Yowser... another reading challenge

I thought and thought about it, and finally thought: Yes, I'll commit to reading 3 time travel books this year. Why the heck not?!

I'm planning to read 3 of these books this year:

Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper

A time travel romance by Lynn Kurland

House on the Strand by Daphne Du Maurier

A Time to Remember by Stanley Shapiro

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Thanks to Alyce of At Home with Books for creating this great challenge!

This page will be my home base for this reading challenge.

Time Travel Books I've Read

Dreams of Stardust by Lynn Kurland

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Once upon a Rose by Judith O'Brien

Mystery? Romance? Mystery?

East of Peculiar by Suzann Ledbetter

Stop the presses!

I’ve read a fiction book!

Right here in the middle of this fiction drought of mine. (Or shall we look on the bright side and call it a nonfiction feast/frenzy/mania/addiction?)

And I liked it, liked it, liked it. So much that I didn’t want to get out of my comfy chair except to refill my coffee mug. (Though, truly, this ain't all that unusual.)

Lots of mystery series seem to start out with the thing where the main character (often a woman) is starting over after some big life change—divorce, being widowed, retirement, etc. Here, Hannah decides her high-stress Chicago advertising job is for the birds and takes a job managing a retirement community in the Ozarks.

And there’s a handsome sheriff in that county, so there’s sure to be a murder that will bring them together.

And yes, indeed: a murder occurs! (Don’t worry – we either never really know or never really like the victim in these cozy mysteries. You won’t even miss her.)

The neat-o thing about this mystery is that it’s very much a romance, too. And this is a good thing. Also, the characters are believably quirky, and that’s always a bonus, I think.

And now, as I write this, I’m impatiently waiting for the second book in the series to arrive to fill the hold I placed when I hit the last page of this book and was bummed it was over. It was a good kind of bummed.

Booking Through Thursday: Twisty

At Booking Through Thursday, this week's question is:

Jackie says, “I love books with complicated plots and unexpected endings. What is your favourite book with a fantastic twist at the end?”

So, today’s question is in two parts.

1. Do YOU like books with complicated plots and unexpected endings?

2. What book with a surprise ending is your favorite? Or your least favorite?

I am definitely a fan of books with unexpected endings. Of course, they're hard to screen for, because if someone tells you, "Oh, you'll never guess what happens at the end!" then you know something shocking will take place, which ruins the whole darn thing.

So these books are surprises when you stumble upon them, and I'm pretty much OK with that.

Complicated plots are fine with me, as long as the author doesn't doll it all up just to be fancy. That's just plain tiresome. Some mystery authors really need to calm themselves on this count.

I have a secret hunch that many of the word-of-mouth blockbuster books have twists at the end. Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper and Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants come to mind. Will have to watch to see if I'm just making that up or if there's actually something to it. (For example, does The Help have a surprise ending? I'm avoiding reading it because everyone else on earth is reading it, and that makes me cantankerously dodge a book.)

Anyway, here's my least favorite book with a surprise ending:

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

(I nearly threw that book down in disgust when I read the last two pages. Have mercy.)

And here's my favorite such book:

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

(though I'll confess to being ambivalent about the ending... but it's kept me thinking about the whole book and its ending for years now)

Late November, back in '63*

The Kennedy Assassination—24 Hours After: Lyndon B. Johnson’s Pivotal First Day as President by Steven M. Gillon

Hasn’t everything already been said about November 22, 1963?

Except, um, that we still don’t exactly know who done what.

Oswald: lone assassin?

Shooter(s) on the grassy knoll?

I keep thinking there’s going to be a deathbed confession that will reveal something new. Then I sigh and figure we’re probably just Never Going to Know.

At any rate, the books about the Kennedy assassination keep rolling off the presses, and I think this one actually does something new. Thank goodness.

Steven M. Gillon’s book covers the same day as William Manchester's marvelous The Death of a President, but from the incoming president’s view and with the perspective of 45 years.

Here’s the weird thing: This book is gripping, despite the fact that the reader knows what is going to happen. The change of perspective is much of the reason, I believe. It was almost a sleight-of-hand move—all the nation was fixated on the Kennedy family, while a new president was getting his bearings, nearly invisible in plain view. This book shows us what was going on behind the scenes for the brand-new Johnson administration.

It’s no secret that LBJ despised being vice president. (Can you blame him?) This book shows the dramatic transformation of a man who, by several accounts, was quite sullen during the hours before circumstances thrust the presidency upon him—and whose political instincts were then put to a great test, as he attempted to fill the role of president while remaining sensitive to a grieving family and nation.

It’s almost a micro-history, given that it focuses on one 24-hour period. Amazing how much took place within that one day.

This book is an ideal companion to Manchester’s The Death of a President.

In Manchester’s book, the Kennedy crew is presented glowingly, while LBJ appears to be an insensitive, power-hungry brute.

In the Gillon book, LBJ comes across as a man whose finely-tuned political instincts give him the ability to walk the fine line between strong leader and mourner-in-chief. He’s not presented as a saint; the warts are on full display. But there’s an appreciation for the grace with which he handled the transfer of power.

Many in the Kennedy group, on the other hand, here appear to have taken out their grief and rage on Johnson. A particularly scathing passage about Kennedy’s staffers: “Their profound grief was understandable. Their sense of entitlement was not” (p. 160). Ouch.

I’m guessing that if a person were to read both Manchester’s The Death of a President and Gillson’s The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours After, she would get a pretty decent sense of how things played out during that first day. The two books balance each other. And it’s fascinating, as a reader, to see the differences in the nuances.

Presidential history geeks, rejoice.

* OK, so yes, I fiddled with the lyrics there. I know it's supposed to be "December."

Booking Through Thursday: Favorite Unknown

From Booking Through Thursday, here's this week's question:

Who’s your favorite author that other people are NOT reading? The one you want to evangelize for, the one you would run popularity campaigns for? The author that, so far as you’re concerned, everyone should be reading–but that nobody seems to have heard of. You know, not JK Rowling, not Jane Austen, not Hemingway–everybody’s heard of them. The author that you think should be that famous and can’t understand why they’re not…

One name comes to mind immediately, and it's: Craig Johnson.

Best darn mystery author to surface in the past decade.

I've raved about him in my reviews of both The Cold Dish (the first in his terrific series) and The Dark Horse, which is his latest.

He just can't go wrong.

Hey, guess what? Astronauts!

First on the Moon: A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. by Gene Farmer and Dora Jane Hamblin

I found this book while browsing the shelves at the library. (Man, I don’t do enough of that!)

And here’s what the book jacket flap* says: “Life senior editor Gene Farmer and Life staff writer Dora Jane Hamblin have spent many months with—indeed, living with—the astronauts and their families.” I had an ecstatic little moment in which I savored this word: voyeurism.

Photo credit: NASA

Oh, yes. I’m not ashamed to confess it. (Admit it—when you’re a passenger in a car after dark, you oh-so-casually glance in people’s windows, too. Right? Right?!)

Then, about 10% of the way through the book, I was liking it so darn much, I wondered: Am I just a lazybutt, to be liking journalists’ writing so much? (You hear those scary things about newspapers being written at a 4^th grade level. You know?)

Then I decided, To heck with it. I don’t give a crap. I just like this book, and I’m going to keep liking it, and so there.

(Plus, it vindicated itself; I had to look up the meaning of the word “tocsin.”)

So here’s the thing:

If you read only one book about the space program, probably it should be The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. But—if you read only one book about the Apollo program, this one here is the one I recommend.

Here’s why:

First, it gives a terrific behind-the-scenes perspective, including interviews with the astronauts and their wives. It feels very up-close and personal. (As up-close as you could get to those close-lipped fellows, anyway.)

Another good thing about this book is that it’s informal in tone, yet it provides a great overview of Apollo 11. It’s one of those books that you enjoy so much, you don’t realize you’re learning stuff. Photo credit: NASA

* Yes, I read the flap, in spite of protesting yesterday that I Do Not Do That. But this was one of my bizarro browsing instances, when all rules fly out the window. Truly.

Booking Through Thursday: Flapper? Or Not a Flapper?

Over at Booking Through Thursday, here's this week's question:

Do you read the inside flaps that describe a book before or while reading it?

I used to love reading the inside flaps of hardcovers and the back covers of paperbacks.

Then I became a librarian. A public librarian.

And now I read reviews.

I find that I tend to avoid reading the flaps, because sometimes enough time has passed between having read the review and actually reading the book, that I have forgotten why I requested the book in the first place--and this is thrilling--like a surprise. (Sometimes I continue to wonder why I requested the book; these are the great unfinished ones that get hauled back in after 5 pages or so of failing to draw me in.)

These days, it's only in my rare browsing moments that I actually read the flaps -- and even then, I kind of squint at them so I don't find out too much.

Also, since I write about books here and at work, I want to remain untainted by the descriptions of others. I like to discover the story on my own, and I like to describe it on my own.

The Woodrow Wilson biography

Woodrow Wilson: A Biography by August Heckscher

I visited the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C., without having researched Wilson first.

Disclaimer: The visit was something of a surprise/accident; otherwise this type of heinous oversight would not occur in the life of the Type A presidential history dork. I darn near avoided visiting, since I hadn’t researched in advance. I am sometimes a moron in this way.

So I asked the docent there to recommend a Wilson biography, and she said this book is the book on Wilson.

So here’s the thing: By halfway through (it's 675 pages, this book), I thought I’d learned that I’m just not that into Wilson. (Did this make me horrid? Why did this make me feel horrid?)

This is a perfectly good biography. In fact, it’s acclaimed.

It just wasn’t tripping my trigger. Until we got to the war years and beyond—and then, I was in. And the last 150 pages went way too fast.

A person just can’t help saying, “What if…?” over and over again, when reading about the peace conference following WWI. And that’s when Wilson began to seem truly sympathetic—and tragic. And then his life just got worse and worse and worse. Being a sucker for such tragedy, well, it grabbed me.

Here’s but one thing to love about Wilson: He was a terrific orator. The book includes some brief excerpts from impromptu speeches he delivered, and the man could really put together a sentence.

So, here’s to our only U.S. president who earned a doctorate (Johns Hopkins, government and history). He’s also the only president buried in Washington, D.C. And his first name wasn’t even Woodrow, it was Thomas! (President Thomas W. Wilson. It just doesn’t sing, does it?)

OK. Done now with the geek-out attack.

The 19^th book I've read for the U.S. President Reading Project challenge.

Blogoversary, Baby!

I read somewhere that the average blog exists for about 2 years. Then the blogger gets weary of it or something, and the blog just withers away.

Well.

We're at the 2-year mark here, and I'm feeling hale and hearty and like blogging the night away.

Happy Blogoversary, blog!

(Still trying not to think the unpleasant word "Blagojavich," but now that I've said it, I'm guessing you won't be able to shake this thought every time you see the word "blogoversary." Am I right?)

2010 Pub Challenge!

1 More Chapter is running the 2010 Pub Challenge, and I'm signing up!

Here are the guidelines:

1. Read a minimum of 10 books first published in 2010. You don't have to buy these. Library books, unabridged audiobooks, or ARCs are all acceptable. To qualify as being first published in 2010, it must be the first time that the book is published in your own country. For example, if a book was published in Australia, England, or Canada in 2009, and then published in the USA in 2010, it counts (if you live in the USA). Newly published trade paperbacks and mass market paperbacks do not count if there has been a hardcover/trade published before 2010.

2. No children's/YA titles allowed, since we're at the 'pub.'

3. At least 5 titles must be fiction.

4. Crossovers with other challenges are allowed.

5. You can add your titles as you go, and they may be changed at any time.

6. Sign up at the Pub Challenge site using Mr. Linky.

7. Have fun reading your 2010 books!


I'm looking forward to it!

This page will be my home base for this reading challenge.

Books I've Read

1. Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House by Stacy Parker Aab (nonfiction)

2. Slow Fire by Ken Mercer (fiction)

3. Model Home by Eric Puchner (fiction)

4. A Night Too Dark by Dana Stabenow (fiction)

5. Franklin Pierce by Michael F. Holt (nonfiction)

6. Junkyard Dogs by Craig Johnson (fiction)

7. War by Sebastian Junger (nonfiction)

8. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (fiction)

9. Drink the Tea by Thomas Kaufman (fiction)

10. The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar (nonfiction)

Yeehaw! Have completed the Pub Challenge in mid-July! Yet I read on...

Booking Through Thursday: 2009 in Review

Over at Booking Through Thursday, this week's question is:

It’s the last day of the year, and you know what that means … nostalgia and looking back.

What were your favorite books of the year? (Books that were new to you in 2009, if not necessarily published this year.)

I adore lists. I especially adore best-of-the-year lists, so this time of year makes me just bliss out.

Here's my own personal best-of-the-year book list.

Fiction:

This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

The Hot Kid by Elmore Leonard

The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson

Nonfiction:

Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys by Michael Collins

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffery Toobin

Down Around Midnight: A Memoir of Crash and Survival by Robert Sabbag

Columbine by Dave Cullen

In 2009, I had a much easier time falling in love with nonfiction. I'm hoping fiction returns to me in 2010!

President of my youth

When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan by Peggy Noonan

Maybe I’ll just stick with books written by presidential speechwriters. These people can write.

For years, I’ve solely thought of Peggy Noonan as the speechwriter who gave Reagan the words (“slipped the surly bonds of Earth” and “touched the face of God”) from the lovely poem, “High Flight,” that he quoted after the Challenger disaster.

And I confess that I didn’t know much else about her. Now I see that she also wrote a memoir called What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era, which someday I may read, because I really like the way she writes.

And indeed, the writing is lovely. So are the memories and the stories she shares. This thing is strong on nostalgia and uplift. However, I think several of the stories probably are quite sugar-coated. And, nevertheless, I have to confess that I enjoyed reading this book.

While I’m confessing stuff, I’ll add this to the list: I’m a total sucker for books that paint people as heroes. Sometimes even when I know that they completely are no such thing. It’s a weakness, and I’ve put it right out there.

So—Noonan thinks of Reagan as a hero. I can’t say that I do. But doggone it, I liked reading about him as though he were.

And to read about the jokes he made after he was shot, and while he was recovering... oh, I get a little bit weak, I do.

The 18^th book I’ve read for the U.S. Presidents Reading Project challenge. (And I just know this was more fun than the Millard Fillmore biography will be.)