Monthly Archives: January 2013

My Beloved World

By Sonia Sotomayor

(Knopf, $27.95, 336 pages)

Who is this author?

Sonia Sotomayor, who became the newest Supreme Court Associate Justice in August, 2009, has had a stellar legal career. Rising from poverty in the South Bronx with the determined support of her mother and grandmother, she went on to be her high school’s valedictorian and to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1976 and from Yale Law School in
1979. After stints as a New York assistant district attorney and at a law firm, she went on to become a judge of the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, and then served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit. She is the third woman and the first American of Hispanic heritage to serve on the Supreme Court.

What is this book about?

A bright kid with what must have seemed at the time like a dim future – a juvenile diabetic who learned to sterilize needles and inject her own insulin shots at age 7, a daughter whose father was an alcoholic who died when she was 9, a girl with an emotionally remote mother and a spirited grandmother, a TV fan who found role models in characters who played lawyers  – Sonia Sotomayor’s inherent intelligence and perseverance carried her forward to a brilliant career. In this memoir, we learn how she drew on her inner resources and common sense to build on what America has to offer to those who have the determination to
succeed. She writes candidly about her family, her brief, failed marriage, her dreams and her struggles, her mentors and her early experiences. This memoir ends when Sotomayor joins the lower court, which means that there is plenty of dramatic material left for subsequent memoirs.

Why you’ll like it:

Once derided for having too much “empathy” by her political opponents, Sotomayor demonstrates here that empathy is a great tool for a writer. Her memoir is straightforward, warm-hearted, revealing and honest: a very personal story of a woman who has overcome substantial odds and now has the ability and power to help shape the course of the nation. Reviewers are hailing the smoothness of her writing, and the 16 pages of photos add to the intimate nature of her book.

What others are saying:

Says Sara Nelson, writing for Amazon Best Books of the Month, January 2013: “Happily, it is becoming a familiar story: The young, smart, and very hardworking son or daughter of immigrants rises to the top of American professional life. But already knowing the arc of Sonia Sotomayor’s biography doesn’t adequately prepare you for the sound of her voice in this winning memoir that ends, interestingly, before the Yale Law School grad was sworn in as the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice. Hers is a voice that lands squarely between self-deprecating and proud, grateful and defiant; a voice lilted with bits of Puerto Rican poetry; a voice full of anger, sadness, ambition, and love. “My Beloved World” is one resonant, glorious tale of struggle and triumph.”

“U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor … recounts numerous obstacles and remarkable achievements in this personal and inspiring autobiography. Her path to the highest court in the land was rife with difficulties, but it wasn’t circuitous—from an early age, Sotomayor was determined to become a lawyer. To reach her goal she overcame diabetes, the language barrier (her Puerto Rican family spoke Spanish at home), the early death of her beloved alcoholic father, and—in the academic and professional worlds—the disparaging of minorities. … Sotomayor is clear-eyed about the factors and people that helped her succeed, and she is open about her personal failures, foremost among them an unsuccessful marriage. Regardless of political philosophies, readers across the board will be moved by this intimate look at the life of a justice,” says Publishers Weekly.

Kirkus Reviews says: “Graceful, authoritative memoir from the country’s first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. … The author’s text forms a cultural patchwork of memories and reflections as she mines the nuances of her parents’ tumultuous relationship, fondly recalls family visits in Puerto Rico and offers insight on a judicial career that’s just beginning when the memoir ends. Sotomayor writes that her decision (a shrewd one) to close her story early is based on both a political career she feels is “still taking shape” and a dignified reluctance to expand upon any recent high court “political drama,” regardless of the general public’s insatiable curiosity. Mature, life-affirmative musings from a venerable life shaped by tenacity and pride.”

“…Sotomayor’s big-hearted autobiography, “My Beloved World,” is nothing if not a powerful brief in defense of empathy, her
long-awaited closing argument in the trial of Mind v. Heart.

Readers looking to mine this book for clues about the justice’s legal philosophy will be disappointed… but anyone wondering how a
child raised in public housing, without speaking English, by an alcoholic father and a largely absent mother could become the first Latina on the Supreme Court will find the answer in these pages. It didn’t take just a village: It took a country. Sotomayor offers up a tale of a sprawling “family,” generous mentors and the many opportunities she has grabbed and paid forward….” says Dahlia Lithwick in The Washington Post.

“…”My Beloved World,” published simultaneously in English and Spanish, is classic Sotomayor: intelligent, gregarious and at times disarmingly personal. While the tone is mostly bright, Sotomayor doesn’t shy from discussing her chronic diabetes and occasional bouts of unconsciousness, the death from AIDS of her cousin, her regret at not having children, her divorce or her nicotine addiction (she was once a three-pack-a-day smoker). The book ends just as she is appointed to the bench; readers hoping for insight into her jurisprudence won’t find it here. What she offers instead is a portrait of an underprivileged but brilliant young woman who makes her way into the American elite and does her best to reform it from the inside,” says NPR.

When is it available?

Justice Sotomayor’s memoir is available at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Albany, Camp Field, Goodwin, Mark Twain and Park branches.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Sorry Please Thank You: Stories

By Charles Yu

(Pantheon, $24.95, 240 pages)

Who is this author?

He’s smart, he’s young, he lives in L.A.  Charles Yu ‘s novel, “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe,” made the 2010 best books of the year list compiled by Time magazine. He won the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award for his 2006 story collection “Third Class Superhero,” and he’s been published in such venues as The New York Times, Playboy and Slate.

What is this book about?

Yu skillfully mines the tricky territory where fiction, fantasy, humor and irony meet and mingle. He sees the world we live in, one that is so familiar that most of us hardly notice it, and from the mundane he conjures up twists that seem at once bizarre and eminently plausible.

For example, one of the short stories in “Sorry Please Thank You” supposes a company has figured out a way to outsource mourning, by having the grief-stricken pay others to feel bereft for them. Their slogan: “Don’t feel like having a bad day? Let someone else have it for you.” It wouldn’t at all surprise me if some emotions entrepreneur isn’t already putting the finishing touches on just such a business, for real. In another, an employee battles a zombie in a big-box store, and if you don’t think they exist, you haven’t cruised around a Wal-Mart lately.

Besides creating post-modern sci-fi content, Yu also uses various forms in which to couch his fantasies. Some of these stories read like computer chats or manuals or speeches or self-help books. He obviously enjoys mind games and playing with the reader, pulling back the curtain on the hiding-in-plain-sight dark side of today’s world and the near future.

Why you’ll like it:

Yu’s ideas and techniques are fresh and provocative. Warning: some of his stories may cause the reader to suffer bewilderment, unexpected introspection, sudden epiphanies, head-scratching and fits of the giggles. In this hard-to-pin-own collection, Yu has done well and you would do well to check him out.

What others are saying:

“What Charles Yu does very well—it is a long list, but this may be its most notable entry—is to create strange and disturbingly normal alternate realities. In his first novel, “How To Live Safely In a Science Fictional Universe”…[he] took sci-fi theories and ran them through a sort of literary normalizer, applying ample wit, pop-culture references, psychological insight, metaphorical flair, and a vital sweetness. . . . In his new collection of stories, “Sorry Please Thank You,” Yu no longer constrains himself to the pre-requisites of realism—or, to be more accurate, the appearance of realism. Freed from this yoke, he takes off in every narrative direction with the glee of a school-kid released for summer vacation. . . . While Yu has drawn many comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut for his entertaining and adept satire, and to Douglas Adams for his intelligent and inventive silliness, Donald Barthelme seems an overlooked literary forebear. . . .”  says the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Says the Boston Globe: “Yu’s workman-like sentences are unexpectedly emotive, while also being almost always very funny . . . Yu’s new baker’s dozen of satiric stories tell of a future that’s really just an exaggerated present . . . Like the best science fiction writers, Yu provides seemingly gratuitous logistical information to mitigate any hint of farce . . . Yu is a master of the slow reveal. It sometimes takes pages to understand where we are and why, but as the chatty protagonists joke and confess their deepest pains, details accrue and outlines fill in. And when we are finally oriented, the universe he has created feels eerily complete . . . Cultish fans of the NBC comedy “Community,’’ this book is for you.”

“Lovely and heartfelt . . . A brilliantly manic ride . . . Yu has an undeniable gift for describing, in clean, economical prose, the mechanics of things that don’t exist or are impossible,” says The Wall Street Journal.

“Impressive . . . Charts eclectic territory, from a zombie in a megamart to a new pharmaceutical drug that generates a sense of purpose, and explores retreats from reality and emotion . . . [An] amusing send up of American consumer culture,” says Publishers Weekly.

Kirkus Reviews says: “Using various narrative strategies (though all but one of these 13 stories is written in the first person), Yu explores provisional identities (including those of a character named Charles Yu) in multiple universes, typically employing a conversational style that makes for easy reading even when the themes are troubling or the formalistic elements challenging. … A collection of playful stories that often have a dark undercurrent. Far out, man.”

When is it available?

Please find this book on the new book shelves of the Hartford Public Library’s Ropkins or Mark Twain branches, thank you.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

The Orchardist

By Amanda Coplin

(HarperCollins, $26.99, 448 pages)

Who is this author?

You’ve likely not yet heard of Amanda Coplin, a young writer from Washington state with degrees from the University of Oregon and the University of Minnesota and residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Omi International Arts Center at in Ghent, NY. “The Orchardist” is Coplin’s debut novel and draws in part on her family history. Publishers Weekly named it one of the 10 best books of Fall 2012.

What is this book about?

Coplin lives in Portland, Ore., but “The Orchardist” is not tinged with the snarky hipster-teasing vibe of the TV show, “Portlandia.” Rather, it is set about 100 years ago in the Pacific Northwest, where quiet and gentle Talmadge devotes his life to growing apples and apricots.  His peaceful, reclusive world is upended when two pregnant, hungry teenage girls, runaways from a cruel brother owner and opium addict, steal some fruit and then steal Talmadge’s compassionate heart. He offers shelter, but this is no idyll: the brothel owner, who specializes in young girls, and his men track them down and the first of several tragedies ensues. Some characters survive, but more violence is on the way. Yet in between these sieges, we get a touching story of how a family comes to be, fashioned from love that struggles to wipe away terrible pain.

Why you’ll like it:

Coplin writes with lyrical eloquence, but is not sentimental in telling this story, which mixes hope and despair. Her characters are deeply touching and you want them to overcome their dire circumstances. While that is not to be in every case, she has created believable people who engage your sympathy, and her skillful rendering of time and place add additional power to this very moving novel.

What others are saying:

Says author Wally Lamb, “When you pick up “The Orchardist,” you will be lured at first by the lushness of the language. But soon enough the characters will take hold of you and you’ll read on hungrily, as if under a spell. It’s hard to believe that this is Amanda Coplin’s first novel.”

“… when two starving, heavily pregnant teenage girls, Jane and Della, turn up on his land in 1900, [Talmadge] feels protective toward them even before he learns their history. …“Why are we born?” wonders Della, a question that haunts all the characters. Coplin offers no answers, only the hard certainties of labor and of love that are seldom enough to ease a beloved’s pain. Yet the novel is so beautifully written, so alive to the magnificence of the land and the intricate mysteries of human nature, that it inspires awe rather than depression. Superb work from an abundantly gifted young writer,” says Kirkus Reviews.

The Seattle Times calls the book “… engaging and enthralling. The reader wants to turn each page quickly as the story develops, and wants at the same time to dwell on the lyrical moments of sunshine, soil and love. “

Entertainment Weekly says:  “There are echoes of John Steinbeck in this beautiful and haunting debut novel set in early-20th -century Washington State…Coplin depicts the frontier landscape and the plainspoken characters who inhabit it with dazzling clarity.”

When is it available?

You can pluck “The Orchardist” from the Downtown Hartford Public Library’s new book shelves.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Sweet Tooth

By Ian McEwan

(Knopf Doubleday, $26.95, 320 pages)

Who is this author?

British author Ian McEwan is one of the stars of the current literary firmament on both sides of the pond. Author of 14 novels, many of them best-sellers, he’s had his work successfully adapted for film (“Atonement’) and has won a boatload of prestigious prizes, among them a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Booker Prize, and a  Whitbread Award for his novels and a Somerset Maugham Award for a story collection. Once known as “Ian MacAbre” for his early deviant-sex-and gore-laden books, he has matured into a writer praised for his wit, sleek prose and intelligence. Kirkus Reviews, often parsimonious in its praise, calls MacEwan “Britain’s foremost living novelist.”

What is this book about?

Serena Frome (that’s pronounced to rhyme with room, not with Rome) looks back 40 years to her beautiful young womanhood, when she was cosseted by a college professor to undertake undercover “soft Cold War” work for Britain’s MI5 intelligence service. Not exactly a spy, she was instead tasked with befriending a young novelist who the agency wants to support, albeit surreptitiously, because his work is considered to be anti-Communist. Serena complicates her assignment by falling in love with her prey. But the book is not merely a tale of spying; it’s also about writing novels and the parallels that can be drawn between the necessary fictions of espionage and the fictions of, well, fiction.

Why you’ll like it:

Not just a book for those who like to read about spying, this tale is told with a great deal of sly wit and rueful reminiscence. The Observer likens it to a Russian nesting doll, with “stories within stories, ideas within ideas, even images within images” nesting one within another. While some reviewers found it sarcastically harsh toward women, others found it playful and a satisfyingly twisty read, loaded with “nonstop wisecracks” and campy humor.

What others are saying:

Says Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post: The Washington Post:  “Ian McEwan’s delicious new novel provides all the pleasures one has come to expect of him: pervasive intelligence, broad and deep knowledge, elegant prose, subtle wit and, by no means least, a singularly agreeable element of surprise. In Sweet Tooth, as elsewhere in McEwan’s fiction, things are not always what they seem to be, with the result that the reader is permitted to delight in the aforementioned pleasures while wondering all the while what, exactly, is going on.”

‘Drafted by MI5, [Serena’s} on the lowest rung when she’s asked to participate in a mission, codenamed Sweet Tooth, aimed at secretly funding writers whose views align with the government. Serena’s target is Tom Haley, with whom she foolishly falls in love. Then he writes the grimmest, darkest postapocalyptic novel imaginable. VERDICT The writing is creamy smooth, the ultimate trap-within-a-trap pure gold, and the whole absolutely engrossing, but poor Serena. She’s such a doof, and she’s a bit condensed too (by both characters and author), which leaves a bitter taste no matter how good the novel,” says Library Journal.

Kirkus Reviews says: “A subtly and sweetly subversive novel which seems more characteristic of its author as it becomes increasingly multilayered and labyrinthine in its masterful manipulation of the relationship(s) between fiction and truth…. Britain’s foremost living novelist has written a book–often as drily funny as it is thoughtful–that somehow both subverts and fulfills every expectation its protagonist has for fiction.”

“…McEwan has always been a good old-fashioned teller of tales, and the suspense and surprises in this book are well engineered…”Sweet Tooth” is extremely clever in both the British and American senses (smart as well as amusingly tricky) and his most cheerful book by far,” says Kurt Andersen in The New York Times Book Review.

When is it available?

“Sweet Tooth” has just arrived on the new book shelves at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Brothers: On His Brothers and Brothers in History 

By George Howe Colt

(Scribner, $30, 480 pages)

Who is this author?

George Howe Colt is the second oldest of four brothers, and his authorial specialty is writing compelling nonfiction. His best-selling “November of the Soul: The Enigma of Suicide” was widely praised, and “The Big House,” a personal account of his family and the house his great-grandfather built in 1903 on Cape Cod, was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times Notable Book. Colt was a staff writer at Life magazine and his journalism has appeared in such venues as The New York Times, Civilization and Mother Jones. He and his family live in Western Massachusetts.

What is this book about?

Brotherly love – and brotherly envy and brotherly competition – is the subject of George Howe Colt’s latest book. Seeking to understand the dynamics of his own family, he mixes personal memoir and the history of famous and disparate sets of brothers, from the actor and the assassin in the Booth family to the artistic and empathetic Van Goghs to the anarchic and inimitable Marx Brothers, as well as the Kellogg family of cereal fame and Henry David Thoreau and his deceased older brother, who influenced HDT’s  life and writing. Colt alternates between his personal experience and those of the famous brothers he has researched. In this book, he is indeed his brothers’ keeper, and that is all to the good.

Why you’ll like it:

Colt is an evocative writer, and although he is making a serious analysis of how brothers interact, he doesn’t take an academic approach. Instead he does it with verve and vivid examples. Here is a sampling of the easy flow and entertaining quality of his style:

“If the handful of black-and-white snapshots that remain from my childhood is any indication, it’s a wonder I didn’t end up with a permanent crick in my neck from literally and figuratively looking up to my older brother. Harry was born twenty months before me, and I worshiped him with an intensity that must have been both flattering and bewildering to the worshipee. I didn’t want to be like Harry; I wanted to be Harry. I cocked my coonskin cap exactly the way he did when we played Daniel Boone; I made the same pshew-pshew sounds he did when I pulled the trigger on my silver plastic six-shooter; I punched the pocket of my baseball glove every time he punched his. When he woke me in the middle of the night one Christmas Eve and invited me downstairs to open presents while our parents slept, I followed. When he said he could help me get rid of my loose tooth, I let him tie it to the playroom doorknob and slam the door. He was my older brother and I would have agreed to anything he proposed; I would have followed him anywhere. And so, one spring evening not long before I turned six, as we lay in our matching twin beds, when Harry suggested that we run away from home, I said yes.”

What others are saying:

Publishers Weekly says: “The brotherly counterpoint between fierce rivalry and stalwart affection is teased out in this absorbing meditation on family dynamics. [Colt] presents vivid accounts of famous fraternal sagas, including the tragic path of Edwin and John Wilkes Booth, the mutual martyrdoms of the tormented Vincent Van Gogh and his tenderly supportive brother Theo, and the endless, anarchic scrimmage among the Marx Brothers. Colt is a superb biographical sketch artist who incorporates a wealth of vibrant, entertaining detail and subtle analysis into these illuminating portraits; as his subjects squabble over parental attention, dinner-table scraps, women, and status, their relationships are a maelstrom of tyrannizing, thwarting, nagging, and suing mixed with admiring, teaching, sustaining, and protecting. Alternate chapters recount the author’s quiet but intense memories of growing up… —his depiction of postwar suburban kid culture is piquant and evocative—torn between hero worship, jealousy, resentful infighting, and a sense of loss as the brothers go their separate ways. No one writes better than Colt about families and the strange alchemy that binds them, and the way siblings make each other what they are even as they become distinct, even estranged, personalities.”

“Anyone who’s had the pleasure of reading Colt’s previous, National Book Award-nominated work, “The Big House” (2003), will know his delicate, detailed, ironically self-mocking way with prose, and his lucid, affectionate fair-mindedness…Though some of these cases may seem at first overly familiar, Colt has done a prodigious job of research and synthesis, and his skill at storytelling is such that each of them is transformed into something fresh, dramatic and emotionally piercing,” says Phillip Lopate in The New York Times Book Review.

“A captivating blend of historical anecdote, personal revelation, and psychological insight, this lively and imaginative book will serve up a great deal of wisdom (and just as much fun) to anyone who has ever been a brother or had a brother. In fact, maybe all you have to do to derive pleasure and nourishment from Colt’s book is simply to have once met a brother—it’s that appealing,” says author Daniel Okrent.

When is it available?

“Brothers” is on the new books shelf at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Flight Behavior

By Barbara Kingsolver

(Harper, $28.99, 448 pages)

Who is this author?

Barbara Kingsolver has written many novels, among them one of my all-time favorites, “The Poisonwood Bible,” a vividly, wrenchingly told story of a fundamentalist family transplanted to Africa. Born in Maryland, raised in Kentucky, educated in Indiana and Arizona, she has always been interested in science and how it affects our lives. She is a writer of bestselling novels, such as “Pigs in Heaven, “The Poisonwood Bible” and “Prodigal Summer” as well as  poetry collections (“Another America”), short story collections (“Homeland”), and essay collections (“Small Wonders”) and nonfiction, such as “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.” And you may be interested to learn that Kingsolver, who won a piano scholarship to DePauw University, has also played with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock and roll band whose members have included such writers as Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Dave Barry, and Stephen King.

What is this book about?

A young wife in Tennessee, forced away from college and into an early and unsatisfying marriage by a pregnancy in her teens, one day makes a startling, life-changing discovery in her small Appalachian town: millions of Monarch butterflies like a glowing orange lake fill a hollow in the mountains near her home, on land her in-laws hope to sell to a logging company. Her evangelical friends and family call it a miracle, but Dellarobia Turnbow (a wonderful name!) soon learns this gorgeous visitation signals an ugly truth: climate change is forcing the butterflies out of their normal Mexican home to Tennessee, where winter weather will doom them. When an intriguing scientist arrives in Feathertown to study the insects, Dellarobia finds work with his team, and soon the uclimate is not the only thing that is changing in her circumscribed life.

Why you’ll like it:

Kinsolving’s books carry messages, often about environmental issues, but do so in a palatable and fascinating way. She’s not preaching here, but she’s very clear about the imminent ecological changes we now face. Kingsolver also has potent descriptive powers – you can easily picture and won’t soon forget that glowing lake of butterflies – and she is equally good at drawing character portraits. The people she invents may exist to help this author make important points about current scientific issues, but they are not cardboard cutouts – they ring true, and they make you care about their lives (and perhaps draw parallels to your own.)

What others are saying:

Library Journal says: “Dellarobia Turnbow is in a perpetual state of fight or flight. Married at 17 to kind, dull Cub, she finds even the satisfaction of motherhood small consolation for the stultifying existence on her in-laws’ struggling Tennessee sheep farm. When a fluke of nature upends the monotony of her life, Dellarobia morphs into the church’s poster child for a miracle, an Internet phenomenon, and a woman on the verge of unexpected opportunity as scientists, reporters, and ecotourists converge on the Turnbow property. …Kingsolver …performs literary magic, generously illuminating both sides of the culture wars, from the global-warming debate to public education in America. It’s a joy to watch Dellarobia and her precocious son, Preston, blossom under the tutelage of entomologist Ovid Byron. VERDICT …Kingsolver draws upon her prodigious knowledge of the natural world to enlighten readers about the intricacies of the migration patterns of monarch butterflies while linking their behavior to the even more fascinating conduct of the human species. Highly recommended.”

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2012, says: “Readers who bristle at politics made personal may be turned off by the strength of Kingsolver’s convictions, but she never reduces her characters to mouthpieces, giving equal weight to climate science and human need, to forces both biological and biblical. Her concept of family encompasses all living beings, however ephemeral, and “Flight Behavior” gracefully, urgently contributes to the dialogue of survival on this swiftly tilting planet.”

“Kingsolver has written one of the more thoughtful novels about the scientific, financial and psychological intricacies of climate change. And her ability to put these silent, breathtakingly beautiful butterflies at the center of this calamitous and noisy debate is nothing short of brilliant. “Flight Behavior” isn’t trying to reform recalcitrant consumers or make good liberals feel even more pious about carpooling—so often the purview of environmental fiction—it’s just trying to illuminate the mysterious interplay of the natural world and our own conflicted hearts,”  says Ron Charles The Washington Post.

Says Publishers Weekly: “Spunky Dellarobia is immensely appealing; the caustic view she holds of her husband, in-laws, and neighbors, the self-deprecating repartee she has with her best friend Dovey, and her views about the tedium of motherhood combined with a loving but clear-eyed appraisal of her own children invest the narrative with authenticity and sparkling humor. Kingsolver also animates and never judges the uneducated, superstitious, religiously devout residents of Feathertown. As Dellarobia flees into a belated coming-of-age, which becomes the ironic outcome of the Monarchs’ flight path to possible catastrophe in the collapse of a continental ecosystem, the dramatic saga becomes a clarion call about climate change, too lucid and vivid for even skeptics to ignore.”

When is it available?

“Flight Behavior” is in the new books stacks at the Ropkins and Goodwin branches of the Hartford Public Library and can be requested for pickup at other branches.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Bring Up the Bodies

By Hilary Mantel

(Henry Holt & Co., $28, 432 pages)

Who is this author?

Hilary Mantel is the brilliant British author who this year won her second Man Booker Prize (the premier British literary award) for “Bring Up the Bodies,” the sequel to her American National Book Award and 2009 Man Booker winner, “Wolf Hall.” Her immersion in the Tudor period of English history is unparalleled, as is her understanding of human strength and frailty. This novel made the The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2012 list, was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Best Books of 2012 and one of The Washington Post’s 10 Best Books of 2012. Mantel also has published 10 previous novels, including, “A Place of Greater Safety,” and the memoir, “Giving Up the Ghost. “

What is this book about?

We all know the story of the young and lovely Anne Boleyn, one of King Henry VIII’s many hapless wives. But until you read this second volume of Mantel’s trilogy (there is one more book to come), you won’t understand all of the intricate inner workings of the intrigue that eventually led poor Anne to the axman. When the restless King tires of his pretty bride, who has not born him a much-desired son, Henry turns to his fixer-hitman-Machiavellian advisor, Thomas Cromwell, the Karl Rove or David Axelrod of his time, depending on your political perspective. Through Cromwell’s machinations, Henry gets his wish and the readers of this high quality historical novel get a crash course in Tudor treachery that is far more compelling than any earnest but dry nonfiction account.

Why you’ll like it:

History books don’t have all that much to say about the quietly powerful Thomas Cromwell, who knew how to get Henry VIII out of jams of his own making without making himself vulnerable. (At least, in this book, not yet.)  Cromwell did plenty of awful and unlawful things in the service of his headstrong and demanding king. Mantel does some marvelous things in making Cromwell a sympathetic character, and her ability to vividly describe the times and circumstances in which the novel is set is another powerful reason to immerse yourself in this book.

What others are saying:

Library Journal says: “In her sequel to the Booker Man Prize-winning Wolf Hall, Mantel has done what only the most gifted novelist can: she has fleshed out an enigma—the historical cipher that was Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s fixer—and made us accept her interpretation of him as valid. Cromwell helped Henry annul his marriage to his wife of 20 years, Catherine, so he could marry the younger Anne Boleyn. But three years later, Anne has committed two fatal errors: she hasn’t given the king a son, and she has become outspoken. Henry’s eyes are on a younger, more placid woman, Jane Seymour. He wants to be rid of Anne, and it is up to Cromwell to see that Henry gets what he wants. VERDICT:  Mantel’s crowning achievement makes Cromwell not just powerful but sympathetic. Mantel is a consummate setter of scenes: stunning, poetic descriptions are embedded in scenes of savagery and earthiness. The historical novel does not come any better than this. It will be as much of a success as its predecessor.

Kirkus Reviews

“…Seeing through Cromwell’s eyes, a point of view she has thoroughly assimilated, Mantel approaches the major events slantwise, as Cromwell, charged with the practical details of managing Henry’s political and religious agendas, might have. We rejoin the characters as the king’s thousand-day marriage to Anne Boleyn is well along. Princess Elizabeth is a toddler, the exiled Queen Katherine is dying, and Henry’s disinherited daughter Princess Mary is under house arrest. As Master Secretary, Cromwell, while managing his own growing fortune, is always on call to put out fires at the court of the mercurial Henry (who even for a king is the ultimate Bad Boss)…” says Kirkus Reviews.

The New York Times says: “Bring Up the Bodies” is beautifully constructed…it proves delightful to watch and anticipate how Ms. Mantel steers [all the characters] into and out of Cromwell’s view, follows his canny assessments of how to play them off against one another and lays out the affronts for which they will later pay dearly…The wonder of Ms. Mantel’s retelling is that she makes these events fresh and terrifying all over again.

The New York Times Book Review says: “…Mantel’s real triumph is her narrative language. It’s not the musty Olde English of so much historical fiction, but neither is it quite contemporary…In some of her books, Mantel is pretty scabrous in her descriptions of present-day England, its tawdriness and cheesiness and weakness for cliché and prettifying euphemism. “Bring Up the Bodies”…isn’t nostalgic, exactly, but it’s astringent and purifying, stripping away the cobwebs and varnish of history, the antique formulations and brocaded sentimentality of costume-drama novels, so that the English past comes to seem like something vivid, strange and brand new.”

Says The Washington Post: “…darkly magnificent…The pleasures of “Bring Up the Bodies” — and they are abundant, albeit severe — reside in Mantel’s artistic mastery. …Sardonic humor, particularly in scenes with not-nearly-as-dumb-as-she-seems Jane Seymour, leavens the ominous mood. Gruffly compassionate toward villains and victims alike, Mantel reveals their weaknesses and cruelties bundled up in a flawed humanity we share.”

“Mantel knows what to select, how to make her scenes vivid, how to kindle her characters. She seems almost incapable of abstraction or fraudulence; she instinctively grabs for the reachably real…In short, this novelist has the maddeningly unteachable gift of being interesting,” says The New Yorker.

“After pulling off this literary feat twice, you realize the smartest person in the room isn’t Cromwell after all —I t’s Mantel,” says The Huffington Post.

When is it available?

You can find it at the Downtown Hartford Public Library or its Goodwin branch.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk: A Novel

By Ben Fountain

(Ecco, $25.99, 320 pages)

Who is this author?

Ben Fountain, who lives in Dallas, is a multi-award-winning author and journalist. How multi, exactly? Very. He has won a PEN/Hemingway Award, Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, Whiting Writers Award, O.Henry Prize, two Pushcart Prizes and two Texas Institute of Letters Short Story Awards, among others. His fiction has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, and his nonfiction in The New York Times and The New York Times Sunday Magazine and other publications.

What is this book about?

War.  Sports.  America’s ongoing love affair with both. A pumped-up patriotism that’s more about bluster than true love of country. Taking place on a Thanksgiving Day, the story brings the eight Bravo Squad survivors of a less than four-minute firefight in Iraq on a media Victory Tour to Texas, to be in the halftime show at a Cowboys game with Destiny’s Child and Beyonce. At the center is Billy Lynn: a 19-year-old Texan, a virgin and a sudden hero. He meets the team’s owner and his fat-cat friends, a born-again but sexy Dallas cheerleader, a Hollywood mogul and giant-size footballers who fight their war on the gridiron. Billy learns a lot that day, about courage, love, America, himself and  his unhappy family, along with hard truths about war and the men and women it changes forever.

Why you’ll like it:

“Billy Lynn” is a finalist for the National Book Award, and reviewers everywhere are comparing it to the surreally farcical yet powerful treatment of war in such classics as “Catch-22” and “Slaughterhouse Five.” The book is earning plaudits for its satirical power, its razor-sharp evisceration of the pompous and phony, its often hilarious dialogue and the strong appeal of the main character, an innocent in a world of wolves who demonstrates a different kind of bravery in the course of one crazy-making day than he did in his moment of glory in Iraq. War is hell, and it’s brutally absurd, too, as Fountain brilliantly shows us.

What others are saying:

The New York Times calls it “[An] inspired, blistering war novel…Though it covers only a few hours, the book is a gripping, eloquent provocation. Class, privilege, power, politics, sex, commerce and the life-or-death dynamics of battle all figure in Billy Lynn’s surreal game day experience.”

Harper’s Magazine says:  “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a big one. This is the brush-clearing Bush book we’ve been waiting for.”

 “A masterful echo of ‘Catch-22,’ with war in Iraq at the center. …a gut-punch of a debut novel…There’s hardly a false note, or even a slightly off-pitch one, in Fountain’s sympathetic, damning and structurally ambitious novel,” says The Washington Post.

Says Sports Illustrated: “Seething, brutally funny…[Fountain] leaves readers with a fully realized band of brothers…Fountain’s readers will never look at an NFL Sunday, or at America, in quite the same way.”

“…witty and ironic sendup of middle America, Fox News politics, and, of all things, football. One minute, the soldiers are drinking Jack and Cokes, mobbed by hordes of well-wishers demanding autographs and seeking “the truth” about what’s “really going on” over there; the next, they’re in the bowels of Texas Stadium, reluctantly hobnobbing with the Dallas Cowboys and their cheerleaders, brokering a movie deal with a smarmy Hollywood producer, and getting into a drunken scuffle with the stadium’s disgruntled road crew, all in a series of uncomfortable scenes that border on the farcical. Texan Billy Lynn is the 19-year-old hero who learns about life and himself on his visit home to his family, and the palpable camaraderie between soldiers ground the book. …” says Publishers Weekly.

Kirkus Reviews says:  “Hailed as heroes on a stateside tour before returning to Iraq, Bravo Squad discovers just what it has been fighting for. Though the shell-shocked humor will likely conjure comparisons with Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five, the debut novel by Fountain … focuses even more on the cross-promotional media monster that America has become than it does on the absurdities of war. …Providing the novel with its moral compass is protagonist Billy Lynn, a 19-year-old virgin from small-town Texas who has been inflated into some kind of cross between John Wayne and Audie Murphy for his role in a rescue mission documented by an embedded Fox News camera. In two days, the Pentagon-sponsored “Victory Tour” will end and Bravo will return to the business as usual of war. In the meantime, they are dealing with a producer trying to negotiate a film deal (“Think Rocky meets Platoon,” though Hilary Swank is rumored to be attached), glad-handing with the corporate elite of Cowboy fandom (and ownership) and suffering collateral damage during a halftime spectacle with Beyoncé. Over the course of this long, alcohol-fueled day, Billy finds himself torn, as he falls in love (and lust) with a devout Christian cheerleader and listens to his sister try to persuade him that he has done his duty and should refuse to go back. As “Americans fight the war daily in their strenuous inner lives,” Billy and his foxhole brethren discover treachery and betrayal beyond anything they’ve experienced on the battlefield….”

When is it available?

It’s on the new book shelf at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

The Sandcastle Girls: A Novel

By Chris Bohjalian

( Doubleday, $25.95, 320 pages)

Who is this author?

With 15 books to his credit, many of them best-sellers, Chris Bohjalian is one of America’s most popular authors. Once a New York City ad man, he moved to Vermont with his wife and raised a now-college age daughter there. In addition to his literary fiction, which ranges from historical novels to contemporary stories, he writes a weekly  column called “Idyll Banter” for the Burlington Free Press.  Bohjalian’s bestsellers include “The Double Bind”, “The Night Strangers” and “Skeletons at the Feast,” along with my favorite, “Before You Know Kindness.” “Midwives” was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah’s Book Club.

What is this book about?

Bohjalian’s father’s family is Armenian, and in conversations we’ve had while I was interviewing him, he told me that someday he would write a novel about the genocide inflicted on his people in 1915 and 1916. “Sandcastle Girls” is that book, and it is inspired by the experiences of his grandparents, who survived the wholesale killing.

The story is told from the perspectives of Elizabeth, a young Mount Holyoke graduate who finds herself in the Middle East during that horror, attempting to save some women who are being herded into death camps and becoming involved with a young Armenian man who has lost his wife and child. Then the narration switches to her granddaughter Laura in contemporary times, who is searching to find out more about  Elizabeth and a terrible secret she may have hidden.

As this personal history plays out, Bohjalian tells the story of a horrific slaughter than nearly wiped out a whole people, sparing few details. The book carries a stark warning: genocide can happen if its perpetrators carry it out in a remote place far from the general world’s notice.

Why you’ll like it:

Bohjalian is a natural storyteller, and here he has compelling material and a personal mission to inspire him. He is especially adept at telling stories from a female point of view – not something all male authors can do – and he also has an instinctive understanding of the emotional issues that women find fascinating to read about. As he did in his World War II novel about Germans fleeing the Russian army, “Skeletons at the Feast,” he uses important and carefully researched historical fact to underlie and over-arch the personal story. This book will likely gain even more attention as the 100th anniversary of the atrocities arrives in 2015.

What others are saying:

“In his latest novel, master storyteller Chris Bohjalian explores the ways in which our ancestral past informs our contemporary lives—in ways we understand and ways that remain mysteriously out of reach. “The Sandcastle Girls” is deft, layered, eye-opening, and riveting. I was deeply moved,” says author Wally Lamb.

“Bohjalian’s powerful novel . . . depicts the Armenian genocide and one contemporary novelist’s quest to uncover her heritage. . . . His storytelling makes this a beautiful, frightening, and unforgettable read,” says Publishers Weekly.

Library Journal says: “Repeatedly (and embarrassingly accurately) referred to here as “The Slaughter You Know Next to Nothing About,” the Armenian genocide of 1915-16 takes center stage in Bohjalian’s intergenerational novel. Elizabeth Endicott, a recent Mount Holyoke graduate, accompanies her Bostonian banker father on his philanthropic mission to Aleppo, Syria, to aid Armenian refugees fleeing atrocities committed by the Ottoman government. Her friendship with Armenian engineer Armen, who has lost his wife and baby daughter, flourishes when they are apart and can only communicate in letters. Years later, Laura Petrosian, seeking out a photograph of a woman rumored to be her Armenian grandmother, uncovers these letters among a wealth of documents—a treasure trove for an Armenian American novelist searching for pieces of her family history. VERDICT Bohjalian powerfully narrates an intricately nuanced romance with a complicated historical event at the forefront. With the centennial of the Armenian genocide fast approaching, this is not to be missed. Simply astounding.”

“Inspired by his grandparents’ background, [Bohjalian] explores the suffering and atrocities of that time with astounding precision, compassion and grace…Bohjalian deftly weaves the many threads of this story back and forth from past to present, from abuse to humanity, from devastation to redemption. His ability to add irony and wit makes the contrasting horrors even more intense. And his unblinking descriptions of atrocities are staggering…Rather than repelling the reader, Bohjalian’s account makes the gruesome truth utterly riveting,” says Eugenia Zukerman in The Washington Post.

The Associated Press says: “”It takes a talented novelist to combine fully ripened characters, an engrossing storyline, exquisite prose and set it against a horrific historical backdrop—in this case, the Armenian Genocide—and completely enchant readers. The prolific and captivating Chris Bohjalian has done it all—again—with “The Sandcastle Girls” . . . Seamless . . . A fascinating journey through time and history.”

When is it available?

This book is now on the shelves of the Goodwin and Mark Twain branches of the Hartford Public Library.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!

Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

By Anne Lamott

(Riverhead, $17.95, 112 pages)

Who is this author?

Anne Lamott is known for her bestselling nonfiction about motherhood and spirituality and for her fiction. She lives in Northern California, is a recovering alcoholic and raised her son (now grown and a father himself) as a single mother struggling to get it right. Her nonfiction includes the New York Times bestsellers “Some Assembly Required,” “Grace (Eventually),” “Plan B,” “Traveling Mercies” and “Operating Instructions,” and her fiction includes “Imperfect Birds,” “Rosie” and “Crooked Little Heart.” Writers trying to free a novel trapped in their imagination and those suffering any kind of block  were charmed and uplifted by her 1995 book of advice and encouragement, “Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.”

What is this book about?

There are three basic and essential prayers, says Lamott, that all of us express, even the non-observant or atheistic, when we find ourselves in need or overflowing with emotion. They boil down to “help,” “thanks” and “wow,” and they emerge, often spontaneously, when we are overwhelmed or are filled with gratitude or with wonder.

These are not the formal prayers heard in churches or synagogues, which she calls “beautifully pre-assembled prayers. . .  the good china of prayers.” They spring from the heart and feel like conversations. Lamott explains how such prayers have helped her and others and why she believes they will help you, too.

Why you’ll like it:

Lamott is wise, and she is funny. She embraces Christianity without the showy preachiness of some pastors, particularly the TV variety, or the sappiness of some inspirational writers. Here is some of what she told NPR  about prayer:

“…I’ve heard people say that God is the gift of desperation, and there’s a lot to be said for having really reached a bottom where you’ve run out of any more good ideas, or plans for everybody else’s behavior; or how to save and fix and rescue; or just get out of a huge mess, possibly of your own creation.

“And when you’re done, you may take a long, quavering breath and say, ‘Help.’ People say ‘help’ without actually believing anything hears that. But it is the great prayer, and it is the hardest prayer, because you have to admit defeat — you have to surrender, which is the hardest thing any of us do, ever….

“I think, if there’s a God — and I believe there is — that God is there to help. That’s what God’s job is.”

“Thanks is the prayer of relief that help was on the way. … The full prayer, and its entirety, is: Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you. But for reasons of brevity, I just refer to it as Thanks.

Wow is the praise prayer. The prayer where we’re finally speechless — which in my case is saying something. … When I don’t know what else to do I go outside, and I see the sky and the trees and a bird flies by, and my mouth drops open again with wonder at the just sheer beauty of creation. … Wow is the prayer of wonder.”

What others are saying:

“Filled with Lamott’s unique brand of humor, wisdom and profound spiritual insight… She has a gift for putting into words what it means to accept and ultimately embrace the beauty, mystery, and pain that is life,” says the San Antonio Express-News.

‘An imaginative do-it-yourself approach to spirituality…With a stand-up comic’s snap and pop, candid and righteous Lamott tells hilarious and wrenching tales about various predicaments that have sparked her prayers and inspired her to encourage others to pray anytime, anywhere, and any way,” says Booklist.

Says Publishers Weekly: “Her newest [is] small and very focused on God, who is clearly brought forward from his (or her) usual background presence in Lamott’s writings. Equal parts 12 Step meeting in the church basement and walks on the beach, it’s a prayer manual for people who wouldn’t be caught dead reading prayer manuals. As such it may surprise, a bit, some of Lamott’s most secular readers. But it takes a very familiar voice in a newish direction, and may attract younger readers whose religious preference is more offbeat than orthodox.”

Kirkus Reviews says: “ A refreshingly simple approach to spiritual practice in a pint-sized reflection on prayer. …Lamott … has taken an enormously complex and often debated topic and boiled it down to three basic elements that transcend doctrine or creed. Though in her previous books the author has been forthright about her Christianity, here she begins with a prelude that assures readers she’s not even remotely interested in trying to tell them who or what God is; she’s simply asking them to consider that there’s a Divine Being willing to run the show. How is one to get that process going? Prayer. More specifically, Lamott touts the spiritual power in powerlessness, gratitude and wonder. The three sections of the book aren’t solely about each one-word prayer; they’re more a running conversation about their collective influence in her life. …In what at first may seem like a jumbled mashup of stories and reflections, Lamott manages to deftly convey the idea that in trying to control things, we’ve largely lost our ability to see the good and the miraculous in everyday life. And those commodities go a long way, she writes, in terms of making a Divine connection that brings a measure of hope and peace. Though fans may be dismayed at the brevity of the book, there’s more here than meets the eye.”

When is it available?

You can find it at the Camp Field, Mark Twain or Park branches of the Hartford Public Library.

Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!