Best of 2011, Official Mid-Year Update

It is time for my Official Half-Way-Point Top 10 Lists for books read during the first half of 2011.

I have read six fiction titles since I last updated the list, and four of them will crack the new Top Ten at least temporarily: Rhino Ranch, The Bone Garden, Saturday, and The Prodigal Hour.

Fiction: (Top 10 of 45 considered)

1. Nemesis - Philip Roth (novel)

2. Saturday - Ian McEwan (novel)

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

4. Rhino Ranch - Larry McMurtry - (series novel)

5. Beach Music - Pat Conroy (novel)

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

7. Dead Man's Walk - Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove Series)

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

9. The Bone Garden - Tess Gerritsen (historical fiction)

10. The Prodigal Hour - Will Entrekin (time travel novel)

Of the three nonfiction titles read since last time, only one appears on this updated list - A Bittersweet Season: Caring for Our Aging Parents - and Ourselves.

Nonfiction: (Top 10 of 20 considered)

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

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

3. Bittersweet Season - Jane Gross (advice on caring for aging parents)

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

5. Chinaberry Sidewalks - Rodney Crowell (memoir)

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

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

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

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

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

Now, it's on to the second half of the year and the final shakeout of the list.

The Bone Garden

The Bone Garden, a standalone novel, is my first experience with a Tess Gerritsen book, but based upon this reading experience, it is unlikely to be my last.  The bulk of the novel is set in 1830s Boston and concerns what happens when a serial killer strikes that city- with flashes forward to modern day Boston and some of the descendants of those featured in the historical section of the story.

Julia Hamill, 38-years-old and freshly divorced from a jerk, is the new owner of an old Boston house that had been in the hands of the same family for well over one hundred years prior to her purchase of it.  Julia is starting to doubt how wise an investment she has made by purchasing a house needing so much maintenance, but she decides to start with cleaning up the neglected garden (where the previous homeowner’s body was found) behind the house. 

Already having dug up several large rocks from the ground, Julia is shocked to discover that what she believed to be just another rock in her way is really a human skull.  She is relieved, after authorities are called in to investigate, that the body she has unearthed dates back to the early decades of the 19^th century.  Thus, begins Julia’s attempt, with the help of a relative of the home’s former owner, to discover the identity of the body and its connection to her new home.

At this point, Gerritsen shifts the novel’s locale to historical Boston, in particular to a medical school attached to one of the city’s larger hospitals.   Here the reader meets what are actually the book’s two main characters: Norris Marshall, a poor medical student barely able to stay in school, and Rose Connolly, a 17-year-old recent Irish immigrant whose older sister will die of “childbirth fever” in the hospital’s maternity ward.  When a killer, dubbed by the press the “West End Reaper,” begins to prey on those associated with the hospital and medical school, Norris and Julia will learn that only by watching out for each other are they likely to survive the Reaper experience.

The strength of The Bone Garden is its focus on the medical schools of the day, a period during which these schools were often willing to purchase dissecting cadavers from whomever showed up with one to sell them – no questions asked.  This was the age of grave robbing, a time during which freshly buried loved ones might disappear within hours of being buried, only to be used in some medical theater for the instruction of a few dozen medical students.  It was also a time when doctors and their students spread infection from one patient to the next by not washing their hands or medical instruments.  This was particularly dangerous in maternity wards attended by unwitting doctors as they examined one new mother after the other. 

As a thriller/mystery goes, The Bone Garden rates as pretty much average.  As historical fiction, it is a very affecting look at a time during which so many big city residents struggled to stay alive in conditions that are almost unbelievable today.

Rated at: 4.5

Pirates, E-Books, Publishers, and You

The publishing world continues to change at breakneck speed.  Just this evening, in a matter of minutes, I've run across articles that address various trends in the industry.  Take a look at these:

Book industry balance continues to tilt towards the author


Matthew Ingram contends that the balance of power is rapidly shifting from the Publisher to the Author and that writers with the smarts to market themselves are going to outsell those who still depend on the old fashioned author-publisher model of the past.  Ingram uses John Green (more on him later) and Amanda Hocking (whom I've previously spoken of) as examples of young authors who are cashing via all the new tools available to them.

Those willing to do "the hard work" that publishers seem reluctant to take on these days, have a legitimate chance to find readers for their work.  Admittedly, creating a bestseller this way is a bit like winning the lottery - but the tools are out there.

Tweeting from a La-Z-Boy, An Unfinished Book Hits No. 1


This Wall Street Journal piece highlights YA writer John Green who has the latest number one seller on both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites.  What makes Green's breakthrough so newsworthy is that he is still working on the book from his Indianapolis home.

It probably does help that the same John Green has 1.1 million followers on Twitter.  Do you think?

Plenty of E-Book Shoppers Buy Directly from Author or Publisher

The Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites might still be the source for the bulk of e-books being sold today, but authors and publishers are doing pretty well by bypassing those outlets when they can.  According to a poll taken by scifi author Stephen Hunt (on his website, Facebook, and Twitter) something like 39% of e-book purchasers buy directly from the publisher and 25% buy directly from the author.

The bad news: 19% of e-book readers responded that they got their books from illegal sources.  That can't be good...or can it?  (See below)

Piracy - A Two Edged Sword

Some authors have tried giving their books away in e-book form, hoping to build a name for themselves with the buzz created.  Some, like Neil Gaiman even report increased sales for hardcopies of books they have made available for free.

I suspect there are special cases in which this will be true, but giving e-books away is not a longterm business plan for anyone, be they new or veteran writer.

What is a new writer to do?

"Paperback Writer" Bluegrass Style - The Punch Brothers

This is another song from ROMP 2011, this time from Chris Thile & the Punch Brothers.  These guys had kind of a Beatle vibe going all night long, and they finally made it official by breaking into this bluegrass version of "Paperback Writer."  The band is using the five instruments that traditional bluegrass bands always include: guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and stand-up bass.  I particularly like their instrumental break when Thile shines on mandolin and the other guys come in for their own short solos.

So here you have it, the Bluegrass Beatles:

The Prodigal Hour

Is there anyone not fascinated by the notion of time travel?  Whether the pull is simple curiosity about what the past was really like, or wonder about the future one is doomed to miss out on, there is just something irresistible about the possibilities of traveling up and down the time continuum at will.  Or, perhaps, the lure is more personal, a desire to right some personal wrong we have done or suffered, for instance.  Whatever the reason, Will Entrekin is here to tell you to be careful what you wish for – because you might just get it.

If Chance Sowin, the main character of Entrekin’s new novel, The Prodigal Hour, had arrived for work at the World Trade Center just a few minutes earlier, his life might well have ended on September 11, 2001.  Survival, however, does not mean that Chance’s life has not been changed forever.  He is no longer the person that entered the building that morning with his naïve optimism intact.  Chance knows that he is one of the lucky ones, and he feels almost obligated to take charge of his life, to make himself a better man than he was on September 10.  Now, it is a question of where to begin.

Chance is from New Jersey and, when his father asks him to move back home until he can figure out what he wants to do next, Chance decides to take him up on the offer.  For the second time in just a few weeks, though, Chance’s arrival time is fated to get him almost killed.  He gets home just in time to interrupt what appears to be a home invasion by a man threatening his father.  When in the ensuing scuffle his father is shot dead, Chance is left to deal with federal agents who hint that his father may have been working with international terrorists.

That Chance refuses to believe his father, a prominent research scientist, could have been involved in research on behalf of any terrorist group, is not surprising.  The notion is so farfetched that he is not even temporarily shocked by it.  The real shocker for him comes from Cassie, a young woman Chance shared his first kiss with when they were kids: his father has invented a time machine and she knows how to use it. 

Now what?  Should they use the time machine to go back in time to save Chance’s father from being murdered – and what will happen if they do?  If they save Dennis Sowin’s life, will they inadvertently alter the future in a way that causes other innocents to die – perhaps by the thousands?  Thus begins an adventure that will see Chance and Cassie visit some of history’s most intriguing hotspots.  Only when the pair decides to “improve” upon the past, do they get in trouble.  Will they, and the rest of us, survive their not so subtle tinkering with the past?

I enjoyed The Prodigal Hour, my fellow time-traveler wannabes.  I think you will, too.

Rated at: 4.0

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

Real World 1, Me 0

Man, do I need a vacation!

After seven days away from the reality of work, family, and personal obligations I slammed back into the real world today - and the real world kicked my butt.  My "Monday" began with an eight a.m. dental appointment, meaning that I got to the office about 2 1/2 hours later than I normally do.  That would not necessarily be a bad thing but, since I was still traveling on Monday and Friday is a holiday, I somehow have to cram five days worth of work into the middle three days of the week.  That is not going to be easy - especially since I left the office at my regular time in order to see the first game of a Little League doubleheader involving my youngest grandson.  Just two days to go, and I didn't make much of a dent in the workload today.  Oh, and my brother, whom I see only two or three times a year, is in town staying with my father.

Also, for the first time in Book Chase history, I am five books behind on my reviews: This Book Is Overdue (Marilyn Johnson), The Bone Garden (Tess Gerritsen), Long Gone (Alafair Burke), Saturday (Ian McEwan), and The Prodigal Hour (Will Entrekin).  Since the Entrekin book is going to be released on July 1, I'm moving it to the top of the queue - look for that one on June 30.

I feel like I've walked into a buzz-saw, but I would not trade last week's experience for anything.  This, too, shall pass.