Best of 2011, Update 4

I think it's time for me to update my "Best of 2011" lists before my recollection of my most recently read titles starts to fade.  I think I get a better final list if I go through this process every 3-4 weeks (at least in worked out that way for me last year).

I read seven fiction titles since I updated the list three weeks ago, but only one of them will crack the new Top Ten: That Old Cape Magic, by Richard Russo goes into the number five slot.

Fiction: (Top 10 of 39 considered)

1. The Glass Rainbow - James Lee Burke (Dave Robicheaux series)

2. Dead Man's Walk - Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove series)

3. Nemesis - Philip Roth (novel)

4. Beach Music - Pat Conroy (novel)

5. That Old Cape Magic - Richard Russo (novel)

6. Love at Absolute Zero - Christopher Meeks (novel)

7. Autumn of the Phantoms - Yasmina Khadra (Algerian detective fiction)

8. Standing at the Crossroads - Charles Davis (British novel)

9. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe (classic British novel)

10. One Thousand White Women - Jim Fergus (Western novel)

Strangely enough, all three of the nonfiction titles I read since last time are appearing on this updated list - What It Is Like to Go to War, Called Out of Darkness,and The Reading Promise.

Nonfiction: (Top 10 of 17 considered)

1. Wolf: The Lives of Jack London - James L. Haley (biography)

2. Hitch 22: A Memoir - Christopher Hitchens (memoir)

3. Tiny Terror - William Todd Schultz (psychobiography of Truman Capote)

4. Chinaberry Sidewalks - Rodney Crowell (memoir)

5. We Were Not Orphans - Sherry Matthews (memoirs from a Texas home for neglected children)

6. What It Is Like to Go to War - Karl Marlantes - (memoir)

7. Lincoln's Men - William C. Davis (Civil War history)

8. The Siege of Washington - John and Charles Lockwood (Civil War history)

9. Called Out of Darkness - Anne Rice - (memoir)

10.The Reading Promise - Alice Ozma - (memoir)

So, there you have it...almost to the half-way point, these are the best 20 books I have encountered in 2011...so far.

The Reading Promise

The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared is not what I expected from its title.  It is much more.  I was initially intrigued by both the book’s title and its cover, figuring it would focus (as the title indicates) on the books that one man and his daughter shared while she was growing up and how the reading impacted the little girl’s life.  That would have been enough to satisfy me.  As it turns out, The Reading Promise does focus on their reading, if not so much on specific books, but it is more about how “The Streak” helped to create a very special bond between this father and daughter.

The Streak is, of course, the hook that will draw most readers to Alice Ozma’s memoir.  Imagine this: 3,218 consecutive days during which Jim Brozina read aloud for a minimum of ten minutes to his daughter, Alice, regardless of what was going on in either of their lives during this eight-year period.  The Streak started when Alice was in the fourth grade and it did not end until she left home for college.  During this period, Alice’s mother would leave the family, her older sister would leave home for a year as an exchange student, Alice would grow into a young woman with friends and plans of her own, and her father would begin dating again.  But, despite a few near misses (one caused by her father’s terrible case of laryngitis) and logistical problems caused by Alice’s sleepovers with friends (during which the reading was accomplished by telephone), the reading streak survived until the two consciously pulled the plug on it at exactly the right moment. 

Jim, an elementary school librarian whose passion was reading to classes when they visited his library, used the reading streak to teach his daughter about life as she was experiencing it.  As Alice puts it, “What he was doing specifically, was trying to use The Streak as a solution to a problem.  It was something he did often, even it he wasn’t doing it intentionally.  There were just trends: after my mother moved out, we read stories about young girls without mothers.  When there were bullies at school, we read about kids who outsmarted their nemeses rather than resorting to fistfights.”

Alice Ozma

There is no doubt that Jim and Alice are very close – or that The Streak had much to do with assuring they would be so.  Jim also believes that all of that reading, and the general love of books that Alice developed, also had plenty to do with making her an accomplished student.  She was one of only three eighth grade students (of more than 300 in her class) to score “advanced proficient” in her state’s reading test; she had the highest PSAT in her eleventh grade class; and she won to first place awards in a national competition during her senior year. 

Alice believes that The Streak was “really more of a promise.”  She and her father promised to each other that they would always be there for each other, and the reading provided comfort and hope when they needed it most.  Jim and Alice believe in “the power of the printed word” and they feel a responsibility to treasure and protect it, no matter what.  The two believe that literature has the ability to change lives for the better.  Who would better know than them?

Rated at: 4.0

The Cat Who Is No More (Lilian Jackson Braun Dead at 97)

Bestselling author Lilian Jacskon Braun died on June 4 at age 97 according to her husband, Earl Bettinger.  Braun was the author of 29 "The Cat Who..." mysteries, a series she began in 1966 with The Cat Who Could Read Backwards.  According to Bettinger, Braun was working on the 30th book in the series at the time of her death.

After adding two more books to the series, Braun devoted herself to a full-time job with the Detroit newspaper, and eighteen years would pass before she published the fourth "The Cat Who..." book.  The last book in the series, The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers, was released by Putnam in January 2007, and what would have been book number 30, The Cat Who Smelled Smoke, has now been cancelled.

Braun, who was born on June 20, 1913, missed her 98th birthday by just sixteen days.

(I have seen Ms. Braun's books in bookstores for most of my life, it seems.  They are hard to miss in the mystery section because of the way the covers generally share a common design - but I never read one, always getting the impression that the books were of the "cozy" type more aimed at a female audience than a male one.  Whatever the case, she was a major figure in mystery writing for a long, long time, and I'm sure that her fans are saddened by news of her death.)

I'd Know You Anywhere

Back in the summer of 1985, when she was still a naïve fifteen-year-old, Eliza Benedict was kidnapped by a man she stumbled upon in the woods.  Little did she know at the time, that Walter Bowman had just finished disposing of his latest kidnapping victim moments before she came upon him.  Walter himself was unsure how much Eliza might have seen but, taking no chances, he grabbed her while he had the chance.  He would hold her for almost six weeks.

Flash forward to the present where Eliza is now the happily married mother of two little girls of her own, little girls who have no idea how lucky their mother was to have escaped the hands of a serial killer when she just a few years older than them.  As for Walter Bowman, he now owns the record for most years spent on Virginia’ s Death Row, but it appears that his time is finally running out.

Imagine Eliza’s shock when, out of nowhere, she receives a “Dear Elizabeth” letter from the killer, a letter in which he describes his reaction to spotting her in a society party photo in Washingtonian magazine, “Of course, you are older, a woman now.  You’ve been a woman for a while, obviously.  Still, I’d know you anywhere.”  Now what should Eliza do?

I’d Know You Anywhere is first-rate psychological drama.  Much of the drama, of course, takes place in the present as Eliza decides how to deal with Walter’s request to communicate with her before he is put to death.  But Lippman, using very effective dramatic flashbacks to 1985, also details exactly what happened to young Elizabeth during the six weeks she was Walter’s prisoner, an experience that makes her reluctant to ignore his letter even all these years later.

What really happened to Eliza?  She has yet to figure out why she was allowed to live when all of Walter’s other victims were killed almost immediately after being kidnapped and raped by him.  What was so different about their relationship that she was allowed to live?  She is not the only one to wonder; the mother of Walter’s last victim blames Eliza for her daughter’s death.  Eliza will never know the truth unless she sees Walter one last time – but the executioner’s clock is ticking.

Fans of psychological crime fiction will be fascinated by I’d Know You Anywhere because of the depth into which Lippman gets into the psyches of her three main characters: Walter (the death row criminal), Eliza (his only victim to survive), and Barbara (the woman who passes Walter’s letter to Eliza).  The book, in fact, compares favorably to similar ones written by some of the genre’s masters, such as Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) and Elizabeth George.

Rated at: 4.0

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (movie trailer)

On Tuesday I embedded a book trailer for Emma Donoghue's Room here on Book Chase because one look at it inspired me to add the book to my TBR stack.  It is, in my opinion, that good, and that effective, a book trailer.  It achieves everything it set out to do.

Today I am embedding a movie trailer for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a film that is scheduled for release in December 2011.  I have not yet read any of the Stieg Larsson books (although I'm sure I'll get around to them eventually), so I know absolutely nothing about the book's plot.  Maybe that's why this movie trailer does nothing for me.  It makes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo look exactly like about two dozen other movies I've seen over the years.

I'm curious, though.  I know that many of you have read the three books in this series already, and that some of you love them.  If you are one of those...does this trailer excite you?  Is this a "do not miss" movie?  Is this a movie trailer aimed exclusively at book readers?

That Old Cape Magic

Richard Russo’s That Old Cape Magic begins and ends with weddings attended by many of the same people.  But, despite the overlap in the guest list, and the fact that the two weddings are barely one year apart, they could hardly have been more different. 

As the book begins, Jack Griffin and his wife, Joy, are making their separate ways to Cape Cod to attend the wedding of their daughter’s best friend.  Another university year has ended, and Jack, too impatient to wait one more day for Joy to finish up her administrative work at the school, has left for the Cape without her.  Technically, however, he is not alone since he carries his father’s ashes in the trunk of his car and plans to dispose of them somewhere along his route to the wedding. 

The Griffins, who have been married for more than three decades, have weathered lean times and tensions with the in-laws to carve out a rather comfortable existence for themselves.  They have, in fact, attained the lifestyle that Jack’s own parents always yearned for, but never achieved for themselves – all of it centered on their work at a respected liberal arts college in Connecticut.  For Jack, driving to Cape Cod for the wedding is a bit like coming home.  As a boy, he spent part of each summer vacationing with his parents on the Cape, and it was where he and Joy had honeymooned.  All things considered, Jack Griffin is satisfied with his life.

One short year later, Jack is driving to the coast of Maine for his daughter’s wedding, but much has changed.  He is still carrying his father’s ashes in the trunk, but this year his father’s urn has been joined by a second one containing the ashes of Jack’s mother.  Like last year, he and Joy are making their separate ways to the wedding – but this time each of them has brought along a date.  The flaws in their marriage, obvious during the first wedding weekend, have seemingly doomed it just one year later.

That Old Cape Magic is told from Jack Griffin’s perspective, the reader ensconced in Jack’s head for a series of flashbacks going all the way back to his boyhood.  Jack is an introspective man and, as he considers the events of his childhood and his relationship with his parents, the reader begins to understand Jack Griffin, the man.  He has reached a threshold in his life – his marriage seems over, his parents are dead, his only child has just married, he has been granted a leave of absence from the university, his Hollywood screenwriting job is not going well - and he has no idea what comes next.    

That Old Cape Magic might be one man’s story, but Jack Griffin’s contemporaries will easily identify with it and the realization that little things, given enough time, and occurring in the right combination, can ultimately chip away at one’s whole world.  Russo uses a good bit of humor (his daughter’s wedding rehearsal is genuinely hilarious) and over-the-top characters (Jack’s parents are unforgettable snobs of the first order), however, that make this one fun despite its rather somber theme.

Rated at: 5.0