Peachy Reads

If you want a different spin on Honest Abe, try this novel on for size. Before Abe Lincoln got to the White House he swung his ax for quite a different reason than what you might remember learning in elementary school. Apparently there was a thriving community of vampires in 1800s America, and due to a certain family tragedy Abe vowed as a young boy to do something about it. He swung that ax quite mightily, felling a goodly number of vampires before his political successes brought him to the White House. Abe’s presidency gets a new spin in this book too, what with the Civil War being recast as a conflict in which vampires figure largely in the motivations of the Southern succession, and John Wilkes Booth is revealed as—what else? -- a vampire. I liked this until about two thirds of the way through and then wearied of the premise. It’s pretty clever though, I must admit, and there’s sure to be a lot of interest in this title when the movie appears on June 22, 2012. The author boasts a...

The author, a self-described WASP and sometime (that is to say, absentee) senior editor at the Paris Review, and his Korean American family (he’s not just married to his wife, but the whole family), buy a Brooklyn convenience store and then the adventures begin. With New York’s impenetrable bureaucracy, the byzantine network of vendors and suppliers needed to stock a New York deli and keep its lottery machine humming, the cast of local characters that trudge through the door, his idiosyncratic employees, his in-laws’ history and exploits, not to mention the author’s literary adventures at the magazine-- there certainly are more than enough stories to fill this book and more. I found myself identifying with certain aspects shared in common between a public library and a convenience store—serving the public is the same wherever you work, it seems. One thing you’ll walk away with from this book is a new-found respect for shopkeepers (and maybe public servants like librarians).

I really enjoyed this book from start to finish.  I saw the film first and was interested enough in the story that I wanted to go back to the original novel.  I’m glad I did.  While the film remained largely true to the novel, it did inevitably change some details of the story, and left others out entirely.  The characters are all wonderfully developed, each unique, each believable.  They’re definitely not perfect, and their fallability may be part of why the novel is so compelling—we may see ourselves in the characters, and relate.  That’s the thing about this book, it just seems so incredibly real. Everything-- the language, the motivations of the characters, their actions.  In spite of the tragic storyline (mother in coma at death's door) there’s still a lot of joy and humor in this book, too.   The Descendants is ultimately a celebration of life, of family, of finding what matters.  A pretty amazing debut novel for Kaui ...

The grandiose avenues and squares of Paris, the impossible conceit of l’Etoile, the romantic uniformity of the golden stone facades and their wrought iron balconies—all this was imposed upon a medieval network of streets and passages. In the course of about fifteen years in the mid-1800s entire streets and neighborhoods were literally wiped off the map to make room for the new triumphant boulevards, parks, and grand public spaces. What effect did this have on the people of Paris and their neighborhoods? Tatiana de Rosnay ( Sarah’s Key ) attempts to investigate this by recreating a historic street that is scheduled to yield to Baron von Haussmann’s wrecking crews in order to make room for the new Boulevard Saint-Germain. Rose Bazelet, a widow, is the homeowner at the center of the story, a person whose life is so rooted in the neighborhood and the very house in which she lives, that she cannot consider abandoning it. Her life story is revealed chapter by chapter as the demolition team a...

A young British diplomat and his family are posted in Cold War-era Bonn when he apparently jumps to his death from the roof of the embassy. The circumstances of the death of a doting father and husband are unexplained and mysterious and there are rumors around the embassy of his being a spy. His widow and children retreat to a remote Scottish island, the family homestead, where they deal with their loss and try to come to terms with all that it means. Coincidentally, a tamed grizzly bear has escaped from its master and all the island folk are abuzz about his fate and whereabouts. Jamie, the son and youngest child, forges a special link with this bear, in a way that will certainly surprise the reader. This is a gem of a novel, one of those unexpected pleasures that surprises you with its originality, its cleverness, its tight writing. As complex as the plot is, it really works nicely—the characters are great, the story wonderful, even the magical realist subplot is a success (hint, it h...

As we near the Omega of Sue Grafton’s alphabet mystery series, the reader begins to wonder if there’s anything new under the sun in fictional Santa Teresa, California, private investigator Kinsey Millhone’s home territory, a place forever stuck in the late 1980s, a time nostalgically positioned before cell phones, GPS devices, and the internet (Kinsey still goes to her public library for vital sleuthing information, for goodness sake!). In V is for Vengeance , her beloved neighbor Henry is out of town and Kinsey herself is offstage for about half of the narrative. V focuses rather on a raft of characters linked to an organized crime family. The preamble to the story is a bit slow, and it never really connects until the end, and then in a way that isn’t too successful. V is for Vengeance is an off-day in the Kinsey Millhone franchise. We hope she gets her groove back if she’s going to make it to Z ( A is for Alibi was published in 1982). With author Sue Grafton now past 70, one wond...