Joyland

by Stephen King

I can always count on Stephen King to get me out of a dry spot in reading. School has been keeping me really busy since I added a class this semester, I'm sinking in short and reflective essay grading and not having as much fun reading time... one bummer about my job. That's why I love King's writing style, he can just start the story and go, and even if it's not one of his best, his writing is so engaging you just zip right through the book, no matter how long.

Joyland is a bit of a side step from the King novels of late. First off, it is a new genre for him, Hard Case Crime. In addition, it is relatively short, considering his typical tomes this one is only about 300 pages. Even so, he fully develops each character, immerses you into the culture (this time a carnival), he gives sufficient background, he keeps the mystery alive and he keeps it moving.

The story is about a college student who spends a summer working the carnival in North (South?) Carolina, which happens to have a haunted house ride. The catch is that the house is actually haunted by a young girl whose boyfriend murdered her while riding through. Devin decides to solve the mystery and find the murderer, who came as a complete surprise.

The good: it's Stephen King.... what else do I need to say?
The not so: heavy on the "carny" stuff, the ghost, mystery and murder seemed a little sidelined by the Devin story.

I'm not real familiar with Hard Case Crime so I can't judge whether this book would be a good portrayal, but I can say it was pretty true to what SK does best, which is tell a story. And while it's not his best, it's a good read. 

Child 44

by Tom Rob Smith

This book has been on my "to-read" list for a few years, when it was listed as candidate for the Man Booker Prize. The novel is a suspense/thriller set in Stalin era Soviet Union. The story boils down to this: one of the top Soviet MGB officers determines there is a serial child-killer on the loose, but the Soviet State refuses to accept this premise, so Leo Demidov is forced to find this madman alone. As he follows the trail of the murderer, he is haunted by Child 44, who, as one of the victims, happens to be the son of a colleague.

Here is my take: the book focuses more on the communist state than developing a suspense. While many a gruesome detail is included in the story, I found little mystery as to the culprit, although other reviewers seemed surprised by the ending. I'm also not sure how accurate his depiction of the Soviet State is because several of the scenarios seem implausible within a socialist regime. For an example, one side story involves Leo's wife and the question of her loyalty to both her husband and the State. Leo's superior tells him to investigate her, which seems rather unlikely that they would leave that to her husband.... but you never know. There is an unexpected twist toward the end of the book, but it is somewhat irrelevant, only in that it places the hero in a moral conundrum.

Again I have found myself unwittingly reading the first novel in a series. Fortunately, this was fine standing alone because I didn't love it enough to read two more. However, if you like suspense with a little history, you might enjoy these books. 

They Thought They Were Free

by Milton Mayer

I read this book on a recommendation from my little bro, who is a very selective reader, in particular of economic, historical and politically timely materials. They Thought They Were Free was written by a Jewish American who moved his family to a small German town shortly after WWII and began integrating himself into the society conducting interviews with what he calls the "average German citizen." His idea was to gain an understanding of just how Hitler was able to lead an entire nation down such a dark path. I found the information compelling and a bit troublesome given some of the attitudes and perspectives of these ten men and reflecting on the state of America at this time. The book made me think.

The best way to give an idea of this book is to share some ideas and quotes from it:

Implementing the Nazi regime wasn't about convincing 40 million Germans, it was about convincing 1 million. The real lives, that real people live in a real community have nothing to do with Hitler (or Roosevelt) or with what they are doing. Man doesn't meet State very often.

All Germany had to do for Nazism to succeed was nothing. It's actual resistance that worries tyrants.

Following Nazism was a revulsion of the people against all the haggling of politics, against Communism and the Weimar Republic. When Hitler came forward, the attitude of the people regarding their politicians was, "throw them all out!" The German people felt like spectators of politicians in races they believed were fixed and they wanted radical change. They wanted to purify Germany and were looking for a leader representative of the common man.

The atrocities of Nazism came step by step, not all at once. When step C came, it wasn't so much worse than step B, so no one made a fuss. But eventually people realized they were accepting things, which wouldn't have been tolerated five years earlier, except then it was too late to fight.

For me the main insights in the book came within the first half, the second part becomes more of a statement on the German National Character and a bit more dry. This book gives an interesting perspective on Germany prior to WWII. So often we hear only the horrible after effects, but fail to consider how it all came about. Several years ago I read The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family, which also comes from a similar perspective. It is a great book about five sisters whose paths take them on drastically different life courses. It was the first book I'd ever read that gave a somewhat sympathetic perspective of the German people between Wars. Prior to that I had never considered what was going on in the lives of the average German citizen and how Hitler's initial actions might have been beneficial for them. 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

by Neil Gaiman

Another genre that I seldom venture into is fantasy, but here it is and "adult fantasy" no less, which I will say right off did not work for me. I don't think it's because I am too practical, since I did enjoy the Potter series and Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and Watership Down. I think it was just that the fantasy in this book was so puzzling and pointless. The Ocean at the End of the Lane had potential, it was an interesting idea, but for me it lacked development and focus, and the true climax of the story kinda went by without much to-do.

In this story an adult male narrator is recalling a traumatic event from his childhood in which he accidentally becomes host to a "varmint" who travels back into our world. As it turns out, this varmint looks like a normal and nice person to everyone around him except for the three ladies who live at the end of the lane. The varmint causes chaos in the boy's world and he needs the help of these women to be set free. I did like the writing style in the last quarter of the book, an intermingling of some classic literature with this boy's current circumstance and the parallels between them, but otherwise it was just too jumpy and confusing. I also found some of the situations in the story bizarre and disturbing.

I haven't read any of Gaiman's previous books, but if you are a fan you'd probably like this since he claims it is his favorite. I also have a limited scope on fantasy, so maybe for you readers too.

Mistress of the Art of Death

by Ariana Franklin

Yes, I stumbled into another series, but at least this time from the beginning. In the midst of the second crusades, Cambridge England finds itself in a battle of another kind, to find who is killing their children. When four bodies turn up badly mutilated, King Henry Plantagenet solicits assistance from Salerno's medical school to investigate. What they get is the Mistress of the Art of Death, Adelia Aguilar, one of the only women trained as a doctor, let alone an investigator of the dead. As a mystery goes this is a pretty good story and although you might figure out the culprit ahead of time, there are some unexpected twists to throw you off. Up until the time when the killer is discovered I liked the book, but after that it started slipping. Without spoiling, I just could not accept that Adelia's defense in that pit stopped this crusader of a madman. The other thing that put me off was the little romance thrown in, which seemed out of line for the character and took the story a bit off course.

If you're a fan of historical fiction I wouldn't put too much stock in Franklin's information. Much of the time I questioned its validity particularly relating to medical facts and sometimes doubted attitudes and actions of characters. I've been known to really berate books for attributing details to times in which they don't belong, but for some reason I wasn't as bothered by these... maybe because I was listening to it and not reading?  I might even go so far as to read the next one, but it'll be a while.

The Bone Orchard

by Daniel Judson

I'm not sure how I started reading "book 2 in the Gin Palace trilogy" which was clearly added as a subtitle, but it wasn't until about a third of the way through when I realized the book was referring to things of which I knew nothing, but it assumed I was fully aware. By that time I was already in the midst of the action so I just kept on reading. In hindsight, what I missed in book one didn't make too much difference.

For me, reading The Bone Orchard was like reading a James Bond script, heavy on action, light on substance. This is very much crime fiction noir with the cynical and unlikeable characters and the dark and seedy backdrop. The main character, "Mac" joins up with the small town's heavy in an effort to get his friend out of trouble. Just as in all Bond movies, you know from the start how it ends, which eliminates the suspense and the mystery. And just as in all Bond movies there are run-ins and fights galore. This book lives up to that as well. The bigger problem for me was that each fight was literally reading a blow-by-blow that went on for pages, which made this more like a movie script than a novel.

If you're a Raymond Chandler fan and enjoy hard boiled crime you would probably like this series and you might like to start with book 1. 

The Light Between Oceans

by ML Stedman

It's easy for me to think I'd always do the right thing in the face of a tough decision. I tend to be a rule follower and I want others to follow the rules or face the consequences of not doing so, but sometimes what's right isn't always clear and some situations call for rule breaking. The Light Between Oceans presents a dilemma in which doing the right thing will hurt someone but doing the wrong thing will hurt someone else; so who do you choose to hurt?

The reader's digest version of the controversy is over keeping an infant who was found drifting in a boat with a dead body. Tom Sherbourne and his wife have tried repeatedly to have a child but instead have suffered repeated miscarriages and still births, now this baby seems like an answer to prayers, but where did she come from?

For those of you who like a good catch-22, you should enjoy this book. It is well written and believable, if not a bit of a downer, but would provide for a lively book club discussion. In fact, my kids and I had a good debate over the subject on our return from St.L. I was a little surprised that my daughter expressed such a strong opinion and her viewpoint and reasoning was very sound. The problem for me in these type of books is that there is no good answer. I can see both sides of the coin and either heads or tails leads to pain.