Peachy Reads

Near the Arc de Triomphe where the elegant Parisian boulevards radiate out from the traffic circle known as l'Etoile, a greasy black smoke billows out of a chimney and infiltrates the residences along the rue le Sueur.   When police are called they discover a grisly scene of mass murder inside. In the chaos of occupied Paris, a serial murderer is able to pursue a diabolical scheme of offering a path to freedom in South America.   Instead, he kills his unsuspecting victims and collects the money and valuables they planned to carry to the new world.   This is one of France’s most harrowing cases of mass murder, the story of Marcel Petiot.   Readalike:   The Devil in the White City .

The 1936 Olympics are probably best remembered by Americans for the singular accomplishment of Jesse Owens, his athletic prowess totally debunking the notion of Aryan supremacy at the “Nazi Olympics”.   The Americans also bested the Germans in the eight-man crew competition, and The Boys in the Boat tells of their quest to win gold. The backstory mainly focuses on Joe Rantz and his hard-luck upbringing as a de facto orphan in depression era Washington. Rowing was his ticket to education at the University of W, and his place on crew, though never assured and always fought for, was a path to betterment and an improved station in life.   I was really taken by his hard-knocks life and marveled at all the hardships that he overcame. The book also focuses on George Pocock, the Englishman whose skill at boat-building (known in crew as “shells”) set the standard in the 1930s. There are other characters such as Al Ulbrickson, the indomitable coach, who badgers and shepherds the bo...

Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life used a narrative device that played fast and loose with typical chronology.  In her latest book, which she calls a “companion” to LaL (and not a sequel), she plays a little bit with time sequencing again.  Teddy, younger brother to Life After Life ’s protagonist Ursula Todd, is the focus of her latest novel.  The narrative sometimes ricochets around like a billiard ball against bumpers, and suggests the random remembrances of an old man, events connected by touchstones that don’t always link chronologically.  Since the storyline is intentionally a bit disconnected, it keeps the reader waiting for foreshadowed events until nearly the end.  And then the ending is a bit too much like Ian McEwan’s Atonement , which I thought was unnecessary, but all in all I enjoyed the book.  Great history.  Great  characters.

My wife has a passion for polar adventures, which is odd considering she absolutely hates being cold.  Or, maybe that’s why it makes it so compelling for her—it’s like her own personal horror literature.  Anyway, we both heard the author of In the Kingdom of Ice speak last week, and not being a fan of icy journeys myself, I was nevertheless eager to read this book. The story of the USS Jeannette is history, not fiction, and although the expedition was celebrated when it occurred during America’s Gilded Age at the end of the 1800s, there are few people in 2015 who know anything about it.  At the time the crew set out on its course past the Bering Strait little was known about what lay at the northernmost extreme of the globe—it was either the stuff of fiction—Santa Claus’s abode was placed there in the 1800s, for example, or of scientific conjecture—some speculated that an ice-free sea stretched across the North Pole.  The US was beginning to test global ambition...

Several conversations with friends and family members about the ultra-competitive high-stakes college admissions process that seems to have become the norm today, have often ended with the sentiment, “It’s so different than it used to be.”  The enormous emphasis on test scores, GPAs, private tutors and consultants, taking the "right" courses, padding your teenage resume with charitable and entrepreneurial experiences, US News & World Report’s rather infamous rankings-- all these things have contributed to the single-minded push to gain admission to the most elite colleges and universities.  Is it all part of our obsession with name brands?  And does it really matter in the larger context? In this book New York Times contributor Frank Bruni gives compelling evidence that suggests that students who attend off-brand state universities and “foundation” schools are oftentimes equally, if not more successful, as those who graduate from the ivies and their ilk.  ...

Hitler’s back, that’s who.  Strangely, inexplicably, Hitler reappears in modern-day Berlin, his formal uniform reeking of gasoline, seventy years after his supposed death.  The circumstances of his reappearance are reminiscent of Rip van Winkle.  He marvels at the new technology (untested avenues for his propaganda apparatus?), the multicultural face of Berlin (was there a military alliance with Turkey?), and many other aspects of modern society in a Berlin he last saw in ruins.  He soon stumbles into a career on television.  People treat him like Sacha Baron Cohen playing Borat. Look Who's Back has become a publishing phenomenon in Germany, and has been translated for many international markets, and banned in Israel. This book is meant as pure satire and there are some amusing passages, though there are other places where the attempt at humor seems to be pushing the boundaries of good taste.   Even though the translator provides an ap...

Grace Reinhart is a couples therapist in New York City on the cusp of making the big time with a book that’s getting lots of buzz entitled  You Should Have Known .   The book is about how couples who face discord later in a marriage really should have seen it coming from the start-- the clues are always there, the fatal personality and relationship flaws obvious from the get-go, but somehow signs are ignored, until later down the line it all goes “kerflooey”.   Grace’s professional  standing, her  modest but comfortable Upper East Side apartment, son in an exclusive Manhattan private school, husband a doctor with at a prestigious hospital—it all seems so perfect and her bio should look rather nice on the jacket flap of her soon-to-be New York Times bestselling title.   But the advice she doles out to her patients and records in her book come back to haunt her—you really should have known, Grace Reinhart.  At times this novel almos...