Five books worthy of re-reading

Wow! I can't believe it's been a year since I made the commitment to start this blog. My love for reading has thrived under the commitment of reviewing each book I read. Blogging has forced me to read genres that I wouldn't otherwise have read. It's also given me more impetus to research and read between the lines of the books I read. And, as a result I've discovered reading preferences I didn't know I had.

After reading books like The Antagonist and Larry's Party, I discovered a preference for reading from a male perspective. I think I like reading books where the narrator is male because it's easier for me to accept the voice. Whenever the narrator is female I find myself judging her voice, and asking questions like: would I say that? would I notice something like that? With a male narrator, I just accept the differences as a product of gender. 

In 2011, I tried my hand at e-reading. I'll admit there's a lot to be said for these compact devices (I bought a Kobo) but at the end of the day I still prefer paperback - nothing beats the comfort derived from flipping the pages of a good dog-eared paperback.

Oddly enough, the book that had the greatest impact on me didn't make it on to my 5ers: highly recommended book list. Chris Salewicz's Bob Marley: The Untold Story changed the way I listen to Bob Marley's music because it changed the way I view Bob Marley the man. The book is filled lots of interesting details and facts but Chris Salewicz's writing style oozes cheese, and he doesn't know the first thing about bridging different ideas. 

Without further ado, here's my list of the five books I read in 2011 that I feel are deserving of a second (or third) go around:




The Color Purple by Alice Walker

 


Half Blood Blues  by Esi Edugyan

 




Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

 


Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 



Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

 I chose the above novels because the stories are so layered and multi-dimensional, a second or third read is likely to reveal details I didn't get the first or second time around.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

From the book cover

Roger Ackroyd knew too much. He knew that the woman he loved had poisoned her brutal first husband. He suspected also that someone had been blackmailing her. Then tragically, came the news that she had taken her own life with a drug overdose.

But the evening post brought Roger one last fatal scrap of information. Unfortunately, before he could finish reading the letter, he was stabbed to death.
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Spoiler Alert

"The letters were brought in at twenty minutes to nine. It was just on ten minutes to nine when I left him, the letter still unread. I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone."

"I did what little had to be done."

With the above statements the reader is meant to clue in that the narrator is the murderer. I'm a trusting reader so I assume that the narrator is providing complete details about his involvement in the crime. At one point I wondered if the narrator might be the murderer because it's always the person you least suspect, but I brushed my suspicions aside because the narrator was playing Watson to Hercule Poirot's Sherlocke Holmes.

I really enjoyed this novel but couldn't help shaking my head at a couple oddities.

Some of the characters openly admit to entering and leaving the house via windows, and others are suspected of doing so. Did people  in the 1920s and 30s commonly use windows to enter homes? This is the second Agatha Christie novel in which it is mentioned casually that someone entered or left through the window. In the first novel that I noticed it, The Secret at Chimneys, everyone from suspects to detectives use window short cuts... Why wouldn't these people just use a side or back door? Both mysteries take place in large country homes, surely there is more than just the front door.

Another issue is with the relationship between Ralph Paton  and Roger Ackroyd. Early in the novel Ralph is introduced as Roger Ackroyd's stepson then all of a sudden midway through the novel he's referred to as his nephew and then at the end of the novel he's back to being Roger's stepson. What gives with the inconsistencies? Agatha Christie is the most widely published author, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare, surely she had an editor.

3/5

The Secret of Chimneys

From the book cover

A light-hearted thriller set against a background of upper-crust society life in the twenties which includes British, French and American detectives, secret passages, a fabulous jewel, a mysterious rose emblem, an organisation called the Comrades of the Red Hand, and an international  jewel thief. A package of love letters is stolen with blackmail in view, but the blackmailer is murdered and the letters go missing. Then a foreign envoy is shot during a house party at Chimneys, Lord Caterham's stately English home.

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This is my fifth Agatha Christie novel (I'm reading them in order of publication).

All of Agatha Christie's trademark plot twists and devices are present in this novel: the setting is a large country estate; there's a clever, witty and beautiful woman at the centre of the mystery; a protagonist with a mysterious past; and lastly, a large serving of political intrigue.

Anthony Cade is our protagonist. When we first meet him, he's a tour guide in Africa. His friend, James McGrath, commissions him to deliver the late Count Stylpitch's memoir to a publisher in London and return some letters to a lady by the name of Virginia Revel.

Virginia Revel is the stereotypical Agatha Christie likeable female character. She seems to come from the same mold as Tuppence and Ann Beddingfield. Virginia is smart and spirited and always up for an adventure. Men and women can't help but to love and adore her.

I like reading Agatha Christie's novels because they are nice and light, but most of them don't really add up. I sometimes get the feeling that she's making up the plot, from one page to the next, and only reluctantly explains who the criminals are at the end, so that she can get on to writing her next novel. I got this feeling several times while reading The Secret of Chimneys.

The Secret of Chimneys is a breeze to read. It's a great book to bring along while traveling or to read on a beach. It's entertaining and doesn't require any thought. In fact, you want to not think while reading it, otherwise, you'll notice the implausibility of the conclusion.

3/5

The Household Guide to Dying

From the book cover

Delia is a popular household advice columnist with all the answers to life's most important problems. If you ask, she can tell you how to get the wine stain out of your linen, how to put the gleam in your bathroom, and the proper way to boil an egg. She will likely toss a few well-meant insults at you as well. You get just what you deserve for not knowing how to boil an egg.

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I have an unofficial rule. Whenever I go to the book store I always buy one book I didn't plan on buying. That book usually comes from the discount racks. This month's impulse purchase is Debra Adelaide's The Household Guide to Dying. The pick isn't an eenie meanie miney mo sort of thing, I usually read the book cover and check out what the literary world is saying about the book. In this case, I made my purchase because an author that I have a deep respect for called it a "tantalizing literary souffle." So on Wally Lamb's word, I decided to purchase The Household Guide to Dying.

I don't understand how Wally Lamb can write such masterpieces as She's Come Undone and I know This Much Is True, and then call this novel "a literary souffle." I'm not saying it's a terrible novel, it's just not that great. Sure it has short chapters, a smart protagonist and an interesting premise, but all that is not enough to disguise the fact that it's dull and predictable.

The story centres around Delia's attempts to tie up all of her loose ends, make life easier for her family when she passes away, and complete one final household guide. One of her loose ends involves returning to the small town in Northern Australia where she lived with her son, who died in a horrific car accident, to find the young woman who received his heart. Her attempts to make life easier for her husband and two daughters includes making frozen dinners that they can eat when she's gone (including sausages with her own blood), having them paint their personal touches on her coffin, and making countless lists to help them plan for things that will occur in the future.

My biggest problem with this novel is it wasn't convincing. Delia's reaction to the terrible turn her life is taking doesn't seem realistic. At times the narrative seemed choppy, as the story flashes back and forth between Delia present and the defining moments of her past. The most defining moment being the death of the son she had as an unwed teenager. The final pages of the novel made me second guess my opinion of this book, because they are so real and so touching.

3.5/5

The Glass Castle

From the book cover
When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.
The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.
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Amazing! I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It boosted my momesteem a tonne by reminding me that not enrolling your child in activities for every day of the week doesn't make you a crappy mom, allowing your three-year-old to boil hot dogs unsupervised does!

Jeannette Walls's writing style is smooth, straightforward and compelling. After being disappointed by Frank McCourt's memoir about his rotten childhood, I was a bit hesitant to read The Glass Castle. I couldn't imagine what misery she could have survived to fill 288 pages. Unlike Frank McCourt, Jeannette Walls does not come across as arrogant, in the can-you-beat-this-miserable-childhood way. She just tells her story and leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions. It's evident that she loves her parents. She works hard to portray the positive and negative aspects of their personalities.

The neglect Walls and her siblings suffer, chapter after chapter, is shocking. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it gets worse. Within the first 50 pages, a three-year-old Walls suffers severe burns after accidentally catching fire to her clothes while trying to cook a hot dog, and is accidentally thrown from a car while her family's doing the 'skedaddle' - sneaking out of town in the middle of the night.

Her mother, a self-proclaimed 'excitement addict' is selfish, immature and lazy. On several occasions she has an opportunity to make life better for her children but refuses. The children have to beg her to get a job, and when she does, they end up doing all of her work for her.Her mother brushes off all sorts of horrific incidents with her 'whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger' mantra.

Her father is a violent and manipulative alcoholic who thinks nothing of physically and emotionally abusing his wife in front of his children. On one occasion he dangles his wife out of a window while on another he tries to run her over with the car while she's in the late stages of pregnancy - and the kids are in the car with him!

I respect Ms. Walls for her ability to leave her emotions out of the story, although some critics have cited it as a flaw. By leaving her emotions out of the story, Ms. Walls allows the reader to draw their own conclusion about what she thought of her parents at the end of the story. She and her siblings suffered a lot but they also came away with some important life lessons that have allowed them to build  prosperous lives and to truly appreciate the most basic things in life.

5

You may also be interested in:
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

The Sisters Brothers

Patrick DeWitt's The Sisters Brothers made the Giller Prize Short List.

From the book cover
Hermann Kermitt Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living - and whom he does it for.
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Eli and Charlie Sisters are infamous professional killers. Charlie, the older brother, is the 'lead' killer. Violent from childhood, the first person he killed was his father. Eli, the narrator, is the younger brother who's always looked to his older brother for guidance. Eli doesn't thrive on violence and killing the way his brother does. In fact, he only got into the killing business in order to provide back-up for his brother.

I was not an efficient killer. I was not and had never been and would never be. Charlie had been able to make use of my temper was all; he had manipulated me, exploited my personality, just as a man prods a rooster before a cockfight. I thought, How many times have I pulled my pistol on a stranger and fired a bullet into his body, my heart a mad drum of outrage, for the lone reason that he was firing at Charlie, and my very soul demanded I protect my own flesh and blood? p. 216

Eli and Charlie's latest assignment has them travelling from Oregon to California to track down and kill an eccentric gold prospector, Hermann Kermit Warm. On their way they come across a cast of colourful characters. DeWitt subtly imparts a moral lesson on his readers. Eli and Charlie steal and murder their way to California with luck apparently on their side. The return trip after their task is complete, reaffirms that old saying 'easy come, easy go.'

The novel is structured in three parts with short chapters (usually two or three pages) breaking up the three sections. This is a great format for commuters, moms or anyone else who has a busy schedule that dictates lots of multi-tasking. This format was also helpful three quarters of the way through when the story started to drag.

At first I wasn't sure how I would fare reading about professional killers. All of the reviews (the book cover is littered with quotes from reputable publications praising Patrick DeWitt's brilliance) warn or at least hint at the level of goriness. Having read Jack Whyte's The Forest Laird, in which small children are buggered and pregnant woman are savagely abused, The Sisters Brothers is not overly gruesome, it's just indicative of the time in which it is set: 1854.

I really enjoyed this novel, although, I'm not sure it lives up to all of its hype. It is a Man Booker, Giller Prize, and Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalist. I can totally see it on the big screen like Pulp Fiction minus the gay scenes. The western background is a novelty, the gore is mild to medium, and the fact that the protagonist is an assassin are all things that make this novel stand out, but still something was missing for me.

4/5

The Free World

David Bezmozgis's The Free World was named to the 2011 Giller Prize Short List.

From the book cover:

Summer, 1978. In the bustling streets of Rome, strange new creatures have appeared: Soviet Jews who have escaped to freedom through a crack in the Iron Curtain. Among the thousands who have landed in Italy to secure visas for new lives in the West are the members of the Krasnansky family. Together, three generations of Russians Jews - some eager to embrace the opportunities emigration affords, others reluctant to leave the country to which they dedicated themselves body and soul - will immerse themselves in the carnival of emigration, with the promise and peril of a better life.
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Told through the eyes and memory of three members of the Krasnansky family (Samuil, Alec and Polina), The Free World is a captivating story about the immigrant experience. Samuil, the family patriarch, is a staunch communist who is reluctantly accompanying his family on their quest for freedom. Alec is Samuil's youngest son. At 26, he is naive - having been protected from the world by his father's status in the Soviet Union and his older brother's bad boy persona. Polina is Alec's wife and the only non-Jewish member of the Krasnansky family. This among other things makes her an outsider within the family.

The Story takes place over a span of about six month during the family's time in Rome, where they are waiting for visas so that they can start their new lives in Canada. For Samuil's part of the narrative, we learn about his experiences in the years leading up to the forming of the Soviet Union (including the murders of the father and grandfather by White Army soldiers), his time in the Red Army and his rise to prominence in the Communist Party. Alec and Polina's narrative is less political and more personal. We learn about their courtship and their experiences coming of age in the Soviet Union.

I love reading novels that open my eyes to events and experiences that are unfamiliar to me. The mark of a good book is one that sends me to Wikipedia to learn more.

My only issue with this book is that some of the scenes seem forced, as though they exist solely to demonstrate some of the Russian stereotypes that persist around gangsterism, black market trading and brutality. One such scene that comes to mind is one that leads up to the story's climax. Alec is roughed up by some guys that are affiliated with his brother but we never get a clear explanation of why it happens. Alec and his brother don't have issues and have served as each others confidantes in the past, so it doesn't add up when Alec doesn't go to his brother.

Otherwise, I really enjoyed this novel.

4/5

Up next: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt