Category Archives: Authors A-E

Review: Heat Wave by Richard Castle

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Heat Wave
Heat Wave
by Richard Castle
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Richard Castle might be as fictional as belly fat on a Barbie ™ Doll, but his book, Heat Wave is a fast-paced mystery with just enough romance to keep it interesting.

As anyone who’s ever seen Castle on television knows, Heat Wave is the novel about fictional NYPD detective Nikki Heat and her shadow, journalist Jamie Rook, and both characters are clearly stand-ins for series characters Det. Kate Beckett, and Castle himself.

One might think the fact that this is obviously a well-placed marketing tool makes the book unreadable.

One would be wrong.

Heat Wave is a bit short, coming in at around 200 pages, but it’s funny, interesting, and satisfying, much as the average episode of Castle generally turns out to be.

As it’s a mystery, I won’t spoil the plot, except to mention blackouts, dual murders, and art thievery. If you want to know how those three things combine, and where the aforementioned romance comes in, you’ll have to read the book!

Review: Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

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Sarah's Key
Sarah’s Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
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While there is no such thing as a term life insurance policy that repays you if you don’t like a book, it’s a pretty safe bet that if you see enough random strangers reading a novel you’re also considering, it probably doesn’t suck. That’s what happened to me with Tatiana de Rosnay’s recently reprinted novel Sarah’s Key: I’d looked at it in various bookstores on more than one occasion, but hadn’t bought it, and then, finally, after seeing too many other people reading it, I took home a copy of my very own a couple weeks ago.

I read it almost instantly, but haven’t had time to post the review until now.

In Sarah’s Key we are treated to not one, but two stories, one taking place in 1942, and the other in modern France. In the past, we are introduced to a young girl named Sarah. She is awakened one morning by loud knocking at the door of her family’s Parisian apartment, and when her mother answers the knock, they find the police waiting. Sarah’s family is Jewish, and they’re about to be part of one of the largest roundups of French Jews. Her father’s been living in the basement for weeks, anticipating such an event, and her little brother isn’t awake yet.

Given time to gather a few things, Sarah wakes her brother, and sends him to hide in the secret cabinet – literally a hollow space in the wall between two rooms – where they often play, and have created a secret lair, as children do, with food and water and books. She locks him in, and promises to come back. Sadly, she and her parents are then hustled off to the Vélodrome d’Hiver, an indoor bicycle racing arena in Paris, then to a camp outside the city, and then off to Auschwitz. While Sarah does manage to escape before the last transport, and is taken in by a French farmer and his wife, she doesn’t make it back to Paris in time to save her brother.

As Sarah’s story is unfolding in the past, however, Sarah’s Key also introduces us to Julia Jarmond, an American journalist who has lived in Paris for 25 years, and is married to a French architect. She shares a special bond with her grandmother-in-law, who is a feisty old woman, and when she is assigned to cover the memorial of the Vélodrome d’Hiver roundups, it is this woman who reveals that the family moved into their vintage Paris apartment only because it was available after being vacated by Sarah’s family.

As Julia begins to research her story, she finds herself compelled to learn about the family who previously lived in the apartment, and eventually, she does track down Sarah’s surviving family members, but only after her marriage disintegrates.

If this sounds like a depressing story – trust me, it’s NOT. It’s imbued with love and hope, and is written so delicately, so gently, that what should be horrifying instead serves as a backdrop for a wonderful exploration of history and the human heart.

Book Review: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

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The Lost Symbol
Dan Brown
Doubleday
509 pages
Get it from Amazon

I confess: I pre-ordered Dan Brown’s latest book, The Lost Symbol so I would have it in my hands on the day it was released. It’s not that I think Brown is the greatest writer in the world – he’s not – but he is very good at what he writes: escapist adventure stories rooted in plausibility. Put another way, just as a cigar store Indian can scare you if you turn around suddenly and find yourself facing one, Brown has this habit of sneaking provocative ideas into his fiction, and fiction that stirs controversy and makes you think, is never bad.

And, as they say, any publicity is good publicity.

The Lost Symbol is no exception.

In this installment of the Robert Langdon adventures, our favorite symbologist is sent to Washington, D.C., ostensibly to pinch hit as the speaker in a special event. Almost immediately he finds he was duped, and instead of acting as a guest lector, he must instead turn detective, and try to solve the necessary puzzles to open a metaphysical portal hidden somewhere in the Capitol, all before a life-long friend is cruelly murdered.

What follows is an adventure story that combines the history of the Freemasons with the budding field of Noetic Science, and takes us on a National Treasure-esque tour of D.C. in the process.

Longer than The Da Vinci code, and less controversial than Angels and Demons, The Lost Symbol is an entertaining adventure through history and Mystery, and, at 509 pages, a really satisfying read as well.

Goes well with endless cups of coffee and chocolate chip cookies.

Sunday Salon: Ship-shape

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The Sunday Salon.com

I realize that I’m actually writing this on Monday evening. I’m either slightly late for yesterday, or really early for the 30th, but either way I was mulling this over yesterday, but never manage to post it.

My reading this week has been a leisurely revisiting of one of my favorite books, Maiden Voyage, by Tania Aebi. It’s the memoir of the author’s two-year trip around the world as the solo handler of a sailboat. She wrote it twenty years ago, and I bought it when it was new, and have re-read it a few times, over the years.

I’m not sure why this book resonates so with me. Part of it, I think, is that I love the ocean in a way that most people who don’t sail rarely do. Part of it is that the romance of being alone on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean appeals – and the risk. Part of it is that I relish the coziness of a ship’s bunk with a small furry animal for company, and reading myself to sleep as the waves gently rock me.

There are, of course, moments I do not wish to experience, even vicariously. At one point, Aebi describes having an earache in the middle of the ocean, and how she heats a sock-full of salt and holds it against her ear. Another tale in the book is the relatively brief mention of a fellow sailor’s issue with a toothache, and how he basically gets drunk so he won’t care, since it’s not exactly like there are orange nj cosmetic dentists hanging in the tropics. Or if there are, they’re sailing, too, and not seeing patients.

Mostly, though, I recognize that I, who considers “roughing it” to be a hotel without room service or wifi, and who can’t even sit through movies where people are cold, wet, tired, hungry, dirty and lacking toilet paper, would probably not be happy for more than a day or two than the minimalist conditions Tania Aebi seemed to thrive upon, as much as I like to imagine I might.

For Tania Aebi, Maiden Voyage represents two years of her life, twenty years ago.

For me, it’s several hours of reading enjoyment and lovely dreams about sailing, which is, after all, what reading is all about.

Review: Life’s A Beach by Clare Cook

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I picked up Clare Cook’s novel Life’s a Beach because I was in the mood for a book to give me a jolt of laughter the way thoroughbreds get a jolt of energy and nutrients when given horse supplements. I was not disappointed.

Ginger is a fun-loving, woman a bit older than I am (specifically, in her early forties), with a sister about to turn fifty. She’s still living in her parent’s garage apartment (she hates the term FROG – finished room over garage), with her cat named Boyfriend and her non-committal boyfriend, a glass-blower named Noah. Glass is a trend in Ginger’s life. Between real jobs, she’s been trying to find herself, and her current incarnation involves making sea glass jewelry.

Against the background of her mother’s entree into the Red Hat Society, her father’s unwillingness to downsize and sell the family home, and her sister’s upcoming birthday, Ginger is a breath of fresh air, but living in denial, so when her eight-year-old nephew Riley gets tapped to be an extra in a horror movie, she is more than willing to go to the set and act as his guardian.

Clare Cook, who previously gave us Must Love Dogs, sends us on a wonderfully funny, sometimes sappy journey to the shore and beyond, all the while holding up a rather forgiving mirror to those of us who know that fifty really is the new thirty.

Review: The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

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When I saw The Wednesday Sisters on the “new in paperback” table at Barnes and Noble, I had to read the back cover. I did so, and took it home, along with about twelve other books.

In my defense – not that one needs to DEFEND book buying – I had spent almost an entire week writing about things like life insurance leads and how to save money on car insurance, and stuff like that, so I needed a lot of summer reading material.

I confess, I was hoping The Wednesday Sisters would be similar to The Jane Austen Book Club, but it was not, though both share, at their core, a story about close friendships among women.

Instead, Clayton’s book, which takes place in the late 1960s and early 1970s is a gentle story of personal growth and deep bonding, all tied in with the desire to write and publish ones own fiction – a desire I completely empathize with, since I am attempting the same.

The different women in the story were all well-drawn, with distinct voices, and while there was no snark, there were moments of real humor. Likewise, when one of the women begins dealing with breast cancer, there were moments of poignancy that would be difficult to match.

Was The Wednesday Sisters what I was expecting? No. Would I recommend it anyway? YES!

Review: Water Witches by Chris Bohjalian

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Water Witches
by Chris Bohjalian
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Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight can tell you that water is one of the best diet supplements. Anyone who knows me can tell you that water is my element, even though by birth I’m a fire sign. What can I say? Opposites attract.

It should come as no surprise, then, that when I saw a novel entitled Water Witches staring at me from the shelves at Barnes and Nobel, I HAD to take it home, and yet, I left it on my own shelves for months before cracking it open earlier this week.

What I found was a gently comic novel with a hint of fantasy, about dowsers in Vermont trying to fix a drought, while the protagonist of the novel, who was father, husband, and brother-in-law to these dowsing women, was working to aid a ski resort in gaining the proper permits to tap a local river in order to make snow.

As is to be expected in a novel about rural Vermont, there were colorful characters, cozy home scenes, and talk of maple syrup. What I did not expect, what surprised and delighted me, was the way the politics of environmentalism were worked in without the novel ever feeling preachy.

I don’t think I’m likely to pick up a divining rod and go searching for hidden springs under my front lawn, but I did, after reading this lovely little novel, spend a happy hour poking around the website for the American Society of Dowsers.

Teaser Tuesdays: Funny in Farsi, by Firoozeh Dumas

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On Teaser Tuesdays readers are asked to:

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between 7 and 12 lines.
  • You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given.

My teasers are:

In 1977, the Shah and his wife were scheduled to come to America to meet the newly elected president, Jimmy Carter. Very few Iranians lifed in America then, and those of us who did were invited to go to Washington, D.C., to welcome the Shah. The Iranian government would cover all expenses.

My father accepted the invitation. My brothers reacted with a few choice words.
— from Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America, p. 111, by Firoozeh Dumas

Reviewed Elsewhere: The Mighty Queens of Freeville, by Amy Dickinson

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The Mighty Queens of Freeville: a Mother, A Daughter, and the Town that Raised Them
by Amy Dickinson
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From time to time, I review books for other blogs, ezines and podcasts, but I still want to track what I’ve read. I recently reviewed True Colors for ALL THINGS GIRL. Here’s the first paragraph:

If you never thought a story that begins with a divorce could be uplifting, you clearly haven’t read Amy Dickinson’s new book, The Mighty Queens of Freeville: a Mother, a Daughter, and the Town that Raised Them.

The rest of the review can be found here.

Book Review: Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas, by John Baxter

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Immoveable Feast: A Paris ChristmasImmoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas
John Baxter
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John Baxter has long been one of my favorite essayists, and not just because he writes about life as an ex-pat living in Paris.

In his most recent offering, An Immoveable Feast, (and yes, the title is a reference to a certain Hemingway publication) Baxter is his usual charming self, as he writes of his adventures in planning the Christmas Feasts to end all Christmas Feasts, for his wife’s very picky, very French family.

While the entire book is incredibly amusing, my favorite chapters involve the hunt for a whole pig, still in its own skin, to be roasted for dinner. Apparently, it is not the custom to serve pork in its skin, in France, and only something extremely un-French will be able to really impress the family. Baxter relays the expressions of butchers and other vendors so well that you can hear the accents and see their gesticulations.

The flaw in this book? It made me so hungry I had to keep putting it down so I wouldn’t drool on the pages.

Goes well with: Bacon. Lots and lots of bacon. And a slice of mince pie.