What I'll Be Reading This Summer: A Selective List

Given the pace at which I consume books, it would be pretty difficult to come up with a comprehensive list of summer reading. But I've put together a kind of menu, of sorts, made up of books I'd like to read or re-read between now and Labor Day, for my amusement as much as your entertainment. We'll see how well I do on this!

APPETIZERS:

• Re-reading The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier; I remember it as one of my favorites of her books, and reading Daphne by Justine Picardie prompted me to re-read at least one of the author's books.
• Miss New India by Bharati Mukherjee, of which I received an advance copy via Amazon's Vine program, looks like an interesting fictional glimpse into the phenomenon of the new India.
• Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason, is a book that I've started reading only to put down and forget about too often: time to do something about this!
• I've also had an advance review copy of The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt sitting here far too long; time for me to read it!
• The Haves and the Have-Nots by Branko Milanovic -- as the political campaign season starts to creak into gear, I thought it would be interesting to delve into the issue of the wealth gap.
• I need to see what all the fuss is about, so I'll be trying The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo, despite my fatigue with Scandi-crime.

MAIN COURSES:

• The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt isn't out yet, but I got an ARC at BookExpo, so I'll be able to read about famed bookhunter Poggio Bracciolini and the Renaissance. Already, I know this is a book I wish I'd written myself. Grrr.
• I don't usually read memoirs, but Read My Hips is written by a friend; I heard early excerpts from its predecessor four years ago in a Media Bistro class, so I need to see what Kim Brittingham has produced.
• The sequel to Lev Grossman's The Magicians, The Magician King, will be out in early August; I'm waiting to hear if I'll get an early copy from NetGalleys or if I'll have to tough it out until August but either way I'll want to read it.
• It's time for me to delve into Geraldine Brooks's novels; I'll be starting with March.
• After falling in love with Joseph Boyden's two novels, I'm looking forward to reading his short stories, Born With a Tooth.
• I'd like to read both of Patrick Leigh Fermor's books about Greece, Mani and Roumeli. I've just started on the former.
• Monica Ali has taken an odd step in her latest book, imagining Princess Diana as an American housewife. At least I think that's what's in store in Untold Story. 
• For my own research for my next book, I'll be tackling Edward Ball's The Genetic Strand, about DNA and family history.
• A Greater Journey by David McCullough recently landed on my doorstep. A neighbor wants to borrow it, so that's one prod; I'm also more interested in reading about Henry James than I am in reading more by him. Hmm....
• The Sandalwood Tree by Elle Newmark looks like an above-average historical novel. 
• I first heard about Oil on Water by Helon Habila on NPR and the interview grabbed my interest.
• William Boyd pulled a fast one on the publishing and art world with his fake biography, Nat Tate. I enjoy the author, so I'll have fun with this.

DESSERTS:

• Tides of War is a book that I ordered from the UK; Stella Tillyard is a fab biographer, focusing on the 18th century, so this novel by her set in the same period is a must-read.
• Colin Cotterill, author of the wonderful and whimsical Dr. Siri mysteries, takes a detour into Thailand in Killed at the Whim of a Hat.
• Being in a re-reading frame of mind, I think I'll go back and dabble in some books by Mary Stewart and Monica Dickens.
• Alexandra Robbins assures us that The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth; with the wave of Internet IPOs reaching dot.com bubble levels, I'll be interested in this!
• The Scarlet Contessa has been sitting here for nearly a year; unkind treatment of a novel by Jeanne Kalogridis of one of the most colorful women of the Italian Renaissance.
• Michael Dobbs has offered up another appealing-looking thriller in Old Enemies
• Paradise Lust by Brook Wilensky-Lanford is the story of a bizarre quest for the Garden of Eden
• Utter escapism: the new novel from Deanna Reynolds, The Dark Enquiry.
• Elizabeth Aston is also the novelist Elizabeth Pewsey, whose Mountjoy series of novels I adore and re-read often. Some more of them will be out on Kindle (hurrah!) and I'll be sampling some of her Austen sequels.

I'm sure a lot more will cross my path as the weeks go past, but as long as you keep tabs on this blog, you'll know what I've found worth reading, what is utterly unmissable, and what I think you should avoid at all costs! Happy Summer!

Mystery Monday: Crackling Suspense in Today's South Africa

I started to pay attention to Soho Press a year or two ago, when I realized they were generating (ahem, publishing) a disproportionate number of my favorite new mystery series, such as the earlier (and better) novels by Qiu Xialong and the gripping series set in the occupied West Bank by journalist Matt Beynon Rees. Not all have been hits -- I'm underwhelmed by Cara Black's books set in Paris, or Rebecca Pawel's potentially intriguing series set in Spain struggling to emerge from the Civil War -- but this series by Jassy Mackenzie definitely is, especially now that I've read Stolen Lives, the second book featuring private investigator Jade de Jong.

Starting with the opening scenes -- a raid on an English brothel that frees a handful of women from South Africa trafficked and sold into sexual slavery -- the suspense never lets up. Nor, amazingly, does Mackenzie drop the ball on character development or lose track of  single narrative thread in what turns out to be a very complex plot. While the raid in the UK warns the reader that this is going to be a novel dealing with some very ugly characters indeed, Jade doesn't initially realize what she is getting involved in when she agrees to serve as a bodyguard to Pamela Jordaan in Johannesburg, after the latter's husband vanishes from their home. But she soon realizes that Jordaan is keeping a lot from her -- and the revelations begin when a guy on a motorbike takes a pot shot at Pamela in the car on their way to locate Pamela's daughter. From then on, the action never lets up -- as Jade's ex boyfriend, police superintendent David Patel is brought in by the British to help with their investigation of the trafficking ring, Jade realizes that the Jordaans may also be involved in the case. The story moves from David and Jade (both of whom must cope with shattering news about family members) to the British police investigators, without ever flagging.

One warning: there is violence in this story, albeit not of the gratuitous kind. Mackenzie makes clear to the reader that crime isn't nice and domestic and tidy: that human trafficking is an ugly and violent business. Some of the characters meet gruesome ends, and while not quite ready to jump on a chair and cheer as if this were an action hero movie, I couldn't help feeling that there was often an element of justice to it all. Anyone who has read the mysteries and thrillers of Val McDermid, for instance, won't find the level of violence disturbing. But it's not for readers who prefer their mysteries on the cozy side.

Ultimately, only one conclusion is possible: that this is a great mystery novel, one that kept me guessing until the final pages, and a "Thumping Good Read" that would make an excellent addition to anyone's summer reading list. I've rated it 4.4 stars: a real page-turner...

What Happens When Readers Manipulate History

By now, after watching what passes for political discourse in the world today, I should be used to people confusing "casual" relationships with "causal" relationships -- you know, what happens when people comment on the fact that there are a lot of thunderstorms on election days (casual relationship) and moving on to concluding that election days provoke stormy weather (causal relationship). Still, the way in which historians and philosophers consciously or unconsciously manipulated and distorted whatever reality was originally contained in Cornelius Tacitus's short work on the German tribes during the early years of the first century A.C., as described in A Most Dangerous Book by Christopher Krebs, left me speechless -- well, nearly so.

When Tacitus was writing this relatively short work (dwarfed by his Annals and what survived of his history of the period from Nero to Dominitian), the German tribes occupying part of what is today Germany were among the few peoples to remain unconquered and uncolonized by Rome. Hence Tacitus's interest in crafting what seems to be the first ethnographic study to have survived. It's hard to imagine that he expected it to be used in the ways that it was: to demonstrate German religiosity, linguistic integrity, national identity -- and ultimately, and most perilously of all for the 20th century, Nazi ideologies revolving around an Aryan superman. Along the way, as the centuries passed, thinkers emphasized what was useful to their particular cause (sometimes mis-translating or ignoring facts contained in the original Latin that didn't support their theories) and glossing over inconvenient observations by Tacitus (such as the propensity for human sacrifices by the Germanes). As Krebs notes, ruefully, "he was repeatedly forced to say what in fact he had not" to satisfy patriotic stirrings and urges. Few of these philosopher-patriots seemed curious about the merits of the work itself -- had Tacitus ever visited Germany himself, or was he just recycling myths about 'barbarian' peoples and applying them to a region that had a bona fide history of fierce resistance? (Yes, Krebs refers often to the wiping out of Roman legions by warriors under the command of Arminius/Hermann in the forests of Teutoburg.)

The book canters through time, giving the reader a whirlwind portrait of humanist and Enlightenment thinkers, both German and others (there's an interesting look at Montesquieu here, and who knew that Jacob Grimm was a legal scholar as well as a re-teller of folk tales and myths?), who drew on Tacitus's work. For me, the most fascinating chapters were those that dealt with the rediscovery of a Tacitus manuscript in the early Renaissance (to his immense frustration, noted bookhunter Poggio Bracciolini never did manage to lay hands on it) and those later in the book in which Krebs examines the way in which a German "spirit" arose -- based in part on Tacitean analyses -- even before the creation of a pan-German state in 1871. Throughout, Krebs tosses one example of another of Tacitus-based political philosophies that abounded "in inconsistencies aided by inaccuracies" in the interpretation of the original document. As Krebs concludes, the Tacitus oeuvre was not born dangerous, "his readers made it so."

This was a lively and fascinating book, one that is based on tremendous scholarship but which wears that lightly. Krebs can appeal to the general reader, never forgetting that they may not have the depth of knowledge about Fichte or Martin Luther that he has acquired (much less of Tacitus himself). He also knows when to display a ready wit, commenting that an Enlightenment-era salon was one in which "the lack of morals was more readily condoned than the lack of wit or finesse." He is careful to show how discussion of cultural or national distinctiveness can tip over into a discussion of racial difference, and ultimately, racial superiority.

As we head into another presidential election in the United States -- one that will undoubtedly see candidates from all parties appealing to the primary documents crafted by the country's founding fathers -- I can't help wishing that those candidates and their speechwriters would turn to this book as a reminder that when you set out to mis-represent what is contained in a document of this kind, or try to ascribe to it powers that it doesn't contain, you set off down a dangerous path. Sadly, I suspect that I'm wishing in vain. A highly recommended book; 4.4 stars.

Two Novels in Search of the Right Label

There must be a word out there to describe these books, and others like them. Neither 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson nor The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison could be labeled "chick lit"; yet neither are they historical fiction. They are, most definitely, targeted at the women buying books (which, all the studies tell us, are the majority of book buyers) and probably wouldn't interest many male readers, and yet, while both rely heavily on romance for part of their appeal, don't fall squarely into the romance genre either. Both have aspirations beyond being genre fiction, and yet both fall well short of being literary fiction. In England, the moniker "Aga saga" is sometimes applied to these books, yet (a) neither is really a saga and (b) not that many folks on the other side of the Atlantic are familiar with solid-fuel burning Aga stoves. So -- does anyone have a suggestion?? No prizes; no rewards: just the satisfaction of removing at least some of the frustration from this blogger's mind.

Well, not all the frustration. Because I found both of these novels disappointing, perhaps because both aspired to -- and seemed to deliver -- more than what I ultimately took away from them. And while I'm quite happy to grab a James Patterson novel or even re-read some favorite romantic suspense novels from Nora Roberts, I know exactly what I'm getting and what I'm not getting from them. With both of these books, that question hovered in the air throughout. And finally neither ended up as even "thumping good reads" for that reason.

OK, on to some specifics. The Very Thought of You (which will be on U.S. bookshelves on Tuesday) was short-listed for the Orange Prize in the UK last year. So I felt reasonably safe signing up to read the e-galleys offered by Simon & Schuster, because even when I don't agree with the literary merits of their short lists, I can usually understand how the book got there. But not this time. The novel is the story of Anna Sands, a young evacuee who, in 1939, is sent out of London to avoid the bombing that is expected to hit on the outbreak of war. She ends up at Ashton Hall, home to Thomas Ashton, a diplomat crippled by polio, and his somewhat distant yet glamorous wife, Elizabeth. The problems appear immediately: the novel is cluttered by too many points of view and even some characters with whom the author was apparently in love and couldn't write out of the book even though they serve no purpose. In fact, the whole novel needs a massive edit: its heart is really the story of the complex relationship between Anna and Thomas Ashton, and how that complicates Anna's later life, but that doesn't become clear until the novel's final section. For most of the heart of the book, the reader is immersed, repeatedly, in Thomas's ponderings about the nature of his love for a new woman in his life, and various dimensions of Elizabeth's shallow personality, combined with Anna's experiences at Ashton Hall, as part of a school set up by Elizabeth to help compensate for her childlessness. Much of it was heavy-handed; it felt like reading a Barbara Taylor Bradford romantic tome, albeit one with much better writing. The author's reach, sadly, has exceeded her grasp, which is a shame given the fact that there is a germ of a very good novel buried amid the romantic flourishes and curlicues. It did hold my attention, and I suspect it would probably make a fun beach book for those looking for romantic fiction set against the backdrop of World War II, but it's only OK.: 3.4 stars. I'm not at all sure what last year's Orange Prize jury was smoking at the time. As for this year's -- well, I'll tackle that at a later date!

Ultimately, although it's a more coherent book, I found 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodginkinson even more disappointing. Silvana is rejoining her husband, now a Polish exile, in England at the end of World War II; they have been separated since 1939 and she's nervous about seeing him again, but their son, Aurek, needs a father. The biggest problem with this is that I guessed the massive "twist" within the first 30 pages, and the rest of the book I spent wondering how the author would bring about the big revelation. The rest was all fairly predictable, although the look at postwar Britain, beset by rationing, was interesting. But I found the characters of Janusz, Silvana and Aurek to come straight out of central casting; none of them, as put on paper by Hodginkinson, ever really came to life. I'd say you could skip this one entirely: 3 stars, and I'm actually feeling generous...

There are authors writing in this space who do justice to this kind of novel. At the top of my mind right now is Joanna Trollope, whose latest novel, Daughters in Law, is on my personal summer reading list. (For more glimpses of what's there, check this blog on Monday!) So, has anyone got a good name for this category of novel that they want to share with me before I report back on that book??

Just Added to My Shelves:

A regular update of the books I've added to my shelves... Several have crept onto this list against my will; I've been trying to avoid spending too much money on books, but -- well, I suppose I can live off peanut butter if need be, but not without books!

• The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe by Tony Perrottet (purchase)
• The Murder of the Century by Paul Collins (purchase)
• The Submission by Amy Waldman (Amazon Vine advance review copy)
•  Untold Story by Monica Ali (purchase)
• Essays from the Nick of Time by Mark Slouka (library)
• The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi (publisher giveaway)
• Unholy Business by Nina Burleigh (library)
• Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke (library)
• A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd (Amazon Vine advance review copy)
• Montecore by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (loan from a friend)
• One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde (library)
• Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia by Blake Butler (NetGalley)

I'm going to have to start reading even more rapidly to keep up with the influx! Will report back on as many as possible...

Stay tuned over the long weekend for two more lists: I'll be putting together a list of the books that are due out in the fall and early winter that I'm already looking forward to reading, as well as my own plans for summer reading -- and thus a glimpse into what I'm likely to be writing about on this blog!

Canada Day: "The Sentimentalists" and the Giller Prize

In honor (honour?) of Canada Day, I decided to finish reading The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud, the novel selected by this year's panel of  judges as the winner of the very lucrative Scotiabank Giller Prize (C$50,000), and it made me ponder the role that subjectivity -- and perhaps even outside pressure -- play in selecting the winners of literary prizes of this kind. Skibsrud's novel originally was published by a tiny press and had an initial print run of only 800 copies; when it won, Gaspereau had to cut a deal with a larger house to get it into the hands of suddenly-eager book buyers. It's interesting to ponder that only a few years ago, there was a bit of a firestorm about the fact that the Giller seemed to go primarily to Ontario-based writers published by affiliates of publishing giant Bertelsmann AG, and this certainly is about as far as this year's three judges could have gone in the opposite direction!

Here I find myself in a bind. I'm a fan of Michael Enright -- after all, it was a letter he kindly wrote me back when I was 15 and sent an unsolicited "article" to Maclean's magazine (Canada's Time and Newsweek rolled up in one) that convinced me that I could one day become a journalist. (He complimented my writing style...) But I have to say I think that the panel of judges headed by Enright did badly this time around; the Giller is supposed to go to Canada's best novel of the year, not its most promising young writer. And that is what I think Johanna Skibsrud could be -- arguably, at least. What isn't up for debate, in  my book, is that this is a choppy narrative, one that is oblique and far too opaque to follow with much enjoyment. The writing is often beautifully elegant, but just as frequently that same elegance became cryptic and impenetrable. By the time I put The Sentimentalists down after finishing it, I was bemused. True, at its heart there is a potentially interesting story of a young woman forging (sort of) fresh ties with her father in his final years, a process that culminates in a story he tells her about an episode during his tour of duty in Vietnam. But it's like trying to get hold of smoke -- when you try to see if it has substance, it vanishes. So with this book: as I stopped to think about it, I just felt ripped off. Well, not literally -- I borrowed it from the library, so the only "cost" to me was the time it took to read -- but emotionally. I had wanted this to be much better than it was because it follows two stellar Giller winners that I simply couldn't put down, one of which is already on my favorite books list for this year; the other is on the same list for last year.

The 2009 Giller winner was The Bishop's Man, a deeply moving and deeply felt story of Duncan MacAskill, the "fixer" for an East Coast Canadian Catholic bishop, whose job it is to descend on parishes whose priests have been accused of sexual misconduct and remove them from their jobs, covering up after them. The narrator has to come to grips with the damage not only these priests have done but that he has done to individuals, families and communities in a painful and raw novel that addresses these scandals far better than any non-fiction account I've encountered. I knew Linden Macintyre, the author, was a witty and insightful journalist, but had no idea he could write prose like this. 4.6 stars; highly recommended: it's now available in hardcover in the United States and will be published in paperback late this year. (I do suggest reading Macintyre's first book; while not necessary, some of the characters and settings are introduced in The Long Stretch, which is almost as good.)

If that's a novel that truly deserved to win the Giller, that is even more true of Through Black Spruce, by Joseph Boyden, which earned the honor in 2008 and which is one of a handful of books to which I'd unhesitatingly give a full five stars. At first, I found it hard to believe this could beat the author's previous book, the very, very good Three Day Road, but it did: as with Macintyre's debut effort, that novel lays the groundwork, in setting and plot, for the "winning" novel, but both can easily be read on a standalone basis. Through Black Spruce is a pitch-perfect novel, one that alternates between the narrative of Will Bird, a former bush pilot now lying in a coma in a hospital in Moose Factory, in northern Ontario where the easiest method of transportation is snowmobile, and his niece Annie, who has returned to be at his bedside. Gradually, Boyden's two major characters reveal their secrets, and the different perils that this placed them in: Will has fallen afoul of the Netmaker family, another Cree clan in the community, while Annie has been hunting in vain for her sister, Suzanne, who fled with one of the Netmakers and was last seen building a modeling career in New York. Whether writing about the club scene in Manhattan or Will's effort to take to the wild expanses of northern Ontario to live as his forebears did, Boyden is pitch-perfect. I can't urge you to read this book too enthusiastically.

I'm glad I still have Boyden's short story collection, Born With a Tooth, to read. I only wish that I'd chosen to spent my Canada Day with it than with Skibsrud's sadly flimsy novel.

Bastille Day Giveaway!

So, it's Canada Day, July 1, and the number of blog followers seems to be stuck at 61! So I'm issuing a challenge: help drive the number of followers up by the time Bastille Day rolls around, and you'll have the chance to win one of five French-themed books on offer. For every 20 new (visible!) followers logged between now and then, one additional book becomes available, to a total of five if we hit 161 followers by midnight at the end of the day July 14 (midnight, East Coast US).

The rules:

• You don't have to be a new follower to enter; all you have to do is e-mail me at UncommonReading@gmail.com and tell me which book you'd most like to win (and if there are any you've read and don't want to be considered for.) You do need to be a follower to enter, however
• For every 20 new followers, one additional book becomes available.
• One entry per person, please.
• Winners will be selected via random number generator and notified by end of day on July 15. The books will arrive via Amazon or BookDepository shortly thereafter. 
• International entries accepted.

For every 20 new followers, a new book becomes available, according to the following schedule:
The first 20: Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors: A young woman tries to carve a path for herself through the French Revolution
The second 20: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery: meet the most unusual Parisian concierge of all time.
The third 20: A Man in Uniform by Kate Taylor: a fascinating novel revolving around the Dreyfus Affair
The fourth 20: Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay: the legacy of French collaboration in WW2, and a secret hidden in a Paris apartment.
The fifth 20: The Paris Wife by Paula McLain: the tale of Hemingway's first wife of "the moveable feast" that was Paris in the 1920s.

I'll pick winners in order of the books' popularity; if at least 80 new followers are added, all entrants will be eligible to win one of four books (unless they opt out of one of them.) I'll first choose the winner of the book picked as first choice by the most entrants, so everyone has the best possible chance to win that. If someone isn't interested in a particular book, they won't be entered for it, but will be entered for all other books. The less popular a book and the greater the number of new followers, the better your odds.

Good luck!