The Last Two Years in Books Part III

I'm feeling a little sheepish about this string of high marks, but I promise I am not looking back with rose colored glasses, this was just a period marked by really great book selection. This list of books 45-34 from the last two years includes two more five star rated books and six more four star rated books. For anyone who has been anticipating my return to blogging (I joke), I've got some good ideas for you....

45. Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes ☆☆☆☆

Be ready for full on addiction, and absolutely do not pick up this psychological thriller 30 minutes before you are planning to walk out the door or when you have a house to clean, you'll never make it to your previously scheduled activity. This is a true page turner. 

44. The Light Between Oceans by ML Stedman ☆☆

I'm not sure I have ever walked away from a book feeling so emotionally manipulated before. Even now looking back on this book, I feel a bit like you might feel upon remembering a particularly icky date. I'm thinking specifically of that guy who leaned in and licked my nose after dinner, but I digress.... At first I enjoyed the premise, a solitary lighthouse keeper who only receives news of the outside world when the supply boat comes ashore once each season. Creative, right? Then he gets married; his wife starts having miscarriages; a dead man and a baby get washed ashore in a boat; and the lighthouse keeper and his wife decide to keep the baby and pass it off as their own (otherwise known in many circles as kidnapping). Of course, they later happen upon the poor mother of the baby who has suffered the loss of both her husband and her child and is totally devastated as a result.   

So what's the problem? The description of this book on Goodreads (which incidentally rates this book as a 3.96) includes the following: "we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another's tragic loss." Hmm.... I'm not sure that deciding not to report that you "found" a baby really falls into the grey area of moral ambiguity. It seems pretty clearly wrong, which is fine. I don't expect my characters to be moralists or infallible. I acknowledge that would be boring. However, I don't like this imaginary sense pervading the book that the choice was really a moral quandary. I also don't like reading anything that screams, "I'm sad! Hey, look at me, I'm sad! I would make a great sad movie!" Yuck Ms. Stedman. Just yuck. If you want to write something that ultimately ends up being said, fine. Just don't make it so manipulative and formulaic. All that being said, I finished this quickly, and that also makes me feel a little icky.

43. The Night Circus by Erin Morgensten ☆☆☆☆

This is so imaginative and delightful, I could almost give it five stars. The story is about a mysterious night circus starring two extraordinary magicians. Kind of. Because the circus isn't really a "circus." I just lost about half of you, which is a lot considering I think I have only 4 or 5 readers, but this is really a wonderful story. It's fantasy, but not in a Lord of the Rings kind of way because it's also a love story (sort of), and it's told in a way that you might believe it actually happened even though it's totally fantastic. This is another one that I wish I had taken the time to review as soon as I finished it because there are so many layers, and it's unlike anything else I have ever read, so I am finding it hard to describe, which I LOVE because who doesn't like to be surprised? This was like happening upon a totally new genre of fiction complete with amazingly rich characters and nuanced plot twists.      

42. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick ☆☆☆☆☆

I feel like I'm losing readers as I work my way down this post. Two stars to an almost four star rated book on Goodreads? Then four stars for a book about a magic circus? And now five stars for a book about North Korea? I can almost feel the eyes rolling now. Stick with me. 

I confess that when it comes to current events I am sometimes laughably out of touch. I learned so much about a country that is constantly the subject of public discussion and political scrutiny from reading this book. Moreover, there is nothing dry about this book. Demick is a talented story teller and writer, and you are in good hands as her reader. This is a collection of stories about real North Koreans who have escaped to South Korea, and they give both a fascinating look at what is happening inside the country as well as the problems those who are fortunate enough to escape face in trying to assimilate. This explores so many things that will be foreign to Western readers, e.g.,  what it's like to literally be starving to death, to be brainwashed, to not trust anyone - even your closest friend or family member, to believe in something from the time you are tiny only to learn it is all a lie, to escape from constant fear and poverty to be forever an outsider. On top of all of that, it's also a story of hope and survival. This is one book that I am still thinking about a year later. It's one that I have recommended over and over, and I have always received positive comments from those who were willing to take the leap and actually read this book.  

41. The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly ☆☆☆☆

This is a wonderful coming of age book set inside one boy's powerful imagination. David's mother dies, and his father remarries and has a second child. The new family is forced to escape London for the countryside during the blitz, and while there, David escapes into a world of fairytales and books. This is a book about the power books can have on our lives. It's one part The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, one part Wizard of Oz, and one part Huck Finn with a thousand fairytale and fable references thrown in for good measure. In other words, it's familiar, yet it's totally new. I thought it was so much fun and just a great read for either young adults or adults.     

40. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini ☆☆☆☆☆

Hosseini is such a powerful writer, and this is the most compelling and memorable of all of his books (all of which I give four stars or higher). This is a fascinating chronicling of Afghan history and culture, and I was surprised to learn how progressive Afghanistan once was with respect to its views towards women. It's scary how quickly that changed and in only a single generation. Imagine being an educated female lawyer who regularly wears western clothes, and virtually overnight being compelled to give up your job, completely shroud yourself from public view, and be essentially made a prisoner in your own home unless you have a male escort to accompany you. Incredible. On top of this rich historical narrative Hosseini creates compelling characters and a complex story about women. I confess, I am always surprised when a male writer is able to capture the female mind so accurately, and Hosseini does that without missing a beat. This is one of the best books I have read in the last 10 years.

39. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan Philipp Sandker ☆☆☆☆

A young New York lawyer travels to Burma on a quest to find her missing father, and she uncovers the fascinating story of her father's past. I find the story within a story literary device to be often overused and more often that not, it's not done well, as one of the stories is kind of a snooze or really doesn't add much to the overall concept. However, that is not the case here. Both stories are compelling, and they work together to make this novel much richer than it otherwise would have been. The father's story is one of heartbreak and enduring love and a struggle from abject poverty to great success. The daughter's story is a journey of self-awakening and a search for her father who she never really knew. I did find some parts of this a little overly sentimental, but I was generally able to overlook that and still give it four stars.   

38. The Bat by Jo Nesbo ☆☆☆

This is the first of the Harry Hole novels. I really wanted to read The Snowman because I keep hearing what a great mystery it is, but because I am RIDICULOUSLY anal retentive, I thought I should start with the first book in the series and work my way up to The Snowman (seventh in the series). I acknowledge this is insane, but back to the review.... I expect a detective who is incredibly smart and a little quirky and maybe sort of a social misfit, and I guess that's all true for Harry Hole, but he's also a total mess and such an alcoholic he can't make it to work a lot of days. I guess I like that he's not formulaic and just a little bit gritty. I'm not sure that this left me longing to read more about him though. He's not that sort of detective, and in hindsight, there was probably no reason I couldn't have just picked up The Snowman out of turn. The mystery element of the book was good but not great. I liked this enough to continue on in the series but not to the point where I had to use a lot of mental restraint not to automatically download the next novel to my Kindle the minute I was finished reading. I also suspect that Nesbo was still feeling his way around a bit with this novel, and I expect the series to get better with time. 

37. And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini ☆☆☆☆

Khaled Hosseini

Just after reading this book I had the opportunity to hear Hosseini speak at SMU's speaker series with my book club. Hosseini, a physician, wrote his first book, The Kite Runner, essentially in the mornings before going to work at his family practice. After the book became wildly popular he took some time off and eventually wrote his follow-up book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, which was even better than his first, wildly popular book. On top of that he's handsome, well spoken, and charming. Oh, and he comes across as incredibly humble and gracious. It's ok to hate him just a little bit. I loved hearing him talk about his process (his wife is his biggest critic) and what his Afghan heritage means to him. Dallas isn't all honky tonks and wide open pastures. 

This is a story about families set across multiple generations and continents, and it reads a bit like a collection of short stories that tie together by interconnected threads woven throughout the entire book. Because there are so many characters and stories, Hosseini doesn't achieve the same level of character development as he does in his other two novels, both of which explore two characters and their relationships with each other. That's not a criticism, more of an observation. Ultimately, this just didn't have the same lasting impact that The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns had on me, but it was still fantastic and solidly four stars. 

36. Divergent by Veronica Roth ☆☆☆☆
Readers be warned, we are about to embark on a period of young adult "literature." I was coming off some pretty heavy reading material, so I gave myself a bit of a brain reprieve. I started with Divergent, and I have to say, I tore through it and found myself anticipating the other two books in the trilogy and the upcoming movies. It was highly entertaining reading. I might have even liked this more than The Hunger Games, which I also confess, I loved and made my husband read.