01.27.16
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THE JAPANESE LOVER/ ISABEL ALLENDE/ COMPLEX SOCIAL THEMES

Isabel Allende captures a complex variety of societal topics in her new novel The Japanese Lover. Allende weaves desperate themes in a story line encompassing aging, a burning love affair which transcends racial lines, the Japanese internment during WWII, human trafficking, child pornography and homosexuality.

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Allende hardly misses a social issue while telling a story surrounding the life of a well to do San Francisco woman from a prominent Jewish family who beginning in her childhood falls in love with a Japanese boy, the son of the gardener at their seaside estate. The story continues over hills and valleys Till death do us part.

It is always pleasurable to read Allende’s writing. Her novels touch reality  and the characters provoke thought and deliver insight but absent a lecture.  I also commend to you Allende’s Island Beneath The Sea and Daughter of Fortune. Search here at gordonsgoodreads for further details on these novels.

01.20.16
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DESTINY and POWER/ GEORGE H.W. BUSH/ MASTERFULLY MEACHAM

With high advance praise from historians David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael  Beschloss one need not say much more in recommending this masterful work by  Jon Meacham.

imgres-2 Destiny and Power,The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush captures the man brilliantly and fairly and secures him a permanent place in American Presidential history.  George Herbert Walker Bush may indeed be  A last of his kind, and Meacham relates clearly and concisely  the depth of that appellation.  More than a biography, Meacham details a period in American and world history through the portal of the Bush Oval Office. The research is impeccable and the access provided Meacham by a very private president and his family is remarkable.

A must read, now even more meaningful with another Bush running for President.

I also recommend  Meacham’s Franklin and Winston an Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship. Search gordonsgoodreads for details.

01.12.16
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COMMANDER IN CHIEF- HOOKED ON TOM CLANCY NOVELS

It is another must read for all lovers of Tom Clancy Jack Ryan Novels.  Again, Mark Greaney carries on the great tradition.  Commander In Chief turns the Russo/American conflict from The Ukraine to Lithuania with a thinly disguised Russian President Valeri Volodin raising havoc in the Baltic’s.

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Jack Ryan Jr. returns in this novel with a large role and John Clark again proves he is invincible!  Add to the plot money laundering, Bitcoin and a new class of Russian submarines and Greaney has all the necessary ingredients for 718 pages of excitement.

No spoilers here!  Just get the book and anticipate a good read.

 

12.14.15
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Snow Falling On Cedars/A Timely Classic from 1994

The prose is magnificent and the story ironically timely in these divisive days of 2015.  Twenty-one-years after its original publication in 1994 the story line is as prescient as then. Snow Falling On Cedars by David Guterson is an award-winning novel, the themes of which resonate today.

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The writing captivates the reader from the very first pages. Outside the wind blew steadily from the north, driving snow against the courthouse. By noon three inches had settled on the town, a snow so ethereal it could hardly be said to have settled at all, instead it swirled like some icy fog.

As the story unfolds, a young Japanese man is accused of murder surrounded by the prejudice against all Japanese following the Second World War. A love affair between a young newspaperman and a Japanese woman, a trial, a community split apart and a  verdict.

Prescient?  Look into my face, interrupted Hatsue. Look at my eyes Ishmael. My face is the face of the people who did it–don’t you see what I mean? My face, it’s how the Japanese look. My family is in bad trouble now. Do you see what I mean?

No further spoiling of the story. It would be a travesty for me to do so. You will thank me for telling  you of my belated discovery of  Snow Falling On Cedars.  The novel was made into a movie directed by John Hicks and released in 1995.

 

 

11.19.15
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THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS/AN ABSOLUTE GEM!

A love that kindles the depths of the heart is interwoven with an unimaginable self-inflicted tragedy in M.L. Stedman’s novel The Light Between Oceans.  “When it comes to kids, parents are all instinct and hope.”  The Light Between Oceans is everything that this reader believes a good novel should be.

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The tale is told with extraordinary care with just enough complexity to always nudge reality.  Stedman’s characters are believable, true to themselves and captivating story tellers. ” You have to forgive only once. To resent one must do it all day every day.”   The skies over Janus are clear as its beacon keeps mariners safe, but even the brightest light is not a shield from life’s stormy seas. As The New York Times stated in its initial review, “Prepare to weep.”

First published in 2012 The Light Between Oceans is more than a good read. It is marvelous! M.L. Stedman was born and raised in  Western Australia, the setting of this book.  She now lives in London. This is her first novel. More please!

11.15.15
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CITY ON FIRE

In the late 60’s I was far from New York living in a provincial New England town. The heavy metal and progressive rock radio sounds told stories of other places, protests, punks, drugs, hallucinations and Abbey Hoffman crying out against anything establishment though his wife and baby slept nearby.

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In the early 70s I came to the City On Fire , the place of Garth Rick Hallberg’s novel of the same name. I first saw New York through the window of the Harlem Division’s  7:05  crawling to Grand Central from  “Pleasantville”  along decaying tracks through the burned out Bronx and then along the elevated looking down on the devastated and abandoned Harlem before the train dipped below the surface at 96th Street.

Hallberg misses no evil from the excesses of the wealthy to the drug infested world of those protesting the establishment through a foggy lens of Heroin , Quaaludes  and booze. He mixes the Straight and Gay personages of New York City from east to west from Hell’s Kitchen to the Village like an expert bartender or drug dealer with an unlimited supply of mind warping ingredients.

Hallberg stacks metaphor upon metaphor in these 903 pages which often become as heavy as the book itself. I was in Hallberg’s  City of Fire the 1970s.  Was it that bad, that wild, that dangerous? I didn’t think so but perhaps I didn’t have as good an eye, ear or writers palate as Hallberg.  Perhaps my train was moving  too quickly to see what the author imagined so vividly. His vocabulary mirrors a thesaurus and the average reader may desire a dictionary at arms reach.   The dust cover suggests the novel is about “What people need from each other, and what makes the living worth doing in the first place.”  Sorry, I missed that station stop.

City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg.

10.16.15
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WILL BIDEN RUN? / WHAT IT TAKES/RICHARD BEN CRAMER

It is late in the game to suggest you pick up a fine print 1050 page book on American presidential politics. If you do you will read what is likely the best ever written on the subject and you will get a good look into  Joe Biden’s thought process. Richard Ben Cramer’s book What it Takes was published in 1992  and is considered by many the most insightful look at presidential politics ever written.  Cramer recounts the frenzied course of the 1988 Presidential race. His insight into the psyche of Joe Biden is remarkable and his research into Biden’s ascent into the political world is beyond comparison.

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” He was a Biden, he  could do anything….He learned to game it out…..to see himself in the situation to come….to think what he would say…how he would sound…. ( Chapter 19, What It Takes).

If  Richard Ben Cramer were alive today he would be the best  equipped to answer the question, will Biden Run? You see,  Cramer was a journalist not a pundit.  It took 1050 pages to do justice to the subject. He was willing to do the work, not express an opinion. Richard Ben Cramer died in January 2013.  Search gordonsgoodreads for my initial overview of the book.

 

 

 

 

10.14.15
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THE WRIGHT BROTHERS/ DAVID McCULLOUGH

The Wright Brothers narrative is so brilliantly written by historian David McCullough that the reader can imagine sitting in his library listening to his melodious voice tell a wonderful American story. McCullough never disappoints as he brings to life Wilbur and Orville, their sister Katherine and their father Bishop Wright and their early endeavor as builders of bicycles in Dayton, Ohio.  The book is much more than the story of the invention of the airplane, although McCullough misses no detail in that pursuit.

imgres-2 I am an ardent fan of McCullough but must admit I thought, why bother with this book, I know the story of the Wright brothers.  Never doubt McCullough’s ability to tell the whole story, including the U.S. Army Department’s ” flat turn down ” of a request by the Wright Brothers for government support for further testing of their heavier than air Flyer.  They supplied documentation of 105 successful flights made in 1904, but to no avail in moving the American Military bureaucracy. Ironically, the Secretary of War at the time was Ohioan William Howard Taft. The British and the French were excited to consider the Wright’s requests.   So the Wright Brothers and sister Katherine were off to Paris and LeMans astonishing Kings, Queens and cheering throngs with their accomplishment. Their reception was comparable to that afforded conquering heroes with private funding made immediately available.

In 1909, William Howard Taft, now President of the United States presented the Wright brothers gold medals. “I esteem it a great honor and opportunity to present these medals to you as evidence to what you have done. I am so glad-perhaps at a delayed hour-to show that in America it is not true that “a prophet is not without honor save in his own country.”  A touch of irony indeed.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

10.13.15
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Honor Among Thieves/ Step Back In Time/ Revisit Jeffrey Archer

Saddam seeks revenge after the first Gulf War.  He plots to steal the original Declaration  of Independence, bring it to Baghdad and burn it for the world to see on the Fourth of  July.  Jeffrey Archer’s Hon0r Among Thieves  weaves the story which is filled with familiar historical characters.

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Archer expands the plot in a wonderful read that turns the pages through a labyrinth like a maze in a cornfield.  Published in 1993, this is one of Archer’s novels that I missed. It cried out to me from the library shelf.  Archer’sKane and Able should also beckon you if you have not read this other great work of fiction.  It is always worthwhile to double-check what you may have missed from authors you have enjoyed.

08.24.15
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THE GUNS OF LAST LIGHT/ THE TRAGIC REALITY OF 1944-1945

The final installment of Rick Atkinson’s WWII trilogy, THE GUNS  OF LAST LIGHT, offers prodigious unsettling detail of the final push to defeat Hitler during the winter of 1944 and the spring of 1945.  The book begins with D-Day  continues through the Normandy hedgerows, the liberation of Paris, Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge.

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Atkinson’s narrative spares no detail  and his criticisms  of Allied leadership are jaw dropping. In his epic account  of the final months of the war, Atkinson creates no heroes.  His depth of research renders judgement on the good and bad.

American deaths in the winter of 1944 at the Bulge alone totaled 19,276.  In the final year of the  campaign of 135, 576 American soldiers  were killed on the Western Front while military bureaucrats meticulously planned the  up coming  Yalta conference between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. Millions of dollars  and endless hours of planning and logistics were spent on caviar, wild game, wines of every description, imported silver, cigars,  china and furniture. Little was accomplished  at Yalta, increasing speculation on how Germany would later  be  carved up among  the victors.

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This is a book for students of WWII history and the reader will be well rewarded by the depth of its six hundred plus pages. Atkinson’s work qualifies for my Every Word Counts honor. The two other volumes equally worthy of accolades are An Army at Dawn, the North Africa Campaign, (search gordonsgoodreads), The  Day of Battle, the war in Italy.

I can not resist sharing this quotation from the book.  Patricia O’ Malley was  a one year old when her father, Major Richard James O’Malley  was killed by a sniper at Normandy. Later as an adult she  wrote this following a visit to  her father’s  grave at the cemetery at Collerville above Omaha Beach. I cried for the joy of being there and the sadness of my father’s death. I cried for all the times I needed a  father and never had one. I cried for all the words I wanted to say and wanted to hear but had not.  I cried and cried.