The Job

A Fox and O'Hare Novel
Janet Evanovich
Lee Goldberg

Nick and Kate are charged with taking down an international drug smuggler. But nobody knows where he is, or what he looks like. No problem, just offer him some chocolate. Oh, and a bucket of gold. Oh, and a VR tour of a sunken ship recovery with a fake submarine while a psychopathic killer decides she has had enough of Kate. All in a days work.

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The Chase

A Fox and O'Hare Novel
Janet Evanovich
Lee Goldberg

Nick and Kate are out to take down the corrupt former white house chief of staff. He now runs the military contractor Black Rhino, and uses his business to steal priceless works of art. Our hero's use a con to steal them back. Well, in particular, to steal back a Chinese chicken statue before it needs to be repatriated from the Smithsonian back to China. So they set up the heist to steal the chicken, run in to trouble along the way, and end up taking down their target for everything he owns. It is the "run into trouble along the way" that is fun.

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The Heist

A Fox and O'Hare Novel
Janet Evanovich
Lee Goldberg

Nicolas Fox is high on the FBI's most wanted list as a master thief and con-man. Kate O'Hare is the FBI special agent leading the task force to capture him. When she finally does get him into custody, she is able to finally relax and move on to more mundane assignments... until Fox escapes. Or, that is until Kate finds that her bosses have cut a deal with Fox to allow him to go free as long as he works with the FBI (that is, works with Kate) to bring down bigger fish. So begins a love-hate relationship between criminal and cop. In this episode, Fox and O'Hare develop a con that brings down a corrupt banker hiding out in Indonesia. As a con, there are multiple players involved (the driver, the set construction guy, the actor, the muscle, etc) and everyone plays their part. This is a fun book (that turns into a fun series) of a perfectly matched, yet mis-matched, set of partners out to clean up crime.

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Personal

A Jack Reacher Novel
Lee Child

An assassination attempt on the French president by a sniper leads to the conclusion that only 4 people in the world have the skill necessary to pull it off. Of course Reacher is one of them, but he alibis out quickly. And then he is pulled back into his old world, with his old boss, to track down and stop the killer from successfully completing the job. Of course, it isn't quite as cut and dried as someone wanting the French president dead. There is political and military intrigue, there is money and power involved, and clearly (according to the title) it is personal.

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Never Go Back

A Jack Reacher Novel
Lee Child

The end of a 4 novel story arc (that I am apparently reading backwards). Reacher reaches Virginia and goes to meet up with Susan Turner (because he liked her voice on the phone) who is an MP in his former job. But she is missing. And then fired. And then he is conscripted. And accused of murder. By this point in his civilian career, Reacher is no longer interested in being in the military. But he hangs around until he can figure out what is going on...

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The Mistborn Trilogy

Brandon Sanderson

This trilogy includes The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages. Since I basically read them straight through, I will just give you one review of the entire trilogy. The basic premise for this world is that there is a battle between good and evil (duh!), here named Ruin and Preservation. Certain humans have been granted allomantic powers. That is, power to ingest and burn metals, giving them special abilities. For example, burning iron allows you to pull on metals from a distance. Burning its alloy steel allows you to push on metals. There are 16 allomantic metal/alloy combinations and a rare few people are "Mistborn", with the ability to burn all metals. Others are just "Mistings" and can only burn one. In this world, Vin is a young street thief who gets caught up with a set of high level thieves with a plan to overthrough the Lord Ruler, who has ruled the empire for 1000 years. She (of course) discovers that she is mistborn, and develops her talents as the true heroine of the trilogy. We have battles, creatures, mysteries, political intrigue, rebellion, heroism, and the occasional twist or two in how we should think about the world. This is an extremely well written fantasy series that takes full advantage of the created world. For 4/5 of the series, I was enthralled, entertained and often surprised. I suppose one shouldn't bash an ending unless one has a better idea (which I don't) but the ending left me disappointed. It seemed to easy. In fact, reminded me of the ending of The Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman, which I also loved, but left me flat. In this case, it looks like Sanderson has some follow-on trilogies to extend the world he has created. Curious about whether it helps or hurts...

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Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Written a letter to his 16 year old son, Coates explores what it means to grow up and live as a black man in America. He is unapologetic in his identification and descriptions of a systematic racism that exists, and seemingly will continue to exist forever, in this country. His arguments stem from the foundation of this country on slave labor, and the deep capitalist identity that this country has owned. One cannot have a capitalist identity (where capital is god) without recognizing that the first infusion of capital has human. Coates primary language of this capital is Body. He is eloquent in his description of the role of the physical body in the identity of blacks. Admittedly, he recognizes that he does not have a faith system that allows him to spiritualize anything. So when a black person is killed, his body is taken from him, and that is all. For Coates, there is no higher meaning than body.

Contrast this focus on the biology with an NPR piece I heard on the radio about "Gender Fluidity". Here we were introduced to people who argued that their gender could change day-to-day. That is, they were not gendered male, but with a female body. Instead, regardless of the biology of their body, they could wake up one day male and the next female. This completely disregards the biology of the body and pushes the source of gender identity somewhere else.

Is body everything... or is body nothing...

Definitely read this book, and then go talk to someone about it. Regardless of your place on the body/spirit spectrum, Coates presents an important perspective on race history and identity in this country. As he states, just as a male will never truly have an idea of what it means to be female, to live in and protect a female body, I will never truly have an idea of what it means to live in an protect a black body. I can read, discuss, be sympathetic, but am always at least one step removed from the body.

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The Sympathizer

Viet Thanh Nguyen

This is a fabulous investigation of identity. The time setting is the end of the Vietnam war and our protagonist is a North Vietnamese man who has been embedded with a South Vietnamese general as a spy. After the fall of Saigon, they escape to the US and continue (as southerners in exile) to work toward the defeat of the communist north. This work involves raising money and keeping the U.S. political interest in an anti-communist southeast Asia alive. As a spy, it involved regular reporting back to his superiors and even working as a consultant on a hollywood movie. At one point, in discussing the merits of working on this movie we find Mao's discussion about the role of art and literature as tools for both revolution and domination. At the end of the discussion about the value of the movie

...emotions [about the movie] were irrelevant. What mattered was that the audience member, having paid for the ticket, was willing to let American ideas and values seep into the vulnerable tissue of his brain and the absorbent soil of his heart.

This is the essential argument about consumerism and marketing. We can all claim that what we watch and/or read is just entertainment and does not need to reflect our values. But somehow, by spending our money (placing value on) this entertainment, we are opening our mind and spirit to the message. It seeps... and has over time ability to change our identity. Maybe the question becomes, does awareness prevent, or slow, that identity change? Does self-reflection allow us to maintain our role as audience member, or is isolation the only way to maintain a value system? Many religious sects have chosen the later...

This is but one example of the thinking about identity and culture that is prompted. I can't recommend this novel highly enough.

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My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store

Ben Ryder Howe

A memoir-style telling of the relationship between Ben, a white, pure-bred New Englander, and his wife Gabbie, a first generation Korean American. The story explores the cultural divide between the two as Ben (an editor for the Paris Review) and Gabbie (a corporate lawyer) both change their lifestyle in order to purchase a NY deli as some sort of compensation for Gabbie's mother Kay. The two end up living in Kay's basement in Staten Island (along with several other extended family members) as a way to save money and keep the money pit of a deli alive. It really is a fascinating look at small business, immigrant mentality, asian family systems, upper-crust publishing and multi-cultural relationships. There are so many compare/contrast scenarios that it is a stark reminder that the cultural divide is not just asian/american. It is also wealthy/middle class, white collar/blue collar, commuter/local. Unfortunately, the book either goes on too long, or loses its Mojo because after about 2/3 of the way through, I lost interest. So fun, engaging, too long...

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The Invention of Air

Steven Johnson

Nominally, this is a biography of Joseph Priestley, the late 18th century English natural philosopher (scientist), theologian, politician. More accurately, it is the story of how science worked 250 years ago, using Priestley as a protagonist to walk us through the process. And more importantly, Johnson intersperses commentary throughout to highlight how "doing science" has changed, both for better and worse. So while this is a biography and presentation of the historical record, it is also an opinion piece and a persuasive essay. Mixing this all together is ambitious, but Johnson is up to the task and, at least from the point of view of this scientist, hits a home run.

The foundation for the story is the scientific life of Priestley and his experimental investigation of air. He, along with Ben Franklin and a group of intellectuals that refer to themselves as "The Honest Whigs", over the course of 10 years in the 1770's are discovering the physical properties of air. Before this time, air was invisible nothing, and therefore there was nothing to discover. But new equipment (accurate scales, air pump, etc.) make investigation possible. Priestley is credited with "discovering" oxygen, and recognizing that plants and animals affect "common air" differently.

What I love about this book is what Johnson refers to as "the long zoom view". The fact that plants and animals affect air differently could be just a scientific fact. But these intellectuals are not just scientists. They are theologians, politicians, industrialists, etc. as well, which allows them to see "fact" differently. In this case, Franklin takes the 'affect air differently' fact and posits a systems view of life on earth. That is, he suggests for the first time ever the idea of an ecosystem and the possibility of a necessary global homeostasis. This is astounding insight. But it is not just his. Johnson suggests that most of the discoveries and scientific epiphanies that occur during this time are really the result of two social artifacts:

1. the communal nature of science. The Honest Whigs did not have a proprietary sense of knowledge. Instead, they were acting proponents of open source knowledge, sharing everything with each other and even with their scientific and industrial rivals. So Franklin on his own never makes this ecosystem observation, and
2. the long term "leisure" life of the scientists. That is, Priestley had 20-30 years of a hunch about the scientific fact of air being different that the common understanding of air. During this time, the idea was percolating and bouncing around as he investigated other things, as he shared ideas with others, as he delved into theology. Were Priestley to be working on a government funded grant that demanded results in a few years, perhaps he never makes the discoveries and history changes (the oxygen idea leads to better gunpowder production by the French, which is sold to American revolutionaries, giving them a military advantage over the British). 

Today's scientific research has neither of these factors. However, you can see elements of them when looking at hot new scientific fields. Big change is happening where open source knowledge prevails, and we the interface between traditional specialties (fields of biophysics, biochemistry, materials science (chemistry + physics), medical physics, etc.) all revealing ground breaking discoveries.

The book is a super fast read, and a great combination of scientific biography and meta-scientific sociology.

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Every Day

David Levithan

'A' (our protagonist) is a teenager who wakes up in a different body each day. He "borrows" that body, pushing the host consciousness aside while he is there, able to access memories as needed to interact as the host would. He only needs to know enough to survive, and not screw up the host life, until midnight, when he jumps to a new body. He has never known anything different, and has resigned himself to be as unobtrusive as possible in each host. Until he meets the girl. And falls in love. And then what? This is the ultimate in forbidden love stories. I enjoyed Levithan's initial exploration of identity with 'A', making me think about how you know who you are (see Middlesex). But it was left short, and I was largely unfulfilled in being led down this path of identity exploration. As readers we were not pushed into depth or provided a compass for inquiry. I am tempted to say you can only do so much with the YA genre, but that is a cop out. Some of the best social commentary/criticism in the past decade has come out of YA for those willing to listen (see Divergent and Unwind series). The only alternative is to say this is highly creative, yet ultimately mediocre as an instigator of thought.

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The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution

Mariano Azuela

A translation of the novel from Spanish, which was first published as a newspaper serial in around 1915. A good scholarly introduction to this edition tells us that first, the title is not right. The underdogs suggests disadvantaged sports team overcoming all odds to win something. And while this is one possible reading, the translation is probably better as "the people beneath". In fact, it is a story of survival, of poverty fighting against political power and then not knowing how to "win" or to stop fighting, how war is an intoxicating/addictive drug. Demetrio is a guerrilla revolutionary who has some military success based on his fearlessness, leadership, and ferocity. This is  his story, about the transition from a two ox farmer to a general, his own recognition of his changing identity, and his inability (disinterest?) in stopping the change. And somehow, even in victory, the people beneath are still beneath...
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Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel

Imagine a world 20 years after a global pandemic flu that kills billions. In this world, in central Michigan, a traveling troupe of performers (Shakespeare and an orchestra) moves from town to town in an effort to live their motto "Survival is not sufficient". In addition, we are treated to backstory for several characters from either before the flu some intermediate years, slowly developing connections between them. I found myself constantly evaluating the "reality" of the story. Is this how it would really happen? Is this how life would be after a catastrophic global event? I was surprised by the lack of technology (I mean, we didn't forget how to wind coils to generate electricity) but, in this version at least, it took longer than I would expect to return. I suppose compare to A Canticle for Leibowitz, where it took generations and Mandel's version is much more likely. I also found myself observing the portrayal of violence and how it affected individuals. Really one of the best post-apocalyptic, near term worlds I have read.
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Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides

I didn't have any expectations for this book, didn't even read the dust cover for a synopsis. My only expectation was from the initial chapters, that it would be the story of struggle and development of gender identity of a hermaphrodite. And it was... sort of. But Eugenides takes a broad view of this identity discussion, utilizing 2/3 of the book to tell the history of protagonist Cal back 3 generations to his Greek ancestors and their life and emigration from Turkey to the suburbs of Detroit. Cal isn't even born for most of the book and tells this history from an omniscient 3rd person version of his 1st person memoir. In hindsight, I find this historical identity formation to be fascinating, telling the story of immigration and assimilation, highlighting life in Detroit during the depression, prohibition, and civil rights. In process of reading, I found this frustrating since I was waiting for "the real story" to begin, to the point that my enjoyment of the history was diminished in my impatience. Aside from this, it really is a fascinating collection of cultural Americana descriptions that Eugenides captures. For example, the diagnosis sequence where Cal is spending time with Dr. Luce and the sociological/scientific debates of Nature v Nurture are front and center. It is so matter of fact, and yet such a pivotal national discussion as genetic research begins to enter the collective consciousness of the general public. I think I will like this book more with time as its themes continue to crop up.
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Boy's Life

Robert McCammon

The story of one year of life in a small, southern town told in first person from the perspective of 11 year old Cory. From the beginning, Cory admits to the magic of youth. That is, kids have access to magic that adults don't, and as you give up that magic (with maturity perhaps) you can never get it back. With this postulate, McCammon is able to enter into a story telling from the perspective of kids who have access to this magic (or from the adult perspective, vivid imagination). As a result, as a reader you are witness to scenes of reality, scenes of clear magic, and some of those in between that you are just not sure about the perspective. Running the length of the story is a murder mystery that drives the plot. Cory and his father witness a car driving over an embankment into the lake. But since the lake is so deep, no body is recovered, and no missing persons are reported anywhere local. So maybe there was no murder. But for Cory, there is definitely a mystery. This driving narrative force is always in the back of Cory's mind and it holds together the meandering life of an 11 year old and his friends, through lazy summer, winter storms, school, family strife, new friends, vacation and all the important markers of childhood. And it is this that the book is really about. Growing up, holding on to magic, and letting magic go.
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The Vagrants

Yiyun Li

I would classify this as interesting, but not fascinating. Or maybe fascinating, but not engaging. It is the story of life in Muddy River, a northern Chinese town in late 1970's. The four or five main characters are introduced in the context of their lives and roles in Muddy River. Only over time are the connections between them revealed. And while this is nominally a story of a few individuals in a particular town, it is ostensibly about China and the effects of the Cultural Revolution on individuals. The main plot circles around the planned execution of a counter-revolutionary who was a former revolutionary. In both of these lives, she was fully engaged, which led her to extreme interactions with individuals in both of her political lives. Fascinating is the daily life routine of a majority of the Muddy River citizens, the daily interaction with the communist government. The pervasive presence of the central government simultaneous with the irrelevance of the central government. The individual attitudes of parents, kids, city outcasts are all very much about "here is what I need to do today", leaving the societal big picture to the government. I think in the west we have a view that our role in the big picture is more pronounced and important, but I am not sure that we have a realistic view about the impact of our egocentrism. Being drawn into thinking about and comparing cultural roles and norms from east to west is ultimately, for me, the payoff of this novel.
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Crossing to Safety

Walace Stegner

I had tried to read this a year ago and got bogged down in the first half chapter. It is (in my memory) an endless description of a leaf on a tree as viewed from a cottage porch. In fact it is nothing like this, but... This time I persevered and found a story following two couples and their ongoing relationship over the course of several decades starting in the 1920's. Both the men are english professors who worked together for a few years at a midwestern university (one clearly talented, the other interested in poetry which doesn't get you promoted or famous), one woman is a control freak, and the other a peacemaker. Money, politics, family, career, travel, health, life purpose, and anything else you can think of meanders through the relationship of these two couples. Stegner is a master of painting a picture of life and is able to create characters that are sufficiently complex that I was able to identify at different times with each of them (while rolling my eyes at those same characters at other times). It is a story of friendship and true community as not once is there the expression of "Let's just not see them anymore". For me, I was only able to get through this because I was listening to it, the words continued to move (I was not able to put the book down) as the car drove down the road. And the end result was an appreciation of a well written story.
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Avalon

Mindee Arnett

A bit of sci-fi action between my foreign authors exploration. And a good one I must say. This little space western finds Jeth leading a group of teenage starship thieves as they work toward purchasing their own ship and going legit. The starships they target generally have metadrives that allow faster than light travel. Their next assignment is to track down a lost ship and the cargo turns out to be valuable to their crimelord boss Hammer and to the confederated authorities. In fact, the cargo has the potential to dramatically altar how life in the galaxy functions... of course. This is good, fun sci-fi, that pays enough attention to the space traveling details, but not too much to get in the way (just turn on the gravity drive, don't worry about what it actually is). In fact, this reads very much like a Star Wars prequel with Jeth playing the young Han Solo. Throw in a few surprises and set the world up in such a way that this could be a nice little series for Arnett. At least, I hope it is since the characters she developed are interesting and fun.
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The Man with the Compound Eyes

Wu Ming-yi

Three stories told interspersed. The story of Alice, a Taiwanese writer/professor who lives on the eastern seaboard. She has lost her husband and son, has aboriginal friends who look after her and is struggling to find purpose in life. The story of Atile'i, a pacific islander who journeys off his Island, finds a big world and seeks to understand it in terms of his existing worldview. The story of Sara and Detlef, European scientists on personal journeys to understanding their connection and responsibility to the earth. In fact, all of these stories are about connection to earth and the responsibility of humanity to understand the earth and act accordingly. The unifying event in these stories is a large storm that breaks up the great trash vortex that has been collecting in the Pacific gyre and sends it on a collision course with Taiwan. Each story is independently engaging, and the connections between them are natural and unforced. Wu does not feel the need to make explicit connections with plot, but allows the reader to feel the connections just by acknowledging that the characters inhabit the same space. May be one of the most environmentally persuasive books I have read.
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The Berlin Stories

Christopher Isherwood

Some parts fiction, some parts autobiographical, this is a description of life in Berlin in the early 30's as the Nazi party is gaining strength. Isherwood is living in Berlin, doing some writing and living the artists life (meeting people, going on vacation with them, getting involved in lives). What I find most fascinating about these stories is the political development. Isherwood is not writing as a political writer, but since the political scene is so dominant, it infiltrates every aspect of life. And, from this perspective, in the early 30's in democratic Germany, there was a legitimate struggle between the Nazi and Communist parties for control of the elections, and at least in Isherwood's circles, no one thought the Nazi's would come to power. So while these are stories of people, an actress, a business man, a professional sponge, they are also stories of time and events. And together these stories offer another insight to how we can get so far down a road that it is hard to come back.
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The Dust of 100 Dogs

A.S. King

Saffron Adams is a modern day teenager. She is also Emer Morrisey, a feared 17th century teen pirate. At the tragic end of her pirate life, she is cursed to live the live of 100 dogs (with all her memories intact and retained) before being born again in a human form. As Saffron, she has one purpose: retrieve her treasure. King does an excellent job telling both stories (Saffron and Emer) making them both engaging. We do not ever pine for the other story, but are content (even enthralled) by the life we are reading about presently. And as a bonus, we get occassional life lessons from Emer/Saffron's time as a dog. Well thought out, well executed. A great pirate novel.
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All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

Set in World War II, the story follows two main characters who are both teenagers: a blind French girl and a scientifically gifted German orphan boy. We bounce back and forth (rather quickly) between these two stories until they eventually intersect about 2/3 of the way through. In some ways, this is a fascinating view into regular life in occupied France, and into life as a boy conscripted into the German military machine.  However, it felt flat and wrote. Somehow the entire story felt defeatist, without inspiring hope in the characters, or the characters providing hope for the reader. Maybe that was the intent, to immerse yourself in this hopeless world of WWII, but in a fictional novel I want a bit more escapism. Or I want emotional arc (give me hope and then dash it) so I have something to react to.
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Lock In

John Scalzi

Reading the description of this novel I immediately thought of Blindness by Jose Saramago. That was an OK novel (fascinating in many ways, but overall flat). As such, I was not jumping to get into this. However, I must say it was brilliant. Set in a future where a new disease has caused some people to become "locked in", where they have zero physical ability, but their minds are vibrant. The result is a massive worldwide effort to develop neural interfaces with those brains so that the victims of this disease can interact with a world through a remotely operated physical transport (i.e. robot). With this setting, Scalzi gives us a straight up detective thriller. Think mashup of Counting Heads, I-Robot, and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch. I can definitely see this becoming a serial. What is particularly fun is the ability of the locked in to rent physical transports (thereby traveling across country almost instantly) or borrow (local police departments have loaners for out of town detectives), and all the difficulties that entail. I also liked the way Scalzi would introduce new characters without explicitly stating whether they were a locked in or not. As a reader, you couldn't make assumptions about the person and were forced to read other characters reactions and interactions carefully. Very fun, very clever.
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The Three-Body Problem

Cixin Liu

Bestselling Chinese Sci-Fi novel that was translated to English. Although it is sci-fi, I would probably say its primary genre is Mystery-Thriller based on how it reads. It just so happens that the mystery is sci-fi based. Beginning at the cultural revolution, we are introduced to a scientist and his family and a set of ethics/values that sets the stage for a conflict between a scientific worldview and a cultural/religious worldview. This feels like a common conflict and recalls the feeling of other Chinese cultural revolution or Soviet Marxist revolution story-lines. This setting provides the basis for decisions, planning and scheming around a first contact event with an alien (extra-solar) civilization. Liu does an excellent job of playing with both the psychology of humans knowing about alien civilization and the reality of physical interaction with that civilization. Overall, this is a fun exploration of competing worldview's and the implications of worldview on actions.

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The Martian

Andy Weir

This is straight up science fiction of the best sort. No dystopian messages or utopian hopes. It is near future, human space travel to Mars. We start with the third manned mission to Mars aborting after 6 days on planet due to a massive dust storm. During evacuation, Mark Watney (mechanical engineer/botanist) is injured, blown away, and then left for dead. This gets you through about page 3. The entire story is a survivalist thriller in an extreme environment. Watney is the ideal "think outside the box" engineer who refuses to believe that a problem exists that doesn't have a solution. His only task is to survive for around four years until the next manned mission arrives and can rescue him. This is a page turner novel, putting one extreme situation after another in front of the reader that you can't really believe, but need to see how he solves the problem. It is also fun to cut back to earth to see NASA, etc. working Apollo 13 style to try to solve problems from their end. If you want a feel good, hope for humanity, space thriller, this is it. Well done Weir. 
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behind the beautiful forevers

Katherine Boo

Narrative non-fiction. Boo spent about 5 years interviewing people and learning about life in a small slum called Annawadi, near the Mumbai airport. She follows several "characters" to explore what life is like in what she calls the undercity. Abdul is one of 9 siblings working in the recycle trade, Manju is the daughter of an aspiring slumlord and one of the few who is attending college. As these two lives intersect with the city around them, we discover just how small their world is as they rarely leave the area surrounding the airport. For most of the book, the fact that it read like a novel was distracting. I continuously wondered if it was actually true, how could Boo have known what characters where thinking or feeling. And as a novel, it wasn't really that engaging. Boo was restricted in her storytelling by only being able to attribute thoughts and feelings that were coming out of her research. Even with these literary limitations, I found the book fascinating, giving insight to Hindi-Muslim relations, corruption, politics, slum life, caste restrictions and hopes & expectations for a progressive life. For some reason, it also made me start to wonder about parallels between Indian poverty and US poverty. Are race and class issues in U.S. cities similar to the caste issues in India? From the perspective of the local poor, how big of an issue is government corruption? Are the hopes for upward mobility in the U.S. just as strong (and just as unrealistic) as described for the Mumbai slum? As a final note, I will also recommend as a companion Shantaram, which is the fictional story of life in Mumbai's underworld, with both books referencing some of the same landmarks and slum life descriptions.

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The Book of Unknown Americans

Cristina Henriquez

This novel is set in New Jersey, following a few immigrant families who have traveled to the US for various reasons. The apartment complex they all call home provides a community of sorts for these families who come from Honduras, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama, Mexico, etc. In fact, one of the pleasures of this novel is the telling of the different stories of each family history, showing the uniqueness that each brings to their current situation. Our main characters are Mayor and Maribel. The storytelling mechanism is to allow each character to narrate a chapter (so as a reader we get first person insight from a variety of points of view) but strangely, Maribel is never a narrator. So her character is completely developed from the third person. While the story does have some weaknesses (caricature and a weak ending) it is definitely worth the read.

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UBIK

Philip K Dick

Sometimes sci-fi writing provides insight to a particular social issue or gives a futurist glimpse into how our world could possibly develop. Other times it takes a scientific phenomena and just writes a story, without agenda. This book is the latter. We start out learning about a world where some people have special talents (seeing the future, changing probabilities, etc.) and others have the ability to interrupt these talents. So of course, we are introduced to two different talent agencies, one offering these talents for hire, and the other offering 'talent shielding'. In typical PKD fashion, things aren't always what they seem and trying to figure out what really is going on is half the fun. And we are treated to a little bit of a vision of this future world where everything in monetized, including your front door and morning coffee machine (no cash, your door won't open to let you out). I am a bit surprised that this hasn't been made into a film, as it seems like it could be lots of fun.
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Getting To Know You

David Marusek

This guy is a genius. Loved his Counting Heads novel and this current selection of short stories includes several that were the basis for that novel. So we are seeing integrated nano-tech, corporate clones and ubiquitous surveillance. We also get a couple of soft scifi stories, of which my favorite is Yurek Rutz. In particular, I appreciated in the authors introduction the acknowledgement that it is difficult to both write short form as well as to read it (you must get the entire world defined within a couple pages) and his brief background about when and why he wrote each story.
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J

Howard Jacobson

I usually enjoy novels that have won a prize. This was a Man Booker finalist, so I had hopes. While the details are never spelled out, it is essentially the story of life in a rural European town some years after World War II. The result of the war is unclear, but the effect is the suppression of Jews and Jewishness along with the Balkanization of all ethnic groups. So every little small town is an isolationist, homogenous group. Add to this mix a Jewish protagonist, and a mysterious Jewish underground working to insure the continuation of the Jewish line without upsetting the repressive/precarious balance of the status quo.  I can see how this is potentially interesting, but I was not engaged by the writing. The story was too cliche and did not provide any new insight to a post war mentality in Europe. I expect that by creating this alternate history fictional word, Jacobson will be presenting me with an intellectually stimulating point of view or new way of thinking about the specific Jewish trauma in the post war environment or the general cultural/sociological trends that lead to isolation and eventually genocide for any minority. I got neither.
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A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle

Nice short fantasy tale. Kids Charles Wallace and Meg are pulled into a universal battle of good v. evil. They get to travel (with the help of some mysterious beings) to other planets, battle great minds telepathically, meet flying centaurs, and have a generally non-childlike adventure. This reads very much like C.S. Lewis Narnia series as an explicit Christian morality tale and is not subtle with its message. But it is easy to read and fun and I remember why I liked it as a kid.
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Time Warped

Claudia Hammond

A non-fiction look at the neuro, psycho, and socio-logical underpinnings for time perception. I will admit that I only read about the first third, was moderately interested and never picked it up again. Not engaging in that it struck me as not particularly ground breaking. Note that this is based only on a first-third reading, so...
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Decoded

Mai Jia

Rong is a young boy with autism and a proclivity for math. His mentor pushes him to challenge himself in problem solving and patterns and the regularity of the problems becomes a comfortable/safe place to retreat. When he is recruited into a special military unit charged with codes and code breaking, Rong is finally at home. But when he finds himself entering into an addictive battle to break some unbreakable codes and simultaneously maintain his humanity, finding balance is not easy. It seems Jia's aim is to open a new window into a life as an autistic man. Unfortunately, the actual novel is not as engaging as this treatment sounds like it could be. I have not read enough translated works to be familiar with the feel of a translation, but my "feel" on this one is that something is lost in the translation.
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Geek Love

Katherine Dunn

A family of carnival sideshow freaks is the center of this novel. The father is apparently an amateur experimental geneticist who used radiation, chemicals and any other mutagen he could think of on each of his children when they were in utero to create the next big sideshow sensation. I am not sure if the voyeuristic nature of looking in on the family was supposed to be appealing or if trying to see the humanity in the "freaks" was the point. I was not particularly interested in the former and the later was not compelling storytelling.
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The Cowboy and the Cossack

Claire Huffaker

Originally published in 1973, this is a classic western novel set in eastern Russia. The story follows a band of Montana cowboys hired to drive a herd of cattle into the interior of Siberia. They discover from the beginning that in addition to all the traditional hardship associated with driving a few hundred head of longhorns, they also need to navigate the political situation in a new place, from the bribes needed to initially dock their boat to the nuances associated with each local bureaucracy. The bulk of the story follows this band of American Cowboys and their relationship with their Cossack (i.e. Russian cowboys) escort. This could easily have devolved into cross cultural hi-jinks, but instead Huffaker takes an approach which is able to authentically explore cross cultural differences and similarities between these two groups. Within the rugged, individualistic, zero-emotion world of cowboys we are exposed to a surprisingly vulnerable and introspective look at friendship, loyalty and duty. And like any well written western, the action and suspense lasts right up to the last few pages.

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