Book 52 - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson

Woo hoo! Book 52!! This also the second "three-peat" author, having read all three books of the "Dragon Tattoo" series in the course of the challenge.

Book 52 - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson

As the final book of Stieg Larsson's "Dragon Tattoo" opens, Lisbeth Salander is gravely injured after being shot multiple times in the epic battle scene that ends the second book. After being flown by medevac helicopter to Sahlgrenska hospital, emergency surgery is performed to remove a 22 caliber bullet from her brain, and to mend her other wounds. She is no longer the chief suspect in the triple homicide that made her a fugitive in the previous book. The man the police now seek for those crimes is Ronald Niederman, a hulking monster of a man who suffers from a neurological syndrome that prevents him from feeling pain, and who was responsible for inflicting many of the injuries that have landed her in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. She is not a free woman, however. She is still a ward of the state, declared incompetent to deal with her own affairs, despite her photographic memory, massive intellect, and prodigious computer skills. She is now also facing assault and attempted murder charges, stemming from her attempts to locate the evil and mysterious Zalachenko, and is being held by police in her hospital room. Zalachenko, who in reality is Salander's father, is lying in a bed two doors away from Salander, recovering from ax wounds inflicted by her in the aforementioned battle. This is the second time he has survived an attack by Salander. The first time was when Salander was a young girl, and Zalachenko was delivering the last in a series of horrific beatings to her mother, this final one landing her in a nursing home for the rest of her life. Young Salander lashes out against her father, and her violent reaction leads to her involuntary committal in a psychiatric hospital and ultimately to her declaration of incompetence.

Locked away in ICU, unable to receive visitors and without access to the internet, Salander is powerless to do battle with forces that wish to lock her away for good. Zalachenko, a Russian agent that defected, has been harbored by a super-secret internal faction within the Swedish Secret Police. For years they have been covering up his crimes, believing his importance as an intelligence asset was such that they were willing to overlook his criminal activity, and knowing that if their secret ever got out, it would be devastating to themselves and to current and former government leaders. Salander knows at least part of the story, and putting her away in a mental institution for good is one of the steps they feel they must take in order to hide the existence of the Zalachenko affair.

People who know Salander know that she is far from incompetent, and this seems to engender a fierce loyalty towards her, regardless of what feelings she may have for them. Mikael Blomkvist, the investigative reporter from the other two books and at one time Salander's lover, is now frequently the object of her scorn. Nevertheless, Blomkvist throws almost all the resources of his magazine behind defending her and uncovering the secret organization that becomes known as "The Section." Dragan Armansky, her former employer, has also devoted much of his security company's resources to the investigation. Several police officers, in the course of their investigation, have become sympathetic to Salander's plight. Even Salander's hacker friends get in the game, once she manages to gain access to the internet from her locked hospital room, and once Armansky uses his connections to make people in the government aware of what is going on, strange alliances start to form between these investigations and those implemented by the government.

Of course "The Section" is also investigating everyone trying to figure out what is known about their organization, and what they will need to do to cover things up. At one point, a member of the Secret Police is trailing a member of "The Section," who in turn is trailing Blomkvist. In her surveillance the Secret Police officer notes that not only is Blomkvist observing his observers, but there is also someone from the Milton Security observing the whole thing.

Like the other books in the series, this is a page-turner. Although it is truly a continuation of the action of the second book, it is no longer a murder investigation, but rather a taut political thriller. The action moves along fast and furious. The plot is complex, but because of the number of separate investigations going on, there is ample opportunity for review when the various entities update each other on their progress.

I have to say, I'm sorry to have to say goodbye to Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. I guess it's probably better to go out this way. Larsson wrote three fantastic books. There's not a clunker in the bunch.

Book 51 - Naked - David Sedaris

This is the first of two "three-peats" for the year - authors of whom I have read three books in this year's challenge.

Book 51 - Naked - David Sedaris

As I am in a hurry to finish my entries, and I have written about Sedaris' books twice before, I am going to refer you to my previous entries for Barrel Fever and When You Are Engulfed in Flames for any background information for this funny and entertaining author.

This is his second book, and all the essays seem to be autobiographical, dealing for the most part with his childhood and college days. However, with much of Sedaris' work it becomes difficult to tell where the weird and quirky truth ends and the weirder and quirkier exaggeration begins. For example in "A Plague of Tics," Sedaris describes a series of obsessive-compulsive tics he supposedly exhibited as a youngster that are so comically outlandish as to defy credulity. On the other hand the mystery of who is wiping their butt with the bath towels, related in the story "True Detective," is made more plausible by the presence of their strange greek grandmother, Ya-Ya. The mother of Sedaris' father, her strange habits are described in detail in "Get Your Ya-Ya's Out." Ya-ya barely speaks english, her hygiene is questionable, she boils expensive meats, kneads bread dough on the dirty kitchen floor, scavenges plants from the neighbor's yards and seeds from their bird feeders, and holds David's mother in scorn, refusing to call her by name and referring to her simply as "the girl." In light of her strange behaviors, why she seems to be dismissed as a suspect in the bath towel incident is inexplicable.

Sedaris' early family life is a rich source of weirdness. There's his father, who is so fanatical about golf that in the story "The Women's Open," he ignores the fact that his daughter is experiencing her first period. They are watching a live golf match with nationally known players, and he is so engrossed in the game that he foists the responsibility for making sure his daughter is OK off on a complete stranger in the crowd. In "Dinah, the Christmas Whore," David's sister drags him off on a mysterious mission on Christmas Eve to a seedy part of town to rescue a one of her coworkers, who also happens to be a prostitute, from an abusive boyfriend, and winds up bringing her home to meet the family. His mother seems to be the genetic source of David's sardonic wit, and she frequently uses her sharp tongue to cut her husband or his mother down to size.

As you must have gathered by now, I really like Sedaris' work. It exaggerates truth and finds truth in exaggeration, and is weird, quirky and funny. As I have warned before, his work is not for the prudish. His humor is dark and twisted, he talks openly about sex and bodily functions, and he is unabashedly gay. If any of this offends your delicate sensibilities, you might want to stay away from his work. However, if you can hang, you will find in him one of the most gifted comedic writers of our time.

Book 50 - Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton

I know, I know. This entry is kind of light. I'm trying to wrap-up though, so I don't have time to write long reviews.

Book 50 - Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton

Wharton's book tells the tale of Ethan Frome through the eyes of a nameless narrator who arrives in the small New England town of Starkfield on an extended business trip. He wonders about the mysterious man he sees around town from time-to-time. The man seems to have all of the life sucked out of him and appears to be much older than he is. After unsuccessful queries of the townspeople, he learns the story directly from Frome himself when he is forced to stay at Frome's home due to a fierce snowstorm that makes travel impossible.

The narrator flashes back to Frome's youth. Frome is married to Zenobia, a woman whose constant hypochondria has made her almost unbearable to live with. Frome falls for her cousin Mattie, who has moved in with them in order to help the physically frail Zenobia with her housework. Mattie turns out to be a poor housekeeper, and is subject to constant criticism by Zenobia. Frome turns out to be a poor philanderer, failing to put the moves on Mattie, but making it so obvious to those around him that he is smitten that his wife decides to send Mattie away and get a live-in housekeeper that is more competent, and perhaps less attractive to her husband. Frome is unwilling to stand up to his wife, and is he is not brave enough to run away with Mattie, rationalizing that he lacks the resources to divorce his wife and set up a new life for him and his new love. He finally exercises one act of defiance: driving Mattie to the train station. While this act allows him the opportunity to make his feelings known, it ends in tragedy, and gives the book's ending its ironic twist.

I enjoyed the book, despite the unlike-ability of some of the characters. Zenobia is a selfish, shrewish woman, and Ethan is an unambitious, spineless man. In a way, they seem deserving of their fate, tragic as it may be.

Book 49 - Deep Blue Home - Julia Whitty

I'm a tree-hugger. There. I've said it. I'm a tree-hugger. Not in the radical activist way, mind you. I don't believe in spiking trees, and you are not going to catch me naked on the street corner, espousing vegan philosophy with PETA activists. You won't even catch me storming a Japanese whaling vessel in a rubber dinghy. Nonetheless, I'm a tree-hugger. And some of you are too.

You know who you are.

You are a person who knows that nitrogen runoff from industrial farming techniques are creating huge dead zones in our oceans, where nothing can live.

You are a person who knows that our planet is being stripped of its biodiversity, threatening the balance of earth's ecosystems and threatening the existence of mankind itself.

You are a person who thinks it is irrational to think that seven billion people burning fossil fuels does not have an impact on the planet's ecology.

Come on. Say it with me. My name is "***SAY YOUR NAME***," and I'm a tree hugger.

This book is for you.

Book 49 - Deep Blue Home - Julia Whitty

Julia Whitty is a former documentary filmmaker who writes on environmental issues for magazines such as Harper's and Mother Jones. The Fragile Edge, her first book on oceans, has won several awards for creative non-fiction including the Pen USA Award and the Kiryama Prize. In Deep Blue Home, Whitty explores the ecosystems of the world's oceans and the importance of these ecosystems to the survival of life on this planet.

Whitty opens the book by flashing back more than twenty-five years to her days working on Isla Rasa, a tiny island in the Gulf of California. Here she studied the thousands of migratory birds that flocked to the island: elegant terns, least-storm petrels, and the peregrine falcons that hunt them. Later she takes us to the coast of Newfoundland, where she augments her encounter with a giant sea turtle by explaining how these cold-blooded animals have adapted to freezing cold water temperatures by pumping warmer blood from the middle of their bodies out to their extremities. She tells of a close encounter with a sperm whale, so close that she had to contemplate whether she would be dragged under when it sounded. When she introduces us to a new species of animal she makes reference to its position on Red List, a list that tracks the endangerment status of thousands of species.

The book is not just facts about various animals in the ocean, however. She discusses the life-cycle of the ocean, and how it affects the life-cycle of the entire planet. She discusses global water circulation patterns such as thermohaline circulation, and how desalinization due to melting ice caps threaten to shut down this vital circulation pattern. She discusses how industrial fishing techniques have diminished the populations of many species to the point where it is unsure that they can recover. She discusses the problems of this overfishing in the context of trophic cascade, the idea that over-fishing a particular species has ramifications for other species, both those that hunt that species, as well as those that are hunted by it.

Reading this book is somewhat like listening to the narration of a nature documentary without the picture. Whitty's vivid descriptions allow your mind's eye to fill in the video portion, and her passion for the subject exudes from every page. She evokes Steinbeck and Melville in her narrative, and she deftly interweaves tales of the world and the sea from Indian, Norse, Roman, and Greek mythology, reminding us that the importance of protecting the sea is not a knowledge that we have not yet gained, but rather one we have forgotten. At the beginning of this post I said this book was for tree-huggers, but maybe more importantly, it is for those people who aren't.

Book 48 - Candide - Voltaire

I fear these last few entries are going to be even more of a mess than usual. I apologize in advance, but I'm desperately trying to make the deadline. I'm currently reading my last book, but I still have four more entries to write up!

Book 48 - Candide - Voltaire

Voltaire's satire Candide tells the tale of its eponymous antagonist, a man who blindly embraces a philosophic viewpoint of The Enlightenment known as optimism. Based on the ideas of the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, optimism embraces the idea that God has made a perfect world, and any imperfection we find in it is due to a lack of knowledge of the greater good that imperfection serves. In other words, we live in "the best of all possible worlds" and "all is for the best." Voltaire ruthlessly satirizes this point of view, heaping upon the characters maladies and misfortunes of such a comically gruesome and pointless nature as to defy any explanation as to what greater good they might serve.

Candide is a young man who lives in Westphalia in the castle of a Baron, where he studies philosophy under the tutelage of Pangloss, a fervent proponent of the school of optimism. Caught making out with the Baron's daughter, Cunégonde, he is banished from the castle. Shortly thereafter he is conscripted by the Bulgars to fight. When he is caught away from his regiment, supposedly out for a stroll, he is accused of desertion and is flogged so brutally that every bit of skin is flayed from his back. Candide recovers, however this is but the first in a series of horrible misfortunes the characters of the book encounter, each one more comically gruesome than the last. Candide's adventures take him all over Europe and as far as the New World, wear he encounters El Dorado, a remote, almost inaccessible land where there are no wars, no one is imprisoned, and the streets are littered with gold and jewels. Candide eventually leaves El Dorado with a vast fortune, but what he does not squander he winds up losing to swindlers and thieves. It is this loss of fortune more than any of the physical grief he has encountered which causes Candide to question his blind optimism.

The characters of the book are deliberately underdeveloped and unrealistic. They are caricatures, stand-ins for various points of view. Pangloss serves as a surrogate for Leibniz himself. Candide is comically naive and impressionable, blindly following the teachings of Pangloss. Cunégonde represents idealized womanhood in Candide's eyes, but while she professes feelings for Candide, she is quick to discard those feelings and use her sexual assets to her advantage. Martin is a pessimist who sees only bad in the world, which seems almost as extreme as Pangloss's relentless optimism. It is only Cacambo, a valet that Candide acquires on the way to South America, who shows any real honesty and depth of character.

This was a short but interesting read, although one has to do a little background research to fully appreciate it. This book is a relentless attack on Leibniz's ideas, and so therefore a cursory knowledge of those ideas is helpful in understanding some of the humor. I think it was helpful that the version I read was a modern translation by Peter Constantine, and had a well-written introduction which provided some of the background necessary to appreciate the text. I've never read any other Voltaire, and while the satire and the use of pun-ish names seem a bit heavy-handed at times, I'd have to say that overall I enjoyed the book.

Book 47 - As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

I'm still having trouble keeping up with the posts, but as of this entry, I'm about to start book 51!

Book 47 - As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

Addie Bundren is dying. Outside her window, her son Cash is employing his carpentry skills in the construction of her coffin, working methodically but steadily in hopes that the coffin will be ready before she passes. Her daughter, Dewey Dell, waves a fan to help her bear the summer heat, while two of her other sons, Darl and Jewel, debate whether they can embark on a delivery and return before she dies.

So opens As I Lay Dying, a book many consider to be Faulkner's best. It tells the tale of Anse Bundren's misguided quest to fulfill his wife's dying wish and bury her in Jefferson, some 40 miles away. They must make the trip by mule-drawn wagon, and in addition to Addie's coffin, Anse expects his five children, four of which are at least teenagers, to ride on the wagon as well.

The trip seems doomed from the beginning. Addie dies soon after Darl and Jewel leave for their delivery, and Cash is not yet finished with the coffin. A storm washes out the bridge that spans the river they must cross. When they finally do set out, Addie's body has already been baking in the hot July sun for a few days, and buzzards have picked up the scent. A failed attempt to cross the river, one that proves fatal for the mules and very nearly fatal for Cash, sets them back even more. People try to convince Anse to just bury her at home, but Anse insists on respecting her dying wish, no matter how much risk it presents for the living.

With this book, Faulkner expands on his multiple-narrator technique employed so well in The Sound and the Fury (see my review here), which was published the year before. This time, rather than four, there are fifteen narrative voices taking turns telling parts of the story from different perspectives. This unique technique allows the reader to develop his or her impression of the characters from the way they react to the events and the other characters around them. The narration is not always temporally linear, and often different narrators overlap and re-tell events from another point-of-view. At one point Darl is telling us about events that he could not possibly be witnessing, as he is miles away at the time, and Addie herself narrates a chapter posthumously, although it is not clear if she is speaking to us from the grave, or if Faulkner has time-shifted to a point where Addie is still alive.

There is much dysfunction in the Bundren family, and many contradictions between the outward appearances of the characters and what is really going on in their minds. Anse seems dedicated to Addie and the mission to bury her, but he reveals himself to be lazy and selfish, allowing others to put themselves in harm's way for the mission, and seeming to be more concerned with acquiring a set of false teeth for himself than for the safety of others. Dewey Dell is secretly pregnant, and her thoughts are dominated with sexual reveries and thoughts of what she is going to do about her situation, rather than with grief for her mother. Jewel outwardly seems withdrawn to the point where some believe that he doesn't care, but inside is grief manifests itself as anger and he turns out to be the chief defender of the coffin, often going to foolishly heroic lengths to ensure its safety. Darl seems to be the most reliable voice at the beginning, but grief and the stress of the journey get the better of him and he descends into madness. Cash barely speaks at the beginning, concerned only with the construction of the coffin, and whether it is balanced when it is on the wagon. Ironically, as the book progreses he emerges as the book's most lucid and rational narrator.

I really liked this book. Initially, the constantly changing narration threw me off, and I found myself re-reading passages because the first time I was still in the mindset of the other character, but once I got used to it, I really enjoyed the shifting voices. As with any of these Deep South books, one has to struggle a bit with the peculiarities of Southern dialects, but one gets used to that as well. I've only read two of Faulkner's books in my life, both of them in this challenge, but I have to say this is my favorite of his so far.

Book 46 - Last Words - George Carlin

One of the many inexplicable contradictions of my childhood was that while I was not allowed to buy Beatles records because I would be feeding their drug habits, I was allowed to buy George Carlin albums. Although I suspected it at the time - based on the long hair, explicit language and drug references - after reading this book I now know for sure that I was feeding his George's drug habit.

Book 46 - Last Words - George Carlin

For those who don't know, and I can't imagine who you might be, George Carlin was a famous counter-culture comedian most noted for his routine, "Seven Dirty Words You Can Never Say on Televison." This autobigraphy, assembled with the help of Tony Hendra and published posthumously, chronicles almost every aspect of George's life: his nearly aborted birth, his days growing up in New York City, his troubled stint in the Air Force, and the ups and downs of his comedy career.

The book covers Carlin's early days of radio, and how parlayed his radio career into a stand-up comedy routine, first with a partner, and then on his own. It talks about the television appearances of the sixties: Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and of course The Tonight Show, where he appeared so frequently that he became one of the guest hosts for Johnny's frequent days off. It tells of his dissatisfaction with his career and the period of self-sabotage that preceded his emergence as the counter-culture comedian of Class Clown. His routines of this period, in which he pointed out absurdities in language, sports, and the Viet Nam war, made him one of the founders of the brand of observational comedy that seems so commonplace today. Like Lenny Bruce, who George admired, he blazed new trails in what was being said on stage. His "Filthy Words" routine, a sequel to the "Seven Dirty Words" bit, was the foundation of the U.S. Supreme Court's "Federal Communications Commision vs. Pacifica Foundation" decision which officially established the FCC's authority to regulate indecent material on the airwaves.

George is riding high (in more ways than one), but success brings problems to his life. There are problems with drugs, taxes, and his heart. His wife suffers drinking problems, and after winning the battle with the bottle, she loses a battle with cancer. Things are looking bleak once again.

But once again Carlin emerges from the ashes. He embraces new management and capitalizes on a relationship with HBO. He starts to become more politicized. He also comes to an important realization: "laughter is not the only proof of success." This liberating thought allows him to engage the audience without worrying about getting a laugh with every sentence, and would shape his comedy until the end of his career.

I hate to say it, but unless you are really a fan of Carlin's, you probably don't have a reason to read this book. Yes, there are some revelations, but nothing earth-shattering, unless it would surprise you to hear that Carlin had a drug problem, or couldn't keep his finances straight. He dishes a little dirt here and there when it involves a direct interaction between him and a celebrity, but he doesn't seem to have a ton of celebrity friends, and he's not really one to tell tales out of school. I'm also not the biggest fan of comedians analyzing their comedy, although Carlin's brand of humor was so bound up with who he was that it's not nearly as painful here.

I'm not sorry I took the time to read it, though. As a fan, it allowed me to relive some memories, to fill in some gaps in what I knew about him, and to better understand the reasons his comedy took the directions that it did. If you are really a fan it might do that for you as well.

Book 45 - The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

I have to admit, I stumbled across this selection while looking for good short books to read. With the deadline fast approaching, I can't get bogged down with too many 500+ page books. The first thing that caught me was the title. It sounded to me like a children's book. It turns out that Haddon has a well-established career writing for children, and this was his first effort at adult fiction. The second thing that grabbed me was that the narrator of the book suffered from autism. This definitely piqued my curiosity. Combine this with a deadline-friendly 226 pages, and I knew I had my next reading selection!

Book 45 - The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

This book is quite unique in that it's narrated by a boy who appears to have some form of autism, perhaps Asperger's syndrome. His condition is never specifically mentioned, but he attends a special school, has trouble spotting emotion in facial expressions, exhibits rocking behavior, and becomes unnaturally preoccupied with things. He is also hyper-observant, which causes him great stress in new situations, because he has way too much input to process. This elicits seizure-like behavior in which his body and brain shut down. He is very good with mathematics though, and wants to sit for a math exam that will allow him to attend university, something nobody at his school has ever done.

His name is Christopher John Francis Boone, and he lives alone with his father, his mother having died of a heart attack some time before. The story opens with Christopher finding a dead dog with a large garden fork sticking out of it, lying in his neighbors yard sometime around midnight. Naturally he is the prime suspect, this strange boy who goes to the special school and who is found standing over the dog's dead body. He is innocent of course, so he decides then and there that he is going to find out who really killed the dog. After his initial efforts at investigation lead to trouble with the police, his father forbids him from continuing his inquiry. Christopher persists however, chronicling his efforts as a school project which ultimately turns into this book. His investigation leads him to uncover another mystery, one that involves him much more personally, and which leads him on a terrifying solo train journey from his home in Swindon to London.

I liked this book. Christopher's inability to read people's emotions combined with his unique way of processing information creates an interesting perspective on the most uninteresting things. Something as simple as getting on an escalator or riding a subway train becomes an adventure filled with wonder and terror. While the author makes no claims that this book is an accurate depiction of autism - in fact he has received some criticism that it is not - it does bring to light the challenges presented to parents of children with special needs, how each individual succeeds or fails at these challenges, and the strain this places on interpersonal relationships.

Book 44 - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Although this selection is an international bestseller, and has been translated into 67 different languages, I'd never heard of it until I started the challenge. While discussing books that I was planning to read with a friend, she told me that this was one of her favorite books of all time, and suggested that I include it in my reading list. Unfortunately, she passed away this past summer, before I got a chance to read it. I figured I owed it to her to include it in the challenge.

Book 44 - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist is a fable about pursuing your life's dream, or as the book calls it, your "personal legend." Coelho's tale, like most good fables, is a simple one. It tells of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd who has a recurring dream about finding a great treasure near the Egyptian pyramids. He meets a man who calls himself the King of Salem, and who claims his purpose is to encourage people to follow their personal legend. The man informs him that this recurring dream is Santiago's personal legend, and tells him that he must follow it. Santiago is reluctant at first, but the man seems to have mystical powers and seems to know many things about Santiago that he couldn't possibly know, so Santiago decides to sell his flock and embark on the journey.

He suffers many great setbacks along the way. More than once he loses everything he owns. He faces death and injury at the hands of thieves and warring desert tribes. Along the way, he meets an Englishman studying alchemy, from whom he learns the value of knowledge. He meets a two hundred year old alchemist, who teaches him the value of wisdom, how to listen to his heart, and how to connect with the Soul of the World. He meets Fatima, who he immediately recognizes as the love of his life, and who loves him so deeply that she is willing to let him go to pursue his personal legend. Ultimately he finds the treasure he seeks in the place he least expects it to be.

The book's beauty truly lies in it's simplicity. While there is much mysticism, the plot is simple, the language straightforward, and the truths it puts forth are pure. Follow your dream. Listen to your heart. Connect with the world around you. These messages resonate with many people, so I can understand why it is a hugely popular book.

With the challenge deadline approaching, I almost always have a book with me, just in case I find myself with a bit of downtime and want to read a few pages. I was approached more than once by complete strangers who saw me with this book and felt compelled to come up to me and tell me what an inspirational book it was, and how much I was going to enjoy reading it. One person noted that my copy was a library book and informed me that once had I read it, I was going to want to buy a copy for myself, so I could read it over and over again. While I may not share their level of enthusiasm, I still have to say that I found the book to be a most enjoyable read, and I certainly wouldn't rule out a repeat read at some point in the future.

Book 43 - Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain

Jeez, I'm so backed up. I just finished book 46, so that's three more to write about after this one...not to mention six more to read and write about...

Book 43 - Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain

Kitchen Confidential is Anthony Bourdain's autobiographical look at the life of a professional chef in the (mostly) New York restaurant business. Bourdain starts with his childhood experience on a transatlantic ocean liner, where he gets his first taste of vichyssoise, and starts to understand the experiential nature of good food. Once he arrives at his destination, France, he is still reluctant to be adventurous, ignoring the French dining experience for the most part and sticking to hamburgers and fries, until one day his parents make him and his brother wait in the car while they enjoy one of the finest restaurants in France. Feeling left out of what he believes would have been another vichyssoise-type experience, it is then that he starts on the path that he is well-known for: trying anything edible, no matter how strange it might seem. He discovers his love of food, and when he grows older, after knocking around at Vassar for a short while, he drops out and goes to Cape Cod, where he gets his first taste of the restaurant business. Starting as a lowly dishwasher, he soon graduates to food preparation and working the line. He eventually attends the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), and when he's done he manages to land a job at New York's famous Rainbow Room. Here he "makes his bones," learning to handle a high-volume and high-stress kitchen.

Bourdain tells it like it is, or at least like it was for him. He paints the early kitchen crews as merry pirate bands, looting and pillaging and taking no prisoners. They are pits of anarchy, full of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Is that steak not done yet and the rest of the food is ready? Throw it in the Fryolator! Cut your finger? Wrap a towel around it and keep working! Need to grab something out of the oven, and no towel handy? Use your bare hand! Bourdain's kitchens, for the most part, are drug-fueled pressure cookers, brimming with stress and yelling and swearing and sexism. He berates vendors, gathers intelligence on employees, and poaches staff from other restaurants. He speaks distainfully of the types of failed restaurant owners, and boasts of his ability to spot the warning signs of a failing restaurant.

Then, deliberately contradicting himself, he presents the kitchen of Scott Bryan, the head chef of Veritas. Bryan's kitchen is the antithesis of almost everything Bourdain has described. Everyone is in pristine whites. The kitchen is busy, but there is no yelling, swearing or male posturing. Each dish is carefully constructed from scratch and beautifully plated. The owner is a perfect example of one of Bourdain's failed restaurant owner types - someone who didn't know the business prior to getting into it - but he is highly successful and runs a tight ship.

The book is very entertaining, even if Bourdain comes across as arrogant at times. He is a good storyteller, and the stories he tells make for good reading. You can see his passion for food in his writing, and while he might not be the greatest chef in the world, it's clear that he is passionate about what he does. Plus, it's fun to hear him slam Emeril LaGasse and Bobby Flay, two of the food networks first big stars, even if it seems like sour grapes for achieving greater celebrity than he did. If you have ever worked in a restaurant, or if you are a restaurant customer who's always wondered what goes on in the back of the house, you will get a kick out of this book.

Book 42 - Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McIerney

I'm a little backed up on the reviews. I finished reading this earlier in the week, and I finished reading another today, which I will try to write up before the weekend is done. Still, I've got a long way to go to meet my deadline, and a very short time in which to do it.

Book 42 - Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McIerney

Like Fight Club, which I reviewed very recently, this is another story of a man caught up in a self-destructive spiral, except this time it is not violence and mayhem, but rather drugs and debauchery that feeds this decline. The story is set in the 80s in New York City, and the main character - to be honest, I'm not sure if his name is mentioned - is a fact-checker at a big New York magazine. His fashion model wife has left him, and rather than go home to an apartment full of reminders of what he has lost, he has taken to nightly benders with his friend Tad Allagash. Tad is an insatiable womanizer, clubber, and cocaine user, and he drags our protagonist from club to club, always looking for a place where there might be more action or a better party.

As you can imagine, these self-destructive sprees are taking their toll on his professional life. He stops caring about his work. He comes in late, leaves early, sneaks naps, takes long drinking lunches in the middle of the day, and makes mistakes in his work - a very bad thing for a fact-checker. His lack of sleep and prodigious drug use combine to feed his obsession with his ex-wife, and when he learns that she is back in New York, he makes a desperate but failed attempt to contact her. Also for reasons we don't initially understand fully, he is ducking calls from his brother, who does not yet know that his wife has left him. It is not until his brother finally catches up to him that we understand the full depth of his pain.

I liked the book. Maybe it's because I would have been about the same age as the protagonist at the time it was set. There is also something interesting in the narrative voice of the novel. It is written entirely in second person. For example, the opening lines of the book are:

"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy."

This, to me, heightened the feeling of being inside the protagonist's head, while at the same time emphasizing the emotional detachment that the character is feeling.

So go ahead and check it out. I never got around to watching the movie, which starred Michael J. Fox as the lead and Kiefer Sutherland playing the role of Tad. McInerney wrote the screenplay for it though, and I've been told that it's reasonably faithful to the book, so if you don't want to invest the time in reading, but the story still sounds interesting, it might be worth checking it out.

Book 41 - The Neon Bible - John Kennedy Toole

I was having a conversation about books with someone not too long ago, and she mentioned a book that she had been meaning to read called The Neon Bible. I had never heard of it before, so I whipped out my trusty Blackberry and quickly Googled it. It turns out that the author was none other than John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces. I had never known that he wrote anything aside from his brilliant posthumously released satire, which earned a Pulitzer Prize for literature. I ran to the library the next day to check it out.

It turns out that he wrote this book when he was sixteen years old, apparently for a writing contest. Toole's mother, who fought so long and hard to get A Confederacy of Dunces published, found this earlier manuscript and wanted to publish it as well. Louisiana's Napoleonic code specified that the rights to the manuscript also belonged to some other relatives (they had surrendered these rights to the first book), and Toole's mother did not wish to share with these people. She went so far as to assign a trustee to keep the manuscript from being published after her death, but eventually lawsuits forced the trustee to relent, and the book was finally published.

Book 41 - The Neon Bible - John Kennedy Toole

The Neon Bible tells the story of David, a boy growing up in a small rural town in the Deep South, during the 1940s. The story is told through a series of recollections the boy has while riding a train to an unknown destination. He flashes back to life as a young boy, and tells of quality time spent with his aunt, a former actress and singer. His father loses his job and they are forced to move up into the hills, where the soil is thick clay in which hardly anything will grow, and in which the foundation of their house shifts when the rain softens it. The father, who he does not care much for, and who does not care much for him, spends all his money on seeds and tries in vain to grow food. Eventually the father goes off to the war, and when he is killed the boy's mother slips into madness, frequently visiting the garden even after it has become overgrown.

Being a small southern town, religion figures heavily in his memories, but it is often shown in a self-righteous and hypocritical light. He tells of his dealings with Mrs. Watkins, the female half of a holier-than-thou couple, who as his school teacher has it in for him from the start, unjustifiably singling him out for perceived bad behavior. Mr. Watkins, the teacher's husband, seems frequently to be trying to remove a book from the library or stop a show on moral grounds. There is also the revival tour of a charismatic preacher that comes into town, and divides the existing preacher's congregation, and there is the neon bible for which the book is named, a glowing sign hanging over the church that is visible from his house in the hills.

While the book is surprisingly well-written considering the age of the author at the time, it is much more of a novelty than a novel. It is an adolescent piece by an author who would later produce great work but too little of it, leaving us wanting more. In that respect, people who are big fans of A Confederacy of Dunces might be interested in this book to catch another glimpse of the potential of this author. However, if you are uninitiated and want to see what all the fuss about this John Kennedy Toole is about, stick with A Confederacy of Dunces.

Book 40 - Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk

There's less than a month to go, and I've still got twelve more books to read. I read eleven last month, so it's doable, but it's going to take some work. I guess I need to shut up and get to the review.

Book 40 - Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk.

The first rule of Fight Club is: "You don't talk about Fight Club."

The second rule of Fight Club is: "You don't talk about Fight Club."

The narrator of this novel can't sleep. He works in a corporate job coordinating product recall, plugging numbers into a spreadsheet that weighs the cost of the recall against the likelihood that people will get hurt or killed and sue. And he can't sleep. No, it's worse than that, he can't feel. He goes to support groups for ailments he doesn't have and finds cathartic release through the suffering of others. This works at first, and for a while after one of these episodes he can seemingly close his eyes and get some rest, but eventually it's not enough – once again he can’t sleep.

Then he meets Tyler Durden. Tyler shows him a whole new way to feel alive, through the physical pain of bare-knuckle brawling. Tyler and the narrator start Fight Club, an underground fighting match where ordinary men from all walks of life come to beat each other’s brains out. Two men to a fight. One fight at a time. Fights last as long as they have to. If it’s your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight. No exceptions.

For a while this works. The narrator has never felt more alive as right after a fight, but Tyler is not satisfied. He first expands and franchises Fight Club, and then uses it as a recruitment tool for Project Mayhem, which uses violence and mischief to create anarchy in hopes that what remains after society falls will at least be better than their current existence.

This was Chuck Palahniuk first published effort, and it’s a great one. It is wonderfully wicked book, full of brutal satire. Many people might be turned off by the large amount of graphically described violence, but really that’s what the book is all about: the characters are using this violence to escape their seemingly pointless lives – even if just for an evening - and feel something, even if it is mind-numbing, bone-crushing pain. When this is no longer enough, it almost seems logical that Tyler would export this idea to dealing with the general public, using mayhem to try to shock them out of their day-to-day existence.

I never saw the movie, except for a clip or two here and there, so I don’t know how true it was to the book. So much of this story revolves around what’s going on with the narrator and his thoughts about his job, his insomnia, and his relationships with Tyler and Marla. There’s a reason he remains nameless, but I won’t say what it is. I have already said to much. Remember, no matter what, "You don't talk about Fight Club."

Book 39 - The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

Book 39 - The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point is Malcolm Gladwell's Bestselling book that explores what it takes for an idea to take hold. Published in 2000, prior to the crushing success of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, the book puts forth the argument that there is a tipping point, a point at which an idea takes off and takes on a life of its own, and that this tipping point can be influenced by the smallest things.

There's "The Law of the Few," the notion that very few influential people exert most of the influence over whether the idea takes off. These people can be broken into 3 categories: Mavens, Connectors, and Persuaders. Mavens are knowledge experts, and this expertise makes them influential. Connectors are people who bridge the gap between disparate groups of people. They know everybody, and therefore are effective at spreading a message among different groups. Persuaders, are the salesmen. These are the people who can make you feel like you really want a product or care about an idea.

The second factor Gladwell explores is "Stickiness," which is the ability for an idea to take hold and maintain that hold. A multi-million dollar ad campaign is useless if your message doesn't stick. If you can't remember the message and associate it with the product, the money is wasted. Gladwell discusses the effort that went into making the show "Sesame Street" capable of holding a preschooler's attention, and how the makers of "Blues Clues," took what was learned from "Sesame Street" and created an even "Stickier" format.

Finally there is "The Power of Context," the notion that you can tweak the way that the information is presented in small ways, with very powerful results. One way he explores this is in the turnaround in the New York City crime rate in the early nineties. During the eighties, violent crime on the subways was very bad. The problem was that the subways were dirty, graffiti covered places that looked like no one cared about them. New York launched a campaign to clean up the subways, remove the graffiti, and stop the panhandling and turnstile jumping. The effect was dramatic: Crime plummeted.

This is a well-written and thought-provoking book, but as I mentioned before, it was written prior to the social networking explosion, so it is a little dated in that respect. He hardly even mentions the internet in the book. In the edition I read, which was published two years after the first and contains a new afterward by the author, he notes this oversight and talks about email, but at that point MySpace and Facebook were still at least a year away. It's not that the advent of social networking negates anything he says, but it becomes an important medium for implementing some of the ideas he puts forth, and it would be interesting to see what Gladwell has to say about these technologies.

Book 38 - The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

No preamble - let's go straight to the review!

Book 38 - The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

The Lost Symbol, the latest book from Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, is a fast paced thriller that in order to be enjoyed requires from the reader a vast suspension of disbelief, because at the beginning of the book, set in Washington, D.C., most of the town is watching a Redskins NFC playoff game.

Seriously, the setting is D.C., but the belief we as readers are asked to embrace is the notion that the Masons run everything. They are in all positions of power. They protect secrets which if known could change the world as we know it. They built the Nation's Capital, and embedded their symbology throughout the city.

OK, so maybe the last part isn't such a stretch. It's been pretty well established that many of the Founding Fathers were Masons, and so it is not really much of a surprise that they would embed their imagery in the buildings of D.C., and it is this fact that allows Brown to draw the reader into his broader intrigue. He is able to point to specific buildings and point out where these symbols really exist and say, "see, I told you it was there," which gives him credibility and allows the reader to at least temporarily believe in the broader conspiracy.

The other major thing we are asked to believe in is noetic science. This the science of trying to prove some of the metaphysical questions that everybody asks. Does God hear our prayers? Do we have a soul? What happens to the soul when we die? It is the combination of ancient mysticism and science, and plays heavily into the secrets that the Masons are supposedly trying to protect.

Brown weaves a fast-paced tale of suspense, involving kidnapping, dismemberment, puzzle solving, and a lot of chasing. It feels like an episode of 24, and it should, as the entire story takes place in less than 24 hours. Robert Langdon, famed symbologist and the protagonist from Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, has been asked by his friend, Peter Solomon, a high-ranking Mason, to speak at a Smithsonian event to take place at the U.S. Capitol Building. However, in reality, Solomon has been kidnapped, and it is his captor, the evil Mal'akh, who has lured Langdon to D.C.. Mal'akh wants to force Langdon to decode Masonic symbology that will lead him to the secrets of the Ancient Mysteries, which Mal'akh believes will bring him enormous power. But before Langdon can even unravel the first clue, the CIA becomes involved, as does the Architect of the Capitol, who is himself a high-ranking Mason.

What ensues is a hurried combination of chase and treasure hunt, as Langdon races to unlock the Masonic mysteries and free Solomon before Mal'akh kills him. It is difficult to know who to trust. The Masons are conflicted between saving their brother and keeping the secrets entrusted to them. The CIA's motive in trying to stop Mal'akh is unclear. The only person it seems Langdon can trust is Solomon's sister Katherine, a noetic scientist who has made incredible advances in a secret research lab set up by her brother. After her lab is destroyed by Mal'akh, she joins forces with Langdon to attempt to free her brother.

I loved the fact that this novel takes place in my backyard. As I was reading, I was intimately familiar with many of the streets and buildings they went to. When one of the scenes takes the action to Franklin Square, the CIA lands on top of 1301 K Street NW, where my office used to be.

Anyway, I don't want to give too much of the book away. I thought it was thrilling escapist fiction, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Give it a try!

Book 37 - My Empire of Dirt - Manny Howard

No, I haven't really slowed down, I'm just a little backed up on entries. I've got this one and another, and I'm halfway through a third book.

Book 37 - My Empire of Dirt - Manny Howard

I've always had an interest in urban farming. My ears perk up whenever I hear a story of someone who's converted an unused lot into a community farm, or someone that is growing food in or close to the city in a commercially viable and/or sustainable way. It's not that I know much about farming, it's just one of those topics that I find it interesting. So when I heard Manny Howard in an interview talking about this project, I figured I was going to have to get around to reading it sometime.

In My Empire of Dirt, Manny Howard, a magazine writer, who at one time was on the masthead of Gourmet Magazine, accepts a freelance writing assignment to turn his Brooklyn backyard into a farm, live off the food it produces for one month, and then write about the experience. Although, he makes an allowance for salt, pepper and coffee, everything else he consumes must come from the farm.

As the book's subtitle tells us, this is "A Cautionary Tale." Very little goes right for Manny, and although sometimes he is the victim of circumstance, like when a freak tornado whips through Brooklyn, he also brings misfortune upon himself. He seems to be a bit manic, and often rushes into things without thinking them through, such as buying animals without preparing enclosures for them. This mania also manifests itself in an obsession with the farm to the exclusion of everything else, including his family, which puts a heavy strain on his marriage.

But that's not even half of Manny's problems. The yard does not receive adequate sunlight, so only certain parts of it are productive. The rabbits refuse to mate, and when he finally manages to impregnate them, they eat their young. Many of the crops are destroyed by the tornado. Many don't grow well in the first place. Even the potatoes, which he thought were going to be the easiest, turn out to be a disappointment.

Still, he manages to get some food out of the farm. He manages to grow tomatoes, eggplants, and collard greens. On the animal protein side, he is fairly successful with eggs, and manages to raise some chickens to a size at which they can be eaten. He also manages to eat at least one gamy rabbit, although this is an experience I think he would prefer to forget. There is also a bad experience with a not so freshly slaughtered bird that you would think someone who wrote for a food magazine would be smart enough to avoid.

It's an entertaining book for the most part, though I could have done with less of his personal background at the beginning, and I wasn't all that interested in the history of Brooklyn as a farming community. However, his farming misadventures definitely held my interest. If you are expecting to learn something about urban farming or the locavore movement however, there is very little here for you. Howard's failures aside, there is nothing sustainable about his venture, and as the magazine editor was footing the bill, he does not explore the economics of what he spends in order to set up the farm and tend to the plants and animals.

Book 36 - Barrel Fever - David Sedaris

I couldn't resist reading another of David Sedaris' books. I went to the library and picked up Naked, which someone told me is good, but I started to think that it would be best to go to the beginning, so I went back to the library and got his first book Barrel Fever. However, I haven't abandoned the idea of reading Naked, so it may wind up being a three-peat for Sedaris...we'll see.

Book 36 - Barrel Fever - David Sedaris

This first book of David Sedaris' short stories and essays took me a little by surprise. I had thought that his work was basically autobiographical essays, and in my review of When You Are Engulfed in Flames (http://the52booksin52weekspersonalchallenge.blogspot.com/2010/10/book-26-when-you-are-engulfed-in-flames.html), I wondered how much embellishment he added to these personal stories. Of course there were times that he was obviously exaggerating for comedic effect, but other times I wasn't sure if he was making it up or if he was just a magnet for bizarre experiences. After reading Barrel Fever, I'm even less sure of the line between truth and fiction, as the first twelve pieces in this book are purely fictional, albeit told in first person.

That being said, the opening story "Parade," although obviously fictional, appears to be told as Sedaris himself. It is an over-the-top piece in which he inflates his celebrity status and engages in a name-dropping extravaganza in which he claims to have had homosexual affairs with Bruce Springsteen, Charlton Heston and Mike Tyson. The rest of the fiction stories have different narrators. In "My Manuscript," Chad Holt introduces us to various people in his life, and then relates the twisted fantasy he has imagined for them as characters in the manuscript he is writing. In "We Get Along," the narrator is a son coping with his mom after his father's death revealed his serial infidelity. "Jamboree" is a white-trash tale worthy of Maury Povich, told by the younger brother of a teen girl who moves out of the house and has a kid with her deadbeat boyfriend. The boy leaves home too, moves in with his sister, and winds up taking care of the baby, because both parents lose interest in the child and its welfare shortly after it is born.

I was pleasantly surprised to encounter the story "Season's Greetings to our Friends and Family!!!" I had heard this years ago on the NPR show "This American Life," but I wasn't really aware that it was David Sedaris' work, seeing as it was performed on the show by Julia Sweeney. It takes the form of a Christmas Newsletter, written by the wife of a family that has just been enlarged by the addition of an illegitimate twenty-two year old daughter, conceived when the husband was serving in Viet Nam. The wife shares all the details of their dysfunctional family life and subsequent legal problems with the folks on her Christmas card list, in one of the most sordid holiday tales ever. If you are in a holiday mood and want to check it out, here is a link to Sweeney's reading of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iWV4YJS-XE

You'll notice I said that "Seasons Greetings" was one of the most sordid holiday tales ever written. That's because this book contains another. It is called "SantaLand Diaries," and one of Sedaris' first breaks was his reading of this on NPR's Morning Edition. It is the true account of his time working as an elf in SantaLand at Macy's in New York. NPR often trots this recording out for the holiday season, so if you are a listener you might encounter it. If you just can't wait and/or don't want to leave it to chance you can find his reading of it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=161Fyi6fid0

Trust me, this is one of the stories that greatly benefits from hearing it in Sedaris' voice.

In my opinion, this book is hilarious, but it is not for the timid or the homophobic. This book is even edgier than the other one I read, and seems bent on shocking and offending. Personally, I like my humor that way, but it's not going to be for everyone.

Book 35 - The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

I've shifted into high gear trying to catch up! This is my third book since Sunday, and I'm pretty sure I can finish another before the week ends on Saturday. However, there isn't much time left, and I've got a long way to go.

Book 35 - The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

The governments of the world have suspended all manned space flight due to the discovery of a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, a kind of time vortex that exists between Earth and Mars. This does not stop Winston Niles Rumsford, a wealthy American aristocrat, from buying his own spaceship and flying it to Mars himself, accompanied only by his mastiff, Kazak. He flies directly into the vortex, and he and the dog are scattered through not just space, but also through time. He and the dog materialize in various locations at specific intervals, one of these locations being Rumsford's estate, where he appears to his wife and their butler every fifty-nine days.

Malachi Constant is also a very wealthy man, but lacks the aristocratic background of Rumsford. The Constant family fortune was amassed by Malachi's father Noel, who devised an investment scheme so disconnected from the market as to be almost completely random, if it weren't for the religious overtone to it. He hands this system down to Malachi upon his death, who continues to be wildly successful, growing the fortune to staggering proportions.

Rumsford's wife, Beatrice, does not allow anyone on the estate grounds for the materializations, so it comes as a shock when Malachi is invited to attend. It turns out that Winston wishes to share some information about Malachi's future with him. He tells him that he will father a child with Beatrice, and that he will travel not only to Mars, but to Mercury and to Saturn's moon, Titan. Neither Beatrice nor Malachi want these events to transpire, and start to take actions that they think will keep the prophecy from coming true. In actuality, these actions drive them closer to their destiny.

Malachi and Beatrice aren't the only ones swept up in Winston's plans. They are but pieces of a vast scheme to promote world unity and the brotherhood of man by creating a common enemy for mankind to fight against, then making them feel shame afterwards, and finally by creating a new religion through which they can be redeemed. This religion, The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, of which Malachi becomes an unwitting prophet, seems remarkably absurdist in nature, especially after just having finished Albert Camus' The Stranger (http://the52booksin52weekspersonalchallenge.blogspot.com/2010/11/it-seems-that-i-am-repeating-myself.html). God/The Universe could care less about what happens to you, and you are so insignificant that nothing you could do could please him/it either. The irony to this in Vonnegut's story is that there is a higher order of things; a grand plan so to speak. It's just not the one you think it is, and it has very little to do with your interests.

There are several recurring themes that occur in Vonnegut's books, the foremost of which is time travel. Winston is unstuck in time and space in a similar fashion to Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse Five. The planet Tralfamador also figures heavily in both books, a planet that seems to have undue influence on the human race. The members of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent believe that no one should have an advantage over another person, and therefore they employ physical and mental handicaps to hobble whatever superior natural abilities they might possess, something very similar to what was done in Vonnegut's famous short story "Harrison Bergeron." These repetitions of theme do not seem redundant however, possibly because they were so imaginative to begin with. Instead they seem like recurring motifs in a larger work, like musical themes and variations as a part of a larger symphonic work.

Do I recommend it? Of course! It's Kurt Vonnegut, after all! And before you say, "but I don't like science fiction," let me stop you right there and say that this is not science fiction. It is social satire that happens to take place on other planets aside from earth. Try it, you might like it!

Book 34 - The Stranger - Albert Camus

It seems that I am repeating myself. I've read two books by Steinbeck, two by Larsson, two by Hiaasen, and now this is the second book by Camus. I am also eying another Sedaris book, possibly another Faulkner, and the third of Larsson's "Dragon Tattoo" series before I'm done. The way I see it, I have eighteen more books to read in the next six weeks, so I figure if I have to read that much, it might as well be stuff I really like. In other words, it's better to "go with what you know."

Book 34 - The Stranger - Albert Camus

Meursault doesn't care. He just doesn't care. His mother dies? He doesn't care. His girlfriend wants to get married? He doesn't care. His new friend the pimp wants him to write a letter to trick the mistress that he's been beating to come back to him, so he can beat her some more? Sure, why not? He doesn't care. He has no emotional connection to anyone or anything. He has no moral compass. Meursault thinks that life is absurd, that it has no meaning, that there is nothing beyond this physical existence.

The Stranger is set in French Algiers, and opens with Meursault receiving word of his mother's death. He goes to attend the funeral, but he shows no signs of grief for his loss. If anything, he is annoyed with the people around him trying to console him for feelings he does not have. The next day he hooks up with Marie, an old coworker, and they go see a comedy and fall into the sack. Meursault then befriends a pimp named Raymond, who gets him to write the aforementioned letter, and then later invites him and Marie to spend some time at a beach house of a friend. At the beach they run into "The Arab," the brother of the girl Raymond beat up, and they get into an altercation in which Raymond is wounded with a knife. After stopping Raymond from shooting the Arab, Meursault inexplicably goes out and finds the Arab and shoots him, emptying the gun into his body even after he is lying on the ground.

Meursault is arrested and a trial ensues. The trial quickly becomes less about the actual crime and more about Meursault's emotional state, or lack thereof. People are brought to testify about his lack of appropriate grief over his mother, in order to paint him as an amoral monster, not worthy of society's pity, and deserving of society's ultimate punishment. He is found guilty and sentenced to death by beheading.

Throughout the book, Meursault's emotional detachment is contrasted with the characters around him. Salamano is an old man with a mangy dog that he beats frequently. Upon losing the dog, he grieves in a way one might have expected Meursault to grieve his mother's passing. Raymond's passion and anger, although evil in nature, is starkly different from Meursault's indifference and amoral attitude. The examining magistrate and the prison chaplain are men of faith to whom Meursault's atheism is so alien, that they desperately try to get him to find God. In the end it is this final confrontation with the chaplain that allows Meursault to finally see that it is not just he that does not care about anything, but it is the universe that cares about nothing as well. In this revelation he finds momentary happiness before his death.

I liked the book. It is deceptive, offering great philosophical depth cloaked in a simple story. Still, I think I liked The Plague better (link to my review: http://the52booksin52weekspersonalchallenge.blogspot.com/2010/07/book-19-plague-albert-camus.html. Both books do a good job of illustrating Camus philosophy of the absurd, so either would be a good place to start if you haven't read any of his work.

Book 33 - Skin Tight - Carl Hiaasen

Although I've read a bunch of classic literature, I've also peppered my selections with some non-fiction and pop fiction. I've already confessed that Carl Hiaasen is one of my favorite pop writers, so it should come as no surprise that I've read yet another of his thoroughly entertaining books.

Book 33 - Skin Tight - Carl Hiaasen

As I said in my review of Nature Girl (http://the52booksin52weekspersonalchallenge.blogspot.com/2010/07/book-22-nature-girl-carl-hiaasen.html), Hiaasen's work is highly formulaic, and Skin Tight is no exception. Set in Florida, the story centers around a retired state investigator, Mike Stranahan, who now spends a quiet existence on a stilt-house on the water, fishing and boating and entertaining young coeds who he happens to find nude sunbathing on his deck. Quiet indeed, until a hit man shows up to kill him, and Stranahan is forced to defend himself by stabbing his would-be killer in the chest with the sword-like nose of a trophy marlin. The killer dies before Stranahan can get him to talk, leaving him to wonder who put the hit out on him. Sure, Stranahan has made some enemies over the years, but he's retired now, so why go after him?

Well, it turns out that Stranahan was involved in a missing persons case involving a girl who disappeared after getting a nose job. Her doctor, Rudy Graveline, a Miami plastic surgeon of undeserved renown, killed her by accident on the operating table, and is covering it up so that he can hang on to his lucrative practice, a plastic surgery mill where young talented doctors do most of the cutting and he takes all the credit. The truth is that Rudy is a hack who's fought off malpractice so many times that he is in danger of losing his license, and he is not going to let that happen. He believes that Stranahan can expose him as the girl's killer, and therefore wants him out of the way.

Meanwhile a TV investigative reporter, Reynaldo Flemm, and his producer, Christina Marks, have caught wind of the story through a disgruntled former employee of the doctor. Christina is the true talent behind the duo: she lines up interviews, writes the questions, checks the facts, etc. Reynaldo is a vain bumbler, who is more interested in gaining notoriety by getting punched on camera than he is in uncovering a real news story. Christina teams up with Stranahan in more ways than one, and finds herself dodging the bullets of Chemo, a second hit man sent by the doctor to kill Stranahan. Chemo has a horribly disfigured face, the result of an electrolysis laser accident, and is doing the hit in exchange for dermabrasion treatments.

If you have read any of Hiaasen's work, you know this is only the beginning. Corrupt zoning commissioners, blackmail, dirty killer cops, a rather unique hand prosthesis, and more botched surgery keep the action humming along nicely. Hiaasen's writing style is tight and the comedic oddness of the characters and situations keep you turning the pages to see what happens next. This is a thoroughly entertaining book, and I recommend it to anyone who likes quirky comedy/action/mystery stories.

Book 32 - An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England - Brock Clarke

Here's another selection from my public library's "Good Books You Might Have Missed" cart. This time they did a pretty good job.

Book 32 - An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England - Brock Clarke

Sam Pulsifer is a bumbler. He bumbles through life. At least that's what his inmate buddies tell him. They are bond traders, incarcerated in a minimum security prison for various SEC infractions. Sam, on the other hand, is in there for arson and manslaughter. As Sam tells it, he accidentally set fire to the historical house of Emily Dickenson, killing two people that he did not even know were there.

Convicted when he was 18, Sam serves 10 years, and upon his release tries to figure out what he is going to do with his life. He moves back in with his parents, who have had to live with the infamy that their son has brought upon their house. In order to get rid of him, they offer to send him to college, but not before his father shows him the box of letters. Dozens of letters, sent while Sam was in prison, from people who want him to burn down the houses of other New England literary figures: Mark Twain, Robert Frost, Edward Bellamy, to name but a few. The letters come from all walks of life, and each of them has their own peculiar reason for wanting the house of a particular author burned to the ground.

Sam tries his best to leave all this behind him and start a new life. After graduating college, he embarks on a somewhat successful career as a package design engineer, marries a beautiful woman, and has two wonderful children. He goes on like this for several years, never telling his new family about his past, until one day the son of the couple he killed shows up at his door. All of his lies start to unravel, and mysterious fires start to occur at the houses of literary figures, with all signs pointing to Sam as the culprit.

I'd never heard of the author before reading this book, but I found it to be very entertaining, in a darkly tragic way. The story is wonderfully absurd, and is full of interesting characters. Sam draws our pity, but not always in a good way. Sam is often the victim of circumstance. However, he refuses to take responsibility for the things he has done, and because of his fear of the truth, he becomes more and more entangled in his web of lies, which ultimately makes his situation much worse.

I won't spoil the ending for you. All-in-all, it's a pretty fun read. Check it out.

Book 31 - Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain

Book 31 - Pudd'nhead Wilson - Mark Twain

Pudd'nhead Wilson is a tale of switched identities, similar to Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, except this time the switch occurs between a son of a black slave and an aristocratic southern white slave holder. The action takes place in Dawson's Landing, Missouri, and the title character is David Wilson, a young lawyer who shortly after his arrival in town makes a remark that is beyond the comprehension of the townsfolk, and therefore earns him an undeserved reputation as an idiot - a Pudd'nhead. This reputation dooms his prospects for practicing law in the town, and he is forced to occupy himself performing basic accounting for local businesses, and engaging in one of his favorite hobbies, the study of fingerprints.

Roxy, a black slave woman, who due to generations of breeding with white men is only 1/16 African, gives birth to a boy, Chambers. Chambers is the son of yet another white southern aristocrat, making him 1/32 black, but no less a slave than Roxy. In fact, he has so little African blood that he very closely resembles the master's son, Tom, who was born on the same day as Chambers.

Roxy, fearing that Chambers will be "sold down the river" into what is commonly regarded as a worse life as a slave on a large plantation, switches Chambers with Tom, and due to a fortuitous replacement of the other house slaves and the death of Tom's mother, is able to raise the two children in their alternate roles. Chambers, now known as "Tom," grows to be a spoiled brat who has little regard for people, much less slaves, and after dropping out of school, wrestles with a gambling addiction which leads him to being disinherited from the family fortune more than once. Meanwhile, the real Tom, now known as "Chambers," lives the life of a slave, and is forced not only to simply endure his Tom's sadistic personality, but being the stronger of the two boys is often called on to fight his master's battles.

Luigi and Angelo, a pair of identical twins who claim to have traveled the world performing in side-shows arrive in town. Initially they enthrall the townsfolk. However once Judge Driscoll, Tom's uncle and adoptive father, is found killed by a knife owned by the twins - with the twins standing over the body, they are accused of the murder. It is only the forensic skills of Pudd'nhead Wilson that allow not only the identity of the real killer, but also the truth about "Tom" and "Chambers" to be revealed.

This book, while set in the South 10-30 years before the Civil War, was actually written about 30 years after, during Twain's "dark period." The book has somewhat of a cynical tone. No one simply lives happily ever after. Roxy gains her freedom, and manages to work and save money, only to lose it all in a failed bank, and to be sold back into slavery by her son. She escapes, and at the end is receiving a stipend from the real Tom, but her spirit is broken, and she lives out the rest of her days in sorrow. "Tom" escapes the gallows, but perhaps meets a worse fate. "Chambers" returns to his "rightful" station, but after years of living as a slave cannot adapt.

My edition of the book also contains "Those Extraordinary Twins." Twain tells us that when he first started the story, it was a farce about a pair of conjoined twins who each had their own head, shoulders and arms, but shared the rest of their body between the two of them. Twain claims that over the course of writing the story, another story emerged, a tragedy, and he was forced to perform a "literary Caesarean operation" to extricate the farce and leave the tragedy. The excised story, "Those Extraordinary Twins," shares many of the same characters in name, but is quite a different story. The fact that the twins are conjoined rather than identical make them the center of attention, not just auxiliary characters, and many principal characters from Pudd'nhead Wilson fade into the background. Twain humorously explores the problems with two distinct personalities sharing the same body. One is religious while the other is not. One is a teetotaler, while the other freely imbibes. If one of them is convicted of a crime, is the other guilty? While this is initially entertaining, Twain explores this with the same heavy hand as he did with Tom and Huck trying to free Jim in Huckleberry Finn, making the joke a bit tired after a while. The story is short, however, and therefore still quite funny.

It is interesting to compare and contrast the two stories, as together they offer an insight into the evolutionary nature of Twain's writing process. They are both good reads, so if you choose to read Pudd'nhead Wilson, I recommend that you find a version that has both stories (mine is Penguin Classics), so that you can see the differences.

Book 30 - Lake Wobegon Days - Garrison Keillor

Today's book is another that has been sitting on my bookshelf for nearly three decades. I don't remember why I even bought it, or if I bought it at all. I wasn't even a big fan of Garrison Keillor back then, although I now listen to "A Prairie Home Companion" on a fairly regular basis. Well, whatever the reason for having the book, I finally got around to reading it.

Book 30 - Lake Wobegon Days - Garrison Keillor

As I mentioned above, I am a fan of Keillor's radio program, but that hasn't always been the case. Keillor's humor moseys along at it's own pace, not really being concerned with getting anywhere quickly, and I think that it is a style that doesn't really start appealing to you until you get a little older. At least that's how it works for me. Now I love listening to his skits about Guy Noir, or the cowboys, and even his news from Lake Wobegon, which is a regular feature of the program. Lake Wobegon is supposedly a small town in Minnesota which does not appear on a map due to surveying errors. In reality it exists only in the mind of Keillor, although it bears a strong resemblance to any number of small farm towns of the region. It's fictional existence does not prevent Keillor from bringing the town to life, and in Lake Wobegon Days, he paints an elaborate picture of the town and it's people.

Keillor starts off with a fairly extensive history lesson on the founding of the town, once known as New Albion, and on its early settlers. He then talks about the role Protestantism played, gently lampooning the worship practices of the various splinter sects, before launching a Walden-esque journey through the four seasons, with a brief intermission between winter and spring to discuss the reporting of news in the town, and wraps up with a chapter that focuses on the power of preaching, among other things.

There is no overarching plot to the book. Instead it ambles along, presenting vignettes that describe the people of the town, and their way of life. It frequently time shifts from Keillor's boyhood to the present, and is rife with asides that are often presented in the form of footnotes, a technique which I found a bit distracting. One such footnote, an extensive manifesto written by a former town resident criticizing his upbringing, occupies the bottom half of 20 pages. In it's defense however, I found this manifesto to be one of the best parts of the book.

While the book paints a vivid picture of small-town life in Minnesota, I was disappointed with the lack of a cohesiveness, which made it hard for me to finish. If you are a fan of the radio show, especially "The News from Lake Wobegon" segment, you might enjoy learning some of the history of this imaginary town, and you might like hearing some of the early stories of the families that inhabit the place, but for me it just wasn't that compelling. Still, it was a popular book when it came out, so feel free to not accept my judgement of the book and to read it yourself.

Book 29 - Still Life with Woodpecker - Tom Robbins

I'm a world-class procrastinator, as is evidenced by the fact that I am woefully behind in this challenge. Another indicator is the fact that this book has been on my shelf for close to thirty years, waiting to be read.

Still Life with Woodpecker - Tom Robbins

As the subtitle on the book says, Still Life with Woodpecker is sort of a love story, in a redhead-stoner-philosopher-environmentalist-anarchist kind-of way. It tells the story of Princess Leigh-Cheri, the daughter of a deposed monarch of a small but apparently strategically significant country. King Max, his wife Tilli, and the Princess live in exile in the United States, on the shore of the Puget Sound, with their faithful servant Gulietta, in a house given to them by the CIA.

The princess, seeking purpose to her life, decides to get involved in saving the planet. After much begging, her parents allow her to travel to an environmental conference in Hawaii, with Gulietta serving as her chaperone. Here she meets Bernard Mickey Wrangle, an anarchist bomber known as "The Woodpecker," who it turns out has plans to blow up the conference. After despising him briefly, she falls in love with him, and has to wrestle with the conflict of her feelings for him vs. the moral obligation to turn him in.

Eventually Wrangle is apprehended, and has to spend time in prison. The Princess cloisters herself in her attic, attempting to duplicate the conditions her imprisoned lover is experiencing. In her solitary state, with nothing more to read than a pack of camels, she develops a world view centered around the imagery on the cigarette pack involving pyramids, redheads (both she and Wrangle have fiery red hair), and alien races. Unfortunately, the press catches wind of her self-confinement, and when word gets back to Wrangle about what she has done, he gets the wrong idea about her motives and dumps her.

Don't worry, I haven't divulged the entire story. Besides, with Robbins' writing, getting there is half the fun. The story is full of humor, psychedelic imagery, odd-ball philosophy and solopsistic interludes where he discusses his love/hate relationship with his new Remington SL3 electric typewriter, which he is using to compose the story. It also discusses the purpose of the moon, and explores how to make love stay.

All-in-all, I thought it was a fun read, albeit a little dated (it was published in 1980). Maybe if I'd read it when I bought it, I wouldn't have had to make that complaint.

Book 28 - The Girl Who Played with Fire - Stieg Larsson

I've got too much stuff to do, so no preamble this time. Let's just get down to the review, shall we?

The Girl Who Played with Fire - Stieg Larsson

The Girl Who Played with Fire is Stieg Larsson's second installment in the posthumously published trilogy about Lisbeth Salander, the young, brilliant, tattooed, and socially distant computer hacker, and Mikael Blomkvist, the middle-aged, doggedly tenacious investigative journalist. Salander's prodigious computer skills allow her to gain access to information that would be off-limits to most, while Blomkvist employs his reporter's instincts and persistent nature to get to the truth of whatever he investigates. Their work together in the first book managed not only to solve a forty-year mystery but to bring down the evil financial empire of a wealthy industrialist and arms dealer. Together they make a formidable team.

But alas, they are no longer together. Salander, once Blomkvist's lover and friend, has cut all ties with him, and refuses to answer his calls or emails. In fact, she has basically cut all ties with everyone and is travelling around the world. So how is a woman who is considered by the state to be incompetent, and has only a modest income from her job as an investigator for a security firm able to do this? Well, it seems she used her computer skills to claim a 20 billion Kronor consolation prize from the Cayman island accounts of the arms dealer she helped take down.

Upon her return, she buys a huge new place of her own, and bequeaths her old place to a part-time female lover. Snooping into Blomkvist's computer, she stumbles upon a name from her past: Zala. Driven to investigate, she visits the home of a couple who is working with Blomkvist on an expose of the sex trafficking industry. The next day, the couple is found dead, and Lisbeth is the chief suspect. Later another body turns up, the body of her state "guardian," which reinforces the notion that Salander is the culprit.

A media frenzy and a nationwide manhunt ensues. Armansky, Salander's employer at the security firm, doesn't know what to believe, but has sufficient doubts such that he launches an investigation of his own, and makes his resources available to the police. Blomkvist, convinced of her innocence and suspecting that the real killer's motive was something in the sex-trade expose that was about to be published, launches an investigation as well. Salander is also investigating, but her target is the mysterious Zala, a name that evokes so many painful memories.

I hadn't originally intended on reading this quite so soon after the first one. There are only three, and of course there won't be any more, so I wanted to savor each one a bit before launching into the next. I'm glad I didn't wait though, because I thought this book was even better than the first. I thought the plot was more complex, and the action moves much more quickly than in the first one. If you like a good mystery thriller with a dark edge, this is a book you should check out!

Book 27 - Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson

My local library has a cart that sits next to the information desk with a sign that says, "Good Books You May Have Missed." It was here that I stumbled across this week's book, Snow Falling on Cedars. I had heard of the book, and had heard it was supposed to be good, so I decided to give it a try.

Book 27 - Snow Falling on Cedars - David Guterson

Set on San Piedro, a small island in the Puget Sound of Washington State, Snow Falling on Cedars tells the story of the trial of a Japanese-American man named Kabuo, who has been charged with murdering Carl Heine, a white man. The trial takes place in the mid-fifties, and anti-Japanese sentiment runs high in the small town. Kabuo has motive and opportunity, and there are pieces of circumstantial evidence which may or may not point to his guilt, but Kabuo maintains his innocence against the accusations of the zealous prosecutor, who seems to be capitalizing on the jury's predjudices against Japanese in order to get a conviction.

As children and teenagers, Hatsue, Kabuo's wife, was involved with a caucasian boy, Ishmael, the son of the local newspaperman. They spent countless hours in secret together, lest their families find out and forbid them to see each other. Finally, when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, Hatsue and her family, along with all the other Japanese and Japanese-Americans on the island are rounded up and taken to an internment camp. Ishmael makes her promise to write, and thinks that one day they will be together again, but Hatsue has already decided that she does not love Ishmael, and while at the camp she meets Kabuo, with whom she falls in love and marries. Ishmael continues to carry a torch for her, and this influences his actions in relation to Kabuo's guilt or innocence.

With this book, I was hoping for more of a mystery story, and less of a Harlequin romance. The story, while beautifully told, is predictable, and in my opinion seems to be overly focused on Ishmael's obsession with Hatsue. This is not to say there weren't other elements that were interesting: the culture of the Japanese-American families; the cruelty of the internment; the prejudices the Japanese-Americans faced both before and after the war. But in the end, I found it a somewhat unsatisfying read.

Obviously many people liked this book, so feel free to read it if you like.

Book 26 - When You Are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris

I'm halfway there! Twenty-six books down, twenty-six to go! Of course, it's already the middle of October, but never mind about that. I have three more books already completed and I'm halfway through a fourth, which I'm hoping to finish by the end of the week. In other words, I'm still cranking it out, and although it's going to take some effort at this point, I have every intention of making it to 52 without having to resort to Reader's Digest Condensed Books.

Speaking of condensed literature, I love essays, especially humorous ones. All through the 80's and 90's, and into the new millennium, I could not wait to read Dave Barry's column every Sunday in the Washington Post magazine. Barry now only does the annual "Year in Review" feature, and although I miss him, I love Gene Weingarten's replacement column. I'm also a fan of Twain and Swift, and of P. J. O'Rourke, who despite his conservative pedigree, or perhaps because of it, is one of the best humorists of our time. But one essayist I had never got around to reading was David Sedaris. I had heard him read his essays from time-to-time on "This American Life," the popular storytelling show that airs weekly on NPR, but I had never sat down to read them myself. I had originally put Naked, which I believe is his second book, on my list of potential reads for this project. However, when I saw a hardback version of When You Are Engulfed in Flames sitting in the bargain bin at Border's for four bucks, I knew that would be my introduction to Sedaris' work.

Book 26 - When You Are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris

David Sedaris is a man of extremes. He can take the most mundane experiences and hold the reader rapt with the details. Conversely, he can take the most bizarre people and situations and make them seem human and normal. But no matter which direction he steers the reader, the ride is always funny, albeit uncomfortable, for Sedaris humor has an intensely dark side.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames is Sedaris' sixth and most recent book. His essays are mostly autobiographical, and range from childhood, to his college days, to his current life both here and abroad with his boyfriend Hugh. At first blush it would appear there is a fair amount of embellishment to his tales, but perhaps not as much as one would think. Sedaris channels weirdness, and when he can't find the truly weird, he manages to make everyday life seem weird and interesting.

Some of the tales focus on his youth. In "The Understudy," he and his sisters are forced to endure the substitute babysitter from hell. "Road Trips" recounts his attempts to come out to his friends about his homosexuality, and tells of his virginity's close call with a supposedly straight trucker who picks him up hitchhiking and wants to him to perform sexual favors for him. In "What I Learned" he tells us how he tried to temper his parent's enthusiasm for his attending Princeton by informing them that he is going to major in Patricide.

Other stories focus on his contemporary life. "April in Paris" and "Aerial" take place while he was living in Normandy with his partner, while "The Smoking Section," the book's longest essay, has Sedaris and Hugh moving to Tokyo so he can quit smoking. Perhaps one of the funniest parts of the book is a subsection of "Brother Can You Spare a Tie," an essay on his problems with fashion and accessories, in which he discusses his experience with the Stadium Pal, an external catheter designed so truckers on cross country hauls don't have to stop to urinate. I stumbled across a YouTube link for Sedaris reading this on the Letterman show. I highly recommend taking a moment to check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBdymtyXt8Y

Sedaris' writing is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if you've got a twisted streak to your sense of humor, you will most likely find him quite hilarious.

BTW - Sedaris has a new book called Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. The Washington Post ran a promotional article about Sedaris and the book last week, and the online version has a video of Sedaris reading from the new book. Here's the link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/03/AR2010100304162.html

Book 25 - The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver

Some years back, a friend of mine talked me into joining a book discussion group. I loved to read, but at the time I was such a workaholic that most of the reading I did was professional in nature. A book group seemed like just the thing to encourage me to read for the fun of it.

The local Border's offered several clubs, each with a particular focus. There were clubs that read mysteries, clubs that read romances, and clubs that read science fiction, but all of those seemed too limiting. Then we stumbled upon the "Eclectic" group. This sounded like a great idea! We could read classics, modern fiction, biography, it didn't matter!

The group met once a month, at Border's, and a Border's employee led the group. We were technically allowed to pick the books, but sometimes indecision within the group allowed the Border's guy, whose tastes leaned toward science fiction and fantasy, to exert undue influence on the selection. However, for the most part we chose our own books, and though the process was often fraught with bickering and multiple elimination votes, we managed to pick some pretty good selections.

One of the more memorable books, at least for me, was a book by Barbara Kingsolver called The Poisonwood Bible. It is the story of an evangelical Baptist family that travels to the Belgian Congo to preach the gospel to the heathen locals. The family is almost destroyed by the trials that they face, and they gain a new understanding of this country and it's culture, as it struggles to be an independent nation. I found this book to be riveting, and promised myself that I would read another one of her books one day. This brings us to today's review:

Book 25 - The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver

A lacuna is a gap in a manuscript, where the text is missing or illegible. It can also refer to a small pit, or a hollow cavity. In Barbara Kingsolver's book The Lacuna, it is both. Harrison Shepherd is the son of a Mexican woman and an American man. His parents estranged, he spends his youth with his mother in Mexico. His mother's main interest seems to be bagging a wealthy man before time takes away her youth, so to pass the time Shepherd reads voraciously. One day he is given a pair of diving goggles by one of the employees of the house they are staying in, and he spends many hours swimming and observing the ocean life. Eventually he finds a cave, a lacuna, that is only visible at certain times, when the tide is just right. At the other side of this cave is a hidden cove that can only be reached by those who can make the long journey.

Eventually, Shepherd returns to America, and while attending a boarding school in Washington, DC, he finds himself in the middle of the Bonus Army riots. Leaving the school under mysterious circumstances which become clear later, he returns to Mexico, and begins working for the famous muralist Diego Rivera and his fiery wife Frieda Kahlo. Initially a plaster mixer, he becomes the house cook. Later when Rivera offers asylum to Lev Trotsky, the leader of the Bolshevik revolution, Shepherd becomes one of his assistants, typing up manuscripts, helping with translations, and recording much of what transpires in his journals.

Under tragic circumstances, Shepherd eventually returns to America, this time to Asheville, North Carolina, where after a while he settles into a career writing books which romanticize ancient Mexican civilizations. He is enormously successful, until his past associations with communist sympathizers draw the attention of the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Kingsolver constructs the book as a series of Shepherd's journal entries, letters, various newspaper articles, and book reviews, which gives the story a choppy feel. This seems to be intentional. I've read a few reviews that complain about the weakness of the central character, but this seems deliberate as well. In both of these cases Kingsolver seems to be saying what Shepherd said throughout the book. That it is the part that is missing - the lacuna - that is the most important part of the story.

While this is probably not Kingsolver's best work, I still found it to be an enjoyable read. However, if you were only going to read one of her books, I'd make it The Poisonwood Bible.