David Benioff: City of Thieves: A Novel
Only partway through this but looking forward to finishing it as soon as I remember to buy an extra lightbulb for my reading lamp. The tale is being related to an American writer by his Russian grandfather, about being trapped starving in his hometown in Russian in the year the Germans were invading. The grandfather found himself imprisoned as a young man by the Russian militia for stealing a flask off a dead German pilot, and being then set on a mission to find eggs for the Commandant's daughter's wedding cake. Was just speaking recently with a friend who only reads nonfiction. Seems like all the nonfiction in the world about the Second World War could not begin to capture the sense of how it felt to be there at the time, with the world collapsing around you and yet desperately in love with your future executioner's engaged daughter. (****)
Dennis Lehane: The Given Day: A Novel
Usually Lehane's books are just very entertaining detective stories, though a few -- Shutter Island in particular -- stand out as more. This one so far seems like it's clearly going to fall in the "more" category, with a tale that looks like it's going big places. Chubby, happy, stupid Babe Ruth just joined and then failed to prevent the ruin of a negro baseball game while killing time waiting for the train, and that was just the prologue. Note: it's been almost six months and I have yet to finish this. (***)
Junot Díaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Took a surprisingly short amount of time to get into this one and cranked through it once into it. Which is surprising given that I don't relate wholly to a massively pudgy, socially outcast, fatally romantic Dominican kid named Oscar Wao.
But damn if the book's narrator didn't suck you into the world of Oscar, his family and the weight of the Dominican curse (fuku) that he carried on his back. Not to mention that the narrator was easily as much of a geek as Oscar, and loaded the pages with references to Final Fantasy, Starblazers, Warcraft, and all that other great gags that only true nerds would catch onto. I'm sure I missed dozens.
What kicked this one up to five stars, though, was simply the writing of the last third of the novel. By the time he was most of the way through his story -- particularly the crushing tale of Oscar's grandfather's family -- Junot Díaz's typing was on fire, and the last chapter's flash-forward rush was just devastating. (*****)
Chuck Palahniuk: Choke: A Novel
The story of a man addicted to sex whose dying mother thinks he's everyone but himself and who earns his keep by faking choking in a restaurant for purposes of getting saved by people who then spend their lives looking out for his well-being.
Brilliantly funny yet subtly sad, looking forward now to checking out more Palaniuk. (***)
Scott Smith: A Simple Plan
Much like his newer book The Ruins -- though containing actual chapters -- Smith's "A Simple Plan" just never stops getting worse, yet stays highly entertaining.
Ostensibly it's the story of the narrator, his slower brother, and his brother's buddy who together happen across a downed plane containing a dead pilot and $4.4 million in cash out in the forest, and decide on the simple plan: take the money and hide it for six months, and if no one comes looking for it, keep it and disappear.
The plan turns out not be so simple, and circumstances go from there. One of the best thrillers I've read. (****)
Yann Martel: Life of Pi
Finally got around to finishing something, thank god. Reading five books at the same time when you have very little time to read essentially means you finish nothing for ages, then finish a bunch all at once, but after getting halfway through this I couldn't stop until it was over.
"Life of Pi" is at the outset the story of a confused Indian lad named Piscine (after a local pool), though nicknamed Pi for short. Pi's the son of a local zookeeper and a highly confused individual when it comes to religion. With the greatest of intentions he takes up Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism all at once, much to the consternation of his parents and local Christian, Islamic, and Hindu priests.
Approximately 30% through the tale Pi's father decides to sell of much of the zoo's livestock to take the remaining animals along with his family to Canada via a freighter -- a freighter which then proceeds to rapidly sink halfway across the Pacific, stranding Pi in a lifeboat alone with an injured zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and... a fully grown Bengal tiger named Richard Jenkins. The rest of the story concerns Pi's survival asea with this group, and goes some pretty damn surprising places -- places that I've never seen described before, some wonderfully funny, some darker than "The Terror" (the other book I'm taking for-freaking-ever to finish).
I'm sucker for killer endings, and damn if the last thirty pages are so aren't the definition of a fast read. The last page -- and especially Pi's final words -- are simply heartbreaking, though undoubtedly truer than anything I've read in ages.
Here's to the world in which there lives a Richard Jenkins. (*****)
Dan Simmons: The Terror: A Novel
Just started it, so far there are two ships in the 1800's locked into ice while trying to cross the northwest passage through the artic. And something's out there. Not bad so far. (****)
Dennis Lehane: Darkness, Take My Hand
Having started with A Prayer For Rain, actually the fifth in the series, I'd gone back to the first Kenzie/Gennaro novel set in modern Boston, then moved on to this one.
Like the others, the book focuses on a wisecracking Boston private eye raised in Dorchester who, along with his hot but equally intelligent partner Angie and unstoppable juggernaut of a buddy Bubba, jumps into cases that are way over their head.
Unlike the cliche this setup sounds like, however, this Lehane series inevitably ends up being far darker than its setup would have you believe, with an ending involving dual serial killers that's pretty much unbelievable in its violence. Like the movie Gone, Baby, Gone (which I needn't read, as I believe the movie did a good enough job), and Lehane's own Mystic River, people are frequently more than they seem, but usually for the worse.
While I can't say any of the series will leave you walking away with a smile on your face, damn if they aren't pageturners. Looking forward to the third one, which is allegedly on the more comedic side. (***)
Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach: A Novel (audio)
Not sure if you can really call this a novel, more a novella, On Chesil Beach is the second Ian McEwan book I've read, after the terrific Saturday.
The story is straightforward and pretty damn simple: two kids in England in the 60's from different backgrounds find themselves in a room in a hotel on the English shore on the first night of their honeymoon, wondering how the hell to get it on. He's really into the idea, she... not so much.
From there the book covers only the next two hours or so (or more, maybe), as well as the events in their lives leading up to that night, but it's McEwan's wording and painting of what's going on inside both of their heads that makes the book so killer. You get to know both of these two people -- we all know people in many ways like these two -- and it's how the drama of the night plays out in the big and evn more little ways that sucks you in.
This isn't the most action-packed thing you'll ever read -- hell, it'd probably even make a shitty dramatic movie -- but somehow the thing gets into you with its mood, laying you out with an ending you somehow knew was coming from the first line. (*****)
David Anthony Durham: Acacia: Book One: The War With the Mein (Acacia)
Been awhile since I found the time or geek factor to read a good fantasy novel, probably not since reading the LOTR trilogy in '97 and not really even enjoying it that much. Loved books like the Dragonlance serieses back in high school, though, so when EW recommended this as a terrific start to a trilogy, figured I'd give it a shot.
Acadia is the island capital of a massive empire on a world much like ours, an empire which has ruled the Known World for a thousand years. Like many empires, however, (I'm guessing here), its foundation is rotten, built on a tithe of slaves send to a faraway unknown people in return for an addictive heroin/weed-like powder known as "Mist".
Without getting too much into the politics of it all, the king of the world is assassinated early on, his four children are scattered to the four corners of the world, his kingdom conquered by cursed Norseish conquerors, and the book focuses mainly on who the heirs grow up to become and how the family is reunited.
Actually pretty damn riveting stuff, Durham describes clearly how each of the children is molded by the new lives they're thrown into in a nature/nurture argument that -- much like most of the characters and their choices in the book -- never becomes a picture painted in clear black or white.
Not a perfect book -- I never got a sense of the countryside or the people of the lands outside of the royal main characters, and a few more small, comic details would have been welcome -- it was still a great read, with a damn strong ending that makes April '09 still too far away. (***)
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