Friday Finds: 26 June 2009

Only two new finds this week. And one of them actually has been around a while even though it's just now showing up on my radar.

Not sure where I first read about Chris Ransom's debut novel, The Birthing House; but it sounds like a great psychological thriller – as one reviewer put it, "a ghost story with class." It'll be published in August. And I think it's very possible that I've heard of Syrie James's The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen before this week, but it's only now registering with me. I discovered it while checking out the Everything Austen Challenge over at Stephanie's Written Word. Haven't decided yet if I'm going to take up the challenge, but James's book sounds like it's worth a look.

Friday Finds is a weekly event hosted by mizb17 at Should Be Reading. Participants are asked to share with other bloggers about the new-to-you books found during the week – books you either want to add to your TBR (to be read) list, or that you just heard about that sounded interesting.

So, what great new books did you find this week?

Review: To Dance with the White Dog

Written by Terry Kay
Simon & Schuster / Pocket Books, 1990; 242 pages

At the beginning of Terry Kay's To Dance with the White Dog, 80-year-old Sam Peek has just lost his wife Cora after fifty-seven years of marriage. Soon after her death, a pure white dog appears at Sam's place and stays with him. The couple's seven grown children are worried about their father – at first, no one but Sam sees the dog. And even after White Dog makes herself visible to the rest of his family, Sam's conviction that she's safeguarding him makes them uneasy. Sam even claims that White Dog dances with him; and she does, but not while any of the kids are around.

The two daughters who live nearby, Kate and Carrie, are especially worried. Before they actually see White Dog, they're convinced Sam's obsession is a sign of mental decline. There's a wonderfully funny episode in which they dress up in commando-type black garb, complete with fireplace ashes to blacken their faces, and stake out Sam's house in the early morning hours, trying to get a glimpse of his canine guardian. Of course, Sam discovers them – with some help from their husbands – and begins to think the "girls" might be having mental breakdowns of their own. Well, I guess guys gotta stick together. As Kate's husband Noah tells her:

"Good Lord, Kate, don't you know your daddy better'n that? The two of you are aggravating him to death. All he's doing is paying you back. He's putting you on. You know he likes to do that. . . . The trouble with the two of you is you don't know how a man feels when he can't do something anymore."

White Dog always seems to be around when Sam needs help or company. She even accompanies him on a journey back to Madison Agricultural and Mechanical School for a class reunion. It was there in 1915 that Sam met his future bride, Cora, who was a young nursing student at the time. While Sam and White Dog are traveling, Sam becomes confused and loses his way – the first real sign that his children's fears might be justified. But it turns out all right. Sam is rescued by a passing Samaritan, and eventually meets and spends a few hours with an old friend from the past.

The reunion turns out to be Sam's last lengthy excursion. As the months pass, he stays close to home – developing an interest in genealogy and writing everyday in his journal (". . . brief, daily footnotes of brief, daily occurrences"). And White Dog stays with him right up to the end. Just before he dies, Sam tells his youngest son, James, that he believed White Dog was Cora who had come back to watch over him. Of course, we readers have believed that all along, as well.

To Dance with the White Dog won Terry Kay the Southeastern Library Association Outstanding Author of the Year Award in 1991. Kay has said that the novel had its start as a work of nonfiction in honor of his own parents' long marriage; even the visit by the white dog is supposed to be based in fact. It's a very moving story – even an inspirational one. But it's also packed with humor and wonderful, memorable characters. The relationships among Sam Peek and his children feel very authentic. And Kay has a fine ear – all the dialogue sounds absolutely real. It's a great read – sad, funny, heartwarming but not saccharine. And although it forces readers to confront the subjects of grief, old age, and death, it's really a celebration of life, love and family ties.

Booking Through Thursday: Hot!

This week's BTT question is a tough one:

. . . what is the most “Summery” book you can think of? The one that captures the essence of summer for you? (I’m not asking for you to list your ideal “beach reading,” you understand, but the book that you can read at any time of year but that evokes “summer.”)

At first I thought it would be difficult for me to come up with one book that "evokes summer" – that is, a book with a summery feel to it. Actually, the first thing that came to mind was Barbara Pym. Since I'm a confirmed Pym fanatic, and I first discovered her work during a summer trip to England back in the early '80s, her books usually do make me think of summer.

Then there are all those books I first read during summer vacations when I was a child. I was introduced to Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer and Nancy Drew during the summer. And I spent one whole summer enthralled by everything Arthurian after reading T.H. White's The Once and Future King. But then, I think I read Lord of the Flies during a summer vacation, too; and that certainly doesn't seem very summery. Well, I suppose you could see it as the ultimate example of the summer camp experience gone horribly awry.

But if I'm going to choose just one book that always represents summer in my mind, it would probably be Alice in Wonderland. Not that I read it during the summer, but because of the story of its creation. It was supposedly on July 4, 1862, that Lewis Carroll invented the tale for Alice Liddell while taking her and her sisters rowing. Also, the book is prefaced by a poem that begins "All in the golden afternoon / Full leisurely we glide" and it ends with Alice and her sister sitting in the grass, thinking about the "happy summer days." See? Perfect summer book. In fact, it might be time for a quick re-read this summer.

Spring Reading Thing: The Wrap-Up

So summer is officially here now – been with us for several days already. It's also been a few days since the Spring Reading Thing ended on June 20th. This was a very easy, enjoyable "challenge," and I managed to read almost twice as many books as I thought I would during that time – although only one of them was on my original list of possible titles. I'm still working on getting all the reviews posted, and hope to get that done by the end of the week.

It would be hard to choose a favorite among all the books I read – they were a very mixed lot, and I enjoyed most of them very much. Several were books I'd had on my want-to-read list for many years, and some (like Ellen Foster and To Dance with the White Dog) were new discoveries by authors I hope to encounter again in the future. There were even a few disappointments in the bunch, but no real stinkers. I suppose the biggest surprise was The Longshot, the debut novel by Katie Kitamura, certainly a new name to watch.

Here's the list of books I read, with links to reviews:

Angels & Demons. Dan Brown
The Private Patient. P.D. James
The Way Through the Woods. Colin Dexter
The Book of God and Physics. Enrique Joven
Brimstone. Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
The Old Man and Me. Elaine Dundy
The Optimist's Daughter. Eudora Welty
Ellen Foster. Kaye Gibbons
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Robert C. O'Brien
To Dance with the White Dog. Terry Kay
The Unit. Ninni Holmqvist
Moon Tiger. Penelope Lively
The Longshot. Katie Kitamura
The Valley of Fear. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I want to say thanks to Katrina at Callapidder Days for hosting, and to all the other participants for all the great reviews and recommendations. I've added quite a few new titles to my TBR list, which is now almost long enough to be divided up into a multi-volume set.

Review: The Longshot

Written by Katie Kitamura
Simon & Schuster, 2009; 191 pages

From the publisher's synopsis:

Cal and his long-standing friend and trainer Riley are on their way to Mexico for a make-or-break rematch with the legendary Rivera, who has never been beaten. Four years ago, Cal became the only fighter to ever take Rivera the distance, even though it nearly ended him. Only Riley, who has been at his side for the last ten years, knows how much that fight changed everything for Cal. And only Riley really knows what's now at stake, for both of them.

In support of total disclosure, I want to say right up front – I got this book free from the publishers, Simon & Schuster UK (A CBS Company). What with all the new blogger-control rules and regs being kicked around, I wouldn't want to piss anybody off (oops, sorry – I mean make anybody upset with me). Don't want the FTC, or any other watchdog group I might not yet know about, coming after me.

However, when I say I loved this book, the fact that I didn't pay for it has nothing to do with it. I would have loved it even if I'd bought it with my own hard-earned cash. And nobody asked me to say that.

At first glance, I would not have said this was a book for me. It's true that I was something of a boxing aficionado as a child (well, I was a weird little girl, OK?) – used to watch the fights every week with my father. And I did go see Stallone's Rocky I about two dozen times when it first came out (still think that's a perfect little jewel of a film). But I've never cared much for the mixed martial arts variety of fighting. All that kicking and jumping and pounding heads on the ground is just a little too much mayhem, a little too far from A.J. Liebling's "sweet science" for my taste. But Katie Kitamura's masterful debut novel is almost enough to make me a fan. Almost.

The book is written in a stripped down and deceptively simple style. Short sentences. No frills or pointless verbiage. The story is tightly focused. Cal and Riley travel to Tijuana for the fight. They stay in a cheap motel. They eat in a nearby cafe. They train for the fight. Riley takes a brief trip back to California for a press conference at Rivera's gym. Cal climbs into the ring for the big event. You learn very little about their past lives or families or time away from the job – and yet by book's end, you can't help feeling you know all about these men. Cal and Riley are each on a journey of self-discovery that we take right along with them. Kitamura is adept at using description for explanation, and allowing her readers to feel the emotion of her characters, rather than telling us about it. It's such a bravura performance that the comparison to Hemingway is, I suspect, inevitable.

You don't actually have to be a boxing or MMA fan or know anything about either sport to like this book – although a rudimentary interest would make it more enjoyable. The relationship between the two men, their exchanges, and the time we spend inside their heads is really what this work is all about. The action is exciting, immediate, and raw, but not as interesting as the story of Cal and Riley. Their journey back into the ring for the biggest fight of Cal's career is moving, psychologically jarring, and a really exciting ride.

Tuesday Thingers: Confused and Frustrated? (Who? Me?)

This week, Wendi has the following questions for the Tuesday Thingers group:

What areas of Library Thing do you find confusing or frustrating? The team at LT seem to be continually updating things at the site. Is there anything in particular that you would like to see updated or changed?

Well, in general, I'm pretty satisfied with the way LT works. But yes, as Wendi says, it would be nice to have a way to search by user name, and as far as I know, it doesn't exist at the moment. Not really sure how much I'd use it, though. I admit I'm not very good at searching out friends at LT. But I've never been able to get the email tool to work for me, either.

I think the thing I find most frustrating is just the general slowness of the site, and I'm not sure there's much to be done about that. Just too much traffic, I guess. LibraryThing has turned into a very popular site, and rightly so. And I guess delays are to be expected.

One thing I'd like to see at LT is more book descriptions and capsule synopses, such as you find at Good Reads. Some books do have descriptions in the Common Knowledge section, but not all. Of course, I guess if I want to see more descriptions, I should stop my griping, get myself in gear, and add some of my own, right?

Tuesday Thingers is hosted by Wendi of Wendi's Book Corner. If you'd like to see more or participate yourself, head on over to her blog and leave a comment.

Review: Angels & Demons

Written by Dan Brown
Simon & Schuster / Pocket Books, 2000; 570 pages

From the publisher's synopsis:

World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization – the Illuminati. Desperate to save the Vatican from a powerful time bomb, Langdon joins forces in Rome with the beautiful and mysterious scientist Vittoria Vetra. Together they embark on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and the most secretive vault on earth . . . the long-forgotten Illuminati lair.

When I read The Da Vinci Code several years ago, I liked it much more than I expected I would. It wasn't a great work of art, of course – Dan Brown's style is not the most elegant I've encountered. But it was a whopping good tale that moved fast and had interesting characters and lots of twists and turns and surprises. And that's pretty much all I ask of a thriller. The history and theology and science might not have passed muster with historians and theologians and scientists, but I knew going in that the book was fiction (that means "not real," folks) and it might play a little fast and loose with facts and accepted theories. I didn't mind that – I just enjoyed the ride.

So I expected at least a bit of a let-down when I picked up Brown's earlier work Angels & Demons. I mean, art historian Robert Langdon (the protagonist in both books) had already tracked down and preserved the bloodline of Jesus Christ. What could be more exciting than that? Well, how about saving the Vatican and possibly the rest of humanity from evil secret-society terrorists with anti-matter? (Sorry, I guess that might be a bit of a spoiler.) It would be hard to find a caper more thrilling than that, now wouldn't it? And then there's that jumping-out-of-a-helicopter-without-a-parachute trick, too. Take that, Douglas Preston!

Seriously, folks – I enjoyed this one just as much as the first Robert Langdon escapade. (OK, technically, this was the first one, I know.) It's set mostly in Rome, one of my favorite cities (even though I've never been there), all that anti-matter nonsense gives it a science fiction-y feel (one of my favorite genres), and it's all about Renaissance art, one of my favorite periods (even though I'm not actually quite that old). There's more than one mystery to be solved, just as there was in Da Vinci; but this time I didn't figure everything out quite so fast. And it's written in a play-by-play, minute-to-minute style that leaves you breathless after every short chapter – wondering just what astounding, implausible and life-threatening thrills Langdon will be involved in on the next page.

Would I recommend it? Well, sure. Why not? It's a fun read, if you don't take it too seriously. And if you don't mind more than a little gore and mayhem. I don't usually enjoy books with a lot of violence, but it didn't bother me here – maybe because the whole thing was so improbable, it didn't seem real enough to be upsetting (but you've been warned). The thing that really made my blood run cold was all that trashing of the Vatican library!