Reading with a vengeance!

Leisure time = reading time!  And hopefully something you'll be interested in picking up and maybe even sharing.  Lots here to learn from, entertain and enjoy.

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (2013)

A zen Buddhist priest writes a beautiful two-pronged novel about a suicidal girl whose diary washes ashore and is found by a Canadian writer.  In the diary, the Japanese-American girl shares the story of her life amongst bullies in Japan and time spent with her centenarian, Buddhist nun great-grandmother.

This novel is Ozeki's junction of fiction and reality and it's difficult for us to parse through it, determining where she writes what she knows and where she creates from her imagination.

The concrete thinker in me does not enjoy the book as much as the abstract reader will.  But it is a wonderfully made story that draws the reader in as the diary draws in the novel's writer who finds it.


Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (2013)

All the YA (Young Adult) books are wasted on the young.  Maybe this was written for a young audience and maybe it has young protagonists.  But enough about that demographic.  This story is placed in 1980s Omaha and it has 80s references that today's YA whippersnappers can't appreciate, characters we quickly come to know and care about and a gripping plot.

Eleanor and Park meet.  There's a romance.  But it's not like that!  They don't even speak to each other at first.  Heck they don't even like each other.  He's not popular.  She's not even on the fringe of not popular.  The both get by.  She, barely.  His home life is idyllic.  Hers is horrible.  They are different as can be.  Or are they?

A great story, an unpredictable ending set to 80s new wave and the sharing of X-Men comic books.


The Still Point of the Turning World by Emily Rapp (2013)

Heartbreak and literary philosophy between the covers.  A mother cathartically relives the devastation of learning her beautiful boy is not going to blossom into all the hopes and dreams she has for him, but will instead soon die of Tay-Sachs disease, a terrible, degenerative illness.

Rapp begins this crushing memoir with the medical appointments that reveal her son's diagnosis.  Rather than give the day-to-day trials of living with a slowly deteriorating baby, she talks about how she dealt with the truth of his diagnosis, the reality of the prenatal Tay-Sachs testing many people take (her son's was a rare and untested variety) and how she came to terms with the fact that she and Ronan would share very little time here together.


The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America by Ernest Freeberg (2013)

Fact-filled book, exploring the change in society once the incandescent lightbulb hit the scene.  Quite honestly, this book did not light up my life in an entertaining way, but it was educational historically, socially and scientifically and for that it had value.

Drama in the scientific community surrounded the fame that Thomas Edison garnered, as it was not he alone who invented the lightbulb.  He did, however, revolutionize the processes by which the lightbulb was used and brought to the people at large and for that his fame was earned.

There were many deaths and dangers present in the initial years of light being spread upon the city streets.  Stories are gruesome and disturbing.

Europe conceded that America reigned supreme when it came to ambition and ingenuity and it was a new age.  The late 1800's were an Age of Edison.


The Dinner by Herman Koch (2013 USA)

Is there a genre called disturbing fiction?  The Dinner might fit the bill.  Or it might be called confusing fiction.  This book has been a bestseller in Europe for a few years now and has just found its way to America.

Teen cousins get into trouble and the narrator and his brother, a political big-wig in Amsterdam, along with their wives, meet for dinner to discuss how to handle the problem.  The book is largely flashbacks and intermittently, we find them back at this dinner.

Perhaps most disturbing is the way one of the parents wants to 'handle' the trouble the teens caused.  Or maybe more disturbing is what the teens actually did.  Or it could be that none of the characters in this book has enough redeeming qualities so you would run screaming from dinner with any one of them.

The concept was a good one, though you get one-third of the way through the book before you even get a hint of what the problem was in the first place and perhaps your interest wanes by then.  All said, it takes less time to read this book than it does for them to finish their dinner, so you can decide what you think for yourself.


Out of the Easy by Ruta Septys (2013)

After reading how many books by a particular author can I consider myself a fan?  I've read Septys's debut, Between Shades of Gray (2011) and decided whatever book is her next, I will be reading.  She has hit the ball out of the park twice, with YA historical fiction.  And both times, I started the books at night and stayed up into the wee hours to finish in one sitting.  I didn't love Ms. Septys in the morning due to my reading hangover, but I did love her books.

Out of the Easy is the story of a girl, Josie Moraine, raised in New Orleans, or not really raised, by a prostitute with links to the criminal underworld.  Josie wants more than a life of tricks and crime.  She has her sights set on college, in the Northeast no less.  In the 1950s, that was not exactly on the poor girl's menu.  But Josie, a smart and savvy girl with ambition was going to make this happen.

A richly drawn cast of characters both for and against Josie, a mystery to be solved and the backdrop of the French Quarter conspire to make a grand novel.

I read, therefore I am,
the lowercase b