The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (1/3 through)

I took this book along on a recent trip, but only managed to get through about 1/3 of the book.  It is a dense book, full of beautiful descriptions of scenery and the inner workings of a small, Midwestern family.  I have had a few obstacles to enjoying this book -- first, it is a heavy book, meaning that the story it tells is not an easy one.  People and dogs die, even in the very first scene, and the emotional weight of issues like infertility and living with a handicap can be felt early on, too.  Second, the book jacket gave away a plot event that appears about 1/3 of the way into the novel.  I was so disappointed that I read the book jacket and it gave away this plot point that I had to put the book down for a couple of days.  Finally, it is a retelling of a classic story, which I only put together because of a hint my sister-in-law gave me.  I think I sort of know what is coming next because of this, so it takes away some of the drama of the story.  With all that said, though, I am determined to like this book.  It is well-written, with intricate details and an imaginative take on the subjects of dog-rearing, death, and betrayal.  The dogs are central characters, so some people may have a problem with that.  One early chapter is told from the perspective of a dog, which is an attention-grabbing stunt but also an important clue as to what the author is trying to do.  He's building layers of meaning into the story that go well beyond the plot points.  It does seem to take a long time for something to happen, but the author is really building the emotional worlds of the central family and their dogs.  Edgar Sawtelle, the central character, is born mute, and develops his own sign language that his family and friends (especially the dog Almondine) learn to read and speak.  This is a fascinating way of recreating a character who is central to the plot (to give his name is to give away too much).  There are hints throughout as to what story is really being told here, but I don't want to spoil anything for anyone else.  Let's just say there is an Uncle Claude and a mom named Trudy.  That may be enough for some people to put together the story that is being told.  I'm looking forward to the rest of the story unfolding in this unique way.

Pillar of Fire (all the way through)

This remarkable volume, the second of three books, traces the middle stage of Martin Luther King, Jr's civil rights struggle and contextualizes the struggle as part of a grand arc of history -- an arc that "bends toward justice," to apply a quote from Dr. King himself.  The book describes efforts to gain rights we often take for granted now -- the right to vote, the right to eat in desegregated restaurants, the right to express ourselves without fear of government reprisal -- bringing the struggle to vivid life with well-researched details.  The narrative centers around the movement in the South, but brings in perspectives from around the country and begins to indict Northern racism as well as the institutional racism of the South.  Malcolm X's rise to national prominence begins with a violent episode in Los Angeles and ends with his death in Harlem.  The detailed account of the often violent struggle for control of the Nation of Islam that Malcolm X engages in and his changing understanding of Islam and the need for a more "militant" response is an interesting counterpoint to Martin Luther King's struggle to make decisions in the best interest of the non-violent movement.  President Lyndon Johnson's role in the book begins with a visit to St. Augustine, Florida, as Vice President, where he is the reason for an integrated dinner that sparks later movement activity, and ends with his battle for control of South Vietnam heading toward outright war.  Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, and J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, spar toward the beginning of the book over turf within the White House, and Hoover's active opposition to King through FBI wiretaps is ultimately triumphant; these wiretaps are ultimately revelatory (see below) and essential to the history of the movement.  The wiretaps reveal the inner struggles of the King circle, as well as some personal failings of King's, and they also reveal the Hoover FBI's ability to use "extralegal" means to control what Hoover considered subversive activity.  The implacable opposition faced by nonviolent protesters attempting to overcome segregation astounded me with its vehemence, violence, and blatant injustice.  The pivotal summer of 1964 begins with the murder of three Mississippi civil rights workers, and the efforts to bring these murders to trial face stunning opposition -- Mississippi authorities claim the nonviolent workers were faking the disappearance until the bodies are discovered, and even after the discovery of bodies, Mississippi authorities blame the victims for the crime.  That outrage is just the beginning of the legal saga that is unwound in the epilogue of the book -- the FBI did get some convictions in the case after years of struggle, but no one goes to prison for life because of these murders.  There are numerous heroic stories of pioneers in the civil rights movement who suffer punishment for their involvement in the movement -- one particularly tough pill to swallow is the story of Vernon Dahmer, who is murdered at the end of years of providing support for the movement, after the voting rights act is passed in 1965, essentially for offering to pay the $2 poll tax for those who can't afford it.  The hero of the story, aside from Dr. King, is probably Bob Moses, the pioneering educator who begins a lonely campaign to bring voting rights to Mississippi in the early 1960s, then operates as a key leader in the "Freedom Summer" of 1964, which ultimately brought a Black delegation to the Democratic National Convention in a showdown that tested how far the country could go to accept Blacks voting in large numbers in the South.  Moses is one survivor in the epilogue who makes a positive impact in the 1990s.  Which does not mean this is a downer of a book -- gripping, yes, depressing in some ways, but also inspirational and true.  The research and detail make for a compelling read.  If you are willing and able to put in the time, it is well worth the read.

Pillar of Fire (halfway through)

This book requires some extra concentration, so reading it before bed-time has resulted in my falling asleep many times.  However, I had a chance to put a significant dent into it this weekend, and I really learned in great detail about the civil rights era and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, impact on it.  The violence the book describes is astonishing, similar to the first installment, Parting the Waters, reviewed here.  The book opens with a very detailed account of a violent incident in Los Angeles, which accompanied the rise of Malcolm X to national prominence.  The first five chapters explore the connections between several disparate events, leading up to a climactic confrontation in Birmingham, Alabama, between King's non-violent volunteers (mostly youth) and police armed with dogs and fire hoses.  The main arc of the narrative centers around the national civil rights struggle, and the cast of characters is immense.  J. Edgar Hoover has a starring role as a vindictive, mean-spirited man haunted by the specter of American Communism well after its influence has waned.  The tape recordings he has made using wiretaps and bugs in hotel rooms and offices, including one of King's extra-marital affair and private observations about the Kennedys, are devastating to those who see King as a modern-day saint, but the overall picture he paints of a real human being both buffeted by events and shaping them is worth the shock to the system caused by the revelations in King's private life.  I have just reached the point of beginning the section on "Freedom Summer," a project to promote voting rights in Mississippi involving student volunteers from around the country, which spills over into national implications, and I am eagerly anticipating the rest of the book.  The story is complex and filled with surprises, so I am enjoying learning so much about this history, which is not so distant in the past.

The Italian Secretary

This short novel was a quick, entertaining read, but I expected a little more subtlety than I got in the plotting and the examination by the eminent Sherlock Holmes of the crimes committed.  The author, Caleb Carr, was commissioned to write an additional mystery featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and he did a workmanlike job of writing in Dr. Watson's old-fashioned voice and making it seem authentic.  My favorite thing about the book was the setting -- the descriptions of Edinburgh and Holyroodhouse were intriguing, and helped to tell the story.

The most disappointing aspect of the book, though, were the clues that Mr. Holmes followed in deciphering the crime -- most of the clues dropped in the book turn out to be red herrings, and the ones that ultimately solve the case are not necessarily obvious, but not so subtle that they would require Mr. Holmes to use his highest powers of observation and experimentation.  Also, there are some loose strings at the end that are not tied up, and Holmes and Watson are not involved in the final capture of the murderer in the direct way that I would expect.

Getting Organized in the Google Era

I read the first few chapters of this book before getting discouraged.  I decided that if I tried to write a book on getting organized (which is hardly my strong suit) I could do about as well as this guy.  He doesn't have any secret formulas, just a set of principles that seemed pretty elementary.  They didn't seem to match the promise of the book and seemed more as a transparent effort to cash in on the author's role as a former CFO at Google.  Maybe after reading the whole book I would have more respect for the effort involved, but really, the book just annoyed me more than I could stand.  The author does try to keep things light, but his attempts at humor really just got in the way.

Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew

I re-read this long, intense study of an important German-Jewish poet over the last two to three weeks in honor of the professor who wrote it (John Felstiner), who is retiring this month from teaching at Stanford.  This professor was the closest thing I had to a mentor at Stanford, but I really only knew him from taking two classes that he taught.  He taught on poetry in a way that invited students to read poems closely, and his poetry selections were interesting and varied.  He also taught a course entitled "Imagining the Holocaust" that attempted to put the Holocaust in context with the works of survivors as the centerpiece.  That is where I first was introduced to Paul Celan's poetry, specifically "Todesfuge," or "Death-Fugue," which imagines the Holocaust very specifically in a German poem.  The professor played a recording of the poem, which he reads closely in the book, and I remember being impacted by the reading.  The poet was not very loud or overly dramatic, but the poem itself has a definite rhythm that adds an emotional charge.  The book re-creates that charge, interestingly, by translating the poem into English, but working the original German words back into the poem -- the repetition of words in the poem allows this, and the "regression" so to speak back into German identifies the specific nature of the poem.  The poem is about the death caused by Germans, so it is fitting that it should end with German language, even in translation.  This kind of innovative yet true translation is at the heart of this book, which tackles Celan's life through his poetry.  The book makes the poems come to life for those of us who don't know as much German as we would need to translate Celan's poetry.  Celan's poetry is difficult because it is quite often very spare -- it uses so few words as to be mystifying.  Yet still, the poetry speaks to the condition of the German language after the Holocaust, and attempts to bring the truth of the man-made disaster into the language without diluting its horror or softening its impact.  The poet spoke in one of his speeches of the difficulty of writing poetry in German after "the thousand darknesses of death-bringing speech."  This book clearly examines Celan's poetry to illuminate the process the poet went through in trying to accomplish this project.

Fearless by Max Lucado

I read this book with relatively high expectations.  I hoped to find answers to some of my problems with fear -- the fact that fear drives me to a certain extent, and that I feel constrained by fear, especially when it comes to money.  The promise of the book is that it will teach us how to live a life without fear, and it delivers on that promise to a certain extent.  However, it falls short of being a life-changing treatise that alters my worldview completely.  The book does address specific causes of fear, including money, and the answer is always to turn to Jesus in some way.  The simple Biblical truth that this book addresses is that every fear (except the fear of God, which is another word for faith) can be lessened if we look to Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father for answers.  That truth is expressed gracefully, with style, and with compassion.  Still, I am hungering for more truth on the nature of fear.  Why does God allow us to be so ruled by fear?  The author does touch on the fact that fear sometimes plays a useful role in warning us of dangers.  But he doesn't delve deep into the psychology of fear, how rooted it is in our experience.  In a way, fear is the only appropriate response to the human condition.  Still, I wonder if that's purposeful -- that the author knows not to dwell too much on the deep-rootedness of fear, because his philosophy and advice is simple -- trust God, no matter what. 

American Rust by Philipp Meyer

American Rust starts with a killing that could be called self-defense.  The plot flows forward from this single event and remains taut until the final conclusions are reached.  The point of view bounces back and forth in stream-of-consciousness style from the two main characters, 20-year-old Isaac and 21-year-old Poe, to their family members and the police captain, Bud Harris, who is charged with cracking their case.  Isaac, a smallish, smart kid whose mother has committed suicide before the novel opens, lives with his wheelchair-bound father in southwestern Pennsylvania.  His sister, who escaped to Yale shortly after her mother's suicide, also makes an appearance about a quarter of the way through the novel.  The father's and the sister's perspectives don't add that much to the novel, but they are important in telling the story.  Poe, a former star athlete, lives with his mother, Grace, who also becomes a focus of the narration.  She becomes the wheel around which Bud Harris turns (they have an on-again, off-again relationship at the beginning of the novel).  She ultimately shifts his actions toward the unthinkable.  The setting dominates the novel -- the broken-down steel mills being reclaimed by nature, the beauty of the hills around the fictional town of Buell -- as every character takes note of the setting at various points in the novel.  There are heavy overtones of American decline -- hence the title.  The book creates many murky moral dilemmas and contains difficult, life-affirming or life-denying choices.  It earns the category of serious literature because it doesn't shy away from these painful realities.  The content of the novel is a little like John Updike's -- lots of sex, well-drawn characters who make bad decisions -- but without the comic turns.  The novel opens with quotes from two existentialist authors (Kierkegaard and Camus), so there is a little too much existential angst in the novel.  Still, the author does write a gripping tale, and I have to give him his due in drawing me in to a story that gave me plenty to chew on.

The Alchemyst by Michael Scott

I read this book on a recommendation from my sister-in-law, an avid reader and middle school teacher.  I enjoyed it, primarily because it fits all the action of a good fantasy novel into a relatively short, easy read, but I was disappointed with the ending.  It's definitely a young adult novel aimed at teenagers, but it has appeal beyond young adults if you're okay with a little modern language and technology mixed in with your fantasy world.  The plot of the novel centers around two twins, who find out they are working for Nicholas Flamel and his wife in separate shops at the beginning of the novel.  Nicholas Flamel is the famous alchemyst of the title, who has been brewing a potion since the Renaissance in order to keep himself and his wife Perenelle alive until the modern day.  Soon, the twins are transported into a fantasy world populated by Elders (including a vampire assassin on the good guys' side -- probably my favorite character) and other mythological creatures.  The novel draws toward a close with a climactic battle in a parallel world almost entirely inhabited by these mythological creatures, which is inventive and different than other things I've read, but also a little disappointing because the battle doesn't resolve everything, and we're soon brought back to the "real world" without having every question answered.  I'm being a little vague on purpose because I hate giving away endings, but just know that if you really like the book, you'll probably have to buy the whole series to get all the answers you want.  The writing is pretty good and the pace of the plot is fast, so I recommend the book overall to anyone who wants to enjoy a new take on the fantasy genre from a young adult's perspective.

The Magician's Elephant

I read this book over Christmas, in the midst of many distractions.  It grabbed me from the first sentence, which I had read on Amazon before putting the book on my Christmas list, and continued to add layers as I read.  The first chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book, daring to make its readers care about small things.  A single decision focuses the chapter, allowing the author to weave in background and meaning while asking the question, What if?, which becomes a theme of the book.  The young man who makes this small decision, with a musical name and a difficult childhood, resonates with Oliver Twist and other Dickensian characters.  He also has at least one flaw (his earnestness), like every character in the book.  The book brings out magical realities, an essential part of childhood, but it is not really a children's book.  The elephant in the title becomes a key character in her own right, symbolizing alternately a war, a catastrophe, hope, despair, and creativity.  The multi-layered symbolism keeps this from being a straight allegory, but every character certainly has representative qualities.  I recommend the book for its poetic quality and thoughtfulness, even if the uplift the book is looking for isn't quite there in the end.