The Sisters Mortland by Sally Beauman

I have become absolutely spoiled with advance copies from publishers. I keep picking them up, only to find the same stack languishing on my desk months later. I picked this one up ages ago, because it looked good at the time, and then promptly forgot. But I picked it up again in the hopes that it might be, as advertised, a “gothic page-turner.” I found myself sucked in immediately. It’s the summer of 1967 and Maisie, Julie, and Finn are three sisters living in an old abbey in rural England. Their father died and their mother and grandfather look after them and the estate. The beginning is narrated by Maisie, a gawky, odd 13-year-old girl who lives in the shadow of her father’s death, her sisters’ beauty, and the ghosts of the nuns who visit and speak with her. Daniel, a family friend, is a handsome boy with gypsy blood who is positively besotted with Finn, whose affections may not be his alone. A young painter, Luke, is also staying at the abbey, and is working on a painting of the sisters that will immortalize the girls and that fateful summer. When a tragedy strikes the abbey, all of their lives are changed forever. Flash forward to 1991, where we catch up with Daniel, a broken-down man who has achieved wealth, but left his former self behind. Still searching for the truth and for Finn, Daniel plumbs the past for answers. There are lots of twists and turns in this story, and the writing really moved me to continue. A satisfying gothic family saga.

The Brambles by Eliza Minot

This book was so good, and to think I was putting it off, thinking “not another Minot novel”! Nancy Pearl put it on her top 10 books of 2006, and with good reason. It’s perfect for readers who enjoy family dramas and love character. Margaret, Max, and Edie are the three adult Bramble siblings struggling with family, work, self-identity, their mother’s tragic plane accident, and their father’s deteriorating health. The focus is really on Margaret, a mother of three who loves her children and her husband, while rhapsodizing over her stylish, carefree days in New York City. One review called her an “ambivalent mother” which I think is just wrong—she knows that she has sacrificed some of her earlier self to be a mother, but clearly relishes the roll—and the memories and thoughts that she shares about pregnancy, her eldest son’s intelligence, her panic over her children’s health, provide a complex portrait of a stay-at-home mom’s ups and downs. Max is married with a son, Rex, but is much less grown up than Margaret: he’s quit his job and hiding the fact from his wife, who begins to suspect infidelity. And then there’s Edie, a semi-addled bulimic who is the least developed of the siblings. Overall, this was a satisfying read. The “plot,” and the discovery that the Brambles make about their family’s past, was really secondary for me to the rich characterization and the empathy that Minot brought to each portrait. Unlike Franzen’s The Corrections, this was a family I could have spent much more time with.

The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch

So many of my friends raved about this book (thank you, Hannah!), and I am so glad I picked it up now. It truly swept me away into its world, and I didn’t want to let go at the end. Miles O’Malley lives in Olympia, Washington and is an avid beachcomber—he spends hours, day and night, exploring the tide pools and sands near his home. But this summer turns out to be life-changing for the shrimpy (his height is a constant refrain) 13-year-old in a number of ways. For one, he discovers a giant squid with eyes as big as hubcaps one night when he should have been sleeping. This discovery, and others, makes him a local celebrity and he soon has newscasters and even a local cult trying to track him down. But what I love about Miles are the subtleties in his character, the details that make him real—he’s in love with the older, bipolar, punked-out girl next door, his best friend is an ailing senior with Parkinson’s who used to be a psychic, and he spends his time digging for clams on the beach with a classmate obsessed with sex and air guitar. He’s a Rachel Carson enthusiast and can quote her at will (and boy, do I need to read some Carson sometime soon!). I have a soft spot for coming-of-age novels, and this one swam right past my defenses.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

I reread this for my book group (did I mention I’m doing scads of rereading?) and it was just as chilling and effective as the first time. This book is so subtle and unsettling. Again, what struck me about it was how it intimately details the horrors of dehumanization, of what has been and will be the experience of too many. While it uses cloning as its backdrop, it applies to so many other scenarios—and plumbs so many other issues, too. Like how self-hatred is taught, little by little—how deception is inculcated, too, and accepted wholesale once we’ve been conditioned to it (the Iraq War, anyone?). But the power of this little novel is that it’s not an ‘issues’ novel. Ishiguro provides a clear picture of what’s important and what’s at stake in any issue—people and human relationships.

A Big Storm Knocked It Over by Laurie Colwin

I have been doing so much rereading right now—for my book group and other projects—that I was craving something fresh, short, and utterly delightful. Why didn’t I think of Laurie Colwin earlier? I have always enjoyed anything I have read by her for their breezy brilliance, and this is no exception. Jane Louise is a recently married graphic artist for a publishing company in Manhattan whose work is constantly being interrupted by her oversexed co-worker, Sven. Jane Louise and her husband Teddy have a lovely life together, although Jane Louise constantly suffers pangs that he married the wrong woman—he should have married a prim, blonde Christian instead of a skinny, anxiety-ridden Jewish girl. And she allows herself to contemplate sex with the ever-scheming Sven, which sets her into an endless spiral of confusion. But really this is just a sweet, simple novel about a young woman learning about love and family and herself, and learning to trust in the life that she has chosen. I also loved how pregnancy and motherhood and friendship is depicted in this novel. You really feel as though you are among friends when reading Colwin’s books—there is an easy familiarity and chattiness that entertains as it fills a void (for me anyway—my dearest friend is 3,000 miles away and we mainly communicate through letters). It is just so sad to think that this is Colwin’s last novel; she died of a heart attack at the age of 48.

The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

This is a seamless, compulsively readable short story collection that certainly deserves its Pulitzer Prize. And I still can’t believe that it was a debut! I reread this as Lahiri has been chosen as the 2007 selection for Seattle Public Library’s “Seattle Reads” program, and I am writing discussion questions for a Reading Group Toolbox. My favorite story is still “This Blessed House”—so amazing.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Let me just say that this isn’t the kind of book I generally gravitate to. And that I need to stop reading such morbidly violent books while pregnant! But it is a debut novel by an Entertainment Weekly writer (I love that magazine an obscene amount) and the reviews were good. Camille Preaker is a young journalist who isn’t quite as accomplished as she could be. But her boss believes in her, and pushes her into a big assignment in her old hometown. Two young girls have been found strangled with their teeth pulled out within a year of each other. Camille heads back to a home she has avoided for years to investigate. She stays with her Mom, a beautiful, rich socialite who is as chilly and strange as they come, a vacant step-father, and precociously dangerous, popular teenage half-sister. I was drawn to read the book from the descriptions of the dysfunctional family—and boy is it dysfunctional. Camille has been living in the shadow of her sister who died, and receives no love from her mother. Camille’s past and her family’s secrets get dragged out in the investigation, and there are a few surprises therein. Not, perhaps, as surprising as they could have been. But if you’re in the mood for a dark thriller, this is a compelling one.

I am reposting this for the benefit of the Library Success wiki and RickLibrarian's page.

FIFTY FAVORITE BOOKS

Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
The Ramona books by Beverly Cleary
Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin
The Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
Break It Down by Lydia Davis
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Anything by George Eliot, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda in particular
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer
China To Me by Emily Hahn
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom by Amy Hempel
Oyster by Janette Turner Hospital
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Obasan by Joy Kogawa
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Sisters by Mary S. Lovell
The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Mosley
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Iris Murdoch (everything I’ve read so far, which isn’t much considering how prolific she was)
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman
The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New by Adrienne Rich
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
The Way It Is: Poems by William Stafford
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Waterland by Graham Swift
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Slaughter-house 5 by Kurt Vonnegut
Sleepwalking by Meg Wolitzer
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

Link’s stories are the stuff of dreams—they are luminous, unpredictable shape-shifters that illuminate the inner workings of the mind. Like her first collection, Stranger Things Happen, these stories are genre-bending—they lean to the fantastical, but can’t quite be pinned down as fantasy or literary. At their spooky best, you are left bewildered and enchanted. My favorite stories in the collection are “The faery handbag” and the self-titled story which features a television show called ‘The Library.’

I had the good fortune to run into Kelly Link at the library where I work a few weeks ago. More to the point, I dashed after her madly after I saw her exit an elevator. I got red-faced and giddy and asked her to autograph my notebook! She was extremely gracious and kind and calm with my fan-ness; apparently, I am the first person ever to recognize her! But I calmed down once we started talking about restaurants in Amherst and Northampton—where she lives and where I once did (and man, is the food good there—I don’t think I like any Seattle restaurants as much as I liked some of the places there.) And later even sent a deck of cards (with the Magic for Beginners cover) and told me that I made her year! It’s so nice when the authors we like turn out to be really cool human beings.

Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

This is a book lover’s dream! In every chapter Prose breaks down the art of literature by its dazzling components--the sentence, the paragraph, characterization, gesture, dialogue—and creates an understanding and appreciation for the masters of the craft. The authors, stories, and scenes she uses to illustrate her point are inspired and inspiring—I wanted to run right out and read every author, short story, and novel she cited as examples throughout. One of the final chapters is dedicated to the reading of Chekhov’s short stories and how he broke every rule and convention Prose felt she kept trying to impart on her writing students. I can’t wait to dedicate a little time to Chekhov myself. And I know that I will slow down and savor my reading a little more—pay closer attention to how authors do what they do.

Digging to America by Anne Tyler

Sometimes books come at the right time. I had heard from so many friends just how good this book was, but I didn’t get to it the first time it came in for me. But I was really ready now for something so seamlessly written, with characters so clearly and compassionately drawn. Two American families in Baltimore adopt Korean girls and meet in the airport—the Donaldsons and the Yazdans. The Donaldsons invite the Yazdans into their lives right away, wanting the girls to grow up together, share their Korean heritage. Smoothly transitioning from year to year, from character to character, Tyler explores the idiosyncracies of family life and parenting, as well as the complex terrain of national identity, belonging, and “foreignness.” Sami and Ziba Yazdan are Iranian, and Maryam, Sami’s mother, still feels very much apart from American life even though she has lived there the majority of her adult life. What is an American life? What are the rules of American society, being as so many of them are not made explicit? Tyler evokes the viewpoints of her characters with a warmth and generosity that is infectious. I simply did not want this book to end—I wanted the years to keep scrolling by, the follow both families much longer.

Saturday by Ian McEwan

I thoroughly enjoyed rereading this novel. Rather than synopsize it, a few of my favorite passages:

“At times this biography made him comfortably nostalgic for a verdant, horse-drawn, affectionate England; at others he was faintly depressed by the way a whole life could be contained by a few hundred pages—bottled, like homemade chutney. And by how easily an existence, its ambitions, networks of family and friends, all its cherished stuff, solidly possessed, could so entirely vanish.”

“It’s a commonplace of parenting and modern genetics that parents have little or no influence on the characters of their children. You never know who you are going to get. Opportunities, health, prospects, accent, table manners—these might lie within your power to shape. But what really determines the sort of person who’s coming to live with you in which sperm finds which egg, how the cards in the two packs are chosen, then how they are shuffled, halved and spliced at the moment of recombination. Cheerful or neurotic, kind or greedy, curious or dull, expansive or shy and anywhere in between; it can be quite an affront to parental self-regard, just how much of the work has already been done. On the other hand, it can let you off the hook.”

“Who else could love him so knowingly, with such warmth and teasing humour, or accumulate so rich a past with him? …By some accident of character, it’s familiarity that excites him more than sexual novelty. …This fidelity might look like virtue or doggedness, but it’s neither of these because he exercises no real choice. This is what he has to have: possession, belonging, repetition.”

A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle

A sweet story about life and love after death—set in a New York cemetery where a hermit, a talking raven, and the ghosts of the recently deceased live.

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

I’m like more than 10 years late on this one; it was a bestseller back when I was working at a bookstore in Amherst, and one of Oprah’s early picks. But Bohjalian’s name came up recently, and I thought, why not? There are simultaneous reasons why I should and should not have picked up this novel. I am working with midwives and planning a home birth, and while this novel does much justice and even celebrates or at least illuminates midwifery, it is at heart about a home birth gone horribly wrong and the trial following a mother’s death from an emergency C-section. But somehow the more gruesome or troubling aspects of the book didn’t get to me that much. Because really this is a mother-daughter story, narrated by Connie, the daughter of the midwife on trial. It’s also wonderfully evocative of Vermont, its intense snows and sloppy mud seasons. And it’s more nuanced than I expected. Overall an enjoyable read that I lapped right up.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

I have been a distracted reader this summer, and was just craving something that would draw me in. I have been hearing much hype about Mitchell for years, but every time I picked up his supposed masterpiece, Cloud Atlas, I kept dropping it faster than a sweaty gym sock. I mean, I’m all for experimental fiction and fractured narratives, but my brain just hasn’t been up for it of late. So when my friend Hannah told me how much she had been enjoying his latest (and my dear friend Nick told me he loved it, too, so I’d had plenty of prompting), I dusted off my advance reader’s copy and finally got down to it.

Let me just say that I am a sucker for coming-of-age novels. If they’re set in the 80’s (when I grew up), then all the better—and if they’re set in Britain (where I wish I’d grown up), well, then, what am I waiting for? The protagonist of this one is Jason Taylor—a lonely 13-year-old who secretly writes poetry and has a nasty, hindering stammer who wants desperately to fit in and be accepted by his peers. Unfortunately, the boys in his school like to use him for a punching bag. But who wants to read about the perfect, popular kid anyway? This book is heartbreaking and always honest about the wretched state of insecure boyhood. And Mitchell has some absolutely memorable characters here, and has created a solid, true story about a boy coming of age during the Falklands war, surviving divorce, and navigating the grisly public school halls while giving you a glimpse of the fine young man he will become.

Brighten the Corner Where You Are by Fred Chappell

I love the title of this novel and I bought a copy years ago for the title alone. I have been cleaning off my bookshelves, deciding what to keep and sell (a friend of mine is totally appalled that I could sell any of my books, but given that I live in 700 square feet that will soon be crammed with all things baby, I just have to!), and found this again. It’s a sweet, Southern story about the narrator’s father, a high school teacher and prankster in 1946. It’s one day in the life of this sly, inventive man—a day of much mischief and surprises, and a school board meeting in which his teaching of Darwin in science class will be called into question. I had fun reading this, and there are some great moments, but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. (Which may be partially my fault in waiting 4 years to read it!)

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

I kept hearing wonderful things about this book, that it was a sure-fire book group pleaser and all that, and I tell you—it was! It’s a simple, spare novel about 19th century China when footbinding was still very much a part of women’s lives and friendships as well as marriages were arranged. Our narrator, Lily, had an “old sames” or laotong friendship arranged with Snow Flower, a young girl from a more auspicious family. Women had their own phonetic written language called nu shu and these girls shared their lives and thoughts over the years through letters (I automatically love novels about letters—just so you know). But misunderstanding and resentment begins to grow between them through their years as wives and mothers. Written with great sadness, Lily revisits her friendship with Snow Flower, slowly unfolding where they both steered wrong, where they both lost track of their true selves and one another. Not a book to finish on the bus—I had to choke back tears and regret that I didn’t give myself a proper, messy cry!

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

I thank my lucky stars all the time that I know Nancy Pearl! And she’s done it again by recommending a wonderfully diverting vampire novel! McKinley is most well known for her teen fiction, but this one is very adult, and so good! It starts out rather benignly, where we meet Rae/Sunshine who works in her step-father’s bakery in a sleepy town making cinnamon rolls as big as your head. But not far into the story you begin hearing about the Voodoo Wars and the Others—this is no ordinary, sleepy love story after all. I really loved this book—for its intelligent, grounded, and surprising main character and utterly beguiling, chillingly charming vampire.

Operating Instructions: a journal of my son’s first year by Anne Lamott

I must admit that I put off reading Lamott, even though I had heard this book is good and that she is good, because of her emphasis on Christianity in her work. I fully admit that I have a kneejerk reaction to Christian writings, and let’s be honest, Christianity in general. But I am so glad I read this book. For one, I am expecting so it was wonderful to read about another mother’s thoughts—on her terror at having a boy and her own conflicted experiences and perceptions of maleness and penises (I don’t know if I am having a boy or a girl, and I do have some concerns about having a boy, or a girl for that matter). Secondly, she wrote this book during the reign of Bush Senior and spends a lot of time railing against the evils of Republicanism—but it did break my heart to think here I am with a child being born into the 2nd Bush reign which is unarguably worse that the former. Lamott also explores her faith, and calls its craziness into question at times, in a truly refreshing way. I may not be able to handle her books which deal squarely with this topic, but I appreciated her candor and questioning in this one.

City of Your Final Destination by Peter Cameron

Julia Glass recommended this book at her visit to the library, and I am so grateful! It was just what I was craving: well-drawn, intriguing characters, witty dialogue, and some academic satire thrown in for good measure. I hope to read more Cameron quite soon.