Books Read 2008

I averaged one a week this year, down from the last several years, but still a respectable number. I attribute the decline to my growing fascination with the piano and an increased work load the last few months. Also a moonlighting job that has cut into my weekend time. Hopefully 2010 will be quieter at work and I can spend more time with my hobbies!

Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle

An entertaining novel, very contemporary, dealing with identity theft. There are three main characters, a deaf woman whose identity is stolen, her boyfriend who is not deaf, and the man who steals their identities. There are exciting encounters, a chase across the country, and plenty of rage and anger by all parties. It's almost a thriller - only the ending is anti climatic, although not disappointing. Another excellent novel by T.C. Boyle.

Link to Amazon: Talk Talk

The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald

An entertaining and original novel, about an orphan baby who was "loaned" out to a Home Economics "practice house" back in the 1950s. Henry House (House for practice house and practice baby) is raised in his first year by a succession of students in one-week shifts. He proves to be so irresistible that he is adopted by the teacher. The novel is essentially a coming of age story, and follows Henry's attempts to make sense of his curious upbringing and difficulties with relationships with other people. It's an intriguing premise, inspired by an actual historical practice baby, and a well executed novel.

Link to Amazon: The Irresistible Henry House: A Novel

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

A more appropriate title might be "The Nicklebys" or "The Nickleby Family". Mean, miserly Uncle Ralph is as much the center of the novel as Nicholas, and there's Kate Nickleby, and Nicholas's mother. It's a Victorian plot full of coincidences and family secrets - a joy to read and discover.

Link to Amazon: Nicholas Nickleby (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

How Far to Bethlehem by Norah Lofts

This is a novel that retells the story of the three wise men. A selection of the Rico Readers (the book club I belong to). I probably would not have read it otherwise. The story is familiar to everyone, but the manner of telling it is frustrating. The author interrupts what little action there is to shift the story to new characters, even late in the novel. In my opinion she should have introduced every character early and followed them through the book, switching back and forth more frequently.

Link to Amazon: HOW FAR To BETHLEHEM? A Novel.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

This Dickens' novel focuses on the hardships of the industrial movement in 19th century England. The characters are weavers, mill owners, the children of members of parliament, and an orphan girl of a troupe of traveling players. Some portions are overly melodramatic, in my humble opinion, but that's just Charles Dickens. It's still well worth a read.

Link to Amazon: Hard Times (Barnes & Noble Classics)

Drood by Dan Simmons

Before reading this book, you really need to read:

• The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens


• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (The semi-autobiographical novel)


• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins


• Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

That should be enough to get you started. The narrator of Drood is Wilkie Collins, the contemporary of Dickens who was his friend and collaborator. Collins also had a problem with laudanum (opium), a plot point that figures prominently in Moonstone and Simmons Drood.

Dicken's Drood was unfinished, of course, and this novel is an entertaining attempt to explain the unfinished mystery of Dickens' novel by assuming that it was based on actual people and events in Dickens' life.

Drood is also massive. The edition that I read weighs in at ~770 pages, a size and heft that would make Dickens' and Collins' proud. By the time you read all the prerequisites for Drood you will have finished off almost three thousand pages. But the reading is so much fun, it's worth it.

Link to Amazon: Drood: A Novel

Home by Marilynne Robinson

The best novel I have read in a long time. It's quiet and somber, reflective and perceptive, moving and thought-provoking. It's a retelling of the parable of the Prodigal Son, with more depth and complexity than the original.

The novel deals with issues of morality and religion with sensitivity and understanding. This is a novel for thinking adults, for those with faith and without, for the hopeful and the hopeless.

Link to Amazon: Home: A Novel

Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold

Subtitle: A Novel Inspired by the Life and Marriage of Charles Dickens

This is an outstanding novel, a fictional examination of Dickens marriage and affair. Even the names are changed, and, as the author says in her introduction, events are rearranged to suit her narrative. But that's OK, in fact, it probably makes for a much better novel.

What's important is that it rings true and convincing, which is a testament to the author's skill. After finishing the novel, we can believe that it happened this way, and that we have had a glimpse of the real Charles Dickens.

It's not a flattering look at his personal life. The novel begins with his death, the the protagonist is his estranged wife. Dickens kicked her out of his home, denying her access to her children, ten years before he died, so that he could carry on an affair with an actress young enough to be his daughter. They didn't teach that in school when I was a kid - only recently have details emerged about Dickens personal life.

The author creates a convincing world for her fictional author, his wife, and his mistress. Highly recommended.

Link to Amazon: Girl in a Blue Dress: A Novel Inspired by the Life and Marriage of Charles Dickens

The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl

Pearl has made a career out of writing novels about literary mysteries. He has written a novel about a translation of Dante, about Edgar Allen Poe's death, and this novel, which deals with the end of the life of Charles Dickens and the end of his unfinished novel, the Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Pearl chooses as a protagonist the publisher of Dickens novels in Boston. The seamier side of the publishing industry is revealed, at a time when there was no international copyright law and the theft of manuscripts was common. The plot involves the publisher traveling to England to search for the end of the unfinished novel. It is, of course, a little contrived, but entertaining. Flashbacks include Dickens last reading tour of America, and a glimpse of the English opium trade in India. Opium plays a large part in Dickens novel, so Pearl uses it to good advantage in his novel.

A "solution" to Dickens unfinished novel is proposed, one involving real characters that Dickens supposedly based his novel on. Overall it's a good read, probably the best of the Pearl literary mysteries.

Link to Amazon: The Last Dickens: A Novel

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

This is Dickens' last unfinished novel. My cunning plan is to read this, then read some of the many novels that attempt to finish the novel for Dickens, or deal with the end of Dickens life. Any excuse to read more books!

Actually, even though the novel is unfinished, it's a satisfying read. Edwin Drood disappears. He is a young, happy-go-lucky, man who was engaged in an arranged marriage. Just as Edwin and his fiance break off their engagement, he disappears. Public suspicion falls on a friend of his, another young man. But all clues tend to point to his uncle Jasper, who seems obsessed with Edwin's fiance. Jasper is also a secret opium addict, smoking it in the opening scene in a den in London.

No one knows where Dickens intended to take the novel. Is Edwin really dead? Or has he just disappeared because of the termination of his engagement? We'll never know, but that hasn't stopped other writers from speculating.

Link to Amazon: The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Penguin Classics)

Sometimes we're always real same-same by Mattox Roesch

An interesting novel, set in an Eskimo village. Cesar, a teenage gang-banger from Los Angeles, moves with his mother back to her old home in Alaska. It's Cesar's cousin, Go-Boy, that eases the culture shock for Cesar. This is a coming-of-age novel, and it follows Cesar and Go-Boy, Cesar's mother, and his new girlfriend, as Cesar adapts to life in Alaska.

Cesar is an unlikely choice for a protagonist. It's tough to be sympathetic to a gang-banger, especially when we learn that he earned that label by participating in a gang-style rape. It's not clear if he actually raped the girl or if he just assisted, but it adversely affected my opinion of the character. Near the end of the novel, Cesar attempts to rationalize his part in the rape by claiming that everyone is guilty of something, an argument that seems immature at best:

And here we all are, standing on this ground. Sure,none of these people have ever participated in a gang rape. None of them have ever seen anything so ugly. But in a way, they have. In a way, every person here has raped someone. Every person in the world has raped someone.

The character of Go-Boy steals the novel. He is a perpetual optimist with his own odd mix of religious beliefs. It is inevitable that his optimism will crash in the face of repeated real-life failures, and that crash forms the real climax of the book. It is Go-Boy's journey that is more compelling and interesting, and his character that is more sympathetic. We see Go-Boy's struggle through Cesar's eyes, and Cesar learns much from Go-Boy.

An interesting novel, giving the reader a glimpse of modern eskimo culture that few will ever see.

Link to Amazon: Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Subtitled: Or the Evening Redness in the West

McCarthy's war novel. Not war between nations but the more elemental and basic desire of man to war on his fellow creatures to advance himself.

At times it reads like a heroic epic poem, at times like a biblical chronicle. There are no heroes here - the characters give free reign to their basest cravings and desires. Violence is ubiquitous. The central character - the kid, is curiously minimized. He appears at the beginning, and again at the end, but in the majority of the novel, as the hideous exploits of the roving warriors are told, the kid is curiously absent from the narrative. We know he is there, that he takes part, but we are not seeing the action through his eyes or even getting his reactions to what happens. In a sense he is everyman, or any man, caught up as a teenager in the war.

The character of the judge is the god of war. He is ruthlessly self-centered. Nothing exists that he does not destroy. He controls and manipulates everyone that he meets.

An unsettling read - grit your teeth and bear it.

Link to Amazon: Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Life Portraits - Rejection

I got my latest rejection for my novel Life Portraits yesterday. This particular agent had had a partial manuscript for four months. A typical rejection: she was "intrigued by the premise", thought it had "appeal in today's market", but "just didn't fall in love".

The tally of queries and rejections for 2009 are:

I sent out 56 queries.
I got 26 rejections.
I got an astounding 30 "no response means no". In other words, 30 agents couldn't even be bothered to respond to my query with a simple no.

This is pretty discouraging for a novel that finished in the finals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Here's the Publisher's Weekly review that I received as part of the contest:

When a woman inherits a series of nude photographs of an unknown man, it triggers a search for the truth behind her dead mother’s mysterious history in this superb novel. Shifting back and forth between the present and the past, with portraits both metaphorical and literal, the parallels between the lives and personalities of young mother Sally Swain and her own newly-deceased mother, photographer Eva, come into detailed focus. Sally’s search draws her into a quest for her unknown father’s identity as Eva’s tale moves from the 1950s to the 1970s amid the drama of the Civil Rights movement and explores her relationships with two very different men: doctor and budding politician Paul James, and confused, often-depressed artist Isaac Rutherford. The suspense is maintained masterfully throughout, and Sally’s slow maturation as she learns the lessons of the past is handled gently and effectively. Paul, Isaac and their family members are richly portrayed with a complex and realistic balance of virtues and flaws as Sally slowly unravels Eva’s secrets and resolves her own personal challenges in the deeply satisfying conclusion.

What now? I suppose I'll keep plugging away at it. This is not my only novel, of course. I have another that is completed and yet another in progress. But I can't pretend that I am not disappointed.

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

Draw a line from William Faulkner through the midnight dark of the human soul and at the end of it you will find Cormac McCarthy, picking over the bones of murderer and murdered, like some oracle seeking the truth of the ways of man and god. McCarthy’s god is, at best, indifferent. At worst, malevolent and sadistic.

This is the story of Lester Ballard's descent into hell. Ballard is a piece of work, a real child of god. McCarthy tells it in stark and simple prose with black humor. Ballard, with the cunning of all men, learns to take advantage of his situation, preying, like the "Son of Sam" murderer, on lovers parked in cars along lonely mountain roads. In his depravity, Ballard takes advantage of the dead female bodies.

No one can tell stories of this kind better that Cormac McCarthy. After reading it I felt depressed and blue for days, wary that a sadistic god would laugh when I was struck down by some depraved child of god.

Link to Amazon: Child of God

Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy

Draw a line from William Faulkner through the midnight dark of the human soul and at the end of it you will find Cormac McCarthy, picking over the bones of murderer and murdered, like some oracle seeking the truth of the ways of man and god. McCarthy's god is, at best, indifferent. At worst, malevolent and sadistic.

Set in the mythical southern Appalachia of Faulkner, this novel is sparse and stark. It follows an incestuous brother and sister. She bears his child; he abandons it to the elements. The baby is taken by a passing tinker. She sets out to find the baby. The brother sets out to find her. Along the way they encounter good and evil in many forms. Look for no happy ending here.

Link to Amazon: Outer Dark

A Romance on Three Legs by Katie Hafner

Subtitled "Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano"

The characters make this creative non-fiction book about Glenn Gould's search for the perfect piano. There is Gould himself, of course. The author does not make a judgment about his mental health, letting his actions speak to the reader. Think the character of the detective Adrian Monk from the popular TV series. To me Gould seems to have obsessive-compulsive character disorder as well as being borderline autistic.

Gould could not find a perfect piano with a piano tuner-technician to keep it perfect, and that character is the practically blind piano tuner Verne Edquist. Edquist's story is, to me, as fascinating as Gould's. Raised on a poor farm in Saskatchewan, he was forced to attend a school for the blind where he learned the rudiments of his trade, working his way up through the ranks of piano tuners to become the best.

The third major character of the book is the piano itself, one of the few Steinways manufactured during the war years when the factory was re-tooled for the war effort. That it was constructed at all seems a miracle. Gould found it languishing in a department store in Canada. He was looking for a super-light action and a clean sound, and it was Edquist that brought that sound out of the piano.

A lot of fascinating details are also revealed about the Steinway Artist program as it existed after the Second World War. Once an artist signed an exclusive contract with Steinway they were supplied with pianos and even piano tuners when they toured.

Unfortunately, shipping Gould's Steinway led to the end of it's useful life, at least for Gould. It was dropped five feet on a loading dock and the plate was cracked. After it was rebuilt, even Edquist was unable to get it back to the pre-accident condition that Gould obsessively desired.

This is a non-fiction book, so the facts get in the way of a happy ending, but it's still a fascinating account of two interesting men and the piano they shared.

Link to Amazon: A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano

The Art of Practicing by Madeline Bruser

Subtitled "A Guide to Making Music from the Heart"

A very useful guide to practising a musical instrument, with tips on everything from physical to mental preparedness. Some of the advice is evident and common sense, some is unexpected.

Link to Amazon: The Art of Practicing: A Guide to Making Music from the Heart

The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl

I did not care for this at all. I have also read The Dante Club by the same author. He's carved a little niche for himself, writing novels with a literary tie-in.

It's worth examining in detail just to understand what bothers me about the novel - so I don't commit the same errors.

The protagonist is an idiot for most of the novel. Naive and bungling, yet unbelievably lucky. Not convincing that he would abandon everything to find out the truth about Poe's death. Mystery novels have a long history of the dumb sidekick, but in those cases the sidekick is not the focus of the novel - the detective is. It's not the mysteries of Dr. Watson, it's the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. In this case neither of the detectives grab the readers imagination, leaving us with this idiot for a protagonist.

Too close to the truth, which, in this case, is boring. I realize the author did a lot of research into Poe's death so that he could wrap his novel around fact. It's boring. You see a mystery about the death of Poe on the bookstore shelf and what springs to mind? Something macabre, something obsessed with being buried alive, something dark and gloomy and fantastic. Instead we get a not-very-cohesive story about Poe being overcome by a single drink of alcohol and spurned by his friends. It's supposed to be fiction, OK? No one expects the truth. It should be a story worthy of the man who wrote The Cask of Amontillado and The Fall of the House of Usher.

The writing style, while it might be appropriate for a novel of the period, is too cumbersome and long-winded for a modern novel with modern readers. There are plenty of examples of historical novels written in a compelling and captivating manner. March and The Year of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks are good examples.

So I didn't like it. Will I read another novel by Pearl? Probably, with the hope that he improves.

Link to Amazon: THE POE SHADOW

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

This novel is worth studying just to understand how McCarthy constructed it. Yes it is violent and hopeless, but it is also riveting and compelling.

My understanding of the construction of the novel is that McCarthy took the novel apart, separated it into two parts, and put it back together. The compelling part is a linear telling of the story of the stolen money and the chase. In this part the writing is restricted to only what can be seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled - the senses. There are no reflections by the characters, no feelings, no rhetorical questions, and no flashbacks. Essentially all of that has been removed and placed in the other part of the novel, in which the character of the Sheriff addresses the reader. There is no action in this part, only a discussion by the Sheriff in first person of his life as a sheriff and his feelings about what he has observed. The two parts alternate, with the Sheriffs first person musings in italics.

It works, very well. Makes me want to try to imitate it.

Link to Amazon: No Country for Old Men

The Loser by Thomas Bernhard

I usually give a questionable book at least a hundred pages before I give up on it. Not this book - I stopped reading at about page 25. It's a long soliloquy; it's one claim to fame seems to be that it is written in one long paragraph. Not strictly true - there are four paragraphs. I can sum up what I think it is about in one sentence - "If I can't win, I won't play." It's not about music, as you might think. It's about giving up when you can't be the best. I read far enough to learn that the narrator did not pursue a musical career because he loved music, but to spite his family. He abandoned his career because he could not play as good as Glenn Gould. There seems to be no plot, no setting, and very little characterization. It's just the narrator rambling on and on in incoherent sentences. Perhaps that is a problem with the translation. The first thing in this edition is an apology from the translator.

I don't have much sympathy with the narrator, of course. I am an amateur musician and writer. Should I give up playing the piano because I am not Glenn Gould? Should I give up writing because I can't get published? I know one thing - I gave up on reading this book.

Link to Amazon: The Loser: A Novel

An Equal Music by Vikram Seth

A novel of music and obsession. Michael Holme is a violinist, the second violin on the famous Maggiore String Quartet. A decade earlier, instead of pursuing a solo career, he left his teacher in Austria and retreated to London. He also abandoned the love of his life, Julia. Imagine his surprise when he sees her on a London bus. She shows up at one of the quartets concerts, and they begin an affair, since she is now married with a son.

There is a surprising plot twist here, which I will not reveal, since to do so would spoil the surprise and the book for the reader. But the twist does bring up some interesting moral questions. To what lengths would you go to play the music that you love with the person that you love? Would you risk your own career? Would you risk the careers and reputations of your friends and colleagues?

The decisions made by Michael are interesting to question and debate, something that would make this a good book club selection. His character is, for me, too self-centered and indecisive, although the author does an entirely convincing job portraying Michael's character.

The descriptions of the music and the musicians ring true, and musicians of any instrument or style of music should find the book an interesting and enjoyable read.

Link to Amazon: An Equal Music: A Novel

Body and Soul by Frank Conroy

Now this is a good novel. It has everything: fully developed characters, an interesting setting, enough plot to keep the novel moving forward, and music. It's the story of Claude Rawlings, from his earliest memories to the premier of his piano concerto with the London Symphony. Claude grows up in post World War II New York - he is a war baby. His mother is a 300 pound, taxi-driving, army-boot-wearing, communist sympathizer who locks him in their basement apartment while she drives her cab. Hidden in the back room is a small 66 key piano, and Claude teaches himself to pick out the songs he hears on the radio.

In a lucky break (one of many in the novel) Claude befriends a music store owner down the street who recognizes the young boys talent and gives him his first piano lessons. Only later do we find out he music store owner is a Polish refugee who also happens to have been the premier composer of his generation. The lucky breaks continue for Claude throughout his career, as he makes friends with people who can teach and help him.

Readers who have shared the experience of piano lessons as a child or teenager will find much to identify with. Readers who are musicians on any instrument will recognize their own struggles in Claude's journey.

Only after some emotional stress enters Claude's life, and his too-easy road becomes uncertain does his music really soar. Several small mysteries keep the novel moving forward. Who is Claude's unknown father? What will happen to his mother and his old friend, his first piano teacher. Will he find love?

The novel is a complete package, a very satisfying read, and an accurate portrait of a young musician. I highly recommend it.

Link to Amazon: Body and Soul

The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason

The only book I know of that features a piano tuner as the protagonist. It's 1886, and an eccentric British Army surgeon in Burma needs his piano turned. The surgeon is so important to the British Army efforts to colonize Burma that Edgar Drake, a piano tuner in London, is recruited to journey to Burma and tune and repair the surgeon's Erard grand piano.

The novel owes much to Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Is the surgeon deep in the jungle of Burma merely an influential doctor, or has he gone native? Is he working in the best interest of the British Empire, or does he have other plans? And why is a piano so important? Drake's journey is eye-opening as he encounters a culture that he never imagined could exist. He falls under the spell of Burma as well as the eccentric surgeon who has brought him to tune his piano. Of course things get out of hand - Drake has to repair damage to the piano from a bullet.

The writing is good, although at times the author abandons traditional dialogue punctuation in favor of a style that is confusing at best - he would have been well-advised to stick to traditional punctuation at all times.

Here is the climatic moment when Drake finally arrives at the location of the piano:

Edgar climbed out of the boat.
The man looked at him without speaking. The piano tuner's clothes were still soaked with mud, his hair matted against his forehead. He could feel the dried mud on his face crack as he smiled. There was a long silence and then he slowly raised his hand.
He had thought about this moment for weeks, and about what he would say. The moment called for words fit for History, to be remembered and recorded once the Shan States were finally won and the Empire secured.
"I am Edgar Drake," he said. "I am here to repair a piano."

Yes, it seems a little overblown and melodramatic when quoted. I admit that I laughed when I read that passage. The plot is, for the most part, predictable. The ending (which I will not reveal) may be disappointing to some.

And how is the depiction of the actual piano tuning? Spotty. I have had some experience in this area, in the moving, tuning, and repair of pianos. It seems that the Erard grand was transported across Burma without removing the legs - not likely. The piano tuner is called on to perform, and is able to play multiple preludes and fugues from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier without much, if any, preparation. I find that hard to believe for even a professional pianist. The descriptions of the actual tuning of the piano are also not technically accurate, at least not consistent with modern practice. But this is fiction, and we should give the author, whose training is in medicine, the benefit of the doubt.

Overall I give it two and a half stars out of five. It's a good effort, and where else can you read a book where a piano tuner is the principal character?

Link to Amazon: The Piano Tuner: A Novel

Clara by Janice Galloway

subtitle: A Novel of Clara Schumann

A fictional account of the real-life character Clara Wieck Schumann, her father Friedrich Wieck, and her husband Robert Schumann. Clara's life is told from her earliest memories, through her training by her father as a concert pianist, her forbidden courtship with Robert, her troubled marriage, and Robert's confinement and death. This is not a happy story, something that is obvious from the very beginning. Clara's father is strict and overbearing, and treats her as property to be exploited. She is a gifted pianist, and begins touring (with her father) in her early teenage years. Clara's skill makes her father famous as a teacher, and Robert Schumann (nine years older than Clara) becomes a student. The inevitable happens when Clara and Robert fall in love.

Even at this early stage, Robert's instability is made obvious by the author. The marriage is forbidden by Friedrich, and Robert and Clara have to resort to appealing to the courts for permission to marry, which happens once Clara comes of age. The marriage is troubled from the start. The author portrays Robert as suffering from alternating periods of manic and melancholic states. Clara is perpetually pregnant, and forced to tour to support the family. She compares the difficulty of living with Robert to walking on eggshells.

This is fiction, of course, but based largely on fact. The edition I read (ISBN: 0743238532) includes an interview with the author in which she states that she was as accurate as she could be without being slavish. The tone throughout, in my opinion, is one of quiet desperation. We are always waiting for the next crisis in Robert's life. The author's style heightens the feeling of anxiety.

Clara suffers terribly from her father and from Robert, but there are moments when she is happy, although there is always the threat of disaster looming. All the famous musicians of the time make an appearance in the novel: Paganini, Liszt, Mendelsohn, and the young Brahms. The author is not a musician, but I could not tell it from the writing - she does an excellent job.

Here is the young Friendrich, describing his fascination for the piano:

... God wanted Friedrich for the piano. What else explained his fascination, his feeling of kinship for the instrument? Something about its hamstrung innards, its rickle of ivory slats, kept drawing him almost against his will. Dependent and tyrannical, willing and resistant, the piano soothed and irritated in equal measure. You could spend your life trying to tame the brute, coaxing it, pursuing its relentless demand for mastery. What music it could make: and orchestra in a box! It was peerless. Yet it was nothing, no more than a stranded whale, without a human operative. Without him.

And here is Clara, thinking about the manuscript for Schumann's piano concerto:

... Even the look of it thrilled her: the bar lines looped over and skirted and duped for melody's sake, effects that could be seen only on the page, not heard in their full subtlety at all. It was clever and beautiful, but it was more that that. It was proof. Proof that sheer effort of will could construct a wholeness where none existed. Proof that music and those who made it could confront chaos, and find in it what was tender and fantastical and clear and true. And this was her purpose: to play such music; music that made everything, everything, come through.

Reading the novel put me in my own melancholic state for days. Isn't that what we desire from good literature? That it is so convincing and real that we are lost in the story? Thankfully we have Clara's legacy as a concert pianist and Robert's music to keep their memories alive - and this excellent novel.

Link to Amazon: Clara: A Novel

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

I would almost rather discuss the author's portrait on the inside back cover of my edition than the novel. Don't get me wrong, the novel is good. A college student finds himself caught up in a murder and it's cover up. His clique of friends are strange. It's almost a tribute to "Crime and Punishment", as the friends each react differently to guilt over what has happened.

But the author's portrait is intriguing. She looks serious and defiant, her arms crossed in front of her, her head tilted slightly to the side, an slight, enigmatic smile on her face. Penetrating dark eyes, dark hair, and a very pale face. I can imagine her seeing through all deceptions to the truth within. Very much like her writing.

Link to Amazon: The Secret History

Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The first detective mystery novel? Yes, and still one of the best. Wilkie Collins was a contemporary of Charles Dickens. This novel has all the aspects of a good mystery. Interesting plot (the moonstone is a stolen diamond), a series of interesting characters, blind alleys, red herrings, unexpected twists and turns, and so on and so forth.

It's told in an interesting way - first person serial. Each character tells their part of the story from the first person perspective. This is a seldom-used method of writing the novel, later to be made famous by William Faulkner in As I Lay Dying.

The only thing that is a little dated is the presence of opium in the plot - understandable since Collins was an addict. I suppose he was writing from personal experience. The treatment of opium seems naive, but what can you expect from the nineteenth century.

Highly recommended, and much more readable than some of the Dickens' novels.

Link to Amazon: The Moonstone (Modern Library Classics)

Beat by Amy Boaz

Yet another novel about yet another woman facing an identity crisis. Frances cheats on her long-suffering husband with a creepy beat poet. She abandons one child and hauls the other to Paris with her to escape her mistakes. While in Paris she neglects her child and even tries to lose her. Frances is filled with angst, self-centered, untrustworthy, and so forth and so on. An all too familiar story that has been told dozens of times. The author does a good job telling it, it's just been done to death. I just finished "Loving Frank" by Nancy Horan - same story, and a better novel.

Ninety-five percent of this book is about the unlikeable Frances and her affair with her creepy poet. The other five percent is what kept me reading - the unanswered questions. Is her lover in jail? Why is he in jail? What happened to her lover's lover? Is her lover cheating on her? Why did Frances flee to Paris? And please, please can Frances be punished for the suffering she is causing the reader?

Ultimately it all fizzles at the end. We don't really know the answers to the questions because Frances is telling the story and she is so confused she doesn't know herself what happened. The only good thing is that the novel is less than two-hundred pages long - the pain is over quickly.

Link to Amazon: Beat

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Why did no one ever tell me about this book? Why did no one ever tell me about Wilkie Collins? A contemporary of Dickens, Collins was very popular in his lifetime, but somehow, in all my many years of school and college, I never heard his name or his books mentioned. Makes me wonder what other authors I may have missed.

This novel is described as the first of the English "sensation novels", what we would call in the U.S. a thriller. If Collins invented this format he was a genius. This novel has the elements we identify with a thriller. Its only weak points are its treatment of women as a somewhat helpless and inferior species, but I could easily say the same thing of Dickens. Even though one of the female characters (Marian) is instrumental in thwarting the plot Count Fosco (what a name for a villain) it is left to the male character to actually resolve things.

But it's a great read, actually a lot more approachable than some of the Dicken's novels. I wish that, as a high school junior, I had been given this to read instead of "A Tale of Two Cities".

Link to Amazon: The Woman in White (Modern Library Classics)

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

A modern gothic novel in the tradition of Jane Eyre.I really loved this novel. It is smart, sensitive, engaging, and suspenseful.

Margaret Lea is hired to wite the biography of best-selling author Vida Winter. Winter has made a habit of telling widely different tales of her life to interviewers, but now she is dying, and wants to tell her true story. She picks Margaret Lea to tell it to, a reclusive bookstore clerk who is herself emotionally damaged.

The tale takes many emotional twists and is full of revelations about the past. Winter was a twin - or was she? Her twin is dead - or is she?

I was disappointed when I finished the book to find that Setterfield has not yet written another novel. More! I want more!

Link to Amazon: The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel

The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl

I had high hopes for this novel, but ultimately it fell a little flat. I love historical fiction with real characters, and this one has literary figures Oliver Wendell Holmes, Longfellow, and others. The setting is Boston, and murders that copy punishments from Dante's Inferno are occurring at the same time that Longfellow is translating the Inferno to English. The literary figures become reluctant detectives.

But I think the author has real problems with the omniscient narration. I am not an inexperienced reader, and I had difficulty following the thread of the narration at times, especially when exciting events were taking place. It is not always clear whose eyes we are viewing a scene through, or even what is actually happening.

It's still an entertaining read though, and the literary allusions are very well done.

Link to Amazon: The Dante Club: A Novel

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

This may be the perfect road trip novel. Sarcastic and ironic. Anti-slavery and humanistic.

Link to Amazon: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Dover Thrift Editions)

The Well and the Mine by Gin Philipps

An excellent debut novel, set in depression era northern Alabama. A young girl witnesses a woman throwing a baby in a well, and that inspires the girl's family to ponder the who and the why. The story is told in first person serial, which is a little unusual, but not hard to adapt to.

It may be just a tad too nostalgic. There's a minimal plot and excellent characterization but quite a lot of what I would call nostalgia for 1930s Alabama.

Link to Amazon: The Well and the Mine

What Maisie Knew by Henry James

A classic novel, extensively researched, written about, and commented on. Maisie is the first fictional child to be the product of a broken home. Her parents hate each other, and treat Maisie as a weapon, something all to familiar to modern readers. Maisie ends up as a pawn between not only her parents but her stepparents and a governess. An awful mess, but a good read.

Link to Amazon: What Maisie Knew (Penguin Classics)

Time to Regroup - Yet Again

The three finalists in the ABNA contest were supposed to be notified yesterday. My phone didn't ring with any mysterious area codes. Neither did I get any email from Amazon. So it's not me.

Depression set in quickly. It's difficult not to be hopeful and enthusiastic. I made it to the final 100 entries out of 10,000. I had an all-positive Publishers Weekly review - it was effusive in its praise with nothing negative to say. So I got my hopes up. I had a better chance of geting into the top three of ABNA than of winning the lottery.

But it's not to be. Now what? Time to regroup - yet again. I have regrouped so many times after disappointments that I feel like a veteran of strange and foreign wars. Typically the depression doesn't last that long, though. If I were really depressed I wouldn't be writing this - and the act of typing out my thoughts does help. It's not like I base my whole existence on whether I can get published or not. My value as a human being is not determined by whether you can buy my novel in a bookstore.

I will rework my query letter, including the news about ABNA and my PW review. I'll search out more agents to send it to. I'll look through the short stories again and send some more of them out to literary journals. And I'll continue to work on the next novel. Of course, I have another couple of novels that are in the drawer, so to speak, and that is probably where they will remain for the time being.

Always at the back of my mind lurks the fear that I may never get published. I may never attract the attention of an agent or an editor or a publisher. So be it, but it won't be because I didn't try.

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber

If anyone ever tells you that thrillers can't be "literary" then point them at this novel. Gruber does an excellent job of developing his oddball characters while at the same time spinning out a tale full of twists and turns as the players attempt to decipher coded documents and track down a long-lost Shakespeare play. Most thrillers read like outlines for a good novel, with all the meaty parts left out. Not so Gruber's book. It's got plenty of meat to chew on.

That's not to say that I didn't see the ending coming. In fact, the plot follows the well worn path of countless thrillers before it. We have the search for a Maguffin, the double and triple cross, the unsuspected villain, the clueless narrator, the chase scene, and so forth and so on. But it's great fun and a wonderful read.

Link to Amazon: The Book of Air and Shadows: A Novel

Another Tag Cloud for Life Portraits

Tag Cloud of Life Portraits

A tag cloud is a visual representaion of the words (tags) in a document where the size of the font correlates to the frequency of the word. Tagcrowd.com has an easy interface for generating tag clouds from text.

Here is the tag cloud for my novel Life Portraits. The names of the characters and several themes of the novel are prominent.

almost anything arm around art asked atlanta away beach bed behind better boys called camera car coffee dark different done door enough eva everything eyes face father felt found front going gone hair hands happened head help home house hub isaac jack job kat kept kids kissed knew life light lisa looked love man married maybe miss mother name nothing opened paper paul people photo pictures portraits pulled really room sally sat school seemed someone something started stay stood surprised talk things think thought together told tom took town tried turned waiting walked wanted watched window woman work years york

created at TagCrowd.com

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

I read this ages ago, and decided to read it again to examine more closely how it is written. This edition has a postscript by the author explaining many things about the writing of the novel.

Interesting that he describes the first hundred pages as a penance or initiation for reading the novel. I found myself skimming much of the historical facts about the sects and heretics. Is all that detail really necessary? Isn't it enough to know the facts without so much detail? I would certainly cut a lot.

And it seems that the author added the extra levels of narrator (a modern translator at least twice removed from the young novice narrator) as a salve to his own ego. Odd.

But at it's core, there is the traditional detective novel, much like a story of Sherlock Holmes narrated by Doctor Watson. William of Baskerville is the "detective" and everything is narrated by the novice Adso.

Much of the extra material valued so highly by Eco was, of course, removed for the movie.

Link to Amazon: The Name of the Rose: including the Author's Postscript

The Life of Emily Dickinson by Richard Sewall

Impressive and deeply detailed, this biography approaches Emily Dickinson's life on a slant, much as she presented her own life to her friends and family in her letters. Most o the biography centers on Dickinson's friends and family and the letters and poems that she wrote them.

It will shatter your belief in the many myths of Dickinson's life. Much is still open to debate, but after reading this biography I believe that Dikinson was not a recluse because she lost a lover or was subjugated by her father. It was what we would call today a lifestyle choice, brought on by her decision to be a poet and the lack of any life-changing occurrence when she was of marrying age.

Link to Amazon: The Life of Emily Dickinson

Publishers Weekly Review of Life Portraits

I received my Publishers Weekly review of my Amazan Breakthrough Novel Award entry, Life Portraits. I couldn't be more pleased with it. Obviously I got their best reviewer. Whoever it is does a better job at summing up my novel than I do:

From Publishers Weekly

When a woman inherits a series of nude photographs of an unknown man, it triggers a search for the truth behind her dead mother’s mysterious history in this superb novel. Shifting back and forth between the present and the past, with portraits both metaphorical and literal, the parallels between the lives and personalities of young mother Sally Swain and her own newly-deceased mother, photographer Eva, come into detailed focus. Sally’s search draws her into a quest for her unknown father’s identity as Eva’s tale moves from the 1950s to the 1970s amid the drama of the Civil Rights movement and explores her relationships with two very different men: doctor and budding politician Paul James, and confused, often-depressed artist Isaac Rutherford. The suspense is maintained masterfully throughout, and Sally’s slow maturation as she learns the lessons of the past is handled gently and effectively. Paul, Isaac and their family members are richly portrayed with a complex and realistic balance of virtues and flaws as Sally slowly unravels Eva’s secrets and resolves her own personal challenges in the deeply satisfying conclusion.

Pardon me for excerpting the high points:

"... superb novel."

"... suspense is maintained masterfully ..."

"... handled gently and effectively."

"... richly portrayed ..."

"... complex and realistic ..."

"... deeply satisfying conclusion."

You can read my entry. Comments are welcome.

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award - semifinalist!

Hooray for me! I made it the semifinals of the 2009 ABNA contest. That means I survived the initial cut from 10,000 to 2,000, then to 500, and now to 100. So I'm in the top 1% of this contest. I'll take any small victory in the seemingly endless struggle to get published.

You can read and review my excerpt. Please. I gladly accept all feedback, good or bad.

The next hurdle is the elimination to only three finalists. There are some excellent entries, so I'm not exactly optimistic about my chances. I should know by May 15th.

I will also be receiving a review of my entire novel from Publishers Weekly.

Agents - unnecessary intermediaries?

An interesting blog post by Mary Walters on her Militant Writer blog.

She's not fond of literary agents, the gatekeepers between writers and publishers.

Here's the comment I left on her blog:

Speaking from an economics viewpoint, agents are intermediaries in a supply chain. The traditional supply chain is supplier-manufacturer-wholesaler-retailer-buyer.

As I see it, the writer is the supplier, the publisher and the writer working together are the manufacturer. The publisher is the wholesaler, bookstores are the retailers, and readers are the buyers. Intermediaries (agents) are not really necessary in the supply chain. History is full of examples of intermediaries (middlemen) that have been eliminated. You might say that is the natural evolution of the supply chain - to eliminate middlemen.

Recent history is also full of examples of other steps in the supply chain being eliminated or consolidated. Direct marketing via the internet is one example, with Amazon attempting to bypass bookstores.

No one should be surprised if the publishing industry undergoes some radical change as well. What that change will be I cannot guess - I wish I could. There are plenty of ongoing experiments - most of which are designed to eliminate intermediaries such as agents, or even publishers and bookstores. Only time will tell which experiments will succeed and which will fail.

The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman

An excellent book, a literary mystery. It has all the qualities of literary fiction as well as a murder mystery. Goodman continues some of her favorite themes here - death by drowning and influence of classical literature.

Link to Amazon: The Drowning Tree: A Novel

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

What an odd book. It breaks one of the rules that is always dictated to beginning writers - no odd turns of plot that later turn out to be a dream. In this case there are three odd turns of plot that all happened while the narrator was in a coma, which the reader know nothing about until later.

And yet it all works somehow. Let me be honest - I love the writing style of Kate Atkinson. She could write a grocery list and I would read it. Her style really resonates with me, and I thoroughly enjoyed this queer book, strange plot twists and all.

Link to Amazon: Human Croquet

Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson

What an odd book, queer and strange. Not one of Atkinson's murder mysteries, it's a novel within a novel within a novel. The narator is on an island off the Scottish coast with her "mother" for the summer and is relatin the story of her time at college. She was a creative writing major, and was writing a novel which is excerpted in the text.

Essentially plotless, there is ample opportunity for Atkinson to display her quirky sense of humor. I love her humor and her writing. This novel is not as good as her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, and very different from her murder mysteries, but worth a read.

Link to Amazon: Emotionally Weird

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodkind

A literary mystery, which means that the quality of writing is higher than your average whodunit. The characterization is excellent, several generations of girls/women that are all students, teachers, or alumni at a private girl's high school. The setting is also excellent, the Adirondacks of New York.

The plot revolves around a series of mysterious suicides of two generations of students. Or are they suicides? The plot is convoluted and complicated, but that is part of the charm of this novel. I highly recommend it.

Link to Amazon: The Lake of Dead Languages

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award - Quarterfinalist!

I made it to the top 500 in the ABNA contest, out of a reported 10,000 entries. This is for my novel Life Portraits. If you would like to read my excerpt, it is on the Amazon site here: Life Portraits.

The two reviews I received from Amazon were positive. Here are the reviews and the "pitch" for the novel:

Review
I couldn't possibly count the number of novels, poems, autobiographies, paintings and songs which were inspired by the fact that the author felt like they never really knew their own parents. It's a bug question, this one of identity. And how can we possibly know who we are if we never knew where we came from in the first place. It may be an over done idea but the premise behind "Life Portraits" that I picked up from reading the snippet, is a very valid one that leaves a lot of room to play around in. We never really realize it because we spend so much time looking for information that is sensational but people are fascinating. Really they are. Everyone has a story that is amazing and deserves to be told. And so these novels keep popping up, the stories of those we never really got to know and no they're dying maybe or dead and there's all this unfinished business....no, the premise for this isn't very original. But it's written well and the little I read gave me enough mental questions about the characters introduced that if I had the whole thing in front of me I'd probably read on.

Review
This excerpt from "Life Portraits" is especially interesting to me because of the historical references to Atlanta, where I grew up during the same time as Eva would have been there. Incidents Eva, Sally's mother, photographed such as Lester Maddox blocking blacks from his restaurant with an axe-handle in the door were events I lived through and my family talked about, so this makes the portraits literally jump off the page for me. It is the rare writer who can evoke a strong sense of smell from me when I'm reading, twice removed from the experience being described, but this writer did. I can smell those sharp, acrid darkroom chemicals, and that smell completely pulls me into the story in a way that simple visual imaginings cannot do. I can still smell it, half an hour after reading it. The choice of photographs as a means of telling the story--photographs that I imagine mostly in black and white, as a serious newspaper or war photographer might shoot them--is an intriguing hook; a means of opening up a world of secrets and buried history, like the hidden nudes in Eva's locked cabinet drawer. The writing itself is quite good. I enjoy the textures of complex sentences and layered imagery, so this is a writer whose skill commands my interest in the writer as well as the story--much as I am interested in following an excellent actor's career through and transcending the characters he or she plays. Of course, I am curious to know whether Sally's inheritance is scant or somehow deliberately hurtful because of her rift with her mother--it is not money or property, after all--or (as I suspect through the foreshadowing) the greatest treasure a complex woman has to leave a daughter she deeply loved and lost.

Product Description
Imagine Sally Swain's surprise when she inherits from her mother twenty years of nude photographs of a strange man, all taken before Sally was born. Life Portraits tells the story of Eva Swain, photographer, and Isaac Rutherford, painter, as they carry out a twenty-year art project, beginning in 1955, to meet once a year and record each other's portraits. Life Portraits also tells the story of Sally, who left home at seventeen and returned fourteen years later, a single mother, in time for her mother Eva's funeral, to discover that Eva had lied to her about her father. She sets out to solve the mystery surrounding the nude portraits and find the identity of her father, and along the way discovers that she is her mother's daughter. What she learns forces her to examine her relationship with her own daughter - and her daughter's father. Part mystery and part love story, Life Portraits should appeal to readers that love complex characters and family sagas. The story of the twenty-year-long art project is original and captivating, and is spun out in alternating scenes with Sally's search for the mysterious man in the portraits.

Judging is based in part on customer reviews, so if you like what you read in my excerpt, please write a short review for me. Juding for the semifinals is over on April 15th.

When Will There be Good News by Kate Atkinson

Another "sequel" to Case Histories and One Good Turn, although it's not a traditional sequel. It's only a sequel in the sense that it shares a couple of characters. In my opinion, Case Histories is a great book, One Good Turn a good book, and this novel another great book. Atkinson returned to her theme of violence on women, and perhaps that brings out the better writer.

I loved the character of Reggie, the sixteen-year-old Scottish girl who wisecracked her way through the novel, doggedly turning up in the right places at the right time, saving more than one life by her actions. Well done by author and character.

It's a great read - give it a try.

Link to Amazon: When Will There Be Good News?: A Novel

American Rust by Philipp Meyer

Rust-belt lit. Two young men, trapped by the collapse of the steel industry and their own reluctance to move on, are caught up in the murder of a vagrant. The writing is good, the subject matter depressing. The setting is somewhere in the coal and steel belt of Pennsylvania, as well as a prison since one of the characters does end up in prison.

Meyer does an excellent job examining the motives and passions of his characters. Each is faced with difficult decisions, each acts according to their wants and desires. The young men each have their chance to escape, and each fails to take advantage of their opportunities.

The author is also successful in bringing the novel to a close satisfactorily, something that can be difficult to do in character-based literary fiction. The ending is dark and sombre, but satisfying.

If I had a complaint it would be with the two female characters - they both seem to find sex the only way to relate to the men in their lives.

Overall it is well worth reading, even though it is dark and depressing.

Link to Amazon: American Rust: A Novel

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

This is a "sequel" to Case Histories, although both novels are fine by themselves. It's a sequel in the sense of the next in a series of mysteries that have the same detective as a protagonist.

Case Histories is a great book. One Good Turn is a good book. This book is about coincidences. As the protagonist says, "A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen." There are plenty to characters all linked by coincidences, with what I'm beginning to recognize as Atkinson's trademark style of tying everything together in unexpected ways.

It's a good read - not as great as Case Histories, but still well worth it.

Link to Amazon: One Good Turn: A Novel

Rejection X 20 = depression

My novel codenamed LP has been rejected twenty times by agents now. My novel codenamed BtC has been rejected once by an agent. I've lost count of the number of times my short stories have been rejected. So depression has set in.

I've been writing seriously for five years now, and what do I have to show for it? One short story published, in an online literary journal. I have written six novels, of which four are "starter" novels that will never be seen by an agent or editor. Two of the novels I am proud of, BtC and LP. I am told this is a very bad time to try to get an agent's attention, so maybe I could take some consolation from that, but twenty rejections for LP is tough to take.

What do I do now? Where do I go from here? I entered LP in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, but I don't have much hope for it - the initial judging is based only on a pitch. I have ideas for four more novels that I have worked on a little. I suppose I will continue to be optimistic and plug away at another novel, probably the one codenamed LL. At this point I have gotten used to writing and creating - I miss it when I am depressed and not writing.

The prospect of never being published is frightening and sobering. It is a very real possibility. Book sales were declining, even before the current financial downturn. And perhaps I am just not good enough. Maybe I will never attract the attention of one of the gatekeepers (the agents) no matter how well I write. It takes a great deal of determination to keep plugging away at it in the face of so much rejection.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson

The story of Ruby and her horrific childhood. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry as I read this. It's dark humor at its best.

Ruby narrates her own conception, and the story gets weirder and sadder from there. Atkinson breaks all the rules and gets away with it, which is what good writing is all about. Not only does Ruby narrate her conception, but we are filled in on the lives of her ancestors in chapter-sized footnotes. Obviously things that Ruby could never know, but the reader doesn't care. It's good writing and it works.

There is even a mystery too, which is what you would expect from Atkinson. The solution is revealed in the climax.

Link to Amazon: Behind the Scenes at the Museum: A Novel

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

A book with a surprising and shocking ending - and no, I'm not going to spoil it for you. The book is a fictional account of the factual relationship between the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah (May-muh) Borthwick Cheney. I urge you not to do any research into their affiar before reading the book - it would most certainly spoil the suprising ending.

The ending is the most interesting part of the book. The rest of it is familiar to modern readers. Both Frank and Mamah are married to other people - they both have children. Their affair goes through the familiar pattern of infatuation, love, deception, estrangement from the children, hurting others by selfish actions, shame, guilt, and so forth and so on. This all takes place around 1909, so there was quite a scandal, something that would not really happen today.

If there were solely a novel, the ending would be dismissed, I think, as too sudden and melodramatic. There is certainly not enough foreshadowing of what happens. But since this is fiction based on fact, you can't really argue "that couldn't happen", since it did happen. It's one of the common "rules" presented to fiction writers. Just because something happened that way does not mean that it makes a good story.

So now you will have to read it, to find out what I am talking about and to decide for yourself if the true-life ending makes a satisfying and compelling story.

Piano World online recital

Participated in my first Piano World online recital this month. It's not as stressful as a real recital in front of live people! Here's my tiny little medal:

The Road to Wellville by T. C. Boyle

An outstanding novel. Boyle really outdid himself with this creative treatment of the Kellogg sanitarium and the breakfast food boom centered around Battle Creek Michigan in the early twentieth century.

The novel's dark humor is its most striking aspect. The descriptions of the medical treatments, the enemas, the food at the sanitarium, the lectures by Kellogg, the odd characters who were drawn to the treatments, read like an odd mixture of Faulkner and Dickens. And it has plot! We follow the Will Lightbody and his wife Eleanor on the road to Wellville, along with an assortment of minor characters and subplots. Highly inventive and a great read.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

Creative non-fiction, like "In Cold Blood", but I actually like this book much better. It lacks the narrative drive, but the characters are more memorable, and the author does a good job of capturing them. Rather than thinking of it as the story of the murder and the trials, it really more of a portrait of the city of Savannah, at least as seen through the eyes of the author.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

Occasionally I find a book so well written that it makes me want to give up my own efforts at writing. This book is nearly perfect - it really speaks to me. It is aptly described as a literary mystery. It has everything that I love in a book. A plot (actually several) that keeps me turning pages. Interesting characters. A "theme" (women as victims). Atkinson weaves together the several sub-plots, springing twists and turns, giving insights into the characters. It's a wonderful book. Now I can't wait to read her other novels.

Piano Lessons have begun

I had my last piano lesson way back in 1973 - thirty-six years ago. I started playing again, on my own, in January of 2008. This year, Laurie got me a couple of months of piano lessons for Christmas, starting in January of 2009. Well, I've had two lessons now ( I take one every two weeks), and decided I would try recording myself to see what I sounded like. The answer is pretty bad. At least this will give me a starting point from which to judge my progress.

How long will I take lessons? I don't know. It is satisfying a need that I have to express myself, and I'm having fun with it. So, if you are brave, have a listen.

prelude-bwv-846

a-moment-lost

melody-from-album-for-the-young

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

An impressive book. Also an impressively blurbed book. It's been compared to Dickens, but I don't think that comparison holds up very well. It's impossible for a modern auther to write like Dickens - the novel would never be published. Dickens' characters are lavishly drawn with overwhelming attention to detail. A modern author can't get away with that. But Ms. Tinti does an excellent job. It does have the feel of a Dickens' story because of the setting - the seamier side of nineteenth century New England.

There is plenty of violence here, graphically described. There is so much that it is somewhat cheapened, like watching a violent movie where everybody gets shot - who cares after a while? It's a great story though, full of little twists and turns, and a great read.

Someone to Love by Jude Deveraux

I had to read this for the bookclub I belong to. They have to put up with the books that I recommend, authors like Margaret Atwood and Geraldine Brooks, so it's only fair that I have to suffer through paranormal romance.

Who invented this genre anway? I've never read one, but the formula is evident from this novel. There's no explicit sex - there are descriptions of heaving chests and six-pack abs, but that's about as far as it goes. The ghosts (the paranormal part) mean no harm - they are misunderstood, and want something, but they don't steal souls and frighten to death. The dialog is corny and unrealistic - sort of a teenagers dream of what romantic dialog might be. The plot is full of holes, but who cares? The fans don't read these novels for the plot, but to feel good about the romance. The characters are improbable - filthy rich man who is also young and gorgeous, greiving over the death of his fiance. Beautiful and succesful TV journalist, veteran of war zones, who faints at the sight of a ghost.

But Deveraux is highly successful with these. She has the right touch, obviously, and she gives her readers what they want.

Silence by Christopher Brookhouse

I received this novel fromthe early reviewer program at LibraryThing. It's a short novel - 150 pages, from an independent publisher, The Permanent Press.

It's the story of a High School senior, Nicki, who runs away a few days before graduation. It's also the story of her parents and friends in a small town in New Hampshire. The writing is good, but there are some awkward moments, in dialog and narrative. It's wonderful that this small press has published this book though - it would have a hard time getting any attention from a large publisher.

Little, Big by John Crowley

An epic story about a family caught at the interface between two worlds - that of man and fairies. Or are they? The book is ambiguous. For much of the novel the reader and the characters are kept guessing about what is actually going on. Are there fairies? Do they mean harm or good? Is there a war, or not? Even after reading the book, I am still not sure what really happened. Like the world of the fairies, the book is ambigous and ephemeral.

Improve Your Piano Playing by Dr. John Meffen

A small book with concrete advice on methods of practice, fingering, touch, and musicality. Some of the advice seems unorthodox and counter-intuitive to me, and for that reason it probably works!

Playing the Piano for Pleasure by Charles Cooke

An intriguing little book, inspirational for the adult amateur pianist. But it also somewhat dated. The edition I have was published in 1941 and revised in 1960. It lacks a conclusion, something that would not be omitted if the book were written today. Still, if you can find a copy, it is a worthwhile read.

Books Read 2008

Here is the list of books that I read in 2008. Seventy-three interesting and thought-provoking books. Mostly novels, and those are mostly literary, but also poetry, civil war history, and musical topics. A great year for reading.

Books Read - 2008

Here is the list of books I read in 2008. Seventy-three interesting and thought-provoking novels. Down from the ninety I read last year, but I did not include the audio books this year.

Once again, primarily novels and almost all literary fiction. The exceptions are books that my book club selected, civil war books, poetry, and books on musical topics.