It might seem hard to imagine that a book about The Los Angeles Public Library would be fascinating, but it truly is.  Susan Orlean begins her book describing the fire in the library on April 29, 1986, and she then moves back and forth taking her reader to the beginning of the city’s first public library to what the library has evolved into.  Interspersed within these chapters are scenes of the aftermath of the fire, and the story of the man who might have started the catastrophic blaze.

Of course, The Library Book is not for everyone,  However, if you are a book lover, have ever worked in a library and/or believe that free access to books and other forms of information is important, The Library Book is a must read.

 

 

Cyril Conroy, through wise real estate investments, is able to purchase the home of his dreams.  However, his wife, who thought she wanted to be a nun until Cyril pulled her out of the convent, despises everything about the Dutch house.  Her son, Danny, is a baby and her daughter, Maeve, has just started school when she leaves the Dutch house forever.  Danny, the narrator of the novel, describes what happens to the family after her departure.

The Dutch House is a good story.  The characters are realistic except for the evil step mother and even the family home has a singular personality.  I think Ann Patchett has written another best seller, although I felt the ending was a bit abrupt.

It is 1941 in Berlin, and Hanni, a widow, desperately wants her only child, Lea, to flee the city and the Nazi’s.  Her last hope is to have the rabbi’s daughter produce a golem, a statue made of clay that magically comes to life.  The golem will protect Lea and get her safely to Paris where, hopefully, Hanni’s cousins will take them in.  The cousins, mathematician Andre Levi, his wife and two sons allow Lea and the golem to stay temporarily.  The World That We Knew follows these characters and several others as they travel and hide throughout France for the next three years.

If you are not a fan of Alice Hoffman, especially when her novels have a strong sense of magic, The World That We Knew is going to be a disappointment.  On the other hand, if you’re willing to suspend belief and learn about golems and the angel of death, you will find The World That We Knew full of delightful characters woven into a tense plot.

In the newest of Malcolm Gladwell’s observations of modern day behavior, he explores why we so often misinterpret people we don’t know.  His basic premise he names defaulted truth which, in essence, means that we form conclusions about strangers based on our own perceptions and experiences.  The master of examples, Gladwell uses individuals such as, Sylvia Plath, Adolph Hitler, Bernie Madoff and Jerry Sandusky to illustrate his theories.  His book begins and ends with Sandra Bland, the woman who was imprisoned in Texas for failing to use her turn signal and three days later committed suicide in her jail cell.  In each of these cases and several more, Gladwell demonstrates how their outcomes would have been different if we talked and interpreted strangers in another way.

Talking to Strangers is typical Malcolm Gladwell – part history, part sociology and part psychology.  His examples are clear-cut, well-explained and easy to understand.

Daphne and Laurel Wolfe are identical twins with bright red hair.  They are as close as any two people can be.  They are best friends, they have a secret language that only they understand and are intrigued and passionate about the English language.  Cathleen Schine describes Laurel and Daphne’s lives from childhood to middle age.  Along the way, she introduces us to their husbands, children, parents and other relatives and employers.  Most of them are as interesting, bright and quirky as the twins.

If you love taking apart words and thinking about the complexities of our language, The Grammarians will charm you.  Schine writes a good story, and it’s easy to read with engaging characters.

Parveen Shamsa is an anthropology major at California Berkeley.  Her parents fled Afghanistan and settled in Northern California before she was born.  After reading a book titled Mother Afghanistan,  an American man’s memoir about building a clinic in a remote village in that country,  Parveen decides to interrupt her studies and travel to that village.  She hopes to study the lives of the women in that area.  What she expects and what she experiences are vastly different.

Waldman’s first novel, The Submission, told a so so story but hit on several controversial issues.  A Door in the Earth is the same in that respect.  The characters are rather flat, the plot, at times, is a bit didactic, but the novel brings up many issues worth discussing.

In her fourth memoir about her family’s life in Africa, Fuller begins with a death and ends with another.  Ironically her father, Tim Fuller, the first of her family’s deaths, passed away in a Budapest hospital, although he spent almost his entire adult life in parts of Africa.  Through recollections of her parents lives, we learn that her father is a hard worker and a hard drinker with a ton of pithy rules to live by.  Her mother is a tough adventuress who loves animals more than humans.

I love Alexandra Fuller’s writing; it is sharp and clear.  In the final chapters of Travel Light, Move Fast her description of her grief after losing family members, threw me into her world of bottomless sorrow.  For me, her family was interesting, but her prose was sensational.

The setting, for the most part, is Arizona in 1893.  Nora is the wife of Emmett who runs a newspaper that is going bust.  She also lives with two grown sons, her husband’s niece, and a young son who has suffered a head injury that has affected his vision and possibly his thinking process.  Nora’s husband and older sons have not returned home for several days, and her water supply is gone and there is very little to eat.  Lurie is on the lam for killing a young man.  He becomes part of a group of men riding The Arizona Territory on camels.  Inland alternates between Nora and Lurie’s life that year:  each dangerous and brutal.

Inland is not an easy read, but I felt it was worthwhile.  Sometimes it takes a few chapters to realize what is actually happening.  For instance, it took me at least 75 pages to realize that Lurie is narrating his tale to his camel named Burke.  For those who need to be drawn into a novel immediately,  don’t read Inland. For others who can wait it out and enjoy the language and originality of Obreht’s second novel, give it a try.

Lincoln, Teddy and Mickey became friends in the early 70’s when they attended college and had a meal job at the Theta House.  While working at the sorority, they all met and fell in love with Jacy.  After graduation, with the Viet Nam war making for an uncertain future, the four plan a last weekend of fun on Martha’s Vineyard.  On their final morning together, Jacy has disappeared and Mickey has taken off to Canada.  Forty years later, the three men meet again at the same home on the Vineyard.  Lincoln and Teddy spend much of the weekend trying to figure out what happened to Jacy and why Mickey went to Canada.

If you usually enjoy Richard Russo, you will not be disappointed in Chances Are . . .Lincoln, Teddy and Mickey are likeable characters, and just like them, the reader wants to discover what happened to Jacy.

I was so fond of Henry, Himself that I wanted to read O’Nan’s other two books about the Maxwell family.  Wish You Were Here describes the family’s visit to their house in Chautauqua the year after Henry’s death.  Emily, Henry’s wife, wants to sell the home which has been a summer haven for the Maxwell’s for three generations.  We see the same characters and learn what has happened to them several years after Henry, Himself.  Emily, Alone occurs about eight years after Wish You Were Here.  O’Nan presents us with the same family members, but Emily is the focal point of the plot..

I thoroughly enjoyed all three novels. Although I missed Henry in these last two books(he is a lovable, genuine, realistic character), it was a joy to read more about this family and discover how each member was getting on.