Peachy Reads

Robert Langdon is at it again—fleeing from his pursuers in the dark of night, in the company of a stunning and intelligent female accomplice, in a battle against time to make sure that truth wins and evil is vanquished.  That is the basic premise of every Robert Langdon book.  It’s a bit tiresome, but it’s also irresistible.  The science, art, and architecture tie-ins are always fascinating to me.  Brown goes modern in this novel—the action opens at the Bilbao Guggenheim and takes place largely in Gaudi’s Barcelona.  I found the chase more interesting than the revelation at the end, but I will probably pick up the next Dan Brown novel featuring Robert Langdon again, if there is one.

I heard an interview with author John Hodgman on NPR and his new title piqued my interest.   John Hodgman, it was pointed out in the interview, was the actor who portrayed the personification of the uptight inflexible PC in the popular Apple television commercials from a few years ago. His resume goes deeper than this though, he has frequently had various TV appearances, and his books apparently have attracted attention when they were published in the past (though not so I noticed).   Vacationland is essentially a loosely linked series of essays on a middle-aged family man / minor celebrity living in the Northeast.  It’s mildly entertaining-- there was some humor to be sure, but if you are expecting David Sedaris-like belly laughs (as I think I was) you might be disappointed.  The most interesting thing for me was the final portion on Maine (of said painful beaches), and identifying the town where he now has a house.  The mystery literary icon who once...

I picked up this book after I had heard several positive reviews, and then there was the added hook that the action takes place largely in Cleveland, Ohio (specifically Shaker Heights), a place near and dear to my heart.  The plot was intricate and tightly woven and the characters so multidimensional and believable that it was a pleasure to read from start to finish.   Plus it was fun to recognize touchstones of Cleveland life like Heinen’s, the 100 th Bomb Group Restaurant, and other landmarks. Mia and Pearl, mother and daughter, follow an itinerant lifestyle that suits Mia’s artistic pursuits.  They arrive in Shaker Heights, a well-established suburb of Cleveland, and become tenants of a duplex owned by the Richardson Family.  The lives of Pearl and the Richardson children, and soon Mia and the entire Richardson family, become intertwined to such an extent that in the end it all implodes rather catastrophically.  Suffice it to say, more than one s...

I grew up on Agatha Christie, and this was like a little return trip to the genteel English world of the simple village life of yesteryear with the vicar and his wife, the local nobleman in his treasure home, an erudite detective with a European accent and a sidekick, and a double (maybe triple) murder.  If it all sounds derivative, it’s meant to.  The Christie-like story is sandwiched within the more modern tale of its publishing, and the sudden and perplexing suicide of its author, or is it murder? The UK cover actually has a magpie on it!

In this gritty tale from the Second World War, two sisters follow quite different paths of resistance that challenge them to the core.  When the Nazis invade France Vianne tries to hold things together in her small town in the Loire Valley, her husband a POW.  Her always rebellious sister Isabelle pursues a seemingly more dangerous calling with the French Underground, traveling around France and crossing the Pyrenees repeatedly to Spain, guiding downed English pilots to safety. This novel is so jam-packed full of history and events, that the reader barely has time to process one thing before something else more tragic and catastrophic comes along.  It is war after all.  I suppose I wish there had been a bit more character development instead of broad brush strokes that defined the different personages.  And I sort of think Ari didn’t speak with the voice of a three-year-old, which mildly bothered me.  From a history standpoint this was a good rea...

This was a serendipitous find on the library’s downloadable service.  Commissaire Dupin is a Parisian who was shipped out to the “boonies” on the Celtic fringe of France to continue his police detective career after he apparently stepped on some toes in the capital city with his sometimes unorthodox approach.  Brittany is as much of a character as any human character in this book—its landscape, its history, its culture, its language, its food.  I really liked Dupin and his constant need for quality coffee and a good entrec ô te.   The murder plot was captivating,  taking place in Pont Aven, the artists’ colony that most famously is associated with Gauguin before he went to Tahiti.  I had the feeling that I was reading a native’s view of the province, but found out later that Jean-Luc Bannalec is a pseudonym for a German author.  And so popular is the series in Germany that it has even been made into a television series.  I felt like it was...

OK, so only progressives are likely to pick up this book.  But Al Franken’s story is unique.  An outsider with a long background in show business, Franken  tries his hand at national politics.  Sound familiar?  Maybe it’s the new normal.  As funny as Franken is (and he does try to put a lid on it to give his office the serious tone it deserves), he’s extremely smart, and seems to have an excellent political sense, reaches across the proverbial aisle, and sees the “big picture”.  And, at least in the book, he inserts a lot of levity into everything.  I found it interesting to see how his campaign was organized, how at first he didn’t have the blessing of the Democratic leadership, how he clawed his way up the polls (without the apparent help of foreign agents), and suffered through a months-long recount, before finally being seated as the junior Senator from Minnesota.  It’s also interesting to get an insight into how Congressional offices ...

A food writer is on the rebound after a broken relationship (she ran off with her personal trainer).  A working trip to Montalcino, a hill town in Italy, is the kind of restorative getaway that he needs to put his life and career back on track.  Except the start of the trip seems to go so wrong.  After finding himself in an Italian jail after a rental car agent tries to hoodwink him, and due to an undersupply of available  cars owing to a holiday weekend, he has no other option than to drive a bulldozer from Pisa to his hilltop pension.  It’s  a humorous  prologue which nearly hijacks the entire story, but luckily there’s much more to the novel once the bulldozer is parked in the municipal lot at Montalcino.  As with most McCall Smith’s novels, there’s a lot of talk about life and about nothing, but human relationships are front and center, and by the end of it, Paul has things sorted out satisfactorily.

I went through a Sherlock Holmes stage when I was a preteen.  More recently I had downloaded an omnibus edition of Holmes mysteries to my Nook account for practically nothing since the stories are well out of copyright.  It wasn’t until now that I revisited one of the tales that I read years ago, one of the signature titles, The Hound of the Baskervilles .  I only remembered a vague notion of the plot, so it was definitely worth  taking up again.  There's a wonderful sense of place on the dark moor with the dusty ancestral home.  It’s a clever plot and the character of Holmes is unforgettable and survives the decades.

Bernie Gunther is sent to Smolensk, in Nazi-occupied Russia, to investigate possible war crimes that involve the assassination of thousands of Polish officers in Katyn Wood by Russian operatives.   Ironic that the Nazi regime would want to investigate war crimes, but the thought is that it will give them leverage against the Soviets when they reveal this heinous act on an international stage.   During the course of the investigation Bernie stumbles into other murders and intrigues and unmasks a double-agent in the process.   There are so many nuances and subplots in this complex novel, it really provides an excellent lens into the true history during a most complex moment in the second world war.

We were briefly in London in March and witnessed some of the transformative construction projects taking place at Paddington Station and along Oxford Street at Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road.  Currently Europe’s biggest engineering project, Crossrail will represent, when it is finished, the newest extension of the London Underground, soon to be called the Elizabeth Line.  This book gives a historical context for the East-to-West path across greater London and delves into some of the history that was literally uncovered during the extensive works to tunnel this line through Europe’s largest metropolis.  Bits of the book are truly fascinating, but it repeats somewhat, leaves other parts out  (Whitechapel, for example, since “it could comprise  a book on its own”) and a geographic approach clashes with a strict historical sequencing, sometimes making it a somewhat confusing read. If you are a London aficionado or a transport fan, this could nevertheless...

Being a longtime fan of Bill Bryson, and a Britophile, it was only a matter of time before I picked up this book. I’ve always found Bryson to be rather an unlikely traveler, and this, I suppose, is part of the inherent humor in his books.  His approach is a bit haphazard, and he sort of ping-pongs to all corners of Britain—the well-known spots as well as the “undiscovered” bits, and even the less attractive parts.    At the start of the book he proposes a diagonal axis, the “Bryson Line” from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath in Scotland, which he intends to follow, but doesn’t really. Rather, he seem to end up going just where he pleases—Sailsbury Plain, Cornwall, Wales, London, Norfolk, Yorkshire…  True, as others have noticed, in this volume he seems frequently grumpy and at times overly nostalgic for the times when every hamlet was defined by an independent ironmonger, a post office, a tea room, and a butcher.  But just as frequently he rhapsodizes about wha...

Peter Wohlleben may well change how you regard trees. A forester in charge of a beech forest near the Belgian border in Germany, he has some unusual (at least to me) ideas about how trees exist, along with some groundbreaking ideas about how forests should be maintained. He makes the convincing argument that forests are communities in which members have intricate interdependencies and amazing defensive strategies.   In fact, trees may be more sentient and beneficial to each other (and to us) than anyone previously may have imagined.   He is a scientist, but is definitely thinking outside the box. This book created a bit of a publishing sensation when it came out in Germany, and it has since been translated into many languages and received well-deserved international attention.  

Back in London, Peter Grant is called to investigate the unfortunate overdose death of a school acquaintance of Lady Tyburn’s daughter.   And there are faces for everyone-- Lesley May reappears with a new face, and the Faceless Man is faceless no more.   A bit disappointingly,  Nightingale has more of a peripheral role in this installment of the series.   And while, sure, there are a lot of magical goings-on and some rather fantastic battles, the plot was a little ho-hum, almost like the author phoned it in.   I notice, based on customer reviews, that other readers felt a change in the series with this book as well.     Maybe it has run its course.   Still love the London settings and the local color, but I think I’m less inclined to continue with the next novel when it comes out.

Another police procedural set in Sweden.   The last Henning Mankell book I read featured a character who had successfully overcome cancer. This book (which was published first) centers on this individual, Stefan Lindman, as he frets over his diagnosis and also becomes involved in the murder investigation of a former colleague on the police force.   Wallander is nowhere to be found in this book, and though the feel is the same, this book is set largely in remote, rugged, and woodsy  Härjedalen , near  Östersund , far from the flat seaside landscape of Ystad.    The plot deals with a little known aspect of Sweden’s stance in World War II, and how some individuals thought that Hitler represented the only answer to halt the spreading Soviet influence within Europe.   And how Nazism survives even today in corners of Sweden. Found this on Hoopla to download for free through the library.

Henning Mankell  authored the internationally known detective series featuring Kurt Wallander.  This particular volume features his daughter Linda, a character who has been in previous novels, but in this installment she is a recent graduate of the police academy and now joining the police force in Ystad, following in her father’s footsteps. Their relationship is fraught with tension, even though they are probably more like each other than either would care to admit.  You don’t always show your best side with family, and this book certainly illustrates that, but I think it is all the more realistic for it. The main storyline focuses on Linda’s friend Anna.  Linda tries to determine her whereabouts after she mysteriously disappears.  Things all become a bit complicated with the reappearance of Anna’s long missing father, a cult, arson, and two brutal murders.  The final scenes stretch credibility, but are nevertheless suspenseful. I liked the sens...

An art history whodunit?    Hard to imagine, but this book often reads like a thriller.   The Ghent altarpiece is one of the most stunning artworks ever created.   Its unparalleled beauty and intricate symbolism also made it one of the most prestigious spoils of war throughout the centuries.   Noah Charney describes the genesis of this wonderful work of art and then charts its precarious survival in spite of iconoclasts, unscrupulous caretakers, inept burglars, and foreign invaders.   The last part of the book documents Hitler’s effort to create a mega art museum in Linz with all the stolen booty from the Nazi plundering of Europe.   In the final days of World War II, this priceless depository of art, including the Ghent altarpiece, was nearly destroyed in a salt mine in the Austrian Alps.   Stealing the Mystic Lamb is a bit of fascinating art history with a little Monuments Men thrown in.   Click here for an online link that shows the wo...

This is the first Bernie Gunther novel  I have read that was completely set   after the fall of the Third Reich.  It takes place in 1947 with a Berlin in ruins, its inhabitants trying to survive under very difficult circumstances with the Russians exerting an enormous influence, and the fragile peace struck between the allied victors fraying at the seams.  Partly due to the struggle for everyday existence in the former German capital, Bernie takes on a job in Vienna, another city that is split between the Amis, Brits, French, and the Russkies. He very quickly finds himself caught in a complex web of intrigue involving the Russians and Americans, and a shady association of ex-Nazis who are creating a network of influence in postwar Europe.  This novel  is extremely suspenseful up until the last pages, and is an enjoyable foray into the history of Europe in the immediate aftermath of World War II and its earliest efforts at reconstruction.