Blue Bottle Mystery: An Asperger Adventure

The Blue Bottle Mystery is a children's/young adult chapter book in which the primary character is Ben, a 4th or 5th grade boy who becomes diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome during the course of the story. The mystery of the blue bottle was a cute story device and the descriptions of Ben's behavior and thoughts were consistent with what I understand about kids on the autism spectrum. However, Ben has a longtime best friend in the book, Andy, who is amazingly tolerant, which is not consistent with students I have known on the spectrum. Kids with autism have a very difficult time maintaining long term friendships with peers. I also didn't care for the fact that Ben is diagnosed with Asperger's by his family physician instead of a team of experts. Although this is not an uncommon practice, it is not the best practice. The author, Kathy Hoopmann, is a teacher in Australia and has written other books about kids on the spectrum and those diagnosed with ADHD. The parent of one of my students with autism recommended this book to me. She used it to help introduce her son to the disorder. I may recommend The Blue Bottle Mystery to other parents for such a use.

The Spellman Files

Everyone should read this book! It's funny, original, offbeat, and fantastic. The Spellmans are a family of private investigators (including Rae, a 14 year old girl) and their story is told by Izzy, the 28 year old daughter. Through this first book-there is a fourth currently in progress-we learn how the Spellmans' p.i. firm began and how the family navigates their personal lives around it. The author, Lisa Lutz, paints the most hilarious depiction of a not-so-perfect family living in an old Victorian house in San Francisco. The lifestyle and worldview of the Spellmans are tainted by their occupation as well as their interactions with each other. I laughed out loud everytime one of them smashed the headlight of one of their family member's car because it's easier to follow someone, or know they're following you. I can't wait to find out what's next in Curse of the Spellman's.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

As I have posted previously, I really liked The Kite Runner, Khalad Hosseini's first novel, and I was eagerly anticipating reading A Thousand Splendid Suns. I was not disappointed. Hosseini takes us back to Kabul, Afghanistan again from the time before the Soviet invasion through the Taliban take over. Unlike in The Kite Runner, the main characters were not able to escape the country and so we live through these tumultuous decades with them. Mariam and Laila are very different women approximately 15 years apart in age, but they end up married to the same man. As Hosseini tells both of their stories he is also telling the story of many Afghan women who lived through the Soviet-run period (women are equal to men) and the Taliban-run time (women will not show their faces). Although written simply, Marian and Laila became vivid to my imagination and I found that I cared very much about what would happen to them. It was difficult to read about the sorrows of the Afghan people, but an important education in a culture I am not too familiar with.

The Sharing Knife-Beguilement

As I've mentioned before, I am not a particular fan of the fantasy genre. I have made another exception with one of my favorite authors: Lois McMasters Bujold. She is the author of the wonderful "Miles" series (sf) as I call it, so I decided to give Beguilement a chance based also on the recommendation of my friend, Cathy. Beguilement is the first volume in a series called The Sharing Knife. We meet Fawn and Dag, the two main characters who meet very unexpectedly and end up falling in love. I'm not giving anything away, it's on the back of the book cover. Fawn is the youngest child of a family of farmers and has run away to start a new life in a town. Dag is a Lakewalker patroller who is separated from his group and rescues Fawn. Lakewalkers are people who practice magic and fight secret evil forces to protect all others. The magic and fantasy part of the book are not overwhelming and, therefore, not a put off to someone like myself. Fawn and Dag are incredibly likable and I found myself in a state of wishing I could know them. This book is well written (goes without saying with Ms. Bujold!) and the characters are relatable even if in a world that is unlike our own. I have already ordered the second volume from my book club.

The Handmaid's Tale

I had high hopes for this book. I really did. I kept reading and waiting and yet....I just kept feeling like I was rereading 1984. Same basic structure: a major country has been overthrown by a controlling, murderous, and mysterious group. All who could not escape live in a world without freedom or privacy. The main character is Offred, who narrates the story of her life as a handmaid. At some point, most of the world has become sterile and so procreating is controlled by the government. Handmaids are young, hopefully fertile, women who are owned by higher ranking officers to become pregnant, give birth, and then be tossed aside so the wives can raise the babies as their own. The story is creepy, but the plot felt unoriginal, and the pacing was for snails. I know I'm unpopular with this opinion and Margaret Atwood is a highly respected author, but I don't feel like I can recommend it to anyone who has limited reading time when there are so many other great books to read.

The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones was my first read from Alice Sebold and I was not disappointed. A copy sat on my bookshelf for about a year when I saw a preview for a movie based on the book. Of course, it was time to read it if I was ever going to get to it. (Because, as any reader knows, the book is always better than the movie.) The Lovely Bones is told from the perspective of Susie Salmon after she has been raped and killed by a neighbor. I think I was sold on the book when she names her assailant within the first chapter. I was expecting the identity of her killer to be revealed throughout the book in some sort of predictable manner. Susie was killed in 1973 when she was 14 and she narrates the next decade of her family's life as she observes from "her heaven" but is not able to interact with them. Ms. Sebold writes from Susie's perspective with a genuine voice for a young teenager gaining clarity on what has happened to her. Although sad at times (obviously) the story is also funny and thought provoking.

Entombed

Although mystery/detective novels are not usually my genre of choice I really enjoyed the story, setting, pacing, and characters in this book. It is the seventh in a series of mysteries with Alexandra Cooper as the heroin. She is a prosecutor for special victims crimes in New York City. Entombed intertwines an old case for her, the Silk Stocking Rapist, and a new case involving the uncovering of the remains of a young woman behind the wall of a building that Edgar Allen Poe once lived. I really liked Linda Fairstein's use of Poe's poems and stories as a device to propel the plot forward and educate the reader simultaneously.

Beginner's Greek

Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl's phone number. Boy and girl meet approximately 10 years later. Will they ever get together? Well, we all know the answer to that. Although somewhat formulaic, the path to getting together was interesting as it wove the couple's story with their acquaintances, family, and friends. Although I felt out of my league with the higher-end living of New York City as a setting, I still enjoyed the descriptions of furniture, artwork, and buildings. Peter and Holly (boy and girl) are both very likeable main characters, which really kept up my incentive for reading. Beginner's Greek is a good read if one is in the mood for "chick-lit".

The Help

I think only a native to Mississippi could write such an engrossing tale of the ties and tensions between white women and the black maids who work for them in 1962. Kathryn Stockett wrote the first person narratives (there are three of them) with confidence and honesty. The three narrators are Skeeter, a young white woman fresh from college and looking for her place in life, Aibileen, an older black maid who is mourning her only son's death, and Minny, a younger black maid with a husband and kids to help support even though her smart alec remarks keep her from being able to hold onto a job for too long. The three of them begin a project which is dangerous for all of their lives: they write down the stories of maids in the homes they work in with hopes that it will become published. The Help is very personal, but also has historical threads running through it that keep it grounded. I highly recommend this book.

The Senator's Wife

Narrated alternately between Meri and Delia, this novel is primarily set in 1994 when the women become neighbors in homes with a shared wall in New England. Meri has recently "married up" after having grown up in a depressing home with almost no nurturing. She is not very concious of her search for a mother figure. Delia is an older woman who has been living alone, separated from her retired senator husband. They become friends, but there's a distance between them as they both face their struggles to find contentment in their circumstances. I enjoyed this novel at first, but it became laborious in the middle. The main points had been made and I was ready to move along. I recommend this book for someone in the mood for "chick-lit with some meat to it".

The Gargoyle

Andrew Davidson's first novel, The Gargoyle is a story told by an unnamed narrator. He begins his story with his terrible car accident which ends with him being badly burned over most of his body. He makes it clear that his physical features and physical (sexual) prowess were the focus of his life prior to the accident. When everyone in his life has abandoned him, save the medical staff, he is visited by Marianne Engel. She begins to tell him her life story and eventually his. She believes that they met and fell in love in a German monastary when she was a nun and he was a mercenary brought in after being burnt in a battle. Dante's Inferno is a continual plot device, which is expressed as irony by the narrator several times. The story is excellent, well woven and organized, although sometimes it was obviously Mr. Davidson's first book. The writing doesn't feel as natural and flowing as authors with more experience. That said, I recommend it even though one may not normally enjoy the genre of fantasy. This includes me. I was actually a couple chapters into the book before seeing the tiny pegasus on the binding which indicates "fantasy" at my library. Oblivious me didn't realize The Gargoyle was included in said genre. Ah well, a good story is a good story.

Rosie

Rosie is the first fiction I read of Anne Lamott. The story is really about Rosie's mom, Elizabeth, a too-young widow who loves to cook, read, and drink a little too much wine at the end of the evening. Elizabeth struggles to parent her wild child and have her own life. She meets a man who does not exactly fit her dreams, but who just might be right for her. I really enjoyed this book because it felt very real and the ideas attainable to everyone, parent or not.

New Book from Audrey Niffenegger

I just read today that Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife, is coming out with a new book in late September. It's called Her Fearful Symmetry. My birthday is late September, so maybe it will be her gift to me. Yippeee!

Water Witches

I picked up this book at my library because I had read Chris Bohjalian's novel Midwives and liked it quite a lot. (Reviewed earlier on this blog.) Water Witches does not keep the reader quite on the edge of her seat as Midwives but is its own story of family and community. The story is set in a small ski resort town in Vermont going through a drought. The main character, Scott Winston, works for a large ski resort. He is married to Laura, who is from a family of dowsers, or "water witches". Scott and Laura are somewhat at odds during their community's plight for water. Whether or not one believes dowsing is possible, this novel exposes the reader to an original idea and a warm community of characters.

The Kite Runner

I was very hesitant to read The Kite Runner because I saw it everywhere. I had this feeling that there must be more hype than substance. I don't remember what finally made me give in, but I'm so glad I did. It was beautiful--and harsh, and sad, and inspiring. The descriptions of Kabul, Afghanistan before the Soviet Union invasion make it sound like somewhere I would want to visit. The story is of two best friends who are from completely different backgrounds. One is the servant in the household of the other. If you happen to have not read this yet, do so! (And the movie's not too bad either.)

Intuition

I discovered this book through a review in the Oregonian--who knew! The setting is a cancer research laboratory called the Philpott Institute housed within Harvard University. The lab is full of wonderfully described characters whose true motives are revealed slowly as the plot thickens. The two directors of the Institute are opposites in many ways: Sandy Glass (Jewish man who changed his name so as not to be too ethnic) is a charismatic oncologist whose primary role is to fundraise, and Marion Mendelssohn, an intelligent scientist who demands much of herself and the post-docs in the lab. At the beginning of the book one post-doc, Cliff, begins to have some success with an experiment he'd been working for a couple of years. Most in the lab become excited, but one post-doc, a woman named Robin who had been in a relationship with Cliff, is suspicious. One of my favorites parts of the book is at the beginning. The author describes a secondary character, Jacob Mendelssohn, Marion's husband, who had been a child prodigy and was expected to win a nobel prize. The description of his rise to "genius fame" up until he's 17 and has a self-aware epiphany of his own is genius itself. I highly recommend this book, even if you don't have a working knowledge of scientific research (that would include me).

Vinegar Hill

Ellen Grier has just moved to a small town in Wisconsin with her family after her husband has become unemployed. With their two children they live with her in-laws, a cold and manipulative couple. The bulk of Vinegar Hill is spent making sure the reader knows just how uncomfortable the situation is and how miserable Ellen can be. What I kept asking myself was why I needed to immerse myself in this suffering. There is no great "ahhhh" moment at the end. This is a non-recommendation.

The Reader

I've owned this book for a couple years with really good intentions to get to it. When I saw the movie trailer I knew I needed to read it before seeing the film--always the best order of things. As the book opens with a sexual relationship beginning between 15 year old Michael and 36 year old Hannah I was, frankly, feeling disgusted. Not at the author, though. Although the story is told in the first person from Michael's point of view, one doesn't get the sense that the author or Michael is defending such a relationship as good or healthy. During the second and third sections of the book Michael deals with the personal consequences of this relationship, especially when he meets up with Hannah again. Set in post-World War II Germany I was very intrigued with the themes of responsibility, shame, and guilt that the author delves into. I highly recommend this book.

The Virgin Blue

Tracy Chevalier's first novel, the reader is introduced to two women in France, 400 years apart. Ella Turner, an American recently moved to a small French village, and Isabelle Tournier, a distant relative of Ella's who has a tumultuous life as a Huguenot. The novel flips back and forth between their stories and attempts some suspense, but doesn't do an especially good job of it. Although Ella is a sympathetic character at first, she becomes tedious and I began to become irritated with her. I had not read about France and Switzerland in this way before and found the true historical setting quite interesting. Unfortunately, the story is lacking.

Click

Recommended by a friend, I was intrigued by this book initially because it has ten chapters written by ten different authors. The two names that stood out to me were Nick Hornby and Eoin Colfer. Each chapter weaves a piece of the life of a photojournalist, George Keane, and his family's discovery of his life. The book has interesting characters and a fairly well woven thread. The last few chapters become a little odd, as if those authors had a vision different than the first seven or eight, but other than that, I recommend this as a good read. The proceeds of this book are given to Amnesty International. Another reason to read it!

Falling Free

If you've never read science fiction, but are curious....Lois McMasters Bujold is a great start. After a recommendation from a friend (thank you Cathy!) I read Falling Free and instantly became an addict of the "Miles Universe" as I come to think of it. Falling Free is technically the first in a not-so-chronologically-written series about Miles Vorkosigan Naismith. Miles is a wonderful character, and yet Falling Free is set about 300 year before Miles is born. This book is about an engineer who is working with a large group of "quaddies"--people who were genetically engineered to work in space, and therefore do not need legs. Instead of legs, quaddies have arms, their second set, of course. The plot is exciting and the characters are interesting, but the best part of the book is that it stages the questions for the rest of the series to continue to explore. Questions about who we value and how we show value to others are only a few that are implied. Ms. Bujold is a fantastic writer and I don't think a person has to be a sci-fi geek to appreciate her. My only caveat....don't look at the cover of her books because they are as corny as most other sci-fi novels.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

The phrase that keeps coming to mind is "Crap that guy is funny!" David Sedaris' part memoir, part short story compilation made me laugh out loud quite a few times. I am especially fond of the first chapter which chronicles his time in speech therapy. It made me think "Do I do that to kids?" I laughed the most at the chapter about his younger brother and how rules changed in his family. Too too much.

The chronicling of his time in France is timely and fun, but the picture he continues to paint of his dysfunctional family is, again, the best of the book.

Girl Meets God

In this memoir Lauren Winner tells of her spiritual journey from Reformed Jew to Orthodox Jew and then to Christian. She was raised in Virginia by a Jewish father and a backslidden Baptist mother. Her personality drew her to convert to Orthodox Judiasm in college. Her accounts of how she was treated by some Orthodox Jews and her boyfriend's family (Levi tribe) was fascinating. She related her slow conversion to Christianity while keeping a very respectful tone towards her Jewish friends and family. Throughout the book she challenges other Christians to rethink their views of Judiasm and the Old Testament.

To The Power of Three

This mystery is about three teenage girls who have been best friends since elementary school. From the outside it was the perfect friendship of contrasting girls; one the athlete, one the beauty, one the intellect. One morning at school they are found locked in a school restroom. One dead, one seriously wounded, and the other minimally wounded from a gun. The community is shocked and the stories about them are not adding up. I think the author, Laura Lippman, understands teenagers better than most and is able to write about themes like privilege and pressure very well.

Snow Falling on Cedars

First of all, I love this novel because it is set in the San Juan Islands, one of my favorite places. I also love it because a large portion is set during World War II. David Guterson has written a beautiful story about a white teenage boy and Japanese teenage girl who fall in love despite the fact that it is completely socially unacceptable. Soon after high school their small community is thrust headlong into the realities of the war and they are pulled apart. In the years after the war they have both moved back to their home island and are brought together again by a murder mystery. I highly recommend this book..and I liked the movie :) Who can resist Ethan Hawke when he isn't trying to be a petulant twentysomething?

Crime and Punishment

If you want to dip into Russian literature (and be able to say you've read some Dostoyevsky) but not be too committed, then this is a good start. Crime and Punishment is about Raskolnikov, a poor student who decides he needs to sell something for money. He ends up commiting a murder and realizes that he can get away with it. A good portion of the book is Raskolnikov talking to himself as he becomes paranoid and suffers from some delusions. Honestly, this is a pretty good place to read quickly. I found myself doing a little skimming and saying to myself, "Okay, he's going crazy, he's going crazy...ah, here's some more plot." During the state of paranoia he befriends a prostitute who helps keep him sane. I read a brief version of Dostoyevsky's bio after reading this book and it helped put the book into perspective. Dostoyevsky led a "wild" young adult life, which included some incarceration. He became a Christian, which is evident in the works that I have read, and underlines the redeeming nature of Crime and Punishment. I won't write anymore for fear of ruining it for anyone.