am) and found that it was the seventh book in a series about Detective Harry Hole. The first two books haven't been translated into English, so I started at book three, and read through four, five and six, to varying degrees of pleasure. By the time I finished the sixth book, I was frankly a little burned out on Harry Hole. But this book, in which Hole tries to find a serial killer who is murdering woman and building snowmen in their yards as a calling card, was everything a thriller should be-- it was fast-paced and scary, well-written and well-plotted. It is a little bit hard to believe that Harry's longtime on-again, off-again love, Rakel, could have such bad luck with the men in her life, but after The Snowmen [SPOILER], Harry is looking like a better and better catch all the time.

Book Review: Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

Title: Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Author: Joshua Foer
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Eddie got this book for Christmas
Source: Hardback copy
Books I've read this year: 10

When people ask me what Eddie wants for his birthday or Christmas, I often pick books that I want to read too. Moonwalking with Einstein was one of those books. I didn't know all that much about it, other than it was written by the younger brother of the brilliant Jonathan Safran Foer, and it was getting lots and lots of buzz. People were comparing it to Freakonomics and Malcolm Gladwell's stuff, and I do love me some Malcolm Gladwell.

Foer does remind me of Malcolm Gladwell and a lighter version of the late David Foster Wallace, but instead of focusing on a bunch of experiences in short (or not so short) essays, Foer engages in a years-long experiment with gonzo journalism. He starts out researching memory and using mnemonics and visualization to improve memory, but takes that one step further, hires a memory coach, and eventually ends up as [SPOILER] Memory Champion of the US. The book is entertaining and smart, and Foer is self-deprecating and nerdy enough that we don't begrudge him his statue. I'm still thinking of Claudia Schiffer bathing in a tub of cottage cheese by the front door of my childhood home. Read the book, and that last sentence will make perfect sense to you.

Book Review: A Spoonful of Promises by T. Susan Chang

Title: A Spoonful of Promises: Stories and Recipes from a Well-Tempered Table
Author: T. Susan Chang
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: I got this book for my birthday from my godmother, Annie
Source: Hardback
Books I've read this year: 8

For several years, I went through a foodie phase where I read lots and lots of memoirs about food. Then I started grad school and my kids were lucky to get one home-cooked meal each week that wasn't pasta, grilled cheese, quesadillas or chicken nuggets, and I felt like a poseur reading all of the foodie books. But (thesis notwithstanding) the grad-school phase is done, and maybe this book represents a return to the foodie memoir, a genre I really love.

I've heard of Susan Chang before. I remember reading one of her articles a few months ago about the crazy kinds of ice cream she makes with her family and it felt kind of braggy-- her kids clamor for basil ice cream, really? I'm lucky if mine venture beyond Creamies. So I was expecting bragginess from the memoir as well. And yeah, it does venture in that direction at times, but overall, I really liked the format. She'd tell a story about a food and provide a recipe. The recipes/stories were roughly grouped together into categories (easy dinners or crazy meals, for example) and over the course of all of the stories, cohesive themes began to emerge-- her love for her dad, her relationship with her husband and kids, the sense of loss she feels from her mom's death when she was a teenager. It's a format that I could see working well for my mom, for instance, if she chose to write the story of her life. I'm not sure that it has inspired me to go out and make beef heart chili (or at least not to serve it to my kids), but I may try the Pad Thai.

And since my radar is attuned to all things Chinese American these days, I was also interested in the ways that Chang incorporates her Chinese American background into the story. I know that our daughter will undoubtedly grow up more American than Chinese, and I was grateful that Chang let us glimpse into her childhood as a third-generation Chinese American, a girl whose mom stuffed her lunch not with dumplings and rice, but with wheat germ and granola bars.

Book Review: The Scholar of Moab by Steven L. Peck

Title: The Scholar of Moab
Author: Steven L. Peck
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: I read a review on By Common Consent
Source: Ordered new from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 156

I've been sitting here at the computer for a long time, wondering what to say about this book. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to look for a nice way to say that I didn't like this book, because I really did like it. But mostly, I'm impressed with the ambition of the book. Even though its length, at just about 300 pages, isn't epic, it feels epic in scope. I think part of the reason is because the book, which centers on the story of Hyrum Thayne, the high school dropout turned "scholar," encompasses so many different voices. Readers not only get Hyrum's private journal, misspellings and malapropisms and all, but they also hear poems from his wife, Sandra, poems and letters from his gal-on-the-side, Dora, letters from one half of the conjoined twins who worked as cowboys in the LaSal mountains outside of Moab during Hyrum's stint blowing stuff up for the government, notes from the unnamed redactor, and likely letters, transcripts or other written work from other voices. I had so much fun reading all of these different voices, and Peck's ability to write from the perspective of so many different characters was really impressive.

The Scholar of Moab is also a book that manages to walk the fine line between satirizing the people of Moab and embracing them. On the back jacket, Scott Abbott says, "It’s satire of the best sort: biting what it loves, snuggling up to what it hates," and that's an assessment that I heartily agree with. Sandra and her ward members are both ignorant and tender, and my reaction to Hyrum vacillated from hate to love and back again several times over the course of the narrative.

One of the most interesting things about The Scholar of Moab is that it's possible to read it as realistic fiction where an astounding number of coincidences come together to create delightfully weird and tragic situation. But it's also possible to read it as magical realism. I'm not sure that Peck comes down decisively on either side of the issue.

The Scholar of Moab is rich, nuanced, and complicated. It expects a lot of its readers, and I appreciate that there is a growing body of books out there by and for (but not only for) Mormons that are embracing these complexities.  

Book Review: The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Title: The Rules of Civility
Author: Amor Towles
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: This one kept popping up on recommendations from Amazon
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 153

The best way to describe The Rules of Civility is The Great Gatsby, gone girl. Yes, the book is set 15 years later, and it's the Daisy/Gatsby figure (I can't decide which) who is actually from the midwest, while Katey Kontent, a secretary originally from Brighton Beach, who plays Nick Carroway's role as narrator, mostly benevolent social climber, and adjudicator. When the book opens in the 1960s, Katey and her husband are at a show for portraits taken during the 1930s. When Katey sees two portraits of her old friend, banker Tinker Grey, she launches into a reverie of the year they spent in the same orbit. The book deals with the complications of female friendship (Katey's best friend Evelyn tries to quash any budding relationship between Katey and Tinker by snatching him for herself), the social networks and mentoring relationships of the Upper East Side, and the ways that women could advance themselves socially and professionally in the 1930s.

The Rules of Civility is absolutely beautifully written, full of surprises, and I'm still thinking about Evie, Tinker, and Katey several weeks after finishing the book. It's the kind of book that makes me want to be a better writer, both in terms of the ability to use language and in the way Towles spins a story worth listening to.

Book Review: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Title: Invisible Cities
Author: Italo Calvino
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Required reading for my Creative Writing seminar
Source: Purchased from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 129

I really, really wish I had been able to attend my class discussion on Invisible Cities. I drove down to Provo, walked across campus to the building, and sat down at the seminar table when the phone rang. It was Isaac's school calling to say he was sick. And I was super-bummed, not just because I now had to walk back across campus and drive back to Salt Lake, but because I wonder what everyone else thought about the book.

I labeled Invisible Cities a book of short stories, but it feels more like a book of dreams. The premise is that Marco Polo is talking to Kubla Khan about the cities he has encountered in his travels. He recounts visits to dozens of places, but these places are all magical and mystical, and don't feel like places in the Orient in the 13th century. In fact, as Polo and Khan continue their discussion, it's evident that the places are much more in Polo's head than they are in any real place.

The language of Invisible Cities is exquisite-- it's more poetic than poetry. As a result, I felt like I approached it like I approached poetry. I tried to soak up the rhythm and the images, and didn't care too much if I didn't "get it." I think the book worked, and some of the cities were haunting (like the one where a mirror of the aboveground city existed underground and all of the dead were positioned in the underground city, engaged in the kind of work they did while they were alive).

Anyway, I wish I could have heard what other people felt about the book. I feel like 90% of it went over my head, but the 10% that stayed with me was pretty enjoyable.

Book Review: A Parent's Guide to Cleft Lip and Palate by Moller, Starr, and Johnson

Title: A Parent's Guide to Cleft Lip and Palate
Authors: Karlind T. Moller, Clark, D. Starr and Sylvia A. Johnson
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10 (I'd actually call this a "usefulness rating" in this case)
Referral: Amazon search
Source: Ordered used from Amazon
Number of books I've read this year: 127

A Parent's Guide to Cleft Lip and Palate is a useful introduction for people like me who are just beginning to grasp what it means to have a child with a cleft lip and palate. The book covers the various issues associated with the condition, including lip surgery, palate surgery, ear problems, dental issues, speech therapy and social impacts. While I read the whole book, I think that the first part was most useful to me. Right now, I'm not thinking about speech therapy or middle school, I just want to get Rose's lip and palate closed and have her eating well. While the book feels dated (it was published in 1990) it seems that surgeries and the team approach that are used today are very similar to what the authors describe in the book. I found the stories that spotlight kids' experiences were the most interesting and helpful part of the book.

Book Review: An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs, Book 5)

Title: An Incomplete Revenge
Author: Jacqueline Winspear
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Referral: Book five in the Maisie Dobbs series
Source: Audible for iPhone
Books I've read this year: 122

The fifth book and still going strong. I liked this one even better than the last few, and even though I know I should be growing sick of Maisie by now, I can't get enough of her. Yes, there's still too much of WWI (Maisie's modus operandi: If in doubt, go back to 1916 and you'll find your answer), and we suddenly discover in this book that Maisie's grandmother was a gypsy (2000 pages into the series that seems like a convenient plot device, not a natural progression of Maisie's character), but this book had a strong central image (fire, in this case), which brought all of the disparate stories together, and I think Winspear just gets better and better at making a whole bunch of seemingly unrelated mysteries work together in a believable way.

Also, I think I've harped on this before, but in past books, I've felt guilty for being so interested in Maisie's love life (or lack thereof). I found myself rooting for her to settle down and find someone-- she's not getting any younger (she's probably 33 or 34 in this book) and there are far more women than men in her age group, and the time will come soon when men stop throwing themselves at her feet. I hate myself for feeling this way-- just because marriage and motherhood make me happy, I know they come with big sacrifices, and Maisie has made it clear that they're not sacrifices she wants to make. But still, I don't want her to be lonely when the people she's closest too (all in their seventies) leave this world. Thankfully, this book was delightfully free of romantic entanglements, so I could just enjoy the story and not worry so much about how someone so smart about other people's relationships can be so dumb about her own. See what I'm doing here? I'm way too personally invested in Maisie Dobbs-- I feel like she's become a friend over the last few months of listening to her story.

Book Review: Design Sponge at Home by Grace Bonney

Title: Design Sponge at Home
Author: Grace Bonney
Enjoyment Rating: 8/10
Source: Ordered new from Amazon
Referral: I've been reading Design Sponge for years, so I've been eagerly anticipating this book
Books I've read this year: 118

Ever since a friend in Texas made fun of my plaid couch a few years ago, I've tried to pay more attention to what's going on in the world of home design. I've frequently added and dropped design blogs from my Google Reader since then. For example, I love Apartment Therapy, but I start to hyperventilate when my Reader has more than about 20 posts in it, and I can rack up 20 posts just from AT every day. Other blogs seemed lame or repetitive after a few months. But I always read Design Sponge. In fact, it's probably the only design blog where I give at least a passing glance to pretty much every post (not the ones about building a business because it doesn't apply, or the ones about flowers because I have zero floral intelligence and I can't open that can of worms right now).

So the blog is great, and the book captures everything I love about the blog. I have a voyeuristic obsession with Monday's"Sneak Peeks" (and a secret desire to be included one day), and the images in the sneak peek section of the book are amazing. The Thursday "Before and After" is my other favorite feature of the blog, and the B&A section of the book is awesome. I wasn't as big a fan of the two middle sections (DIY and flowers), probably because all of the DIY stuff looks so easy in the book and it scares me that it won't be, and flowers just plain scare me. But if you like the Design Sponge blog, or if you appreciate an aesthetic that involves bringing other stylish, eclectic and personal design, often on the cheap, I think you'll find it in this book. I've already referred back to it several times since I read it a few weeks ago.