You May Be "Destined" to Love Millard's "Destiny of the Republic"

I didn’t know how lucky I was to get my hands on an advance reader’s copy of Candice Millard’s The Destiny of the Republic at the American Library Association annual conference until I found myself traveling again a few weeks later.

Always a sucker for a well-written narrative about American history, I carried along the proof copy in my carry-on bag during my next trip.   The book, which hits shelves in September 2011, features a truly intriguing subject: James A. Garfield, an American president who did not seek the office, only to find himself shot by a patronage seeking, wannabe political appointee only weeks after assuming the highest office in the land.  Once I opened the book, I found myself turning page after page, drawn into her rich, flowing narrative.

I knew little about Garfield, less about his assassin, and little about the era in which the story was told - less than 20 years following the end of the Civil War.   In an era rife with patronage appointments to government jobs, raw politics and bitter post-war feelings, the story of the self-made Garfield is remarkable.   Rising from poverty to prominence as Civil War major general, he was then elected to the House of Representatives and then the Senate in 1880.   Then,  when the political frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination – John Sherman, James G. Blaine and the third term seeking Ulysses S. Grant – failed to attract enough support to become the candidate, he was named – in spite of his reluctance – the party’s compromise candidate.  Besting the Democrat Winfield Scott, Garfield would be in office less than 3 months in 1881 before crossing paths with the man whose actions would eventually take his life.

Millard’s narrative and back story for Garfield is far more compelling than my recount.   It’s her ability to take meticulous research and interweave it with the story of assassin Charles J. Guiteau, who thought the country would celebrate his act, which makes this a compulsive, page-turning event.   Just when I didn’t think it could get any better, she infuses the narrative with the next group of historical figures to drive the story – the doctors who cared for the wounded president in the months following the assassination, details  of modern, 19^th Century medicine that could have saved Garfield’s life, and a desperate attempt by inventor Alexander Graham Bell to use a recent breakthrough to help treat the dying president.  Throughout Destiny, there’s the compelling portrait of the long-suffering Garfield, who would live months following Guiteau’s attempt to kill him.

I haven’t read Millard’s River of Doubt, the story of Theodore Roosevelt’s journey down the Amazon, but I’ll have to after reading this.  Evocative and reminiscent of Erik Larson’s remarkable The Devil in the White City, lovers of history are destined to enjoy every minute of her Republic.

-Michael

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai tells the story of Lucy Hull, a librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, who “kidnaps” Ian Drake and takes him on an adventure along the East Coast.  Ian is a precocious 10 year old who spends as much time as possible at the library.  His parents (mother, in particular) monitor his reading and so it is up to Lucy to slip him books on the sly.  One day, Lucy comes into the Library and discovers Ian hiding out, prepared to run away.  Although conflicted about what she should do, she decides to help him rather than take him home or call the police.

Lucy truly believes she is saving Ian from overbearing, homophobic parents who are willing to subdue their son’s nature out of fear that he might be a homosexual.  But what she finds is that not everything is what it seems…not in her life and not in Ian’s.  This book is far from perfect.  Lucy and Ian both annoyed me constantly and I couldn’t shake the feeling that a 26 year old woman traipsing around throughout the East Coast with a 10 year old boy who wasn’t her son was extremely creepy. 

The book’s saving grace comes from the many references to beloved books.  Pretty much every chapter begins with a reference or an allusion to a novel or picture book.  Some of my favorites include:

“If you give a librarian a closet, she will probably fill it with junk.

If she fills it with junk, some of the junk will be books in need of repair.

If some of the junk is books, and the closet is off of a back room anyway, she will hide more books there, books that she thinks are crap like the Stormy Sisters series, but which her boss thinks the library should keep.”  p. 56

It goes on for a few more paragraphs, but you get the gist.  Another great one was the “Choose Your Own Fiasco” chapter on page 157.  I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books as a child and thoroughly enjoyed reminiscing throughout the novel.

~ Linette

Deaver gives Bond “Carte Blanche” on his new mission

Novelist Jeffrey Deaver takes a crack at an iconic character with his newest novel, dusting off the James Bond character that Ian Fleming created over 60 years ago.

While it’s hard for modern audiences to divorce the Bond novels from the films that they inspired, thriller and crime novelist Deaver plants the British Secret Service agent clearly in the 20^th Century all the while respecting Fleming’s source material, in the process creating an exciting page turner of a novel.

It’s hard for me, as someone who was introduced to Bond through the films, to entirely divorce filtering a 007 novel through that mental process.  It’s not difficult to imagine Daniel Craig, the current actor playing the role in the film series, going through the paces of Deaver’s plot, but it’s nice to see the author, while determined to write a modern novel, plant images that hark back to the Fleming novels.    All the requisite elements are here, but some are throwbacks to the Fleming era.  Thus, his “M,” the crusty superior to the occasionally unorthodox agent, is male and in the mold, again, as portrayed by Bernard Lee, who played the role ably in most of the Sean Connery and Roger Moore film adventures.   But there’s plenty of references to the original novels too that show Deaver did his homework – women with unlikely names, a state-of-the-art automobile, references to Bond’s schooling, his parents’s death, the colorful villain and henchman, and the able CIA sidekick Felix Leiter, Miss Moneypenny, Bill Tanner, and Mary Goodnight, all show Deaver is comfortable working within the Fleming universe without slavish references to it.

While Deaver pays the appropriate nods to continuity, he also moves Bond into the 21^st Century.  The “Bond girls” are tough and as mentally adept as 007; Bond, a veteran of the Afghan war, has given up smoking and drinks – but not to excess; Bond’s opponent, Severan Hydt, is a well-drawn villain, modern character – a recycling industry magnate – with a fascination for death and decay.   That character’s plot, not one of world domination, but one of more limited, but nefarious intent, is believable, crafty, and suitably wicked.   Bond uses his fists and his wits – with a helpful assist from a few, not at all over-the-top gadgets from the “Q” branch – to take on both Hydt and his ever efficient henchman, all the while considering a mystery involving his long dead parents.

The results are a globe hopping thrill ride, and one hopes, at the end of the book, while it’s not unlikely that James Bond will return, it’s certainly this reader’s desire to see Jeffrey Deaver plotting that next adventure.

- Michael

Save Me by Lisa Scottoline

I’ve always enjoyed Lisa Scottoline’s books.  There’s nothing I like more than a return to Rosato & Associates to see what scrapes the spunky lady lawyers are trying to escape.  What I’ve realized in reading Scottoline’s stand alone, Save Me, is that what I like about her works are the characters.  I can suspend disbelief with some of the plots in her series because I genuinely enjoy the characters and feel like I know them.  The lack of character development in Rose McKenna made it a difficult and unbelievable book to get through.

Rose McKenna is helping out at her daughter’s school as the “lunch mom” when an explosion rocks the lunch room and she suddenly has to decide whether to try to save her daughter (who’s locked herself in the bathroom) or save a few of her daughter’s classmates (whose teasing is the reason the daughter, Melly, is in the bathroom).  Although she ends up helping the classmates to the hallway and THEN rescuing Melly, she gets vilified by the parents and media when one of the students ends up seriously injured and in a coma.  Make sense?

Oh, there’s much more.  How about a conspiracy to blow up the lunchroom?  An accidental death that occurred years ago?  A corrupt senator?  Lisa Scottoline throws so much at the reader that what starts out as an interesting moral dilemma swiftly turns into a hodgepodge of overused plots.  And really, all that I could’ve endured if I had even a shred of empathy for Rose.  But it was hard to root for her when she constantly second guessed herself and her decisions.  Instead of questioning if she made the right decision during the lunchroom explosion she should have been questioning why she’d leave her daughter, who’d just suffered a severe trauma, overnight in the hospital.  She goes from being “supermom” in the first half of the book to being “amateur sleuth” in the second – a complete stretch of the imagination – even for me.

~ Linette

You Know When The Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

Siobhan Fallon uses a series of linked stories to paint a picture of what families, both spouses and soldiers, endure during a deployment.  As an Army wife, these stories seemed all too familiar to me.  And in that respect, I enjoyed them very much.  The familiarity was rather comforting.  Having either gone through similar experiences or known someone who had, it was nice to know that I wasn’t alone. 

However, as much as I liked the stories for their engaging plots, my only complaint lies with the stories’ characters.  They were either stereotypical or exaggerated. From the “perfectly lipsticked” battalion commander’s wife to the paranoid, neurotic soldier who goes through some pretty extreme measures to check on his wife’s fidelity, none of them seemed fully developed. 

I can overlook that, though, and recommend this to Army spouses and civilians alike because from the first page, Fallon captures almost perfectly that sense of emptiness on a military post when a unit deploys and the men are gone:

“Babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life.”

And she had me there.  Life goes on during a deployment, if a little slower than usual.

~ Linette

I "like" The Accidental Billionaires

I’m not usually one to “read” a book classified in either the computer section or the business section of a library’s collection, but The Accidental Billionaires is a rare exception.   Subtitled The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, Ben Mezrich’s book reads like fiction, with colorful characters and a compelling plot that keeps readers engaged.

If one reads it in the wake of seeing The Social Network, the film which was inspired by this book, one might be surprised that for all the accolades Aaron Sorkin received for his adapted screenplay, Mezrich’s original prose is punchy and fluid as well.   The plot moves briskly, with real life characters coming to life and jumping from the page.   The pace and breezy wit which Mezrich brings to the subject kept me compulsively addicted to page turning, much as the Internet phenomenon has addicted millions of users.

Do I feel like I know Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg any better having ready it?  Naah.  Does it matter?  Not really.   The story it chronicles is the compelling and engaging, because, it, like Facebook, is remarkably addictive.  Whether you love it or loathe it, you can’t help but be compelled to keep reading it.

-Michael

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Diana Bishop has spent the majority of her life renouncing her magical lineage and focusing on becoming a world renowned historian.  She is at Oxford working on her latest research project when she calls upon a manuscript, Ashmole 782, that she senses is magical but has no desire to further investigate.  However, that doesn’t stop vampires, daemons, and other witches from hounding her for answers.  How did she do it?  How was she able to call up a manuscript that has been bewitched for hundreds of years?  One vampire in particular wants the answers and Diana has to decide whether he’s friend or foe.

Ever since reading Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour, I’ve been fascinated with supernatural creatures, witches in particular.  Harkness creates a world in which there are four species:  humans, witches, vampires, and daemons.  And although the witches, vampires, and daemons all think their particular species is superior, all three have a collective disdain for humans (who are completely unaware that the others exist).  Harkness got me hooked with the first half of the book – Diana seems a formidable supernatural creature and all her untapped power is itself a mystery.  However, once she joins forces with Matthew, the vampire, she relinquishes her ability to make decisions on her own.  She insists that she’s strong or “brave” but her actions say otherwise. If she’s not sleeping or eating (or drinking tea!), she’s being carried around from room to room by Matthew.  In addition, Harkness spends an inordinate amount of time describing the mundane activities that occupy Diana’s day and that definitely slows down the plot.

A Discovery of Witches is the first book in a planned trilogy and if its intent is to set up the other two books by providing background and introducing characters without resolving any issues….it does the job remarkably well!  Despite my misgivings on Diana’s character, I will be looking forward to the next installment and hoping that she stops acting like Bella in Twilight (fainting, stumbling, staring deeply into a vampire’s eyes…) and instead becomes the powerful witch she seems destined to be.

~ Linette