Category: books

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

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American Dirt is a 2020 novel by American author Jeanine Cummins, about the ordeal of a Mexican woman who had to leave behind her life and escape as an undocumented immigrant to the United States with her son.

Lydia and her eight-year-old son Luca are the only survivors of the backyard barbecue massacre of her family by a drug cartel.

Her husband had been a journalist who was reporting the crimes.

Mother and son become two of the countless undocumented immigrants from Latin America who undertake the dangerous journey to the United States.

American Dirt debuted on New York Times best sellers list as the #1 on the list for the week of February 9, 2020.

The novel has been optioned for a film adaptation.

Oprah loved the book.  I’d agree.

But many, especially Mexican writers, accused the author (American, born in Spain) of exploitation and inaccuracy in her portrayals of both Mexico and the migrant experience.  A planned book tour was cancelled.

Personally, the book was insightful for me.  It’s the closest I’ve ever come to appreciating the experience of a migrant trying to cross the Mexican border illegally.

It’s fiction.  Not reality.  I understand that.

Amazon

 

 

 

Rather Be the Devil by Ian Rankin

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Rather Be the Devil (2016) is the 21st instalment in the Inspector Rebus series of crime novels.

I recall thinking that Exit Music (2007) was intended to be the Rebus exit.  Seemed Siobhan Clarke would be the successor.

In this book — as good as any of the previous —  ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty makes a comeback.

It’s almost believable how Rankin put together a plot to have Fox and Clarke and Rebus working together again.  Even though Rebus is sick and has to often run home to take care of his mutt.

It’s difficult for Rankin to permanently retire Rebus. They’re both from Cardenden, both live in the south side, both love vinyl, both drink in the Oxford Bar.

Big Ger Cafferty was living in Rankin’s current residence in Merchiston.

To write Rankin isolates himself in a remote peninsula called Black Isle.  No TV.  No phone network. 

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The Cypress House by Michael Koryta

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Arlen Wagner can tell when people face imminent death.  He’s a is a World War I veteran trying to get by during the Great Depression by working for one of the government coservation projects.

He’s traveling with 19-year-old Paul Brickhill, an interesting character.

They get unexpectedly stranded at the Cypress House–an isolated Gulf Coast boarding house run by the beautiful Rebecca Cady–directly in the path of an approaching hurricane.

I wouldn’t say this is Koryta’s best.  And it’s quite different.

Still, I enjoyed it. Koryta is one of the best writers working today.

Amazon

The Wife Between Us (2018)

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by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen.

The Wife Between Us worked for me.  I enjoyed it, surprised by the plot twists.

Not everyone agrees.  And it is a little complicated to follow.

Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners bought the film rights so you could wait for the movie.

Richard seems the attentive, concerned husband at the start.  This is the story of the women in his life.

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

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Erik Larson is a non-fiction author.

I loved The Devil in the White City (2003), his book on the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Larson’s 2020 book sounded interesting too.  So I borrowed Splendid and the Vile from the library.

It’s a new look at Churchill as war Prime Minister from the point of view of his family and friends.   His 18-year-old daughter, for example, partying in London during the Blitz.

About 43,000 civilians were killed in Nazi bombings.  But they stayed the course.  Not many in London wanted to surrender.

Interesting anecdotes are included.   Rudolf Hess flying to Scotland, for example.

I was intrigued by the story of Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt‘s closest advisor on foreign policy during World War II.

One of the architects of the New Deal, Hopkins also supervised the $50 billion Lend Lease program of military aid to the Allies.

In fact, you could argue that Hopkins was essential is starting to bring the USA into the war.

After Churchill himself, I enjoyed most stories of Lord Beaverbrook, William Maxwell Aitken, Churchill’s friend and frenemy.   What a life!

The Splendid and the Vile

A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. …

For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end.

Churchill was not at all perfect. Yet he was the perfect choice for wartime Prime Minister facing impossible odds.

He would have been excellent, for example, at handling the COVID-19 pandemic.

Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.”  His many eccentricities were an advantage.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

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Brit Bennett can write.

She studied at Stanford, University of Michigan, and Oxford.

The Vanishing Half was #1 on the New York Times best-seller list June 2020.

But I read it as recommended for privileged white people trying to better understand the African American experience.

#BlackLivesMatter

Spanning nearly half a century, from the 1940s to the 1990s, the novel focuses on twin sisters, Desiree and Stella Vignes, who were raised in Mallard, Louisiana, a (fictional) small town conceived of by their great-great-great grandfather — after being freed by the father who once owned him — as an exclusive place for light-skinned blacks like him.

“In Mallard, nobody married dark,” Bennett writes starkly.

Over time, its prejudices deepened as its population became lighter and lighter, “like a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream.” The twins, with their “creamy skin, hazel eyes, wavy hair,” would have delighted the town’s founder.

Yet fair skin did not save their father, whose vicious lynching by a gang of white men marks the girls irrevocably.

Nor did it save their mother from an impoverished existence cleaning for rich white people in a neighboring town, and it won’t save the twins from an equally constricted life if they stay in Mallard.

We learn in the first few pages that at 16, Desiree and Stella ran off to New Orleans, two hours away, but “after a year, the twins scattered, their lives splitting as evenly as their shared egg.

Stella became white and Desiree married the darkest man she could find.” …

‘The Vanishing Half’ Counts The Terrible Costs Of Bigotry And Secrecy

The Prophet by Michael Koryta

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Excellent.

I despise the unhealthy over-attention garnered by American High School Football … yet loved Friday Night Lights.

I love this 2015 book too.

Working my way through Koryta’s books, I’m concluding that his greatest strengths of many are plotting and bad guys.

Kent Austin is the beloved coach of the local high school football team, a religious man and hero in the community. After years of near misses, Kent’s team has a shot at the state championship, a welcome point of pride in a town that has had its share of hardships.

Just before playoffs begin, the town and the team are thrown into shock when horrifically, impossibly, another teenage girl is found murdered. As details emerge that connect the crime to the Austin brothers, the two must confront their buried rage and grief-and unite to stop a killer. …

Amazon

The Oppenheimer Alternative by Robert J. Sawyer

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I bought The Oppenheimer Alternative on Audible.

It’s a reimagining of the lives of those who developed the first atomic bomb.

Love the reading by Josh Bloomberg.. He’s a master of the many accents:

J. Robert Oppenheimer (American non-observant Jewish parents)
Albert Einstein (German Jew)
Richard Feynman (American atheist, but both parents were from Jewish families)
Edward Teller (Hungarian Jew)
Leo Szilard (Hungarian Jew)
Enrico Fermi (Italian … but with a Jewish wife)

The book was published June 15, 2020 for the 75th anniversaries of the Trinity explosion on June 16th.

It’s quite different than the many other excellent Robert J. Sawyer books.  But I really enjoyed it.

While J. Robert Oppenheimer and his Manhattan Project team struggle to develop the A-bomb, Edward Teller wants something even more devastating: a weapon based on nuclear fusion – the mechanism that powers the sun. But Teller’s research leads to a terrifying discovery: by the year 2030, the sun will eject its outermost layer, destroying the entire inner solar system – including Earth.

After the war ends, Oppenheimer’s physicists combine forces with Albert Einstein, computing pioneer John von Neumann, and rocket designer Wernher von Braun – the greatest scientific geniuses from the last century racing against time to save our future.

Sawyer feels neither bomb needed be dropped on Japanese citizens.  Especially the second.

Click PLAY or watch an interview with the author on YouTube.

Amazon

The Order by Daniel Silva

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Book published July 14, 2020.

The new novel featuring legendary Israeli spy master Gabriel Allon is as good as any of the past 19 thrillers.

Silva was raised as a Catholic. Converted to Judaism, the religion of his wife.

This one takes place in the few short days between the funeral of a Pope. And the conclave to elect the next.

A shadowy Catholic society with ties to the European far right, the Order is plotting to seize control of the papacy. And it is only the beginning. …

I learned more about the history of Antisemitism in Christianity.

Seems this book hit a nerve with Trumpers. 😀 There are all kinds of negative reviews online. I suspect most have not read the book as it had only been out a few days as they posted. 

I highly recommend The Order. The Gabriel Allon books are some of my favourites.

I only wish they’d hurry up and start filming a TV series based on the character.

The Secret Place by Tana French

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I’m hooked on Tana French, an excellent author of crime fiction. Skilled and original.

On the other hand, this is the second Tana French book that I didn’t finish.

It mostly takes place at a rich girl’s boarding school in Dublin. It follows the inane thinking and dialogue of eight teenage girls, members of rival cliques.  I finally got fed up listening to these teens.

Too bad as I really like her character detective Stephen Moran who was also in  Faithful Place (2010).