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I've added 1 Dead in the Attic and Napolean's Egypt to my B&N wish list.

Here's another, certainly worth borrowing from the library (I don't think I'd buy it in hardback) - Nicole Mones's "The Last Chinese Chef." The story's "hook" is the world of Chinese Imperial cuisine and the many roles cooking plays in Chinese culture and, in particular, in one Chinese family.

The story is basically a love story - not my favorite genre - but if you've ever read a cookbook just for fun, you'll enjoy this book. No recipes, but some nice discussions of what makes good food great - and I love the bits of Chinese social interactions and manners sprinkled throughout.

It will be awhile before I eat Chinese-American without wishing it was real Chinese cuisine.

Michael Connelly's Echo Park is okay. A Miami Herald blurb on the cover says "breathtakingly suspenseful." And it was. In one scene.

Connelly created a terrific villain—a serial rapist and killer—but he is killed 100 pages before the end. I was sorry to see him go.

I had really liked the Kathy-recommended Lincoln Lawyer, but I'd read another Connelly book before that which was bland at best. Echo Park was back to bland. The subject matter would have to be really gripping to make me pick up a third Connelly.

RE: Echo Park

I enjoyed it, probably giving it a c+. I still haven't gotten over my phobia about not finishing a book I start. I have Connolly's THE OVERLOOK and I start to read it until another book catches my eye but still I keep it on my bedside table.

I read Kathy Reich's BONES TO ASHES in one sitting. I'll review it soon. I wonder what it is that makes me absolutely adore her writing. For those of you who don't know. Reich is the person on whom the character Temperence Brennan of BONES TV is based. The Tempe in Ms. Reich's books is much more to my liking than the one in the TV series. I suspect I like her books because 1) I like the characters she has created and I want to know how they are getting along from time to time 2) I like books with settings that transport me there either places that I recognize and recall fondly or in Ms. Reich's case, Montreal where I have never visited but would very much like to spend some time. 3) Reich usually has a (what is it called) a hot topic that I find interesting -- a hook?

Her last book was about the bones of Jesus family.

When her TV series started I was afraid that I would have no more of her books to enjoy. Bones to Ashes had all the elements of a good mystery and it also had a very satisfying ending. The hooks are both subjects that came to interest me on our National Park Quest: Hansen's Disease and Acadians.

We learned about the Acadian culture and history when we visited Louisiana and saw the statue to Longfellow's Evangalene. In Molokai, my husband and I traversed a 1,000 foot cliff by mule (clinging to the side of the mountain) to reach the leper colony there. This place is so remote that it cannot be reached by car. A plane flies in once a day with perishables and only once a year does a ship dock to bring big purchase items such as washing machines.

Although Hansen's Disease is completely curable, the people were so isolated that they don't want to leave and join the rest of the world. They are free to come and go but choose to stay. The government has said that they have a home for as long as they wish.

It is eerie. The people stay indoors while the visitors are there. (They like having the visitors -- they want their story told -- just want their privacy respected). There are no sounds of autos-- there are none. There are no children. There are lots and lots of pets.

If you have ever watched the opening of Jurassic Park, the opening helicopter shot was from this Leper Colony. Our tour guide and "mayor" of the town said they were excited to have the film crew in residence for the time of shooting.

so, with a double punch of Hansen's info (I learned more than I knew by reading Reich's book) and an Acadian story (I didn't learn more about this culture than I had learned in Louisiana) I literally could not put down Ms. Reich's last book.

I give it a solid "A" ---

Kathy

I just finished Joyce Carol Oates' The Gravedigger's Daughter. It is my virgin trip into JCO's terrain, and I must say her writing is astoundingly good. Although it appears to be two or maybe three shorter stories woven into a single one.

It is, at least nominally, about the possibly jewish (lc intentional) daughter of immigrants from Germany as a part of the Nazi war era.

I read it in two chunks. the first third was so intense that I put the book down for a week. I then finished the remaining 400 (yes, it is that long) in two days where I could not put the book down.

Kudos to Ms. Oates for mastering the craft.

I tried reading Cormac McCarthy years ago and couldn't get into him for some reason. A friend encouraged me to give him another try, so I picked up his newest, "The Road," at the library.

The book is a post-apocalypse story. A man and his young son are on a journey through a burnt-over, deserted, lifeless country. We know it's the US, although we don't know (at least by page 50) what happened.

I'll give you a jacket blurb, and one sample of the writing.

The blurb:
"The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his sin son, "each the other's word entire," are sustained by love...an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of."

Now for the excerpt:
"In that long ago somewhere very near this place he'd watched a falcon fall down the long blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the still autumn air."

Oh. My. God.

So far - and I'm only a page fifty - I'm finding this book to be a book, but also a painting - maybe primarily a painting - and it is accompied by some sort of cello meditation.

Wow.

well put Julia,

I felt the same way. The phrasing of the book is the painting of a road. I did not enjoy this book. It is a great book. It is painful. VERY PAINFUL to read.

You never find out who started the end. My interpretation by the end of the book was that it didn't matter. And would it? I LOVED the book.

Working on reviews of the four I read while in the hospital. Maybe Thursday.

Martha (HEY - good to see you back, even if only briefly!) -- I loved the fact that there was no side-taking whatsoever. It happened, it's over, we have to do what we have to do.

What surprises me is that now, what, three weeks later? -- I still find myself wondering about that (hmmm, trying not to give anything away here) -- the identity of the last character introduced in the novel. He, too, is not labeled as to whether or not he is a 'good guy.' Not clearly enough for me, anyway.

I've now backed up and am reading "All the Little Horses."

Looking forward to hearing about what you read.

Catching Up

Reading in hospitals is fine; writing reviews is not. So, here goes.

Why I read a book can depend on any number factors—reviews, interest in subject, a recommendation from you guys, even an author being elected to the Senate. Yep, I decided to check out James Webb.

On the cover of Webb's Fields of Fire, a Tom Wolfe blurb says, "In my opinion, the finest of the Vietnam novels." Immediately I wondered why any writer receiving such praise from such an icon in American literature would even have any interest in the Senate. A nurse in intensive care suggested power—yeah, I've heard I'm not the typical patient—but a hunger for power didn't feel right. Having now finished the book, my final answer is he ran for the Senate because a super grunt in Fields of Fire called Spider nicknamed him the Senator 'cause he was so academically and philosophically oriented. I think Webb wanted the nickname to become real. But I probably simplify. (Probably? Okay. I also waffle.)

Fields of Fire is a good book—thoughtful and engrossing. It did, however, take me forever—it seemed—to read. War novels are NOT my thing!

Three similarities between Vietnam and Iraq stuck me. (Of course they were unintentional; the copyright date is 1978.)

1) Webb draws a comparison between the French and the Americans in Vietnam. "The French, considering their obligation more permanent, had built concrete bunkers, many of which still stood ten miles away at Dai Loc. The Americans, true to the 'temporary' nature of their commitment, erected sandbag bunkers that decayed, sagging at the seams and finally bursting, oozing back into the earth each monsoon season, and had to be continually replaced," (page 210) Now what's the one building we've constructed in Iraq? How much did it cost? And what does that say about bringing the troops home soon?

2) A grunt thinks, "Every day, some new horror inflicted in the name of winning Hearts and Minds." (page 218) Still working that angle, too. Aren't we?

3) A grunt is talking. "We've been abandoned, Lieutenant. We've been kicked off the edge of the goddamn cliff. They don't know how to fight it, and they don't know how to stop fighting it. And back home it's too complicated so they forget about it and do their rooting at football games." (page 231) Gee, it's all so today—especially when at my Saturday morning protest when a car of young people drives by and someone shouts, "They're fighting for our freedom."

Anyway, it's a good book, a bit too descriptive for my taste, but good. Actually, I might even say important. I'd sure like to hear what a Vietnam vet thinks about it.


Reminiscent of Cold Mountain, Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead is another Civil War story. (Yep, I'm really avoiding those war novels I dislike.) In this story, Robey Childs, at the request of his mother, sets out to find his father and bring him home from the War. During his search, Robey sees the horrors of war, the indifference of those for whom it's being fought, and the glee of those able to eke out a profit. Perhaps it should be required reading for all politicians.

I didn't really need to read any of Shakespeare' Kitchen by Lorie Segal. In the introduction she talks about agreeing to turn one of her stories into a screenplay. The produces gives her books on the craft. "They said that in a good plot nothing happens that is not the result of what happened before or the cause of what happens next. I like reading stories like that, but I don't write them because that's not how life happens to me or to the people I know." (page x) I react: Then don't call what you write "stories." "Lifetime ramblings"? Perhaps. "Stories"? No! IMHO fiction provides structure to the chaos. That's its job. If you're going to present the chaos, you're not writing fiction—even if the events are made up. Or maybe Ms Segal has discovered some strange new approach that I'm too much a traditionalist—or too dense—to understand. Anyway, being the rigid person I am, I gave her fifty pages to win me over. She didn't.