The History Book Club discussion

67. by Truman Capote
Finish Date: December 3, 2016
Genre: Short Fiction
Rating: A-
Review: My only experience with Truman Capote is "In Cold Blood," his true crime blend of fiction and non-fiction. So these three holiday short stories are quite a change. In them, he relates semi-autobiographical tales of holidays when he was an Alabama boy. In two of the stories, he spends the holiday with his favorite cousin, an older relative who is still a child at heart. In the third tale, he spends Christmas with a father he doesn't know in New Orleans. They're full of life and humor, although often of a bittersweet sort.

by Truman Capote

68. by William Shakespeare
Finish Date: December 2, 2016
Genre: Drama
Rating: A-
Review: Who am I to critique Shakespeare? It's a tale of magic, revenge, and of course, love. I really just struggled through the Elizabethan English to refresh my memory because I plan to read Hag Seed by Margaret Atwood, which is a retelling of this classic tale. We'll see how that one goes.

by Margaret Atwood

Sounds interesting, Dave.

69. by Kate Chopin
Finish Date: December 7, 2016
Genre: Classic Fiction
Rating: B-
Review: I was not at all familiar with Kate Chopin's writing, so when the Classics book club I joined announced this as their December choice, I was looking forward to checking it out. Written in 1894, this is billed as an early feminist book. Edna is a young wife with two children, married to a man about 15 years her senior in the New Orleans area. I don't want to say she feels trapped because it sometimes isn't quite clear just what she's feeling. A nanny takes care of the children, her husband is often taking care of business elsewhere or at his club, she is free to sketch and paint - and eventually drift into what would have been a scandalous affair at the time. To say more would give too much away. I'm not sure that Edna's motivations are entirely clear, but still, it is a book that was far ahead of its time, and Chopin's career suffered for that.

70. by J.M. Coetzee
Finish Date: December 11, 2016
Genre: Fiction
Rating: C+
Review: Here is another author I wasn't familiar with, so I decided to start with "Disgrace," which won a Booker prize in 1997. That's usually a safe bet. It's very well written. The dialog is believable. The characters are well drawn even if I just can't feel any sympathy for the David Lurie, the protagonist. He just doesn't learn, and while I'm sure that's part of the point, I just couldn't get into the book. He is a womanizer who uses a position of authority to get what he wants, and when he ultimately has to pay a steep price, he still just doesn't get it. He goes to live with his daughter in the South African countryside where they endure a horrible experience. And after that, he sort of means well, but I think he still doesn't get it.

71. by Fredrik Backman
Finish Date: December 15, 2016
Genre: Fiction
Rating: A+
Review: I purposely don't give the highest rating to very many books. It has got to really grab me. This one did, and now I find I'm recommending it to all my friends and family. I haven't quite gotten around to grabbing strangers and telling them they must read this, but it could happen - especially if they look like they could use a laugh. It's full of wonderful humor. Watch out though, because you may find your eyes watering on the next page. It's that kind of book. If you especially like stories about curmudgeons, get yourself a copy soon.

Great progress Dave

72. by Michael Connelly
Finish Date: December 19, 2016
Genre: Fiction
Rating: A
Review: In this entry in the Harry Bosch series, we get something a little different. For the first time, LA Police Detective Bosch leaves the familiar surroundings of Los Angeles and heads to Hong Kong - not strictly on police business, but for very personal reasons. The tragedy of errors that make up this tale will have major consequences for Bosch and those closest to him.

73. by Taylor Anderson
Finish Date: December 23, 2016
Genre: Science Fiction/Alt History
Rating: A
Review: A writer once wrote of Michigan's upper peninsula that there are two seasons - winter and getting ready for winter. Well, for the characters in this series (this is the seventh book), there is war and getting ready for war.

Our heroes from the crew of an already-outdated destroyer in WWII have been thrown into an alternate world where evolution took different turns. The two dominant species are descended from reptiles (the warlike Grik who are making things miserable for everyone else) and a group descended from the lemurs of Madagascar, who become the humans allies in this strange new world. The cast of characters has grown as they've found more allies who have come from other points in our world's history, but the battles have simply spread across a wider geographic range.

This is escapist alternate reality fiction at its best, and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

Good progress Dave

Dave wrote: "73. by Taylor Anderson
Finish Date: December 23, 2016
Genre: Science Fiction/Alt History
Rating: A
Review: ..."

Noting wrong with good escapist SF. I read a fair amount of it myself.

74. by Jo Nesbø
Finish Date: December 25, 2016
Genre: Mystery
Rating: C
Review: Here's another Scandinavian mystery writer that I heard so much about, but sorry to say, this book is no "Girl with the Dragon Tatoo." It's a more conventional mystery, the first in the series featuring Norwegian police detective Harry Hole, who has been sent to Australia to assist in the investigation of the murder of a young Norwegian citizen there. There are some interesting characters, but the decision that sets up the final climax is just not believable to me. I don't think any of the characters would have made that decision, or implemented it so sloppily.

I'll give the series another chance, but after hearing so many good things about it, I was sorry to be unimpressed with the first book.

by Stieg Larsson

75. by Richard Matheson
Finish Date: December 26, 2016
Genre: Horror/Fantasy
Rating: C-
Review: The audiobooks for my long holiday drives are proving disappointing. Matheson is another author I've meant to read for some time now. The only book available to me at this time was this fairly recent one. It starts out well enough - the narrator, now 82 years old, tells us of his experiences in WWI, and immediately following, when he journeys to an English hometown of a friend who died in the war. At this point, we're set up for a proper horror tale. The locals warn him of a witch in the woods as well as dangerous faerie folk. There is some uncertainty about the true nature of both witch and faeries, and that keeps it interesting for a while, but the narrator is just too distracting, inserting his 82-year old observations and assertions entirely too often. And the lead character can't seem to stop apologizing every few paragraphs. Eventually the tale becomes a fantasy love story.

I began to think that the only real purpose of the narrator's age was so he could use late 20th century words without being anachronistic.

Perhaps the book was so disappointing because it started with such promise and slowly unraveled. Too bad.