The History Book Club discussion

Paul wrote: "Bentley wrote: " by Mohsin Hamid

I read the above book and engaged with the author Hamid in one of his ..."

Interesting when I engaged with him - I could see the undercurrent. But that is why everybody reads different books in different ways. Pretentious - very.

26. by Stephen King
Finish date: April 16, 2017
Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Western, Series
Rating: C+
Review: Oh, man. So much of this book is so good – especially the gun battle in Maine and the twin journeys to the Dixie Pig. But.

First, there are the nagging problems that have become increasingly obvious in this series: One, King's tendency to overwrite, overdescribe and overdialogue scenes that would be much more effective with the conciseness he prescribes in his own nonfiction writing books. And two, his tendency to write dialogue that sounds divorced from the reality of modern English.

Second and most alarming, King wrote himself into the story! It was one thing when a character from Salem's Lot realized he was from a Stephen King novel. That's a fun little twist I'm willing to indulge. But to actually have a Stephen King character, sitting in his own living room, talking to Roland about his own life and the creation of the story we are now reading? No. That is a party foul. An egregious one. That fateful decision distracts from the plot and crashes the story to a halt. And for what? By the end, it's clear the story has moved on without the digression having been necessary in any way.

I disagree with the apparent consensus that this is the weakest novel of the series – as I said, King has some set pieces here that are excellent, and masterfully ratchets up the tension in the final chapters; I'd still put Book 5 as the weakest – but it is the second-weakest, and you'd like to see the back half of a seven-book series improving, not weakening, as it heads toward its final chapter.

27. by Brian Posehn
Finish date: April 16, 2017
Genre: Fantasy, Superhero, Graphic Novel
Rating: D
Review: This just didn't connect with me. I don't read a lot of graphic novels, and even fewer superhero comics, so while there were some funny moments, I clearly wasn't the target audience. I could tell satire was taking place without having the resources or background to fully understand it. Also, typically excessive misogyny, which is annoying.

28. by Fred D. Gray (no photo)
Finish date: April 24, 2017
Genre: Autobiography, Race, Politics
Rating: C-
Review: Few people know the name Fred Gray, but as his autobiography makes clear, that's less a function of his importance as a lawyer representing the likes of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis and more a function of his willingness to stand aside and let others take the spotlight. Nevertheless, Gray is a civil rights titan, the lawyer who defended Parks and King in court on the one hand while prosecuting segregation with lawsuit after lawsuit on the other. In the end, Gray's court actions were primarily responsible for ending segregation on buses, in Alabama public schools and at the University of Alabama and Auburn University. He also successfully argued before the Supreme Court a redistricting case that eventually became a basis for the legal principle of "one person, one vote," forced Alabama state troopers to allow and protect the second Selma Voting Rights March, and led the federal lawsuit bringing to light the crimes of the Tuskegee Syphillis Study.

In the end, this is a book that would have been better as a biography tackled by a professional writer. As it is, the writing style is too lawyerly and too personal, at times devoting paragraphs to name-checking friends or colleagues, at others obscuring the natural drama of a court case in overly technical language. That the book is worth reading at all is a testament to Gray's incredible life and devotion to ending segregation "wherever I could find it."

29. by Neil Gaiman
Finish date: April 26, 2017
Genre: Mythology, Fantasy
Rating: C-
Review: This was my first Gaiman novel, and ... well, it wasn't really a novel at all! It was basically a collection of short stories, but instead of coming from Gaiman's imagination, they were pulled from extant Norse mythology – Odin, Thor, Loki and all that. As a result, I don't really feel like I read a "Neil Gaiman book" (not that I'd know what that feels like). The stories were interesting, as the best myths tend to be, but they would have been better if Gaiman had taken the liberty of filling in the gaps to make the story arc continuous. His writing style is very easy to read, almost too easy – at times, I felt I was reading a children's book, and that feeling clashed with the tone and content of the stories themselves.

So in the end, it was a good book, a fun and easy read, but a disappointing way to dip my toe into the Gaiman waters.

MAY

30. by Lisa Damour (no photo)
Finish date: May 3, 2017
Genre:. Parenting, Psychology, Teens
Rating: A+
Review: My first reaction after reading this book was, "OMG MY KIDS ARE GETTING OLD ENOUGH FOR ME TO READ THIS BOOK" followed by 30 minutes of weeping.

But seriously, if the thought of teenagerhood daunts you, or if you, like us, have a girl who isn't a teen yet but has started acting in ways where the old methods have stopped working, this is really a terrific book. It's clear-eyed, calm, real. It doesn't sugarcoat the pressures and conflicts that come with raising a teen, but it also gives parents realistic ways to handle them.

So is this book worth reading if you're about to plunge into the world of raising adolescents? How would I know? Ask me in 10 years! But from my perspective, as someone who is only just now beginning to think about that stage, this book provided a lot of practical and useful advice, as well as a sobering and, yes, sometimes scary reality check. I've never been particularly pessimistic about the notion of being a parent to teenagers, but nevertheless I found Lisa Damour's book helpful in easing my mind and giving me confidence that my wife and I can actually do this when the time comes.

You will be fine Paul - everyone gets through it (smile). Good review.

31. by C.S. Lewis
Finish date: May 7, 2017
Genre: Fantasy, Children's
Rating: A
Review: Another beautiful journey to the end of the world with Caspian, Reepicheep and crew. Lewis really hit his stride here – in writing style, imagination and allegory.

32. by Stephen King
Finish date: May 9, 2017
Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Western
Rating: A-
Review: It's fitting that this eponymous final chapter of Stephen King's epic saga of Roland and his ka-tet encapsulates the Dark Tower series as a whole: It's greater than the sum of its parts.

Yes, King has moments of logorrhea; yes, his self-insertion into the plot is exasperating and distracting; yes, he struggles with dialogue. But.

King is a master of the set piece – the battle for the Breakers, the journey under Discordia, the confrontation at Le Casse Roi Russe, these are all climactic page-turners that allow the reader to consume literally hundreds of pages at a sitting without realizing it.

Meanwhile, the world itself is an incredible creation; King established a rich fantasy world with numerous connections to multiple versions of our own universe, and he continues in this book to deepen and enrich the nature of these connections and the geography of the world of the Tower.

Finally, although I struggled with dialogue throughout this re-read of the series, it didn't stop me from tearing up when the inevitable deaths began to befall the group. After six-plus books, these characters were so well drawn that losing even my least favorite of them really hurt – even when I knew it was coming.

The ending is what it is. In reality, there are two. One occurs in our world, and it is sublime. The second concludes Roland's journey into the Dark Tower, and it is undoubtedly the most controversial aspect of the book. I've never had a problem with it, and in fact I think it has a lot to say about what it means to be so focused on a goal that we sacrifice everything and everyone in our lives to achieve it (full disclosure, that was brought up by a previous Goodreads reviewer, and I completely agree).

This is not a perfect book, but it's perfect enough. In that way, it's a fitting end to a sometimes frustrating but an ultimately beautiful, thrilling and fulfilling series.

Good review

33. by Aldous Huxley
Finish date: May 17, 2017
Genre: Sci-Fi, Dystopia, Classics
Rating: C
Review: Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in the early 1930s, and it shows. Unlike other dystopias written closer to the middle of the 20th century, Huxley's career-defining work is unscarred by the legacy of mid-century totalitarianism. Instead, it seems scarred by the quick and brutal disintegration of the Roaring '20s. Huxley's dystopic world is not a bleak hellscape; rather, it's too perfect. Humanity has harnessed technology to universalize contentment and banish passion. People are no longer born; they are decanted – predestined and sifted into castes by scientific overlords. Parenting is a dirty word, but passionless and promiscuous sex is encouraged.

These focuses – on scientism, the drawbacks and benefits of passion, the fears of progress – hearken more to the beginning of the 20th century than its end. Huxley's world sublimates the individual and idolizes the community; in 21st century America, however, it's the individual that holds sway while the community continues to fragment.

Along with not aging particularly well in its social commentary, I found the writing style difficult to master. Huxley writes with a certain flair, but he also seems to put form over function quite often, making the plot difficult to follow at times. As seems to be typical in this genre, the final few chapters are given over almost entirely to monologuing by the representative of the state.

But I have to give Huxley credit: I thought I knew where the plot was going, but that's not where it went. The final chapter is heartbreaking and exquisitely told. And Bernard and Lenina are not really protagonists so much as they are realistically drawn people who, if I'm brutally honest with myself, probably act a lot more like I would act in a similar situation.

As a classic dystopian novel, this wouldn't be my first choice. But it's well worth reading, if nothing else for some of the insightful discussions regarding the nature of science and happiness in a world that has too much of both.

34. by Omar El Akkad
Finish date: May 21, 2017
Rating: B
Genre: Fantasy, Dystopia, War
Review: This is the year for dystopias – classics calling to be reread and new creations fairly seething with relevance. American War is certainly one of the latter, and it certainly seethes. It seethes with anger, with pessimism, with despair. It's the story of the Second American Civil War, a renewal of the interminable, fatal conflict between North and South, fought this time not over slavery but over fossil fuels in a world where once-coastal cities, and even whole states, now lie underwater.

The seething is mostly done by Sarat Chestnut, whom we follow in five year increments beginning in 2075, the year hostilities recommence. Sarat and her family flee the encroaching fighting near their Louisiana home and the resulting journey brings violence, fear, heartbreak. It does not bring peace. Even when the war ends, peace is hard to find.

Omar El Akkad has created a mostly believable future in which stakes are high, both for the world and the characters through whom we see it. Things have clearly not improved from where they are today – our efforts to slow global warming did not prevent a worst-case scenario that reduce Florida and Bangladesh to mere island chains and force the American capital to move inland, the philosophical division between progressive and conservative states continued to widen and fester, and the ideals, or at least the rhetoric, of democracy, freedom and equality have been usurped by a rising empire across the ocean.

El Akkad's career in journalism, particularly covering Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, clearly inform this work. More than that, however, he writes with a graceful style that includes some real beauty.

A complaint: Future-based fiction relies heavily on convincing the reader to suspend his or her disbelief. Although most of the world of American War feels likely and real, in one significant way it does not: the South appears to have transformed in 60 years into a region where race simply doesn't matter. Aside from a couple of passing references, it beggars belief that Sarat Chestnut – who is half black, half Hispanic – could live six years in a Mississippi refugee camp without any conflict on account of her race. Likewise, although a lot can happen in 70 years, the supporters of a second round of secession are impressively diverse, unrealistically so I'd argue, given the monochromatic nature of those who would be their ideological ancestors in today's South. As a result, I struggled to dive fully into the story as the number of unanswered questions proliferated regarding how the South (or the country as a whole, for that matter) managed to put aside its centuries of racial baggage to realign along the issue of maintaining fossil fuel production in such a short period of time.

Overall, this is a timely and sobering book, suited to the darkness of our present age and serving as a compelling warning sign of one potential outcome if we cannot or will not change our present path.

I would have given higher marks for the classic - I think when reading them - you get a hint of the times even though the book's genre is dystopia. I have to hit that one again soon.

TBR'ed it, thx Paul.

35. by Norman Ohler (no photo)
Finish date: May 28, 2017
Genre: History, World War II
Rating: A
Review: This was a surprisingly fun read – well, as fun as any book about Nazis and Hitler can be. Ohler manages to break a lot of new ground in a well-worn subject, and his argument is clear and convincing: the "blitzkrieg" that so stunned Poland and France in 1939-40 was not the result of any fiendish Hitlerian plan, but the product of large amounts of meth. Ohler also delves deeply into Hitler's medical records to document his increasing reliance on opioids, cocaine and eventually meth, and how the constant self-poisoning contributed to a mental and physical collapse that paralleled his nation's. An excellent book!

36. by Paulette Jiles
Finish date: June 1, 2017
Genre: Historical Fiction, Western
Rating: A-
Review: This was just a delightful read. A poetic and heartwarming and realistic journey that was over all too soon. Definitely lives up to the hype as one of 2016's better books.

Thank you Paul. On both you can add back the word Review:
and you can leave both of them blank or add TBA - whichever you prefer. Thank you very much for your cooperation.

JUNE

37. by Peter David
Finish date: June 3, 2017
Genre: Graphic Novel, Fantasy, Horror, Western
Rating: D-
Review: I think it's become clear over the past few months that graphic novels just aren't my thing. In this case, the graphic-novel rendition of Stephen King's Dark Tower series begins with the creation of Roland as gunslinger, the backstory told in Book 4 of King's series. That book was the best of the series, but all of the things that made it such a terrific novel are missing from the comic-book version. Where King injected emotion and pathos, this is flat and sterile. Where King built a rich and believable world, this is almost claustrophobic in the narrowness of its scope. Where King developed nuanced characters, this provides a series of cliches. In the end, this attempt proves that when he's at his best, King's words are worth more than 1,000 pictures

38. by John Darnielle
Finish date: June 7, 2017
Genre: WTF
Rating: C
Review: I'm not sure if this book is a classic case of good marketing – it made me want to read it! – or terrible marketing – it's absolutely nothing like was promised!

First and foremost, this is a beautiful book, maybe the best written of the year. It's lyrical without being too MFA, and it pulls the reader along even when the reader has no freaking idea what's happening.

Which is, unfortunately, how I spent most of Universal Harvester, which reads more like three novellas strung together with a common character and a common discussion of time and how it inexorably harvests from people, industries and locations alike. All of these pieces are interesting in and of themselves, but do they work together as a complete novel? To the extent "complete" implies a plot that resolves all, or at least most, of the reader's questions, then no, they don't.

What this book is not is a creepy horrorish mystery about home movies spliced into rentals. Certainly, the first part of UH reads that way, but the horror quickly dissipates while the mystery never really does. With a one- to two-star plot and five-star writing, I split the difference and give it three stars. I liked reading it, even if I didn't like feeling like I was tricked into doing so.

Will do. Thanks!

Thanks again.

39. by George Saunders
Finish date: June 10, 2017
Genre: Historical Fiction, Supernatural
Rating: A-
Review: This is a fascinating book, written in a style that I struggle to explain. In many ways, it's like a screenplay, where the characters talk to the audience directly without authorial interference. In other ways, it's somewhat epistolary, as the characters themselves also describe the action. The result is that Saunders essentially removes himself from the novel, even as his evocative prose suffuses each of the characters. Meanwhile, Saunders takes the rare step of documenting his historical fiction by quoting liberally from primary and secondary sources – but also in a way you won't find anywhere else, as he simply strings together quotes from the various sources, letting the multitude of voices and perspectives tell their own tragic, sometimes conflicting story.

All told, the effect is striking, making Lincoln in the Bardo one of the most memorable books I've ever read. Its topic is haunting – literally! – as Abraham Lincoln grapples with the death of his son, while the spirits of those who have died grapple with their individual and collective inability to move on to the next phase, stuck instead in a kind of half-life in which they deny their own reality but must rally together to save Willie Lincoln from sharing their fate.

At times bizarre, at others remarkable, this is a book that well deserves its 2017 hype, even as I suspect its unique style might render it unfinishable for others.

40. by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Finish date: June 14, 2017
Genre: Classics, Children's
Rating: A
Review: This classic children's novel is a slow build, but well worth the effort to read it. A perfect glimpse on how one remarkable girl responds to unthinkable adversity. In a world filled with vapidity and superficiality, we need more writers like Frances Hodgson Burnett, who was a century ahead of her time in subverting the princess trope and making clear that bravery, kindness and generosity are far more valuable than family connections or wealth. The end wraps up a bit too neat, but so what? This is essentially a fairy tale of the best kind, one that more children should be reading.

41. by Joe Abercrombie
Finish date: June 21, 2017
Genre: Fantasy (Grimdark)
Rating: A
Review: "The earth holds no rewards but darkness."

If you're looking for a good one-sentence summary of the predominant philosophy undergirding Joe Abercrombie's consistently, insistently dark high fantasy, that piece of internal monologue from one of the main characters of Best Served Cold might fit the bill.

Abercrombie plays with the limits of nihilism. How far can a protagonist go before you stop rooting for him (or her, in this case)? The answer, as it turns out, is quite far. How far can a protagonist turn toward the dark before you realize they're not coming back to the light? Again, quite far. In Best Served Cold, Abercrombie manages in 650 pages what "Breaking Bad" told us in five seasons: Provide a likable enough person with a reasonable enough motive, and the audience will follow them to hell and back – assuming there's a way back.

It doesn't hurt that Abercrombie is a gifted writer with a knack for world building, battle planning and character development. Best Served Cold follows Monza Moscatto through seven cities in Styria as she seeks revenge on the seven men who ruined her life. Along the way, she collects a team of misfits and criminals who may help her – or may kill her – or both.

What keeps Abercrombie from straying too far into pure nihilism, his work from devolving into juvenile gross-out triviality, is that he seems to truly be letting his characters wrestle with the implications of what they're doing. Is vengeance truly the answer? Is war inevitable? Once it comes, can you rise above the dehumanization it fosters? These are timeless – and timely – questions, and while it's not clear that Abercrombie has the answers, he provides compelling evidence that perhaps the earth holds some rewards besides darkness, after all.

42. by Franz Kafka
Finish date: June 27, 2017
Genre: Classics, short stories, horror
Rating: A
Review: Warning: overt politics ahead.

I've been reading through classic dystopian and postapocalyptic fiction this year, using it as one of several ways to process the unexpected and disorienting election of a narcissistic bully who espouses blatant bigotry as president of the United States. Kafka was not intended to be part of that series of books, but as it turns out, reading "The Metamorphosis" on a whim is fully in keeping with that theme.

Because, frankly, who could better capture the feelings of alienation, stupefaction, disgust and despair that greeted a sizable portion, even plurality, of the country upon realizing Donald Trump would be our next president? What better metaphor for this situation than Gregor Samsa waking up one morning and realizing he has been turned into a hideous bug (or insect, or vermin, depending how you take your German)?

It's easy to see why "The Metamorphosis" has retained its power after a century. Kafka wrote a story that veers from horrific to hilarious, often on the same page, while describing a feeling of alienation that we all have experienced – if not through politics, than through the mere act of living and breathing in a complex, often disorienting world. We have all felt like Gregor Samsa and tried to ineffectually go through our routines regardless. We have all felt like his family and tried to cope with ghastly scenarios we are not equipped to handle.

In some ways, Kafka spoke to me more than Orwell or Huxley or Golding. He doesn't grope for explanations, he doesn't analyze why this situation exists. he doesn't provide any toeholds for us to climb over the plot and soothe ourselves that it couldn't happen here and now. "The Metamorphosis" is purely emotion and reaction. It forces us to reflect rather than deflect: When faced with a disturbing new reality, how do we respond?

I am going to have to reread that book.

43. by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar
Finish date: June 30, 2017
Genre: Novella, Historical Fiction, Supernatural
Rating: C+
Review: This novella apparently took about a month to write, and I'd say it shows. It's breezy, not a bad read, mostly enjoyable, and contains some classic King elements, especially since it takes place in his old haunt of Castle Rock. Is it worth its own hardcover publication, as opposed to being an entry in a larger collection? I'd say not. As a novella, it sits in the awkward space of being long enough to start developing character and plot – but not long enough to really finish the job. King has written some stellar novellas in his career, and while I enjoyed reading this one, it's ultimately pretty forgettable.

JULY
44. by C.S. Lewis
Finish date: July 3, 2017
Genre: Fantasy, Children's
Rating: A+
Review: I go back and forth between Silver Chair and Magician's Nephew as the best books of the Narnia series, typically depending on whichever I've read most recently, so right now I'm back to giving it to this, the fourth (not the sixth) book. Lewis' allegories are particularly strong, while his world-building is probably as good as at any point in the series.

45. by Walter Rauschenbusch (no photo)
Finish date: July 6, 2017
Genre: Classics, Theology, Politics, History
Rating: A
Review: If any Christian of the 20th century was a prophet, it was Walter Rauschenbusch, the man who provided the intellectual and theological backbone of the social gospel movement and liberal mainline Protestantism – two forces whose influence stretched from the Progressive Movement to the New Deal to the Great Society and all the way into the civil rights movement, but who saw their stars pale behind the bright glow of the conservative evangelical resurgence of the 1980s.

Rauschenbusch, speaking at the end of the Gilded Age, saw inequality and oppression of the poor not just as political or economic problems that indicted American society, but as religious ones that indicted the American church. Looking back from our own Second Gilded Age, his message seems more timely than ever: The church, he writes, has been captured by individualism in the form of free-market ideology on the one hand and evangelical apocalypticism on the other. As a result, it has lost the message of the Old Testament prophets and buried the vision of Jesus. The way forward is to regain a vision of collective life – one in which Christians fight for humanity as a whole and seek the redemption of society, not just individuals, from the sins of oppression, covetousness, materialism and consumerism and the systems that foster them.

Certainly, there are elements of Christianity and the Social Crisis that show their age. Rauschenbusch wrote a decade before the American entry into World War I; he died before the Great Depression, World War II or the nuclear arms race shattered the optimism of the Progressive and social gospel movements. As a result, he evinces a faith in the forward progress of humanity that is no longer in vogue. His defense of socialism would put even the staunchest Jacobin contributor to shame, and he has no complaints with the basic tenets of communism as it was understood at that time, 10 years before the Bolshevik Revolution collapsed into totalitarianism and horror.

That said, his call to the church to critique and reform the rapacious instincts of capitalism in the interest of serving the kingdom of God is one the church needs to hear today. As the decades pass and our society forgets the disasters that led to the welfare state and strong government oversight of banks and corporations, Rauschenbusch's voice becomes increasingly relevant.

Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century intersperses Rauschenbusch's original texts with essays by well known theologians and philosophers of our own day. It was published in 2007, the centennial of the original work – and, coincidentally, the year before the Great Recession proved yet again the need for the reforms Rauschenbusch was advocating. The essays do a good job of summarizing Rauschenbusch's arguments (he can get a little dense, especially since writing styles have moved on a bit over the past century), while also updating and critiquing them in the light of both the advances and disasters of the 20th century.

This work is a classic of Christian history and deserves to be better known and wider read than it is.

46. by Alexandre Dumas
Finish date: July 11, 2017
Genre: Classics, Adventure
Rating: A
Review: It's not a perfect novel, but wow, The Count of Monte Cristo is beautiful, compelling and well worth investing the (vast amounts of) time it takes to read – or listen to, in this case. Dumas explores the depths of suffering, hope, vengeance, love, justice, and although he sometimes puts on the bows a bit too neat, he creates an incredible vehicle with which to explore them. I'll definitely be reading this again – actually reading next time – because this is a book that can only improve with additional visits.

47. by Jeanne Birdsall
Finish date: July 4, 2017
Genre: Children's, Adventure
Rating: A+
Review: By a stroke of luck, I happened to be in the car for about 80 percent of the time this wonderfully whimsical audiobook was playing in our car, and now I very much wish I had grown up a Penderwick. Birdsall creates such realistic and likable characters and sends them on such fun and heartwarming adventures that you can't help but fall in love with the whole lot of them. In our case, Susan Denaker's narration was also a treat, and all of us – from ages 5 to 35 – didn't want the story to end.

all good

48. by J.K. Rowling
Finish date: July 14, 2017
Genre: Children's, Fantasy
Rating: A+
Review: Every time I read this book, it gets better and better. This time was special because I read it aloud to our kids, introducing them to J.K. Rowling's rich and wonderful story. And so what if I nearly teared up when Hermione Granger walks into the train car, or when Harry looks into the Mirror of Erised, or when Harry, Ron and Hermione become true friends for the first time? Other books in the series are better written, more complex and more exciting, but this is where it all starts. You only get introduced to Harry Potter one time, and it's in this book, which maybe makes it the best of them all.

49. by Fiona Barton
Finish date: July 15, 2017
Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Rating: B-
Review: A slow starter that turned into a page turner about halfway through. Construction crews tearing down old housing for new development find the decades-old skeleton of an infant, upending the lives of three women who must grapple with the fallout. I enjoyed reading this, and I especially enjoyed, as a former journalist, that the profession was portrayed accurately (the author being a journalist probably helps a bit). There were a few quirks that kept pulling me out of the story (why does everyone address each other by name so often?), but overall it's a gripping read with a nice twist at the end.

50. by Brad Ricca
Finish date: July 17, 2017
Genre: History, True Crime
Rating: C-
Review: Grace Humiston was for a time known as "Mrs. Sherlock Holmes," a detective who had risen to near the top of the U.S. Department of Justice in the early 1900s, shone light on slavery rings and was a near-constant newspaper presence as she shamed the NYPD in her resolution of the nationally notorious disappearance of a young woman from the streets of Manhattan. Brad Ricca here dives deep in telling her story – too deep at times, as he spends pages faithfully transcribing tangentially related details and conversations – and it's a story well worth telling. Unfortunately, a taut and impressive first half devolves into a confusing and frustrating read.

There's a lot of good stuff here, but the overall effect was to make me wish it had been placed in the service of a voice that was more self-assured, and more meticulous. The confidence to make educated guesses, with the attention to the right kinds of detail that would have aided the reader, would have made Mrs. Sherlock Holmes a really terrific book.

51. by Daniel Kehlmann
Finish date: July 18, 2017
Genre: Horror
Rating: A
Review: Wow, this short story really packs a punch. A screenwriter and his family head to the mountains for a family getaway so he can finish his script, and ... well, there's isolation, there's marital strife, there's bad dreams, there's a baby monitor, and you can probably guess the rest. I was surprised and pleased at how Lovecraftian it felt, despite being a thoroughly modern horror story in tone and scope. A fun read for the back porch at sunrise – less fun in a dark room at midnight!

Congratulations on getting to 50 books. You have had some good books.

Helga wrote: "Congratulations on getting to 50 books. You have had some good books."

Thanks, Helga! It was a slow start to the year, quality-wise, but thankfully it picked up.

Helga wrote: "Congratulations on getting to 50 books. You have had some good books."

Let me add my congratulations. Getting to 50 is a real accomplishment.

Congratulations Paul, and I concur with Helga and Vicki - great job!

Thanks, everyone! I didn't even realize it was happening – or that it was that big a deal – until you all started mentioning it.

52. by Roald Dahl
Finish date: July 18, 2017
Genre: Children's
Rating: B
Review: My middle daughter recommended I read this book, and I can see why. The jumble of entertaining adjectives makes this great fun for an imaginative 7-year-old – and a less imaginative 35-year-old. The end was a little abrupt, but overall this is classic Dahl: fun, witty and a little dangerous.

53. by Robert Meyers (no photo)
Finish date: July 19, 2017
Genre: Theology, American Religion
Rating: C
Review: The "official" media organs among Churches of Christ in the 1960s told a consistent story: the group was becoming increasingly suburban, and it was growing, collecting converts and expanding into bigger and better church buildings while its universities grew into increasingly prestigious institutes of higher education.

But others disagreed, and although their opinions and experiences were shut out of the journals, pulpits and lectures that created the doctrinal and ecclesial consensus within Churches of Christ, they refused to be silenced. The result was Voices of Concern, a snapshot of a fundamentalist group that was, unbeknownst to its own leaders, on the precipice of fracturing over issues like civil rights, evolution, grace and the Holy Spirit. In this collection, a number of men and women describe why they left Churches of Christ. The reasons tend to walk the same paths: frustration with the group's sectarianism, anti-intellectualism, legalism and political conservatism – all of it cloaked in the language of biblicism.

As a historical document, this book is incredibly valuable. It is a rare example of dissenting voices breaking through an overwhelming consensus that had been enforced by powerful leaders for decades, and several essays pull no punches in criticizing the movement's failure to adequately engage with its racism and tendency to centralize power in an informal and unaccountable system all too easy to abuse.

As a reading experience, it is probably five or six essays too long. Several essentially say the same thing with only the details and writing styles providing any variety. Others seem to be trying too hard to tell their story in a unique or compelling way. But the several essayists who hit home provide critiques that continue to resonate for anyone who has experienced life within a sectarian religious tradition.

Overall, you probably wouldn't get much out of it if you weren't already familiar with the history and practices of a cappella Churches of Christ. But if you are, then this is worth a skim or two if you happen to run across it.

54. by Chris Hayes (no photo)
Finish date: July 21, 2017
Genre: Politics, Race, History
Rating: A
Review: On p. 210 of his excellent and insightful A Colony in a Nation, Chris Hayes asks the following series of questions that underlie arguments he makes throughout the book:

Imagine a person commits a crime, perhaps even a violent crime, against you. Is this person a human being? A neighbor, a fellow citizen? What do we as a society owe that person? Could he be someone you know and love in the throes of addiction? Or is he a member of a group you'll never encounter again? What dignity is due the perpetrator and the potential perpetrator? Do you and the perpetrator belong to the same country? This is the question before us. The question we've answered wrongly for too long.

Of course, the notion that Americans live in two different, largely monochromatic nations is not particularly new. But Hayes' argument goes a step beyond: that those nations can aptly be considered in the context of colonization – that white America is The Nation and black America is The Colony, and the former uses the power of the state to keep itself safe from, and thereby fomenting, the disorder of the latter.

For a TV pundit, Hayes is a good writer. He has a reasonable, conversational style that connects with the reader, and he writes in a way that should be able to engage those who disagree with him; he's not overly polemical, in other words. He brings first-hand experiences from reporting in Ferguson and Baltimore that lend weight to his arguments and provide him a measure of empathy for those with whom he disagrees.

There are plenty of incredible works about race and poverty that have been written in recent years, from a variety of perspectives – personal, sociological, journalistic, political. If I were to recommend a book on the subject to someone who believes that "All Lives Matter" and is mystified, if not fearful or angry, about the forces roiling our nation, I'd start with this one.

You are making great progress - you might want to take out one of the blank lines before the quote and a couple after it.

55. by Suzanne G. Farnham (no photo), et al.
Finish date: July 26, 2017
Genre: Ministry, Theology, Christian Living
Rating: B-
Review: This short book discusses the call of God to ministry and how to discern it. It would be easy for a book like this to overpromise by providing "10 easy steps" or "5 quick ways." Thankfully, it avoids this. Over and over, statements about how to recognize the call of God are qualified with caveats and cautions, to the point where I was left wondering if there's really any way to discern such a subjective thing. No doubt this is why the authors advocate so strongly for a community approach, something that might sound odd to an American religion that embraces individualism –but which is more in keeping with the tradition of the church. Well worth reading if you're struggling with whether God is calling you to ministry, ordained or otherwise.

56. by Elif Batuman
Finish date: July 29, 2017
Genre: Coming of Age, MFA
Rating: F
Review: I suppose it's appropriate that one of the recurring themes in Elif Batuman's The Idiot is the sensation of being trapped – in conversation, in a situation, in a location. Because about two-thirds of the way through this frustrating and tedious novel, I realized I too was trapped – too curious to simply jettison the story, all too aware that the plot was heading into ever more stagnant territory. In the end, I couldn't help but feel that the title, although ostensibly a reference to the Dostoyevsky classic, was actually referring to me.

It wasn't all bad. The first third of the book was actually pretty great, whether because of my own nostalgia for my freshman year of college (or maybe my nostalgia for Rory Gilmore's freshman year of college) or because Batuman successfully blended a dry wit with a quirky character to create what appeared to be a winning tale of a girl coming of age and falling in love. Instead, Selin's relationship with Ivan grows, she becomes duller and so does the story.

To be honest, the conceit is somewhat realistic: Selin has a male friend who is much more interesting and more suited for her, but she can't help obsessing over the self-absorbed and off-putting older guy, eventually traveling to Hungary to teach English so she can see him on the weekends. But once the story left Harvard, all traces of what made me get invested in it disappeared, and I was left slogging through a swamp of mundane details and dull conversations, each step forward making me wish I had closed the book when I had the chance. By the end, I had progressed to actively hating everyone in the book yet I was still forcing myself to get to the end: the idiot, indeed.

Paul, (regarding the Idiot) I was looking at some reviews of this book and thought perhaps I 'll try later.Now after seing your opinion of it, may be its best to wait till she matures a bit more. I know how frustrating it is to find oneself in a shallow story when expecting to sail away in a breeze. hope your next reading will leave you in high spirits. Thank you for this review.

Congratulations on having read 50 books and more :)

You're welcome, Ayse! Maybe you or other folks would love it, but it definitely wasn't for me – or at least, not after the first 100 pages or so.

Thanks, Luci! :-)